IN SEASON (from LONE DUETS)
Live performance
Material
2-4 hour participatory performance with pig carcass, red wine, olive oil, salt, meat tenderiser, and fluorescent lights.
There is a space between bodies, between flesh and meat, between the kitchen and the altar. Drawing close, surfaces meet, collapsing distance and defying borders.
In Season interrogates the territory between the naked and the dressed, the surface and its erosion, as soiled hands work their stains upon rawness, abrading and soothing as they go. In this ritual between skins, fluid and granular membranes spread and spill, relationships are forged, dissolved and revisited through a process of perpetual preparation.
Between 2005 and 2008, Richard Hancock and Traci Kelly developed Lone Duets – a game of ‘performance chess’, a viral investigation into the form and nature of collaboration. Employing contamination and infection as dramaturgical devices, Hancock and Kelly cultivated a series of 6 solo performances, each made in response to the work of the other, each grappling for the space between.
The resulting works are a series of visceral, intimate, and queer events, both moving and spectacular: Richard Hancock Dermographia (2005), Traci Kelly In Season (2006), Richard Hancock Postures A-to-M (2006), Traci Kelly The Mirror Pool (2007), Richard Hancock Open Wound (2007), Traci Kelly Rupture (2008).
Lone Duets was presented for the first time in its entirety as part of a New Moves International commission for the National Review of Live Art (UK), in 2009.
Performed
Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt, DE (2009)
EPAF, Warsaw, PL (2009)
National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, UK (2009)
The Powerhouse, Nottingham, UK (2006)
Photo credits: Richard Hancock, Marco Pustianaz