2014, 20:00 minutes
I am standing at the front of a bus travelling down a highway, wearing a pair of silver leggings. An aria from Verdi’s La Traviata plays on loop. I hold a space blanket in front of my body, and lift it up slowly, revealing that I am wearing a pair of silver stiletto heels. I walk slowly down the aisle of bus, all the way to the rear, then walk backwards all the way to the front, trailing the space blanket over the heads of the audience. I set it aside and lower my tights. I pull a silver ribbon out of my anus. I walk all the way to the rear of the bus, pulling out the ribbon and tying it around the fingers of the audience. At the rear of the bus I take the end of the ribbon and place it in my mouth. I walk all the way to the front of the bus, wrapping the ribbon around my head. At the front of the bus I turn to the audience. “Thank you,” I say, “I feel very close to you all right now.”
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert features a scene in which a character in full drag sits in a giant silver stiletto atop a bus travelling across the Australian outback, a length of silver fabric trailing in its wake. This image served as inspiration for me to create this piece. The space blanket is a material I have used a number of times in my practice. I love its material qualities: it is lightweight, shiny, makes a wonderful crinkling sound when it moves and can be adapted to many possible shapes. I wanted both of my performances to respond to each other, bookending the festival in a sense. I would work with contrasts between stillness and movement, natural and manmade. As I had something dangling from the front of my body in PRACOWNIA, I knew that I would need to have something coming out of my rear on the bus. One day at my local supermarket I found a small skein of silver ribbon which proved to be the perfect size. On the bus from Warsaw to Charciabałda, Mads Floor Andersen performed an action using a ball of red yarn, tying it around the fingers of everyone in the audience. As I would be performing on the way back, it seemed fitting to mirror this action. Throughout my experiences during the festival I had witnessed many moving performances and met many wonderful people. The sentiment I expressed at the end of my performance was not at all glib – on the contrary it was quite sincere.
Nomadic Arts Festival
somewhere between Charciabałda and Warsaw, Poland
31 August, 2014
