Owen and I first met underthelarge clock in the centre of Waterloo station.
We were separated for the first time as Owen returned from Spain and I moved out there. In an effort to create something positive out of this ‘bad timing’ and to exploit their mutual obsession with list writing they wrote down all the reasons for their friendship. Independently they created personal video diaries detailing their lives since they had been apart. They met for the first time in three months live infront of an audience and began to write their lists towards each other. When they finally met in the middle they invited others to use their bodies as a canvas and way of expressing distant relations and personal responses.
Listus was comissioned by East End Collaborations in 2004 and created with the generous mentoring of Oreet Ashery.
Armed with a bag of nails and a pillow full of feathers Owen and I then travelled from theunderground club scene at ActArt to Nolia’s Gallery on the Old Kent Road then to an arts festival in Dorchester before boarding a plane to Germany. In each place, we wondered around the local vicinity approaching people, with the question; hard, soft? Depending on their answer they would get to dip their hands in the corresponding material. We encouraged people to ‘have a feel’ before leaving a story on a pink or yellow post-it to be read out anonymously by the performers themselves combined with tales of their own. Each tale was then cathartically shredded on the threshold between hard.soft though some still linger on in the memories of the listeners.
An interactive site-specific touring piece exploring the limits and exposure of confessional personal memories of a particular community, anonymity and the autobiographical.
Hard.Soft was performed at Act Art 3, Nolia’s Gallery, Arena Festival (Germany) and Dorchester Festival in 2006.