Falling towards love in a pandemic

Art for me has always been a process to make sense as I am a performance artist that utilises endurance to challenge the contingencies of space, time, and the body. The focus of my PhD research is precisely this.

By Chelsea Coon

Art for me has always been a process to make sense as I am a performance artist that utilises endurance to challenge the contingencies of space, time, and the body. The focus of my PhD research is precisely this. In Judith Butler’s The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethio-Political Bind released on the brink of the coronavirus lockdown, she proposes reconsideration of self as inextricably linked to others as extensions of ourselves in the world.[i] While Butler is not the first to suggest this, the concept certainly has urgency in this moment.

After my IRL international tour schedule for 2020 was annihilated I was initially resistant to full embrace of URL platforms. Through research I began to understand how the complexity of the virtual as a site could work specifically for my practice.

Endurance was a necessary collective strategy to adapt to the pandemic crisis conditions and will continue to matter as we emerge into our new normal. After my IRL international tour schedule for 2020 was annihilated I was initially resistant to full embrace of URL platforms. Through research I began to understand how the complexity of the virtual as a site could work specifically for my practice. This thinking was inspired by live festivals early shifts to the virtual such as Fusebox (US), Serendipity Arts Festival (India), GIFT (UK), where artists and curators together questioned what does liveness in performance art mean now? It was clear a different way to think about performance would ensure sustainability of my practice into a foreseeable future within and post-PhD.[ii] 

As we exit the pandemic into our changed world, artists who can critically offer ideas on how theory can extend into practice for meaningful change on every level are needed now more than ever.

An internal drive necessitated the development new performance works across social media platforms of Instagram, TikTok and Facebook as I was unable keep my work on hold while my horror regarding the U.S. coronavirus response grew exponentially as the infection and death rates soared. I found the URL space to be a unique set of challenges that deeply inspired the development of new rigorous performances works utilising anger and humour. As artist and art historian Natalie Loveless puts it of the research-creation process of discovery, “I fell in love” with the possibilities of this virtual space that permitted continuation of critical, responsive performances for diverse audiences internationally.[iii]

I certainly believe moving forward we, as artists, need to act collectively beyond theory and in practice. Significantly, we can continue to make spaces that allow people to ask hard questions, fail, be wrong, but be supported as they challenge and shift their thinking. Indeed, posthumanism scholar Donna Haraway reminds us that the colossal task of real change happens “bit by bit, or not at all.”[iv] I believe in the strength of community and have found VCA Research cohort meetings to be important gatherings for dialogue regarding the challenges of this moment and that such spaces could inspire other ways to see and think. What artists do both literally matters and shapes the matter of cultural dialogue in critical, responsive ways through challenging power. Choreographer Andrew Simonet explains of the significant power and responsibility artists have in this moment as, “Artists build possible futures. This moment desperately needs futures” […] “Make the art this moment needs. May we be completely safe with our health and bold as all hell in our practice. This is what we train for.”[v] As we exit the pandemic into our changed world, artists who can critically offer ideas on how theory can extend into practice for meaningful change on every level are needed now more than ever.[vi]

References

[i] Judith Butler, The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethio-Political Bind, Verso. 2020. 8, 16, 41, 80.

[ii] Additionally, expert predictions on a future post-COVID was useful to maintain perspective: “Life Beyond Coronavirus: The Expert View,” Episode 6: Preventing the Next Pandemic, University of Melbourne. July 2020. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/watch-episode-6-life-beyond-coronavirus-preventing-the-next-pandemic

[iii] Natalie Loveless, How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation, Duke University Press, 2019. 27, 28, 68, 77-78.

[iv] Natalie Loveless, On Situatedness and Ecological Form. HWK: Haus der Kulturen der Welt lecture on 07-November 2019. Accessed: 06-July 2020. Loveless cites and extends on Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble, 2016. Minute: 33:11-33:40. https://www.hkw.de/en/app/mediathek/video/76707

[v] Andrew Simonet, “This is What We Train For,” ArtPlace America, March 25, 2020. (Italics added for emphasis) https://www.artplaceamerica.org/blog/what-we-train

[vi] Such discussions that further informed shifts in my thinking on activism in international artistic practices occurred in presentations and panel discussions for the Asialink conference Public Displays of Affection: How Can Artists Rebrand Soft Power? at the University of Melbourne, 03-March 2020. https://asialink.unimelb.edu.au/arts/whats-on/2019/public-displays-of-affection-how-can-artists-rebrand-soft-power


Chelsea Coon is a performance artist and writer. Her performances utilise endurance to reconsider limitations of the body through its various orientations to space and time. She has exhibited extensively internationally in festivals, biennales, and galleries. She received her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2012), MFA at Tufts University (2014), and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Theatre, Performance and Contemporary Live Arts at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Scuola Teatro Dimitri, Switzerland (2015). Recent writings will be included in Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (Ohio State University Press, 2020); and the phenomenology of bloody performance art! (Routledge, 2021). Coon is a PhD candidate in practice-led research at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

More from this issue

More from this issue

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on how music is taught and practised, not least because the reliance of so many musical activities on physical proximity has been turned on its head. With virtual lessons and ensembles becoming the norm, the move to online has challenged music educators to consider how we might do things differently in the future.

As we find our way to a ‘new normal’ this is a good time to upgrade remote learning resources to support students who do not need to be on campus all the time, or even any of the time.

In the years leading up to 2020, the experience of studying my postgraduate degree had been highly anticipated. Having heard so many wonderful anecdotes from plenty of alumni students, I was thrilled to finally ‘have my turn’ and accept my position as a producing student at the WA Screen Academy in 2020.

COVID-19 has been a pivotal moment in my creative practice, pushing it in an unexpected direction. It has both challenged and inspired me in evolving my work … throughout this period of time my studio set up has altered drastically in not having access to the machinery that ultimately defines my work, a potter’s wheel.

It’s taken me a few days to start writing. My reactions are slow at the moment. I find it difficult to focus. I’m distracted; often glancing between my work, the Guardian live blog and commentary on Twitter. I think often of home – Aotearoa – and trust I won’t find myself in a position where I need to return on compassionate grounds.

By March 2020, after months of planning and organising, I was poised to enter the recruitment and data collection phases of my PhD research projects … studio practice had been identified as the key methodology through which I would test research questions and generate creative works.

Virtually all students have been affected by COVID-19 in one way or another. From the restriction of social distancing arose the transition towards online teaching, some courses were ready for this change while others weren’t.

Continuing to study the arts in isolation required self-motivation, perseverance and the ability to think, even further, outside the box. The sudden shift from practical exercises to the confines of a screen was … frustrating for professors and students alike.

The portal is closing, and the artists in Australia have managed to seize control of their sector. The career ladder has broken down into snakes and slithered away. The old models of making and presenting have shed their skin, to reveal new ways.

As I began the journey of my PhD candidature, my main drive to proceed was a social conundrum. I wanted to explore and if I could, rationalise, the visceral empathy which at times many are affected by, when witnessing upheaval in the lives of those around us.

To describe this semester as anti-climactic would be an understatement. For my cohort and I, this would have been our final year of music school. As the new semester approached, our anticipation to collaborate, create, and learn together for what would have been the last time at Monash was almost unbearable. We were excited to perform, explore, and to succumb to our collective desires to make art and music.

It begins with me buying two 10kg bags of bread mix. I think we might have to bunker down for a while even though my husband’s words “Don’t worry it will all blow over in a day or two” continually float around the house.

How has it been for the students, as we slowly and carefully manage the return to campuses across the country? There is no doubt that the impacts and challenges will be ongoing particularly for students entering the workforce and coping with extended study after deferrals, which some have indicated will come.