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CREATING/PERFORMING UNDER LOCKDOWN: TECHNOPARTICIPATION VIA ZOOM
What happens when we use technology as the form and content (in response to Marshall McLuhan's famous provocation) to be creative? Here are a few recent examples how I have attempted to explore this question via Zoom. I also reflect upon this question in my recent article LET RIP: RIPPING, REMIXING AND REINVENTING MATERIALS AND ME
What may it mean to remediate, excavate and bring back to life a personal archive of paintings and drawings and mobile phone recording made over the span of 25 years through the medium of moving image and then remediate that remediation through the medium of live performance via Zoom? Innovating the possibilities of media re-use, feeding-back and looping round of text, and the layering of the voices, recently I have been creating multi-layered multimedia live Zoom performances that are colourful, immersive, textured, organic and disorienting montages of young queer experience told through my own personal autobiography. These performances make full usage of the green screen effect. My performance work really pushes Zoom’s visual aesthetics as a means to frame, act as a visual container and play with different levels of order and chaos through the visual confinement achieved. With my back turned to audience and operates like a screen/projection surface. Green screen effect employed with a constant repetitive video being played ‘projected’ onto my back gives the impression of text and imagery superimposed over my body, that I am wearing text/imagery like a garment, that of a body that has been layered with fragments of text/images/ history. My back turned to the camera/to the audience constantly comes in and out of the green screen; my body that keeps getting subsumed and emerging again. Whilst the green screen background acts a base, each live iteration containing so many levels of improvisation means that a performance can never be repeated twice.
RECENT PERFORMANCES
PRESS PLAY: A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS
RECENT AUDIENCE COMMENTS:
‘It’s just so funny, using your jumper to dry the dog!’
‘Love the mixed media & humour’
‘Such an amazing use of visuals and multimedia!’
'Lee, don’t share the bonds like he and Alex together’’ A rhymical piece with a sweet lyrical feel. You’re a master at rhyme. Lovely flow and delivery’
This live Zoom performance poem is an exploration into gay male coupledom and the quotidian, PRESS PLAY: A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS relates to what me and my partner Alex remember about a shared experience: a day out with Rufus the dog, the dog we often dog-sit. As individual memories aren’t always shared, the conversation might reveal some startling yet humorous differences in terms of each person’s recollection. Creating a bridge between video and performance, drawings of Rufus that I have made over the course of a few years appear projected onto my body, giving the impression of text and imagery superimposed over my body as a screen/projection space; that I am wearing text/imagery like a garment and of a body that has been layered with fragments of images/history. This effect is achieved through the green-screen effect on Zoom to really push Zoom’s visual aesthetics as a means to frame, act as a visual container and play with different levels of order and chaos through the visual confinement achieved. My body constantly comes in and out of the green screen; my body keeps getting subsumed and emerging again. A tape recorder acts as an extension of my body and offers another set of voices ( those of Alex’s) to that of mine performing and other voices heard elsewhere. An ongoing tension between me and Rufus unfolds throughout the performance as if he’s taking over my body and taking over my relationship with Alex.
SEEING/NOT SEEING (2020)
‘This is WONDROUS! Cor! FAB!! What IMPACT Can’t wait for a full IMMERSIVE theatrical experience of this! Awkward interactions with non queer population’ very trippy…wow this is disorienting. Very immersive. I also smuggled Gay Times!’
This performance is performed and recorded live via Zoom making usage of its green screen effect. The images that you can see are drawings and paintings I made between 2005-2007 and 2018-2019 and photographic stills and moving image recordings that I took between 2011-2019 on various iPhones.
This short spoken work performance charts teenage-hood; discovering one’s sexuality in private, away from one’s parents. As a teenager, you do not really know who you are. This performance is a self-reflection - a ‘this is what it was like’ to come to terms with my homosexuality; of me finding somebody attractive (men) but not really knowing what I am. I speak my personal truth, my personal history of seeing and not seeing to confront the politics of seeing and underline how validating seeing can be but also the difficulty of not being seen. Whilst it can be understood as one person’s (my) narrative so too can it easily be read as lots of different voices layered to talk about wider levels of experience with various references to cultural context that (any)one can relate to: George Michael, late night tv, bad porn. Part of the performance includes reference to a dad and son (me and my dad) conversation exploring what one is seeing and what the other is seeing about the same action of men in football with one person viewing it one way and the other a different way. Here we travel back in time to 1996, to a football match between Chelsea and Aston Villa courtesy of a cassette recording played through a tape recorder made at the time of the match.
POLARI PUPPET (2020)
A performative reading of the text delivered via Zoom that pushes Zoom’s visual aesthetics as a means to frame. The text was written by me to accompany the exhibition Radical Ventriloquism which I curated earlier this year at Kelder Projects, London. The reading operates as a self-portrait of all different levels of me; on the tape recorder, me speaking with back turned and me reading that disintegrates and gets mashed up by the end. A collision between me reading a lecture and reacting to the sounds of (my voice but distorted) gay slang Polari on shuffle there and then. But more than a self-portrait - a triptych of multiple ‘I’s: me ‘speaking through’ the finger, me speaking with my back turned and me on the tape recorder. Only some people can understand the Polari slang and therefore makes you think about who the audience is in terms of levels of understanding.
MORE ADVENTURES WITH RUFUS (2020)
“More adventures with Rufus” by Lee Campbell (London, UK) dur 20min
This performance relates to what Lee and his partner Alex remembers about a shared experience: a day out with Rufus the dog, the dog they dog-sit. As individual memories arenʼt always shared, the conversation might reveal some startling yet humorous differences in terms of each personʼs recollection. Like the previous performance, A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS, Lee will continue to make a series of drawings about their recollections but a major shift will be that Lee will no longer speak to Alex as a finger, this time Lee will speak directly to the laptop screen as if the audience are Alex. Essentially Lee will have an argument with the audience!
#TEST3 10 words/10 days/100 artists
Just finished 9 days of drawings. Thank you for inviting me to take part in #TEST3 10 words/10 days/ 100artists An experiment in drawing and networking 27.10.2020 - 05.11.2020 #100drawingsnetwork @q_plus_i #drawing #performativedrawing
A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS (2020)
A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS by Lee Campbell. Extending Leeʼs previous performances into gay male coupledom – HOW CAN I GET MY PARTNER TO BE MY FINGER? and WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER? – this performance is centred around a conversation that takes place between a gay male couple – one present – Lee, and one technologically distant, – Leeʼs partner, Alex. Alex ‘speaks throughʼ Leeʼs finger via a tape-recording. As a result of lockdown, many of us have spent far greater time at home with our partners. Lee and Alexʼs ongoing conversations about getting a dog form the narrative content . This performance relates to what Alex remembers and what Lee remembers about a shared experience: a day out with Rufus the dog, the dog they dog-sit. As individual memories arenʼt always shared, the conversation might reveal some startling yet humorous differences in terms of each personʼs recollection.
PERFORMED AS PART OF ONLINE PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL 17 (OPAF17)ON OCTOBER 23RD 2020
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER?
(NAME OUR DOG!) (2020)
WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER? (NAME OUR DOG!) (2020) explores gay male coupledom and taps into many of things that Professor Jacqui Gabb from The Open University writes about in her recent article, ‘It’s raining cats, dogs and diapers! The intersections of rising pet ownership and LGBTQ+ coupledom (2019) in which she talks about the ‘ways that young LGBTQ+ couples are planning their futures together, around and through their pets’.
PERFORMED FOR ONLINEPERFORMANCEART.COM 16TH SEPTEMBER 2020
