CATHARSIS:03
A year and a half ago, I made CATHARSIS:02, a film that documents me breaking sculptures that were initially made in response to my chronic pain and reflected my fragile body. In breaking these sculptures, I sought to accept my body’s delicacy and the guarantee of it’s decline.
Since then, my physical and mental illnesses have prevented me from making work, a particularly difficult consequence of illness. In my first work since CATHARSIS:02, I invited strangers to watch me piece myself back together by tying up portions of the broken sculptures. I requested that they sit close to me and stay with me for the length of time it takes me to piece a portion of myself back together. Once a portion of the ceramics were tied, I attached a sealed note containing a part of myself not told to anyone: a reason I need piecing back together. Should the viewer wish to unburden me of this secret, they could remove the note, read it, and take it away with them, but I asked that they give me a piece of their pain in return by tying their own secret in place of mine.
If CATHARSIS:02 was about accepting my bodies decline, then this performance sought to explore why it is that I’m far more comfortable with that than I am with piecing together my living self.
© Charlotte Morgan 2018
Photo credit: Arestoteles Kara, Low Stakes Festival, 2017, curated by Edythe Woolley and Jack Ellis.
A year and a half ago, I made CATHARSIS:02, a film that documents me breaking sculptures that were initially made in response to my chronic pain and reflected my fragile body. In breaking these sculptures, I sought to accept my body’s delicacy and the guarantee of it’s decline.
Since then, my physical and mental illnesses have prevented me from making work, a particularly difficult consequence of illness. In my first work since CATHARSIS:02, I invited strangers to watch me piece myself back together by tying up portions of the broken sculptures. I requested that they sit close to me and stay with me for the length of time it takes me to piece a portion of myself back together. Once a portion of the ceramics were tied, I attached a sealed note containing a part of myself not told to anyone: a reason I need piecing back together. Should the viewer wish to unburden me of this secret, they could remove the note, read it, and take it away with them, but I asked that they give me a piece of their pain in return by tying their own secret in place of mine.
If CATHARSIS:02 was about accepting my bodies decline, then this performance sought to explore why it is that I’m far more comfortable with that than I am with piecing together my living self.
© Charlotte Morgan 2018
Photo credit: Arestoteles Kara, Low Stakes Festival, 2017, curated by Edythe Woolley and Jack Ellis.