Amanda Coogan - Cutpiece - Accumulator
Thursday, 24th September 2009
6pm - 9pm
I was the first performer. I covered the tables, chairs and half of the room with a yellow canvas. I wore the canvas as a skirt around my waist, cutting the body in half and planting the body into the installation. It was in part homage to Beckett’s Winnie from his play Happy days and a place of transformation of that image. The image is uprooted and during Cut Piece I liberated myself from its mountainous hold. Pulling the fabric up I ripped it down the middle, turning the material and continuing to rip around it. As the ripping continued the diameter of the material crept closer to the body, slowly exposing the table and chairs. At each rip the fabric emitted a cloud of dust. During the piece a brilliant moment of the unexpected arrived. Simply put, I couldn’t rip the material by hand and so bit and tore at it with my teeth. As I bit the fabric I ate it, spat it out and dribbled with spit. With the material in my mouth I made direct eye contact with the audience, echoing a performance, The Fall, I made in two months earlier.
I left the space with strips of ripped fabric placed on the seat of one chair.
6pm - 9pm
I was the first performer. I covered the tables, chairs and half of the room with a yellow canvas. I wore the canvas as a skirt around my waist, cutting the body in half and planting the body into the installation. It was in part homage to Beckett’s Winnie from his play Happy days and a place of transformation of that image. The image is uprooted and during Cut Piece I liberated myself from its mountainous hold. Pulling the fabric up I ripped it down the middle, turning the material and continuing to rip around it. As the ripping continued the diameter of the material crept closer to the body, slowly exposing the table and chairs. At each rip the fabric emitted a cloud of dust. During the piece a brilliant moment of the unexpected arrived. Simply put, I couldn’t rip the material by hand and so bit and tore at it with my teeth. As I bit the fabric I ate it, spat it out and dribbled with spit. With the material in my mouth I made direct eye contact with the audience, echoing a performance, The Fall, I made in two months earlier.
I left the space with strips of ripped fabric placed on the seat of one chair.