Thursday a.m. Idea Post 3/05

Tonight when I was eating dinner at the dining hall I realized after taking three bites of my pasta there was a short dark rather curly hair embedded in my swirled noodles. Like most people would react, I immediately became sick to my stomach and lost all traces of my once very hungry appetite. I proceeded to throw my dinner away and head home. On my drive home I began to think about how I am very aware that I probably eat lots of hairs and other unappetizing things daily because I don’t spot them each time. However, when I was confronted with it visually it sincerely bothered me to the point where I got up and left the scene. The more I thought about this idea of how I am ok with eating something with hair in it as long as I am unaware vs. how I am completely against and disgusted with the thought of eating that when I am visually confronted with the obvious.
In my performances, the viewer is very aware of me, my struggle and my strong presence through out the whole piece. I found myself comparing the very obviousness of my presence to the viewer to how I felt when I was confronted with the very obviousness of the hair in my meal. Is my presence overwhelming and discomforting for the audience? After researching Eleanor Antin’s work, I have found that her performances do not have a very strong personal presence. In her body image performance Antin’s face is so obscure that her expressions are not visible. My expressions and body movements are very apparent in each one of my series and I am considering choosing a more subtle approach to how I present these struggles to my viewer.
One way I could get my point across to the viewer is them having an idea that it was the artist but that fact would be pushed to the back of their minds and it would not be as visually obtrusive when presented. The other way is how I am dealing with presentation right now. It is the hair in the pasta that you are blatantly seeing, no viewer confusion. I ask myself what do I remember more; the times I have eaten and haven’t found anything disgusting, or the times I have found something gross in my meal? Those questions coincide with the type of artwork that generally sticks out in my mind vs. those pieces that I quickly forget about. I feel the more memorable moment is the one that is jarring and visually puts an image out in the open.