Feeling for Chimeras, 2017, Double-channel HD video, found footage, text, sound, performance, fur scarf, overcoat.
Exhibited at The Well, Open School East, Margate, 2017
This is a project about images. This is a project about imagelessness. This is a neurotic project or a project to make one vulnerable to oneself. This is a project about chimeras and all those other doomed mythological bodies stuck within a static frame. This is an investigation of the sacred, and how that borders bodies - let’s call this project Pre-Chimera Time.
Feeling for Chimeras is a research project investigating the sacred, the self-hunt and systemic violence in queer and chimerical bodies. Taking form as a performative lecture and video installation, Feeling for Chimeras explores text-to-image relationships as a reflexive process for fable-esque & fictive experiences of the body; focusing on poetry and found footage video to uncover moments of vulnerability and tenderness in experiences of systemic violence.
What is an affinity with the chimera? That is to ask, what is it to fuck with both a cunt and a cock. That is to ask, what is it to fuck mirrors and leave breathy fogs on sharp reflective coats of glass, in a ritual of fucking, what is it to penetrate oneself, what is it to colonise oneself in attempts of seeking self love. Is there a special type of love in fucking, that one can find when fucking themselves? That is to fuck, to explore non-productive routes of fulfillment. To explore the inbetweens.
To be silent was to engage in the violence to oneself. To be silent towards the violence. To rest lips against tongue, resting lip against tongue, I spoke about my own body. I spoke about myself. I spoke about my own body. I spoke about my self. To rest lips against tongue, to taste, the sweat running over the edge of my lip. To move and to taste. To taste myself. To be silent was to engage in the violence of oneself.
“Okay, I’d like to take a second to talk to you guys. Uhh there’s alot of different ways to do things out there and this just works for me and invite you all to try it well the key word is safety safety safety. Make sure you’re doing things in a safe manner. Uhm i’m not going to spend this whole video talking about safety, pretty much almost everybody is an adult that watches these videos. If you are NOT an adult, you need to make sure you get your parental permission and have them supervising you, and if you ARE an adult, make sure to take time and read books. They have good uhh topics on safety. Make sure you’re doing things safe and correct, especially if you have family members around, neighbours, you definitely don’t want a risk of uh hurting somebody you love, or in the worst scenario killing somebody you love. So keep that in mind, safety first. But alright.”
Documentation of the performance ‘Feeling for Chimeras' by Lou Lou Sainsbury.
at Analogue Ensemble: Intersection, Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate.
9 December 2018
Many thanks to Sally O’Reilly, Paul Maheke, Tom Morton, Sophie Mallett, Jo Sweeney, George Harding & Emily Whitebread.