BY-PRODUCT: A Transmutation
BY-PRODUCT: A Transmutation is a place-based performance project that makes physical the experience of being silenced and addresses the complexity of evolution under this definition: “an entity’s ‘biological’ response to a series of stimuli.”
BY-PRODUCT addresses stamina, transmutation, resources, and the healthy tensions of growth. It is a pop-up experience that merges physical performance and public art.
Conceived in three parts, the project activates, investigates, and presents itself through a self-reflexive and process-driven creative experiment. The whole is designed to be malleable and situationally responsive.
BY-PRODUCT was performed for a live audience for the first time at Everything Evolves // An Experience.
ACTIVATION
BY-PRODUCT begins with activation, a performance involving common materials to accomplish visceral experiences and artworks. I soak butcher’s twine in latex paint, then masticate it with my hands and feet against paper on the ground. I pull monoprints of each piece of string by stomping on the damaged twine between two pieces of paper and two pieces of wood. Repetition generates sculptural objects and monoprints.
INVESTIGATION
Investigation follows; I document the piece’s movements and objects using time-lapse images, notes and sketches. I make drawings of how my body moves based on the marks left behind. Relying also on memory to interpret the performance’s “by-products,” I compile all of this information and prepare for a large-scale mural painting.
PRESENTATION
The final presentation can be formatted as a public mural, an installation, or a combination. To produce a mural, the concept-art from the previous phases are transferred to a larger surface; the mural is executed with a minimal color palette featuring lines and shapes as they intersect and diverge. An installation exhibits “by-products” of the performance and investigative materials alongside an indoor mural or multiple large-scale paintings on paper.
BY-PRODUCT at your space.
BY-PRODUCT: A Transmutation offers considerable opportunities for targeted education, visual literacy initiatives, youth activities, and a breadth of public engagement scenarios.
The project calls for a context that encourages respectful public engagement with experimental performance and a site that can accommodate house paint and water. Ideally, the process results in an on-site mural — either interior or exterior, ephemeral or long-lasting.
