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The Chymical Wedding

The Chymical Wedding, produced in collaboration with Simon O’Sullivan, is the title of a performance at Tate Britain, London 04/01/08 and a film screened for New Work UK Screenings at Whitechapel Gallery 12/06/08 organised by LUX (http://lux.org.uk/events/new-work-uk-media-res). A journal article further analysed the research and was published in a special edition of Angelaki addressing sadism, masochism and culture in April 2010 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0969725X.2010.496178#.UgNdObyr9O0). The Chymical Wedding is indicative of my research that explores the role of fiction and performance in producing relations or subjectivities, undertaken through exhibitions, performance and critical writing. The Chymical Wedding specifically addresses the role of masochism in performance art (through an examination of masochistic and institutional contracts between artists, organisations and audience) and the potential of performance to produce different relations and identifications between artists and audience. In this, the research contributed to an understanding of performance art as something more than theatre or a process registering the limits of the body. As well as this, the research contributed to existing discussions concerning masochism, psychoanalysis and fiction by addressing the difference between Gilles Deleuze's and Jacques Lacan's theories concerning masochism. Following Deleuze’s rejection of the sadist-masochist binary relation advanced by Freud and Lacan, masochistic rituals were explored as generative of fiction and myth, and as a process in which a protagonist passes through a state of becoming an object or thing. A contract was sealed when the audience and performing group repeated the ‘safe’ word, called out to end the punishment of the protagonist; a means of fostering audience participation and reflection on the audience and artist relationships. Andrew Hunt, currently director of Focal Point Gallery in Southend UK, commissioned the performance at Tate Britain. Guest curator Hunt invited myself and art collective WOWOW to stage performances for Late at Tate.