Why have my mouth sewn shut?
I recently received a warm and loving email from someone, asking me why I'd chosen to have my mouth sewn shut at the end of my online residency. This is what I wrote in response:
There are a number of reasons behind my decision to have my lips sewn together. First of all the online residency series I'm curating invites artists to consider the meanings of the disembodied space we inhabit online, and how we can problematize this. For me there are many possibilities but also huge risk around this disembodiment; through my residency I want to explore ways the body can again be made primary when we connect via the Internet.
The whole project has an implicit question behind it: will there be anyone alive to open the time capsule in 100 years' time. I chose to suffer a painful act as a statement about the nature of deep engagement, to highlight the myriad ways in which we are screwing up the planet. For me the mouth is a powerful and important symbol. It is the where we put food, food that is currently produced in a non-sustainable and environmentally-damaging way. It is also the place from which we speak. Sewing up the mouth represents a temporary abstinence from both speaking and eating, choosing silence as a response to the excesses of late-capitalist Western culture and the threat it poses to our survival.
I chose this intense physical sensation because I believe in the power of ritual. I believe that when the body is pierced ritually something powerful happens, something we can't really fully explain or understand. I believe that by doing this rite and sharing it with others, we are asking for something beyond ourselves. I chose the moment of the Equinox to do it because it is a moment of perfect balance -- the precise second, twice a year, at which day and night are equal. During the ritual I will silently call for a return to balance and harmony, my request committed to flesh through the sensation of pain.
I hope there is something in here that makes sense to you. Most importantly I want to stress that I am not unhealthily masochistic and love and respect for my body. I would not want this ritual act to be mistaken for mental imbalance, as my intention is precisely the opposite.
There are a number of reasons behind my decision to have my lips sewn together. First of all the online residency series I'm curating invites artists to consider the meanings of the disembodied space we inhabit online, and how we can problematize this. For me there are many possibilities but also huge risk around this disembodiment; through my residency I want to explore ways the body can again be made primary when we connect via the Internet.
The whole project has an implicit question behind it: will there be anyone alive to open the time capsule in 100 years' time. I chose to suffer a painful act as a statement about the nature of deep engagement, to highlight the myriad ways in which we are screwing up the planet. For me the mouth is a powerful and important symbol. It is the where we put food, food that is currently produced in a non-sustainable and environmentally-damaging way. It is also the place from which we speak. Sewing up the mouth represents a temporary abstinence from both speaking and eating, choosing silence as a response to the excesses of late-capitalist Western culture and the threat it poses to our survival.
I chose this intense physical sensation because I believe in the power of ritual. I believe that when the body is pierced ritually something powerful happens, something we can't really fully explain or understand. I believe that by doing this rite and sharing it with others, we are asking for something beyond ourselves. I chose the moment of the Equinox to do it because it is a moment of perfect balance -- the precise second, twice a year, at which day and night are equal. During the ritual I will silently call for a return to balance and harmony, my request committed to flesh through the sensation of pain.
I hope there is something in here that makes sense to you. Most importantly I want to stress that I am not unhealthily masochistic and love and respect for my body. I would not want this ritual act to be mistaken for mental imbalance, as my intention is precisely the opposite.
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