Reflecting on my participation in Melati Suryodarmo’s Sweet Dreams Sweet performance for the Passionate Pilgrim (2023) exhibition at Ikon Gallery:

“Performing in Sweet Dreams Sweet was an introspective and enlightening experience. While the performance lasted two hours from 2 pm to 4 pm and consisted of slight, soft, and slow movements, I did not experience a slowing down of time, but rather isolation from time. There came a point where it thought at least an hour had passed and then it was over. By walking slowly into the performance, I found a new relationship with walking as my feet wobbled with each step I took, and had to rediscover a balance within my own body.

By wearing the veil throughout the performance, I felt entirely isolated from the anxiety of live performance that I generally experience in my own performance practice as I could only see vague outlines of bodies, and murmurs in the distance over the enchanting music from the other room in the gallery. The veil caused my breathing to feel warm and heavy, which was counteracted by the coldness of the water; some told me they found the coldness shocking, but I found it rather relaxing. The blue-dyed water did stain my feet blue for two days, reminding me of the experience like a memento.

By focusing on the movements and softness, I felt harmony with people I could not even identify. In moments, bowing in prayer, in body, and with one another not necessarily over a shared god but over a shared experience. It was like being girls together again, and returning to girlhood, school, and uniformity through the shared experience of the performance and dressing in the same uniform.“

Produced for the BCU’s MA Fine Art Instagram.

when i return to earth, poem, 2022.

19th castration, poem, 2022.

returned to the garden, poem, 2021.

thee, poem, 2021.

the newspaper at the end of the world, poem, 2021.

Domestic Cybernetics, Poem, 2021, Published in Live Projects, Holodeck, Birmingham.

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