Instructions on the Label: "INSIDE OUT" 16/03/16

"INSIDE OUT"
Performance
17:00 - 20:00
16/03/16

I did my performance from the start to the end of the exhibition. Circulating round the space and interacting with random people who came to see the exhibition. It was a hidden performance as it wasn't visible to a great number of people, only the people I interacted with knew there was a performance. I approached people and introduced myself before asking whether I could swap coats with them for a couple of minutes. Surprisingly throughout the performance everybody was willing to swap coats with me without knowing me in the first place. I believe this might be because of the setting - an exhibition where people are open to anything that happens as anything could be art.

Whilst swapping coats with people we started talking about our coats and sharing information with each other. One leather jacket that I tried on was 10 years old, warn, soft and still intact. Obviously it was very dear to the person wearing it. Again it is very interesting how we get attached to clothes as they hold memories of the moments spent together. By swapping coats it created very interesting conversations about attachment to clothes and memories that people willingly shared with me themselves. As though by asking to swap coats it triggered memories to surface. I was very pleased with these moments as it meant my "performance" was showing success. I still walked around the space in coats that were given to me to wear, writing anything that came to my mind. However, I have found that having a conversation with people during the swapping was true success. I felt that conversations were easily formed and weren't initiated by me but by the people. After swapping coats it was as though a boundary has been broken and people were willing to open up and share memories with me.

I had one experience that wasn't really comfortable for me as the person who swapped coats with me although was willing, I could see didn't trust me enough with his coat. It wasn't obvious but I really felt it when I tried his coat on. It is very interesting how we can pick up on it so quickly. I still did my interaction however I felt uncomfortable so it was an interesting experience. I can't say it was a complete fail, it was just a different experience from the rest that stood out to me. For me this performance is more of an interactive experience between two people. I call this performance an experience because that is what I was after. An experience between two people. So any sort of reaction is natural and therefore successful in itself. Positive and negative reactions also say a lot about the person and their attachment to clothes and about trust in people with their items. You get to know the person just by doing a simple interaction. Also you can clearly see the relationship between clothes and their owners.

As I have already mentioned the writings that I did, didn't do a lot for me but they allowed me to write down how I feel, what associations come to mind and gave me time to bond with the coat. It was important for me to spend some time with the coat and for the person to spend some time in my coat. It's a collision of two different energies. For me the interesting moment happened when I asked to swap coats or when we were swapping coats back. Its the actual doing - the swap - which was performative in the visual sense, the rest was more of an experience in the actual coat, for both me and the person. The more comfortable the people were in giving me the coat, the more comfortable we felt in each others coat. It was all down to trust.

Sometimes I stopped writing notes and instead walked around the exhibition looking at the work, one by one, as though I was the person in the coat exploring the exhibition. I really liked it.

With every coat I wore it was a different kind of experience as two people are never the same, and in return my response to wearing the coat changed as well, from one to the other. It was subtle.

One interesting moment that I found very amusing and funny was when I was swapping coats with a woman who had a red jacket. When she was putting my coat on we realized that she put the coat the wrong way round. These sort of moments I love. I thought back on the name of the performance "INSIDE OUT" and how this moment really suited it. These moments were very important to me as you could not make them on purpose - they are one off experiences that you need to live through and experience. There is no way you can capture it. They are subtle and invisible to the rest. It is something that me and the person experience.

On my last interaction there was a girl who had a vegan sandwich in her inside pocket of her denim jacket. We all have are own habits and rituals that are seen as a bit strange by other people. We are all different and interesting. We all have different things that we repeatedly do every day, its who we are, so for me it was interesting to experience that.

Throughout the exhibition period I have really enjoyed myself. I really enjoyed sharing moments with people though my interaction with them. There was a lot of great work shown and it all came together really well. 

Great photos by Sam Dobson:

The whole of the exhibition: photos by Carlos 

~Ev