Many people have been interested in the Acts of Clothing performance and its working process so I thought I write something about it.

I’ve gotten to know Marcia Farquhar during my visits to the National Review of Live Art in Scotland over the past ten years. Her extravagant appearance, outstanding charisma and audacious complaints that as the artistic director I had rejected her proposals to perform at ANTI Festival, made me fall in love with her way before I saw her perform which wasn’t until 2007. Her performance Acts of Clothing left an imprint for life. Seeing this gorgeous woman on a catwalk sharing a lifetime of clothing, memories and incidents related to them, dressing and undressing, was a performance I simply adored. After the performance I said to Daniel Brine, then a co-director of the Live Art Development Agency in London, now the director of Performance Space in Sydney, that I would love to perform that score with my clothes, my past, my history. Daniel loved the idea and later that year I had the courage to approach Marcia with this concept. She immediately said yes, so here we are.

Although Marcia did call this invitation a kind of consolation prize (as supposed to being invited to the ANTI Festival) in one of our encounters at the NRLA, for me this is everything but consolation. Marcia has very generously followed and commented on my working process. It is a scary idea to attempt to perform a score created and performed by such a brilliant performer and a star but like Marcia puts it: ‘You must not be worried about the clothing performance AT ALL. One of the most ingenious things you have done is to suggest you perform it and invite me to “hand it on” in person, that is very good and very FLUXUS and it will be marvelous whatever it is and as it is over some nights it can be different each night or the same. It is a very flexible form. This should only cause you excitement. Happy terror like going on a rollercoaster but better, not so fixed.’

So how have we worked? Marcia has handed the concept for me to use and basically, I’ve gone through my wardrobe at home and the storages in my parents’ house to find items that I wore at different ages and times. Then I’ve adapted a semiotician’s position and wrote kind of essays of each item in which I tried to consider what each had represented not only in my personal history but a wider social history. I’ve sent these ‘essays’ to Marcia who then has commented and encouraged me to get deeper into some of the themes. So this we have done via email. At one point I was being very insistent that Marcia should come and work with me during the autumn but partly due to our clashing schedules, it didn’t happen. But also, Marcia has been quite persistent that I have to make the work mine. As supposed to directing the actual performance, she calls it ‘over seeing’ it. So although I got the documentation dvd of her performance at the NRLA (which I’ve watched once), Marcia has kept saying that I don’t have to feel obliged to do as she did. Also in her emails she has reminded me all the time that I don’t have to do what she says or suggests. So I’ve stuck to her score and felt quite open to work within it. I’m also working a lot on letting go – trying to flexible with the material so that the performance can vary each night. So probably on some nights there will be more text than on others, sometimes the stories can go deeper and further and sometimes there might be more silence. Sometimes the stuff might be more fun, sometimes more tragic and sad.

So my Acts of Clothing performance will be altogether different and exactly the same as anything hitherto presented… It will be the same conceptually, one woman alone on a catwalk with her wardrobe spanning a lifetime and telling stories prompted by the garments… But altogether different in that I will present my own outfits, my own associations and above all her tales will be told mostly in Finnish, in my own (mother) tongue.

I’ve added a few new items and next I have to spend time working with them. Also some images and press material have to be done. So yes, a lot of work that still needs to be done. Marcia will be in Kuopio for about two weeks working with me in November. I’m really looking forward to that as it she has been an amazing support and inspiration.   

Johanna