Spin-Fold-Spill : a textual investigation about role-play, narrative, and fictitious truths

Abstract

Spin-Fold-Spill is a solo performance, installation and written thesis that explores the Role-System, a system of roles that represents parts of a personality. The performance and installation took place during May 2011. This written component articulates and documents the performance whilst aiming to re-perform the live performance in a textual form. This body of work fits within the fields of live art and performance studies. Spin-Fold-Spill is about how to obscure autobiographical material through the fiction of roles. It is about exploring monologue, about speaking subjects, about telling ones own story and simultaneously playing with the certainty of whose story it is/ was. The body of the performance and this written component are structured in twelve parts that are represented by twelve colour combinations. The audience / reader can choose the order by selecting a colour order of their choice. Various overlapping themes are explored within Spin-Fold-Spill such as: multiple persona in artistic practice, compartmentalisation, melancholia and performativity, storytelling, and the function of the video camera in developing a role's fictitious history.