Out of all the Vitamins we have covered up to this point, I think This is Offal is the one I have enjoyed watching the most. I think Kelley very skilfully combined literature and performance to create a work that was truly quite gripping to watch. I especially enjoyed listening to the poetry in her performance, and found her use of wordplay and puns in order to tackle the sensitive and emotionally charged subject matter of suicide through a tragicomic lens, to be both thoroughly entertaining as well as thought-provoking and inspiring as she masterfully exemplified how to employ language to supplement the actions and intentions of a work. Apart from this, I also appreciated how she was able to derive influence from, respond to, and adapt a Victorian era poem for the in a fresh and intriguing manner that appeals to the audience, while still retaining the original message and impact of the poem. Not only does this highlight the prevalence of an issue that has been pervasive in society for far too long, but from an artistic perspective also highlights the perpetuity of art.
Firstly, below are some of my favourite lines from the performance!
FEET: I was a jumper and a sweater!
LIVER: Were you in the Thames with us, or in de Nile?
GUTS: I stink, therefore I am! Cast off all Vanity, ‘cause This is Offal!
HEAD: This is the river that the boatman picks, You can’t be pulled from it, because it Styx.
These lines really amazed me with their cleverness in context, and I found that they consolidated the balance between humour and tragedy that Kelley successfully achieved. I especially loved the pun “this is offal” that Kelley used as the title of this performance as it was such a succinct way to capture both the genre and content of this work. The ending as well, with the pun “you can’t be pulled from it, because it Styx” was so powerful to me as concluding with a literary allusion to the river Styx reinforces the universality of the subject matter that Kelley is addressing. Just like a body once dipped in the river Styx is gifted with immortality, ending the “life” of the performance by referring to this river solidifies the permanence of the story that is depicted.
The way that Kelley describes the influence of Thomas Hood’s poem in the interview that followed her performance was also very interesting to me. Kelley describes how Hood was interested in using fiction and art to address social problems relevant to his day, and his subject in The Bridge of Sighs was the problem of suicide amongst young working women, and how he wanted to change how they are perceived as repulsive, disgusting, and disposable, to human beings who deserve at least a modicum of pity. Kelley goes on to state that in the task of responding to something that addresses suicide, whether in reality or in literature, the question, or rather dilemma, that arises is that finding a reason is always an act of speculation, profuse in ambivalence. Consequently, even the women in This is Offal does not provide a reason for why she has killed herself, and instead the different organs act like a group of people when something traumatic happens – exhibiting diverse and unexpected reactions. To me, watching this psychological conflict play out in an absurdist, comedic form was this was quite powerful as it shows how Kelley has taken the messaging of a Victorian era poem and worked in response to it to create an atmosphere of feeling – where there is a tangible sense of the fact that Kelley is attempting to evoke sympathy for the suffering of the woman, just like Hood wanted to do in his poem. Moreover, Kelley also went on to agree that a lot of her work derives inspiration from historical texts where the “woman’s voice is absent,” and as such This is Offal carries on the tradition, by communicating the confusion and disconcertment of the protagonist not through her own voice, but that of her organs, symbolising the eternal silence of the woman in Hood’s poem. Finally, Kelley notes that in Hood’s time, it would have been inappropriate to mesh the genres of comedy and social justice or tragedy, and hence it was necessary for him to compartmentalise the two in his body of work, whereas in the postmodern, Kelley has the liberty to intermingle these genres, which she does quite wonderfully in This is Offal. I found this to be very interesting because it is such a strong testament and example of how the evolution of public morality, as well as art and the industry itself allows for work of the past to be refurbished for a contemporary audience in new and inspiring ways while still retaining the truth of the message that was intended to be conveyed.
Fig 1 – Still from This is Offal
Additionally, the more formal aspects of this work were very exciting to me as well. Patrick Kelley mentioned in the post-performance interview that the use of green-screen technology overlaid on top of Mary Kelley’s body during the live performance allowed for a “deliberate ambiguity of surface.” This was quite a unique concept to me, as I hadn’t really considered how green-screens might be utilised in this way, and in the context of the performance I think it really allows for there to be an interesting overlap between fiction and reality as on one hand, the live actions of her body being manipulated are quite representative of a real body in a morgue, however the illusion of organs speaking through the use of green screen is the fantastical element that transforms the tragic image of a dead woman into a surface for comedic commentary in a sense. Moreover, Patrick Kelley went on to mention that the spaces created by the green-screen allowed for a “layering of character within character” (i.e. the organs as characters independent from the woman), as opposed to its more traditional use in contextualising the setting of a character. This was such as interesting perspective to me, as I think it plays quite well into the idea that Mary Kelley explores in her work, of women’s voices being absent from their own stories, because in an almost parasitic way, the organs as their own characters completely take over the complex and tragic narrative of the suicide of a woman who isn’t even audible to her audience. Furthermore, she also refers to This is Offal as a “collage between live footage and pre-recorded footage” and to me, the irony of this statement was quite apparent, as watching the performance five years after it was first performed, the entire piece consists solely of recorded footage. However, the concept of a “video collage” was something that piqued my interest as it was not an idea I had really contemplated too deeply before until I saw it in action in Kelley’s work.
Finally, the interviewer in the Tate video shared some questions that the audience addressed to Patrick and Mary Kelley, and they were quite thought-provoking so I thought I might take a shot at reflecting upon some of them myself:
Does This is Offal become less of a performance as it is recorded?
I thought about this too, especially as I mentioned earlier, we aren’t watching this now, as a live performance, we are watching it as a document of something that has already occurred, and that presents a very different experience of time and space and perception compared to what someone would experience watching it in the moment. I would even go so far as to argue that Kelley’s work isn’t a performance at all (despite the fact that I have referred to it as such throughout my essay), as it is not intended for the audience to watch happening in front of their eyes. The full experience occurs solely when they are able to see the organs transposed onto her body, and this can only happen through a screen and to me this disqualifies This is Offal from being a performance because reality is not presented to the viewer authentically. Therefore, to me, while it does incorporate performative elements, I hesitate to think of it as a performance on its own.
Showing the impossible presents the viewer with a feeling of the uncanny. Should the viewer imagine themselves in a dreaming state when watching this video?
This question stuck with me, as it juxtaposed with the notion of “madeness” that Kelley referred to in the interview. When asked about the “densely crafted” nature of the piece, that arises from her covering her body as well as the equipment used in the performance in a monochrome, almost pop-art aesthetic, Kelley responds by stating that everything looks “hand-made” because that is how she likes to approach creating and presenting her work. Therefore, the constructed nature of this work, and the very obvious fictitiousness of it all is a by-product of her process. Personally, when the question of the “uncanny” came up, I wondered why one would even ask it at all because Kelley makes no attempt to hide that this presentation of talking organs is intended to be uncanny and bizarre to the audience. Therefore, when contemplating whether the viewer should imagine themselves in a “dreaming state” when watching the footage, I was confronted by how this would be possible at all, since dreams to me are quite organic, whereas the expressly manufactured nature of this performance prevents me from perceiving it this way at all.
Where do you think performance is going in the future? And how will these affect your work?
When I heard this, I thought it was almost a little funny since we already are in the future, and it is quite unbelievable how much the nature of art and performance especially has changed to suit the way all of our lives have been impacted by recent events. What this question particularly reminded me of was our last unit in my Integrative Studio 1 class, where we were all required to create a performance of our own. For my piece, I was inspired by a virtual reality performance piece by Samuel Fasse and Morgan Belenguer called Le Regard Ailleurs. I wanted to explore how the nature of relationships has changed in this new digital landscape that we are all meeting and interacting in, and by consequence how we might sometimes craft absurd and unexpected identities for ourselves in the process. In doing so, I also wanted to question what would happen once we left this space. In presenting this, I recorded myself acting out the performance piece, just like Kelley, and then asked that everyone in the class annotate the screen with the thoughts and images that emerged in their minds while watching / listening to my piece. The idea behind this was that by taking full advantage of Zoom as the virtual platform that my performance was forcibly confined to, eventually we would have a collective symbol of our interactions online, juxtaposed against the strangeness of the persona in the performance. Fig 2 is a screenshot of what the screen looked like after everyone had annotated it! Anyway, what the point of this was, is that performance has changed, and by some strange coincidence, it has taken the same direction as Kelley’s piece, This is Offal – one where digital tools and environments play a fundamental role in how we perceive a work.
Fig 2 – Still from my performance
Provided References:
This is Offal
Thomas Hood – The Bridge of Sighs
Work from:
19th Nov 2020 – Daily Vitamins Assignment
Time with Professor Mike Rader
