Private installation, SMAC Space Studio, Newcastle
Projected imagery, printed photographs, plants, artwork fragments, blu tack, plinth, chair, ladder
Dimensions variable

I know that my need to withdraw from other people is not a permanent rejection of the world, nor a permanent state of being: it is a specific response to the overwhelm I feel if I am outwardly oriented for too long. If I utilise the next installation to accommodate my need to withdraw from the world, might I be
able to recover an ability to orient myself toward engagement with the world once more?

In her critique of performative art von Hantelmann notes how turning inward can lead outward once more and vice versa: “...the turn toward the subject and his or her experiences does not imply a narcissistic turn to the self. The work with and on the self presupposes an engagement with outer projects or content in the same way that such an engagement with projects or content also implies or leads to work on oneself.”1

As I commune with the plants and other media I connect more physically, and fully, to the present; with what else is present in this space. This generates a self-sustaining, experiential feedback loop: a soft immersive space grows as I arrange the plants under the projected imagery of foliage and dappled silhouettes; and the more I relate to it, the more I begin to orient myself outward again, to reconnect with the world.

1 Dorothea von Hantelmann, “The Experiential Turn” in On Performativity, ed., Elizabeth Carpenter. Vol. 1 of Living Collections Catalogue, (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2014), http://walkerart.org/collections/publications/performativity/experiential-turn