IKON

Fabienne Audéoud & John Russell

29 May 2003

The work by Fabienne Audeoud and John Russell was based on an original idea of fellow artist Wayne Lloyd, involved 20 female volunteers stripping to the waist and randomly drumming for 40 minutes. With the exception of the lead drummer constantly breaking up an developing pace and rhythm, none of the performers was professional or experienced in drumming. Audeoud and Russell’s assertion that ‘the performance does not mean anything. It is an attempt to stage the title’, recalls a propositional, fluxus-inspired approach to performance. Russell elaborated: ‘it was a gratuitous spectacle….if it had worked out differently you might have been able to read it as some kind of post-feminist statement or even, I guess, as something sexist, but we weren’t interested in any of that at all, “the setting of a decommissioned ballroom, a location originally intended for genteel dancing, in Birmingham, a city strongly associated with heavy metal rock music, could not have been more appropriate.

Fabienne Audéoud & John Russell
Fabienne Audéoud & John Russell.
The Withdrawal from Conversation: The Return of the Oceanic/The Weight of the Breast: 20 Women Play the Drums Topless
 
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