Pefect

2018

I am pefect. I am completely imperfect and coming to terms, slowly, as a goal, with my imperfection. My body is pefect. My brain is pefect. It is not perfect, but it is mine. My body and my brain are so massively imperfect, relative to Western standards of beauty, of health, of productivity, that to claim otherwise is a taboo, a sign of my failing in itself. One thing that I am often seen to be perfect at, however, is calmness. Part coping mechanism, part fear of rejection, and part fabrication/social projection onto my “wise, motherly, Buddha-like” body, I am often admired for my quiet strength and utter calmness in the face of disaster.

I recently went through a period of intense panic attacks; during this time, I was taught various self-soothing, calming and coping skills to try to slow my brain and my body. None of them worked as well as the habit I developed of taking closeup videos of myself and my surroundings. This practice made me hyper-aware of my breathing and body tics, and helped to slow myself down naturally. These videos exist/persist as documents of a painful time that I remember only as though a bad dream; concrete examples of my perfect imperfection.

This multimedia performance features a single channel video projected onto my body. The video is composed of super closeup shots of and near my body taken during panic attacks projected onto the naked expanse of my fleshy belly, the ragged rhythm of the breathing in the video contrasted against the gentle rise and fall of my stomach as the images are projected onto it.  In inviting viewers to examine my flesh closely, to rest their eyes upon my imperfect body, I hope to create a space approximating contemplative tension and uneasy comfort.

The day of the original performance in London, ON, I had the word PEFECT tattooed underneath my left breast. The tattoo took much longer than the performance itself, starting well before audience members arrived, and being completed as the 21-minute video ends. My flesh is raw and tender for the performance, during which time I needed to hold my breasts off of my belly in order to reveal the ‘screen.’ Since my body is only pefect, I am unable to hold one position for very long, and was constantly shifting and adjusting to remain comfortable while maintaining contact between the image and my body.