DOCUMENTING PERFORMANCE: ALEX BAGGALEY

Following on from Performativity, where we explored the documentation of performance, its validity, worth, sucess and autonomy- here is the artist Alex Baggaley talking to Ben Tomlinson about how he approaches this in his work, where his performances move into drawings and paintings.

Ben Tomlinson in conversation with Alex Baggaley

This body of work began as a performance of sorts, how has this

been diluted to contain itself in a sheet of paper with pencil mark-

ings? Do you think the drawings will give the viewer access to your

performance, or does that not matter?

Choosing to do drawings is in some way an admittance that these

experiences can only be felt in the act and not communicated. The

drawings are in no way a consummation of the trips. Mostly they

are an illustration of the lack any representation is capable of

sharing something fully. They can only represent a glimpse.

The choice of using an illustrative style is also to remove them

from any tactile experience - they are strictly visual - although

they do manifest a physical terrain in terms of a scale i.e. each

mark is only the size of a pencil or brush tip and these expand and

conglomerate into a mass describing some feature in a landscape -

accumulating into a density, but that’s just what drawing is.

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