Franko B

Lucille Power

Artist’s Statement:
For the past thirteen years I have had M.E. This changed everything. Asleep for much of this time, confined to my home, I was forced to cease my normal life. Separated from everything I had previously taken for granted, a different life resulted in a different person, one I did not recognise. I became invisible, and this led me to wonder: if I am invisible in the world, what am I? I am now much recovered, but the experience of solitude, the loss of ‘myself’, and its effects, remain with me.

My practice is profoundly informed by this experience. Through my practice I aim to charter my experience of this different body, of an uneasy accommodation of this state of affairs. Making work from this location is an entirely different experience. I have begun to explore what my practice might be now, in my present. How I might develop a practice true to this present. It is crucial that I choose to make work sited on this disappointing and disappointed body. I have found a great sense of this different self through the exploring, the wondering, the difficulties and pleasures, the successes and failures of my own, evolving practice. Acknowledging and utilising these experiences has been key in coming to terms with this.

Our first meeting:
I find myself currently in a strange and not an easy headspace. I am experiencing the world mediated through a harsh critic of my every move; myself. Myself; the self of little confidence; the self of not-achieving; the self of going nowhere fast, of difficult solitude; of too much time alone, of too much space for my head to feel comfortable with. Every time I open my mouth, I fail. I may not say much, but there is no low-key chat, no hanging out, no cutting loose, no spontaneity. No getting away from myself. I am bored. I am fed-up of the wearying way of being, of its predictability. This is not a choice.

I have decided to write it as it is. I cannot write from a place not my present, not my now. I might not like this ‘now’, but it is my location, it is the place from which I meet the world, and in so doing, move towards my future. It is somewhere between these locations that there may be the possibility for a different present. I know that somewhere between these locations there might be the possibility for the other stuff that I am comprised of to re-emerge. The stuff that allows me the freedom to believe that I am doing what I need to do, I am making work, I am communicating, I am experiencing the world, able to meet it in a simpler, more direct and unexcruciating present.

Spilt
These are the first trial images for the work I want to research and develop in the time before now and the new year. I'm in the process of applying for some funding for this. My attitude; try, try and try again.....

The motivation behind this work is the exploration of emotions in public spaces, also how we all contribute to some kind of group dynamic in such environments. I wish to examine the placing of myself in a position of vulnerability. By this, I mean that my plan is to intentionally (with intent) set in motion a series of very simple actions which will be choreographed 'accidents' or blunders, rendering me momentarily the centre of attention, doubtlessly causing me to blush (uggh!).

In so-doing, I wish to record, by way of a hidden camera of some sort, or by camphone, the moment of the blunder, as a way of collecting these moments of awkwardness and social faux-pas. So much emphasis, certainly in urban environments, is placed on the keeping together of, the avoidance of any display of vulnerability. My plan is to engineer vulnerability, as a way of exploring how the social space might adjust (or not) to accommodate this.

A key underpinning in the conceptual framework for this body of work is a gentle and humourous method of exploration. I wish to inject an element of the slightly absurd, and of play into these 'arenas'. A tiny ripple of apparently unintentional buffoonery, mishap and clumbsiness unfurled into a mundane London morning....