The End...Durational Performance as Artistic Research

​The End…Durational Performance as Artistic Research
 
A year, in hindsight, is not a long period of time.  It passes quickly when we pass through the days without reflection.  How do we become more reflective?  How do we change our perception to the quotidian and mark each day?  One of the greatest benefits in engaging in a year-long project in which each day’s actions are marked, literally and figuratively on my suit, has been the time for reflection it has offered me.  The performance has taken many turns.  I had days where I questioned my own intentions and didn’t think that I would make it.  But, the mind is a powerful adversary, to all our inclinations.  Now, with only 9 days remaining, the morning ritual gesture of stepping into my sullied second skin, has become like clockwork…It happens with ease.  I know that the end is near, and will be liberated from this obligation.  It has been a contract with myself. Inserting myself into the canon.  A daily program to instill a deeper, more grounded sense of worth as an art maker.   I have said that the end of the performance on January 1st, 2017 will be like a death.  Those who do not fear death, if there is such a person, may feel the same liberation when they know they are at the end of living.  Someone has said, “Dying is easy, it’s the living that’s hard”. 

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