Intimations : videoperformance and relationality

This practice-based project examines mediated performative relationality in videoperformance by means of five artworks and a dissertation. I argue that videoperformance has the potential to contribute to wider debates on relationality, to examine the addressee and the dynamics of relationality through the mediated encounter between performer and viewer, and to produce an account of relationality that manifests the specific ethical and political valence of this practice. I focus on videoperformances in which artists address viewers via video camera and screen, with the result of activating mediated relationality. The term relationality conveys the emergence of intersubjective relationships. Mediation refers to the relay of performativity from performer to camera, screen and viewer, and acknowledges the transformations introduced by technology. My videoperformances experiment with aspects of mediated relationality: Before You Now (2013) explores the desire for authenticity and unmediated relationality. Regardless (2007) experiments with visual strategies to suggest that the screen is permeable. The Other Person (2010) explores intimacy, trust and zones of proximity. Are You Talking to Me? (2010) denies relationality by focusing on a dialogue internal to the performer. Wish You Were Here (2011) suggests and mocks idealised conviviality, and plays with ideas of liveness. The dissertation is divided into two parts: part one contextualises the project in the framework of theoretical approaches and practices. It maps Lacanian concepts of subjectivity and the gaze; Butler’s concept of performativity; film, performance and new media studies; relational and distributed aesthetics. It also reviews the history of videoperformance from a contemporary relational perspective. Part two examines the interplay of relationality and subjectivity in three videoperformances by way of performative writing and critical analysis. This combination of different research methodologies achieves a thorough analysis of performative mediated relationality in videoperformance and contributes to a wider discourse on relationality.