Cosmic kaleidoscope – a machine for optical multiplicity

Welcome to this blog post I’m sharing another update from the latest modules of my MA in Performance practices at ArtEz University of the Arts in the Netherlands. This task has involved making a portfolio object that “should document and disseminate the core aspects of your practice-as-research in a creative yet rigorous way to the audience of your field of specialization, who are not familiar with your work.

My cosmic kaleidoscope artefact documents and disseminates a core aspect of my practice-as-research – multiplicity. I am an older feminist artist who works with four alter-egos, in the kaleidoscope I bring elements and traces of them together, they tumble, blend, separate, constantly re-arranging and multiplying.

The object mirrors my research, where I bring the alter-egos together to explore how they relate to each other, how they develop, operate and what performance possibilities they might generate. That’s at the heart of my research question.

The cosmic kaleidoscope is a machine for optical multiplicity and a precise metaphor for my research. It generates multiple imperfect reflections, through rotations and framing, it makes ever changing constellations that are never resolved into a single image. There is no original image, as I argue, there is no original self, only shifting relations.

As an embodied device, the kaleidoscope works like my alter-ego practice, it is an assemblage, a collection of mirrors, card, tube , light , traces and elements of the alter-egos,  and a viewing body looking through it. The images in the kaleidoscope only exist when an eye aligns with the device and moves it. Looking through it is a micro‑performance of multiplicity.

At first it looks like a simple construction – it’s made from a cheap accessible pringles pack – but nothing in my practice is straightforward. Seventeen packs of pringles later. One of the most important materials are the mirrored aspects, the image multipliers, on the outside of the piece, they are not clear or straightforward reflections, there are over 3000 tiny tiles that fracture and distort images, the interior reflectors uses vinyl (like this material used in the display) that blurs and distorts the image.

I like the weight of the tiles on the tube, you feel the edges of the tiles, I hope the roughness communicates the human (home-made nature of it) in a non-human object. It’s not a toy; it is playful but there is substance. There’s a radiance to it, it’s intentionally attractive, part of the addressivity – I want you to hold it and engage.

But it’s not a perfect version, in a toy you would get random but brilliant geometric shapes, if this kaleidoscope were like that it wouldn’t fit the practice (I have learned how to make a version like that but that’s not my intention.)  Mariella, my tutor, asked me what the Kaleidoscope does? What is its purpose for the research practice? So yes it’s a multiplicity machine but the kaleidoscope as a whole operates as a container that makes it possible for the merging / blurring / freeing, tumbling, to happen and to be seen and reflected on  – in a way that up til now, that hasn’t really happened before.

To get this action I had to enlarge the chamber that holds the elements has been enlarged and I haven’t stuck anything down. In fact, I would have loved to have made the kaleidoscope longer –  there are assignments size constraints - and if I had the skills / time to be able to make it extendable, merge the concept with the telescopic, I think that would have been brilliant, extending the imagination and possibilities.  

There are strong links to the field and the theory here, I’m seeing it as a portable heterotopic device, (after Foucault) the kaleidoscope temporarily suspends everyday perception and offers viewers a direct, sensorial encounter with visual multiplicity. I wanted it to invite you to experience, rather than simply read about, the unstable, relational nature of identity that my practice seeks to foreground.

To illustrate the difference, between reading about and experiencing the kaleidoscope, I wanted to show you an earlier prototype, this version has the score and the information on the outside. I rejected that idea, finding it not as inviting visually – and as you start reading, you are in your head, experiencing it differently. Distracting and somewhat distancing, it affects how you engage with and approach the object.

This version is less didactic, I feel that as soon as you pick it up, you’re immediately in it, and exploring for yourself. And while I’m thinking about the impact of the addressivity - Another key feature - Some forms of the kaleidoscope shape the lens so you only see what’s in the mirrored frame, with mine, I kept this open, so you see some of the environment context – it’s a space within a space. how it is staged with the mirrored vinyl means you can always see yourself, and you can also remove the lens and extend see yourself multiplied.

Each alter‑ego is folded into the object: it looks to the cosmos with Doris*, (includes some fragments of one of her cosmic maps)

It invites child‑like play with The Little One, (there’s her dice) – and it is playful.

 It fractures and distorts images in the spirit of Donnah anger – there are words from her poems, and a lock of hair is in there, and it only produces change through controlled movement, echoing Tatyana’s choreographic labour – and her elements include metal pin) .

And partial images of them are in there. Illustrating photos and drawings.

As a result of the specialisation, I’m adopting new methods that help contain and learn about the relationality (this is in the essay below, where there’s also more on the theoretical connections) but I mention the specialisation here, as it represents a commitment to the messy reality, the chopped up nature, the traces, becoming super important. I was inspired by Anne Juren’s index approach to her practice, and by Xavier Le Roy’s choreography in his work Retrospective. Both are methods that I will be using in the next steps of my research, and I’ve translated to the making of the kaleidoscope, it specifically informs my decision-making around which traces and elements to include in the lens.

The kaleidoscope comes with a card that helps to contextualise the portfolio, it introduces the alter-egos, invites the audience to engage with and enact elements of my practice – as you’ll read in other blog posts below there is more context and references to a range of documentation tools and practices that include video film work, photography, writing – text, poetry and a script, drawings, sounds and playlists, costume, objects and artefacts, collected over the last 6 years.

While there is extensive documentation, as yet the organisation of the archive as a whole is a work in progress. What is nice is that the archive -whilst it’s messy like the practice– it feels  alive. Every time I make a performance experiment, I, and others – are re-engaging with archive, it grows and changes as it accumulates. That’s my main form of dissemination at this point (I also share work on social media, again, it’s primarily targeted at my existing networks of artist / researchers), and I am thinking more about how I move forward.

So finally, I love the analogue qualities – but I have aligned my phone to the viewing hole / eye to show readers of this blog a few of the images from both the prototypes and the final kaleidoscope. Thanks for your interest.

We-dentity: positions, fields, and dialogues

In this post I’m sharing an excerpt from one of my most recent essays for my MA Performances Practices at the University of the Arts in the Netherlands. It responds to a specialisation module on Expanded and Embodied Choreography. It might also be helpful to see yesterdays post. Thanks for your interest.

 Expanded choreography – discourses, practices, challenges

My current question for my masters research is: in what ways can the embodiment of multiple alter-egos operate as a collective performance making method. To do this I have started working with other artists, not inhabiting but generating versions of my alter-egos, and to see the alter-egos as a shared methodological and aesthetic resource. I began using transmissible personas and improvised scores, which I am already expanding and adapting after the specialisation. In this new context, I am choosing to see the alter‑egos as choreographic agents: embodied configurations that actively organise temporal, spatial and affective relations, shaping how time, space, attention, and connection unfold within a performance situation.

In addition to collective performance making methods, I am now thinking about collective relations. By which I mean the evolving configurations between my internal community of selves, collaborating performers, audiences, and the non-human materials and environments we engage, which co‑produce the relations. This understanding extends Bacon’s “internal communities” into the expanded choreographic field described by Ingvartsen and Peter, where movement and events are shaped by networks of human and more‑than‑human forces rather than by a single author. This is also in line with Peter’s accounts of performance as an ‘action unit’ or network of human and non-human agents, and with expanded choreography’s emphasis on movement shaped by multiple human and more-than-human forces (Peter 2023 web).

Building on this, I am considering a refined research question: In what ways can phenomenologically distinct alter‑egos function as choreographic agents that organise collective relations between internal selves, collaborators, and environments in small-group improvisation settings. I currently situate my practice within the fields of performance studies and expanded choreography. I am developing embodiment‑based artistic research with an interdisciplinary approach that engages philosophical, phenomenological, and choreographic approaches to explore alter‑ego multiplicity. I see my practice moving towards the transdisciplinary because I hope, during the next phase of research, to create hybrid methods in what I describe as a Performance as Selves lab.

 Expanded choreography – discourses, practices, challenges

 In my research I draw on Mette Ingvartsen’s definition of expanded choreography as extending movement “where choreography becomes a territory of physical, artistic and social experimentation involving human bodies, non-human materials, environments, and discourses” (Ingvartsen 2016, ). Further, Xavier Le Roy addresses authorship distribution through his practice of questioning hierarchical structures in choreography and emphasizing shared responsibilities over singular control. In discussing collaborative processes, he states: "the way of working in a group and how the responsibilities are distributed is questioned during the rehearsal process for the work as well as during the performance and it always challenges the established hierarchies"  (Packs 2007, 17). By highlighting distributed agency as a core relational dynamic, where authorship emerges through collective negotiation rather than individual ownership, Le Roy’s approach sees resistance against affective capitalism's extractive individualism – connecting to the urgency for my research.

In Retrospective (2014), Le Roy handed over solo works to a diverse group of interpreters who selected excerpts, learned material, and infused it with their own histories, emphasising autonomy and collective evolution. I am now planning to experiment with this thinking and method to create non-hierarchical multiplicity, where my alter-egos are potentials that are actualized diversely, generating emergent “we’s” (internal and external) without fixed versions and testing phenomenological interactions. Instead of persona transmissions, I envisage sharing and testing alter-ego seeds, embodied scores / cues / descriptions, that other artists could hybridize with their own histories. This could help avoid replication problems and foster Deleuzian assemblages where porous embodiments with entangled histories co‑produce new versions (Przedpełski 2022, 45). Unlike Le Roy’s more abstract redistribution of solo material, these alter‑ego seeds retain phenomenological specificity at the level of lived self‑states, linking Bacon’s internal communities of SELF/s with Le Roy’s distributed authorship and Deleuzian assemblage thinking.

Akin to this is Juren’s shift from “the body” to “anatomy” as an ongoing messy practice of blurring, cutting, fragmenting, and reconfiguring relations which resonates with Le Roy’s redistribution of material and Bacon’s internal communities. I am working on how I might  translate this into a hybrid collective‑embodiment approach that adapts Juren’s soma‑poetic tools. I hope to test a method where my alter‑ego work could be developed through spoken scores and “lessons” that mix phenomenological description, speculative anatomy, and the collaborators’ own histories, inviting participants to assemble ego‑elements, other bodies, and environmental cues into shared, fantasmical configurations rather than fixed personas (Juren 2021, 23) .  In performance studies and expanded choreography, a persistent documentation crisis arises from ephemerality's resistance to capture and multiplicity's evasion of fixity. As Peggy Phelan argues that performance "becomes itself through disappearance," rendering any record a betrayal of its liveness that risks commodification (Phelan 1993, 146).

Rebecca Schneider counters this by reframing remains—gestures, bodily memories, re-performances—as enduring across time, challenging the ontology of pure loss while acknowledging how multiplicity fractures coherent archival fixity (Schneider, 2011, 12).  Equally, I am conscious that practice as research requires metrics (rigor and replicability) and that this is a clash with multiplicities refusal of fixity. To address this in my alter-ego research, I hope to adapt choreographer Anne Juren's Living Index from her Fantasmical Anatomies research. So that my documentation follows an atlas and inventory model – with an “Index of alter‑ego Practices” mapping times and places where different egos clustered or interacted, an inventory of objects or boxes associated with each ego, written scores, poems, and reflections that operate simultaneously as archive and generative notation. This registers multiplicity, allowing the alter-egos to be fluid and neither dissolves, affirms or collapses it into a single definitive version.

Omissions and limitations:

There are many key debates that my practice does not address at this stage. For example, as noted with Ingvartsen’s definition, expanded choreography fundamentally embraces the non-human, but it has also been accused of retaining human-centred hierarchies, despite these non-human ambitions (Leon 2022, 28). I understand that my practice could also be considered as anthropocentric, as my alter-egos risk re-centring human and objects over truly de-centred ecologies. Choreopolitics represents a major theoretical development, with André Lepecki examining how dance and choreographic practices enable freedom in the social realm while resisting the policing of movement (Lepecki 2006, 9). I am aware that my Performance as Selves lab could be read as productive individualism despite my anti‑neoliberal aims, and I address this risk in my Advanced Performance Studies essay. A further limitation might be Eurocentrism, as my older white feminist canon centres Bacon/Butler / European thinkers and scenes and I acknowledge that decolonial choreographies remain peripheral at this stage. Rather than claiming to address this within the current project, I treat this as an acknowledged blind spot and a future direction, remaining attentive to how my methods and questions might eventually be re-situated in relation to non‑European perspectives.

Contributions and future questions

In this practice-as-research, Bacon’s phenomenology of SELF/s provides the conceptual ground for multiplicity; Deleuzian assemblages offer a language for how alter-ego seeds entangle with others; Le Roy’s distributed authorship suggests how these seeds circulate in rehearsal and performance; and Juren’s fantasmical anatomies inspire a living index that documents these processes without freezing them. Building on Bacon’s argument that selfhood is always multiple, and Bromberg’s account of self‑states, this practice helps me imagine and operationalise phenomenological multiplicity as a method that bridges psychoanalytic models of internal communities with live, relational embodiment (Bromberg 1998, 57; Bacon 2024, 35). It also offers anti‑neoliberal praxis tools, such as pedagogical scores for training multiplicity and providing metrics for altered subjectivities under achievement‑society conditions. I am interested in how these transmissible alter-ego seeds could extend Butlerian performativity into collective assemblages of intercorporeal emergence; what this would look like in practice is a question for  the next phase of the research.

As I move towards trans-disciplinary practice-as-research I would also hope to contribute to expanded choreography by operationalizing alter-ego embodiment - Doris, Donnah, Tatyana, and The Little One - as a collective method that contributes insights to key tensions for example: between distributed agency and phenomenological specificity, between decentred and situated authorship, and between ephemerality and the institutional demands for documentation. Drawing from model practices like Le Roy's Retrospective and Juren's Fantasmical Anatomies, my research proposes transmissible alter-ego seeds. Where Deleuzian assemblage theory thinks about subjectivity as a shifting constellation of forces, my alter-ego seeds apply this at the level of concrete practice tools, extending Le Roy’s redistribution into a phenomenological register. I hope that hybridising collaborators' histories into Deleuzian assemblages will foster "more we,"  against neoliberal identity fixation (Han 2015; Lepecki 2006). Methodologically, the idea of the Living Index - an atlas of ego-intra-actions as Karen Barad might describe them (Barad 2007, 15) , object-inventories, and mutable scores – seeks to contribute to the Phelan-Schneider documentation crisis by generating remains that evolve through further re-activation (Phelan 1993, 146; Schneider 2011, 12; Juren 2021, 35).

Glossary entry: Multiplicity

This post is part of my MA in Performance Practices at ArtEz, University of the Arts, in the Netherlands. Thanks for your interest.

Multiplicity: embodied learning and resistance

In this glossary entry, I am approaching multiplicity not as an abstract theoretical concept but in relation to lived embodied realities emerging through my performance art practice. Multiplicity is at the centre of my work; it is a process of becoming-with multiple others through specific practices that challenge fixed norms. I am an older feminist artist whose performance practice initially developed as a resistance to gender normativity and now encompasses a broader view of neoliberal demands on identity.  

The practice focuses on sustained work with four alter-egos – Doris, Donnah, Tatyana and the Little One. I do this with the aim of creating what I call more “we” – relationality and community - and less “I” – individuality. This urgency is driven by neo-liberal forces that demand what philosopher Byung Chul Han describes as an achievement society, populated by self-optimising individualised subjects (Han 2015, 35) and what T.J. Bacon – artist philosopher - considers a “contemporary crisis of identity fixation, where individuals are increasingly pressured to maintain consistent marketable selves across a range of contexts and platforms,” (Bacon 2024, 78) .

I define multiplicity as an inherently embodied capacity to inhabit alter-egos without needing the resolution of a unified identity. I see my alter-egos as multiple self-states with distinct cognition, behaviour and affect. This draws on psychologist and psychotherapist Phillip Bromberg’s argument that the healthy self is not a singular cohesive entity, and that the capacity of different self-states to recognise each other is vital to psychological health (Bromberg 1996, 14).  I argue that while multiplicity offers potential for challenging neoliberal identity demands and gender norms, reflection on its limitations is vital. This is a live and unfinished enquiry, with multiplicity emerging at various levels in my practice, through concepts, methods, and aesthetic choices. My investigation explores some theoretical foundations of multiplicity, how multiplicity appears in my embodied practice and the challenges it poses, as well as weaving in reflections on how multiplicity functions as resistance. I conclude by sharing thoughts on where I position my practice strategically and some possible pedagogical contributions.

Within Western philosophy, theories of multiplicity systematically unsettle traditions that treat the self as singular and the mind and body as separate. Friedrich Nietzsche’s influential work, Will to Power (1901) , argued that individuals are made up of a multitude of drives, or many wills to power, striving to express themselves and suggested that: “The assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary; perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects, whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought and our consciousness in general” (Nietzsche 1968, 490).

Henri Bergson, first in Time and Free Will (1889) and later in Creative Evolution (1907), distinguishes between quantitative multiplicity (discrete, countable elements) and qualitative multiplicity (heterogeneous states that interpenetrate and cannot be simply counted). He describes the self as composed of several conscious states organised into a whole that permeate one another and gradually become richer, an account that links multiplicity directly to lived consciousness, emotion, and temporal experience (Lawlor, Leonard and Valentine Moulard-Leonard 2025). These theories helpfully ground my thinking and align with how multiplicities feel from the inside in my practice. Each time I (or other artists) inhabit my alter-egos, they accumulate, containing traces of previous experiences, physical and emotional.

For Michel Foucault, “[m]ultiplicity can be understood as a web of relations between elements,” - where elements refer to the various forces, practices, events and positions that compose any given situation - “it signifies the undoing of the identity of a human subject” (Lawlor and Nale 2014, 59).  Resistance manifests in his multiplicity as counter-conducts - alternative practices of self-conduct and social relations that can produce heterotopic spaces. These heterotopias (actual sites like cemeteries or theatres) become spaces of freedom where dominant norms, temporalities and identities are unsettled, demonstrating that identity need not conform to singular, coherent patterns (Lawlor and Nale 2014, 106) .The creation and adoption of such spaces is a feature of my practice for all of the alter-egos. For example in a recent performance entitled “small entinglements,” (Bodies in Dissent module at Home of Performance Practices) the space created with my alter-ego, the Little One, provided the freedom to be an older body in the imagined body of a child in a specially designed tinfoil room. This could be read as a heterotopic space, a freeing environment for engagement and development with an audience. Likewise alter-ego Tatyana, who claims performative territory in a local park, makes a space where multiple times, bodies and norms co-exist - as can be seen in the film Full,full, half half (Reeves 2021).

Foucault's ideas about multiplicity as relational networks and heterotopic spaces of resistance directly influenced philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who took these concepts further and developed the theory of assemblages. Deleuze and Guattari radically reconceptualised identity and being, defining multiplicities as "the relationship of the elements that make up reality," (Przedpełski 2022, 75). For Deleuze and Guattari, identity is a process that emerges through multiple forces and relations, with reality consisting of continuous becomings rather than static beings. There is no fixed self being represented only on-going processes of becoming-different (Przedpełski 2022, 78). My alter-egos work sits well with their ideas of multiplicity as assemblages of elements - assemblages being “the provisional, dynamic organisations through which multiplicities produce effects and experiences - including those of subjectivity or identity” (Thornton, 2018).

I have previously argued that these assemblages, in my case of props, spaces, time and embodied techniques, help to co-constitute my alter-egos (Bodies in Dissent module, Home of Performance Practices.) Each alter-ego is enacted through specific embodied practices for example, movement qualities, vocal expressions and bodily postures. These are not static traits, but techniques of embodiment that co-produce the alter-egos' identities in performance. Similarly all the alter-egos have objects that are active components, they shape affect, movement, narrative possibilities, and how they relate with audiences and each other.

While these more general theories of multiplicity form helpful anchors for my thinking, when considering my definition of multiplicity and my urgency more specifically,  I recognise they are contested. I am choosing here to consider Alain Badiou and Byung Chul Han as their critiques force me to critically reflect on how I position my practice in relation to multiplicity, particularly asking why I do what I do and does it contribute in the ways I hope? Badiou argues that neoliberalism promotes a model of the individual as a self-interested, optimizing subject, trained into behaviours aligned with capitalist market logic. He provides a critique to Deleuze and Guattari, suggesting that their multiplicities are ineffective in resisting neoliberal individualism.

This is due to the emphasis on process over decision which prevents the kind of committed action Badiou sees as essential for revolutionary change (Badiou et al. 2006, 64).  Multiplicities ultimately lack the capacity for genuine political transformation because they refuse the "cut" of a decision that enables revolutionary action (Badiou et al 2006, 76 ). Badiou calls for decisive interventions and political change, including specific, committed acts that create clear breaks with existing conditions. These are acts that demand sustained organization rather than “fluid becoming” (Vartabedian 2015, 73). This fluid becoming is how I describe all my alter-egos evolving, but it is particularly evident with Doris.* She is in the process of becoming a cosmic being, she is interested in quantum physics, uses storytelling as a dramaturgical operation and engages with the public.

A relevant performance would be her durational performance as part of the Cosmic Titans Exhibition, Lakeside Gallery, UK. (Reeves, 2025). Doris*  resists human, earthbound body limitations through embodied transcendence, she challenges individualistic assumptions by reaching toward more-than-human possibilities and resists practical identity in favour of speculative becoming. While strong on resistance, I suspect there might never be a decisive “cut” with Doris* and she shows no interest in political transformation.  Badiou’s criticisms help me to reflect on both the functions the alter-egos play and the types of transformation I am looking to make; they serve as a caution not to make any grand claims for the practice in this regard.

Moving on to Han’s criticisms of multiplicity per se, he argues that society has witnessed the erasure of the other, not physical disappearance but genuine alterity – meaning a difference that it cannot be assimilated or fully understood within existing normative frameworks (Han 2015, 29). Genuine alterity entails friction and resistance, forcing the self to encounter what it cannot fully grasp or control. Han argues that multiplicities may contribute to this erasure by replacing otherness and proliferating commodifiable sameness. His suggestion that multiplicity theory’s political potential may be largely neutralised by neoliberal capture has implications for both the way I practice and the contribution my practice might make. The stakes feel high, as Han argues that multiplicities might become another form of personal development, serving the achievement society by providing the illusion of resistance whilst maintaining competitive individualism (Han 2015, 67) – the opposite of what I hope to achieve. Han asserts that what is needed is a sustained engagement with the other.

I feel safe arguing that there was sustained engagement when developing my alter-egos with each of them emerging over the course of a year, but this is more of a challenge now my practice is expanding. Another practical implication for my practice from these criticisms is to keep an awareness of this genuine alterity in mind, to notice it and value it whenever it emerges. Through my learning from practice, performances, and theoretical engagement, combined with this nuanced recognition of a broader societal urgency, I am now focusing on the relational aspects of the alter-egos. Rather than individual identity exploration, I am investigating how they might develop together, creating free spaces for their collaborative emergence. This evolution toward relationality potentially guards against Han's criticism by moving beyond individualised identity multiplication toward collective investigation.

I now draw into this review multiplicity theories from Judith Butler and T.J. Bacon whose theories address multiplicity from the perspectives of gender performativity and lived phenomenological experience. These are theories that raise more of a productive tension, provoking  useful questions about how this multiplicity is possible phenomenologically, and methodologically. Although I began developing my alter-ego practice primarily working with theoretical notions of gender performativity and now work with broader notions of resisting neo-liberal identity demands, Judith Butler’s seminal ideas on performativity and gender construction, remain important to me. Butler suggests that by embodying multiple, potentially contradictory identity positions, multiplicity practice and specifically subversive repetition with sufficient variation, might reveal the artificial nature of all identity categories while maintaining enough connection to existing frameworks to remain intelligible (Butler 2009, 81).

Their concept of the "subversive power of unrecognizable, multiple, or contradictory selves that resist easy categorization" aligns with the aims of my practice (Coles 2007, 67). However in reality I have found that negotiating the dynamic of sufficient variation and intelligibility is tricky. I call my alter-ego  Donnah my twin sister who was not born, her spirit is now called into being as a raging teenager. She investigates how gender performance might recover silenced possibilities while generating new forms of embodied speech (including lots of swearing, grunting and hybrid poetry forms) this resists easy categorization and is often not intelligible. Butler’s work, which sees subversion operating within rather than outside existing power structures, has also challenged me to think about the connections between resistance and subversion. I see my practice as subverting gender norms, creating instability and opening new possibilities – moves that might be part of a strategy of resistance against neoliberalism but are not transformational in themselves.

Coming from performance art, T.J. Bacon’s arguments draw heavily on phenomenology, particularly Maurice Merleau-Ponty's understanding of embodied perception. Bacon emphasizes the self as an “irreducible embodied experience,” directly felt and lived. She states that “Multiplicity doesn’t negate selfhood. Instead, it reveals that selfhood has always been multiple. The irreducible experience is of SELF/s (plural), not SELF (singular)” (Bacon 2024, 29). This notion of multiplicity as the actual phenomenological truth of embodied experience, not a theoretical construct imposed on unified selfhood, felt like an important base for my practice. However it made me reflect on another of Judith Butler’s foundational ideas (explored in Bodies In Performance Module – Home of Performance Practices) that the self does not exist prior to performance; "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results." (Butler 2006, 140). If Butler is correct, how can Bacon and I - as in my definition of multiplicity - claim direct phenomenological access to self/s? Following this question through, I understand Bacon (in-line with Merleau-Ponty and Bergson) to be asking what do self/s feel like from the inside? While Butler is investigating how the experience of the self/s is constructed (and how it came to feel natural?)

As I see it, my alter-egos did not exist before I performed them into being through repeated performances, but once emerged, they become an irreducible embodied experience that I can access phenomenologically. T.J. Bacon also offers embodied research methods that help provide evidence for the reality of multiple selves, which I am incorporating into my research. She uses these methods to study what she calls “internal communities” (Bacon 2024, 34). These communities consist of distinct selves that relate to each other, sometimes individually and sometimes collectively. Bacon suggests that this model challenges common binary oppositions such as authentic/inauthentic, real/performed, or unified/fragmented selves (Bacon 2024, 35). I am currently exploring these tensions by bringing my four alter-egos together in live, relational experiments and performances that test how these binaries hold or dissolve.

To do this, I am adapting two existing methods - transmissible personas and experimental improvisational scores – and bringing them into a new context. Performance artist Philippine Hoegen describes transmissible personas as “characters or alter-egos designed to be shared and embodied by multiple performers, allowing the persona to be passed on, adapted, and reinterpreted in different bodies while maintaining distinguishing elements or features” (Hoegen 2020, 11).  I am currently working with three artists to inhabit my alter-egos in different combinations using improvisational scores. I made this choice to work with other artists’ bodies inhabiting the alter-egos, because of its contribution to my urgency for more “we” and less “I.”

For these transmissible personas I draw inspiration from Lynne Hershman Leeson's seminal Roberta Breitmore series (1973-1978) that pioneered the exploration of fractured identity and multiplicity (Williams, 2015). In this work, Hershman-Leeson created and extended multiplicities of a single persona by allowing multiple artists to embody and perform the same character. This series demonstrated her understanding of multiplicity as an inherently collective rather than individual phenomenon and provides a case study illustrating how personas can function as shared creative methodologies rather than fixed individual identities (Williams, 2015).  Leeson gave exact instructions for artists to re-enact Roberta, this score, an artwork in itself, details what make up to apply how and where, and aspects of her costume and movement for example (Hershman-Leeson, 1975). 

I am also aiming to resist single authorship but in contrast to Hershman-Leeson’s approach, my scores create the conditions for engaging with embodied multiplicities without pre-determining content or development. I build on artist Phillipine Hoegen’s analysis that, “the score serves as a strategy to tease out the multiplicity that hides beneath the surface of the self; to render this multiplicity at least partly sensible or tangible.” (Hoegen 2020, 9). As a result of the considerations in this essay, I have devised an improvised score for the group of alter-egos which invites reflection on the theme of resistances. There are scores that invite the alter-egos to communicate in their own ways in a specific context, others are based on artworks made by one alter-ego being passed to another without explanation (Doris*’s cosmic maps – large scale paintings 200cm x 150cm invited a performance by the little one inhabited by another artist,) and scores for embodied movement qualities expressed through poetry (for multiple Donnah’s.)  I hope by continuing this approach to develop a methodology and tools that others might adapt and expand the exploration of multiplicity.

Conclusion

In this glossary entry, I have suggested that multiplicity is an inherently embodied capacity to inhabit distinct self-states without needing the resolution of a unified identity. Through connecting to theories of multiplicity that both support and helpfully challenge this thinking, I have considered how multiplicity, and some qualities of resistance, offer potential for challenging neoliberal identity demands and gender norms – and have included both examples from my practice. As a result of this inquiry I am now seeing this embodied multiplicity as a way to conceptualise my practice methodologically. This unresolved tension around resistance to individualized identity and gender performativity gains new complexity as others begin to embody my alter-egos — a move that I argue strengthens both resistance to individualized identity and collective negotiations of gender performativity. Initially, working with Doris*, Donnah, Tatyana and The Little One in my own body challenged the idea of a singular me / "Dawn", allowing me to subvert gender norms from the positionality of an older female performer. Inviting other artists to inhabit these alter‑egos extends this work in two directions.

Firstly, it further resists individualized authorship: for example, if multiple bodies can be Donnah, then 'Donnah' no longer belongs to me as an individual identity but functions as a shared methodological and aesthetic resource. This redistribution of the persona troubles neoliberal models of the artist as singular, ownable brand. Secondly, it complicates gender performativity: when differently gendered and aged bodies perform the same alter‑ego, the gendered and generational expectations attached to that persona are re‑negotiated each time. My alter‑egos become sites where gender norms are not only repeated with variation in my body but are collectively re‑worked across bodies. In this sense, transmissible personas link my resistance to individualized identity directly to an expanded, collaborative practice of gender performativity.

This move towards shared embodiment is also part of my attempt to guard against Han's worry that multiplicity becomes another form of individualized self‑optimisation; by shifting alter‑egos into a collective practice, I aim to keep multiplicity oriented toward 'we' rather than a proliferating, marketable 'I'. There are many productive tensions in my multiplicity focused practice, providing different lenses and textures with which to generate questions about how practices grounded in the body might contribute to broader social transformation – at the same time without overclaiming their political significance and with safeguards against neo-liberal capture. As a result of the considerations here, I might be positioning my practice as a hybrid approach, that: i) investigates how feminist material forces - temporality, space, objects – participate in embodied multiplicity ii) as a collective practice rather than an individualistic one, and iii) with a pedagogical aspect through transmissible embodied practice. Pedagogically, this approach offers transmissible tools for other artists and researchers.

My improvisational scores function like open-source methodologies—adaptable frameworks that others can apply to their own multiplicities while maintaining core principles of relational embodiment. By making alter-ego scores publicly available, I aim to create a shared resource for exploring internal communities and collective resistance, contributing embodied methods to performance studies. Future work will focus on developing these transmissible methodologies in ways that others can adapt - while maintaining attention to whatever specific cultural and material conditions are in the mix. I hope that the research experiments will provide embodied data and evidence to inform these questions and that my inquiry into multiplicity continues evolving, accumulating, and bringing richness to my practice.

Bibliography

Bacon, T.J. 2024. *An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art: SELF/s*. Bristol: Intellect.

Badiou, Alain, et al. 2006. Deleuze: The Clamor of Being*. Theory out of Bounds 16. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bromberg, Phillip M. 1996. "Standing in the Spaces: The Multiplicity of Self and the Psychoanalytic Relationship." *Contemporary Psychoanalysis* 32: 509–35. https://archive.wawhite.org/uploads/PDF/E1f_5%20Bromberg_P_Standing_in_the_Spaces.pdf.

Butler, Judith. 1990. *Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity*. New York: Routledge.

Butler, Judith. 2009. *Undoing Gender*. New York: Routledge. Coles, C. 2007. "Gender: Power and Authority The Question of Power and Authority in Gender Performance: Judith Butler's Drag Strategy." *eSharp* 9.

Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. *The Burnout Society*. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Hershman Leeson, Lynne. 1975. *Constructing Roberta Breitmore*.

Hoegen, Philippine. 2020. *Another Version: Thinking Through Performing*. Onomatopee 159. Eindhoven: Onomatopee.

Lawlor, Leonard, and John Nale, eds. 2014. "Multiplicity." In *The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon*, 304–7. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lawlor,

Leonard, and Valentine Moulard Leonard. 2025.

"Bergson." In *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy*. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. *The Will to Power*. Edited by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books.

Przedpełski, R. 2022.

*Deleuze, Guattari and the Art of Multiplicity*. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Reeves, Dawn. 2021.*Full, Full, Half Half*. Reeves, Dawn. 2025. *We-dentity*.

Thornton, E. 2018. "Deleuze Guattari Two's a Crowd." *Aeon*. https://aeon.co/essays/.

Vartabedian, B. 2015. "Rethinking Multiplicity After Deleuze and Badiou." PhD diss., Duquesne University.

We-dentity - research components update

In this post and some of the posts below I share some thinking from my hybrid MA Performance Practice - and performance based film making work. This is at the University of the Arts (ArtEz) in the Netherlands and part-time in the UK. In 2026 I will be on a research journey and may post here from time to time.

We-dentity

Designing the Body of Research - updated research components

I am an older feminist artist who wants to challenge fixed societal norms, I argue that society needs more “we” and “less I”. In my practice, I start with myself. Focusing on more we, by embodying & expanding myselves. At the heart of this practice, I work with four alter-egos who perform and make art in different ways. Through this I explore different ways of being.

My four alter-egos are:

Doris – who is in the process of becoming a cosmic being,

Donnah  -  is an angry teenager,

Tatyana – is a Czech rhythmic gymnast, born in Prague 1963,

The little one -  is a silent, part magical part wounded child,

They are represented by these 4 stations.

I thank everyone for all the learning throughout the year, it has helped me to get to the point where a community of alter-egos seems possible.

My research question is…

•       In what ways can the embodiment of multiple alter-egos operate as a collective  performance making method?

My Aim is…

•       To shift fixed notions of identity by examining co-existence and co-creation within a community* of alter-egos and investigate the performative potential of standing in the spaces between them.

•       *community / cohort /system – please note I have more work to do on getting the right word. Working this out is included in my objectives.

Why this question and this aim?

I start with my personal urgency, societal urgency then discuss the theoretical and artistic field.  

Urgency

•       Personal – My practice over the last four years and my lived experience has taught me that this work needs doing, that it does challenge expectations, and that it increases my agency. I am actively expanding notions of identity, build more collective ways of being, fluidity and flexibility. I want to go further with it, to learn more and share that learning.

•       Society – As Byung Chul-Han (Burnout Society, 2015) argues contemporary society, driven by capitalism and neoliberalism and a focus on the individual, creates an emphasis on self-optimization and constant productivity that is isolating. It separates us from others, from the others within and from our communities. I agree with this analysis, I am enacting Han’s call, for more “we” in society and less I.

Field - Theories and argumentation:

In looking at communities of alter-egos and how they operate in performance studies, I have found an evidential gap. I have found no empirical studies on how alter-ego communities reshape bodily awareness or collective selfhood, sparse analysis of transitions between alter-egos as performative acts and few (if any) case studies on alter-ego collectives. I am still working on this.

In the embodiment of my four alter-egos, there are always transitions between them. Therefore in the wider aim of my research I include the investigation of the standing in the spaces between the alter-egos. I see this as both part of the concept and the how. I argue it is a dramaturgical operation, a critical step in the work because it enacts the community of multiple alter-egos.

I am prioritizing embodied co-creation in my question and using the data from the standing in-between the self-states to understand the activation of the alter-ego community, thus meeting the wider aim.

Many writers have written about standing in the spaces (also thirdness and liminality) so I suggest there is no gap in the field here.

My research field draws on psychology, identity studies and philosophy (of selves and consciousness), neuroscience and performance studies.

I draw on the theories of:

Philip Bromberg’s psycho-analytical multiplicity theory argues that the healthy self isn’t a singular cohesive entity and that  the capacity of different self-states to recognise and maintain identities is vital. This ability to hold multiple entities (of cognition, behaviour and affect ) and sometimes conflicting self-states simultaneously, is how I experience my alter-egos. I am also using Bromberg’s theory of standing in the spaces as a dramaturgical metaphor as it suggests possibilities that could be translated from psychotherapy to performance art in my research.

Jessica Benjamin builds on and criticises Bromberg’s (2012) work bringing the focus more on relationality and  intersubjectivity. Benjamin sees thirdness as a shared, co-created intersubjective space where entities surrender their rigid positions and engage in mutual recognition without domination or submission. This relationality is important for supporting my analysis of the community of alter-egos but it is contested. Here I bring Judith Butler’s work into the dialogue to add support and criticality.

Judith Butler’s – seminal ideas on Performative Acts and Gender Construction argue that because gender is performed and repeated, not stable, or innate, there is the possibility of variation, the ability to perform differently. The important aspect of the theory for me is not whether to repeat gender but how to repeat it, so that norms are challenged.

Butler criticises Benjamin, for example suggesting that the emphasis on mutual recognition can inadvertently reinforce normative categories of identity. If recognition requires recognizable subjects, what happens to those who exist outside normative frameworks? I am interested in the potentially subversive power of unrecognizable, multiple, or contradictory selves that resist easy categorization. 

4. In Thomas Metzinger’s Ego tunnel theory he describes consciousness as a transparent, first-person simulation that creates the illusion of being a unified self experiencing reality directly. According to Metzinger, what we experience as "self" is a phenomenal self-model (PSM) from Metzinger's perspective, alter-egos is another name for an ego tunnel. This conflicts in part with the other theories in my field but helps bring me to my argument:  

That through performance it is possible to see The Self as Community" - Revealing individual selves and consciousness as inherently social, collaborative, and multiple rather than isolated and singular.

That I am creating a Performance as Selves Laboratory – where my  work is an experimental investigation into the possibilities of human awareness, pushing beyond conventional understanding of what performance and selfhood can be.

I argue this framework also suggests why artistic alter-egos can feel both authentic and constructed simultaneously. They're authentic because they emerge from real self-states (Bromberg) and genuine intersubjective encounters (Benjamin) AND  constructed because they involve deliberate development (adding to Metzinger) and presentation of usually less prominent aspects of self (Butler).

I suggest that my embodied performance practice offers new interpretations and contributions back to the disciplines I draw from.

The artists in my field – are included for connection to and the differences from my practice.

·       Joan Jonas – I am including Jonas’s visual artworks because of the way she uses multiple alter-egos in a distinctive poetic language that entangles many elements. She does this using a variety of media: live performance, drawing, installation, video, sound, and photography to create dense, textured environments. I am learning from this practice using similar media to explore to explore gender and fluidity through my alter-egos.

 ·       Sin Wai Kin –an artist working with multiplicity in relation to their alter-egos and characters. Their works challenge binaries of many kinds, particularly gender. Their practice involves assembling distinct archetypes into a fluid collective, using traditional opera roles as a framework to expose and subvert societal binaries. Their approach through performative makeup, costume, inter-character dynamics, and speculative storytelling, is useful to my work especially how they invite audiences to reconsider the nature of self and reality.

 ·       Lynne Hershman Leeson – uses multiplicity in a different way, again with similar alter-ego concepts, I‘m interested in her work with her alter ego Roberta Breitmore  who is inhabited by many other artists and members of the public over the years. I’m keen to explore other artists inhabiting my alter-egos to give a new perspective. That will be part of the on-going research.

 ·       Many other artists are found in my canons and lineages. I take them with me too as inspiration in designing my experiments.

Contribution – I hope this work contributes to closing an evidential gap by….

Providing a case study of one artist’s use of a community or cohort of alter-egos, offering new insights into the relationship between identity, body, and performance .

Ways of understanding and approaching alter-ego communities and considerations of their role / application in performance studies

In relation to the fields I have outlined,

For performance studies I hope this practice as research will produce a performative framework for multiplicity – a replicable methodology using alter-ego communities as critical tools for deconstructing identity

I see the work contributing embodied Evidence for relational theories of selfhood through live performance. Generating tacit knowledge through improvisation, which theoretical frameworks (e.g., Butler) cannot totally provide.

And possibly a decentralised creation model that challenges solo-performer paradigms identity can be a negotiated collective (Butler) and how embodiment function as a distributed phenomenom (Barad)

 Linked to my argumentation, the practice might contribute a  Practical Demonstration that selfhood and consciousness are naturally multiple. the work will provide a methodological innovation by using performance as identity and consciousness research. In gender and political studies I see the work as contributing a Political Challenge to individualistic assumptions about identity and agency.

 For audiences I hope this research will have impact because it is not just theorizing about multiplicity – I’m living it publicly. I hope to offer audiences direct experience of how selfhood could be different, more fluid, more collaborative and invite them to think about their own selfhood.

The research will demonstrate that the "self" is not a thing to be discovered but a process to be enacted, not a possession to be protected but a community to be cultivated. This has implications for thinking about selves, identity and artistic practice, social relationships, and political possibilities.

Objectives

In this section of the lecture I will set out the Objectives of my research, for each objectives I explain the methods and methodology, including limitations and how I might mitigate them…

1. Carry out a topic-based literature review for artistically and theoretically relevant references related to alter-egos, identity construction and with a particular focus on notions of alter-ego communities in contemporary performance practice. As part of this objective I will clarify terms and definitions.

Method – literature review

Actions include: Identify and review key texts in performance studies, psychology, philosophy, sociology, and neuroscience relevant to alter-egos and identity

I will Annotate and synthesize findings in a literature matrix, highlighting gaps and approaches to alter-ego communities.

I will Collate definitions from interdisciplinary sources on terms to be more theoretically defined include Self, self-states, alter-egos, identity, intersubjectivity, thirdness, liminality, alter-ego community / cohort or system - particularly clarifying the use of the word “community” in respect of alter-egos.

In order to ensure validity I will be systematic and transparent in recording and bring critical engagement with my sources. I am aware of potential limitations such as selection and publication bias, and aim to mitigate these through careful planning, documentation, and tutor / peer consultation.

 Output: bibliography and summary document (by end of November 2025).

Write a glossary with critical definitions and noting variations in usage across disciplines.

 2. Set out my principles or guidelines for embodiment, to describe for example how am I activating this group of alter-egos as a “community”,  and to inform the improvisational scores.   

Method: Embodied analysis. I am only just getting started with this, How do I know what these engagements and transitions are in my body? I want to analyse the Being of the performance artist in the process of performative action, where the material is my own “lived body”  as Merleau-Ponty argues. So that I can describe how the presence of my alter-egos are perceived, produced and experienced.

To achieve this objective my actions are:

•       Reflect on my practice and relevant case studies

•       Draft a statement on how alter-egos are constructed, embodied, and given agency in your work – and test it with peers / mentors.

•       Output: Principles document to guide pratice (by end of December 2025).

3. Create improvised scores for the experiments, based on guidelines above.

I will create scores for exploring the later-ego engagements and the standing in the spaces between my alter-egos. My aim is that this will help to ensure replicability.

I do worry that over-structuring may inhibit genuine alter-ego engagement and the transitions, I will discuss this with tutors and try pilot scores and include "open" phases within scores.

 Method  - Improvisational score

Actions: Design experimental protocols, including improvisational scores and reflective journaling templates (January 2026).

Pilot at least one experiment to refine methodology.

Set clear criteria for assessing physical, emotional, and psychological responses (drawing on reflective and phenomenological methods.

Output: Methodology chapter and experiment templates (by end of January 2026).

4. Carry out practice as research –

Method - conduct a series of practice-based improvised experiments designed to test different approaches to alter-ego interactions and transitions, capturing challenges and insights that illuminate my question.

this method is the core of my research, allowing real-time exploration of co-existence and transitions between selves. Studio-based improvisation will generate emergent dynamics, the "co-creation within a community of alter-egos". I plan to use structured iterations and to repeat experiments with varied constraints (e.g., time limits, persona-switching rules) to test consistency of findings. I will triangulate data: Cross-reference improvisation outcomes with journaling/peer feedback to reduce subjectivity.

I am keen to learn about the tension between my curation vs the alter-ego group emerging dynamics, and whether and how their autonomous creative impulses emerge.

Method / Actions:

Schedule and conduct a minimum of 6-10 studio-based experiments

Use video, audio, and journaling to document each session.

Collaborate with peers for selected experiments to explore co-creation.

5 Document the physical, emotional, psychological and perceptual changes that occur during the embodiment process (based on the experiments above) I will use the methods of reflective journalling and video documentation.

I need to capture the subjective experience of the "co-existence" and the transition states, providing data on identity fluidity that I couldn’t get from performance alone. Credibility: I will log reflections immediately post-improvisation to minimize recall bias (as I know this is a problem).

I will track the somatic costs of maintaining multiple alter-egos and kinesthetic empathy. These methods worked well for me in the residency. I know that self-reporting may overlook embodied knowledge, so I will add a method or two.

Other Methods - I aim to use other techniques such as somatics, body-mapping or sketching sensations. practice led writing, field notes Peer exchange and dialogue – collaboration with other artists.  audio (vocal shifts), and field notes to create a fully rounded description of the experiment / results.

Output: Data ready to be analysed

6. Analyse how the alter-ego transitions and engagements reshape bodily awareness and contribute to new understandings of shifting fixed notions of the self, communities of alter-egos, and affect identity.

Aim: Systematically analyse the data for changes in embodiment, identity, and community during experiments.

Method : Review and code documentation for themes related to bodily and psychological shifts (March 2026).

Analyse how findings challenge or support fixed notions of self and community.

Output:  coded data (by end of March 2026).

7. Write up findings and develop approach to exposition of artistic research. And Contribute back to the theories outlined in my field.

Aim: Synthesize findings and articulate contributions to artistic research and performance studies.

Actions:

Draft research exposition, integrating literature, methods, practice, and analysis (April 2026).

Prepare documentation for assessment/exhibition EARS

And feedback from peers and supervisors; revise accordingly.

I will implement a timescale inline with the HOPP YR 2 timetable as required.

Ethics

•       Self-care – psychological well-being? – I am now working with a drama psychotherapist in a specific way to support me through the research. They are helping me as a facilitative guide to how I meet the work and how it meets me, in an embodied way. They are sharing Dialectical Behavioural Tools and supporting with me notes and reflection questions. Other artists I might invite to inhabit the alter-egos – I’ll liaise with the drama therapist on this.

•       Theoretical choices - Benjamin highlights the mutual recognition and surrender between distinct selves, which is crucial for avoiding reductive binaries and fostering ethical, transformative performance relationships.

Thanks for reading.

We-dentity - in the company of entangled selves

Thanks for arriving at my blog and taking an interest in the cannons and lineages for my performance experiment piece:

We-dentity – in the company of entangled selves

Here’s the concept and PR blurb:

Four alter-egos and an artist inhabit the same space for the first time. Who will show up and how? Might they become a community, split or refuse to engage?

It’s a moment of not knowing; an improvised experiment that starts with psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg’s idea that a healthy identity involves fluid movement between distinct self-states of cognition, affect and behaviour. Inside the artists’ mind there is randomness, moments of clarity and chaos.

We-dentity is about expanding ourselves, challenging norms and exploring different ways of being. It matters because society needs more we, less I.  

It’s a Performance by Dawn Reeves and her alter-egos: Donnah, Tatyana Bogdanovic, the little one and Doris*.

Technical assistance: Irina Baldini and the tech team, and Arya for invigilating.

DRA-PER-1. Trace, seek out and use lineages and cannons in/of dramaturgical operations in order to develop their work

My practice and research into alter-egos benefit from a long lineage and cannon of artists who use a wealth of dramaturgical operations. In this module I am choosing the following dramaturgical operations: i) layering ii) multiplicity iii) points of view

These are the main operations, I have chosen them on the basis that they serve the concept of my performance experiment and its development. I want to acknowledge  other operations that are important to this piece that due to space, I am not illustrating the lineages for, these are: framing – this defines the space and is always a feature in the piece, particularly holding the space, introspection – this underpins the practice and primes / guides the audience into the work, and also I am using personification as I use object (in this case chairs) as if they were the alter-egos in some cases.

In the feedback from the formative run through – more operations were visible to the audience, these included: collage (I agree, it’s similar but different to layering in that collage often juxtaposes and puts images side by side, more assemblage.) Call to imagination (definitely, my work is one of created alter-egos) Archiving (agree – particularly for one alter-ego whose birth certificate is included) and costume (I’m including this in the layering).

i) Layering

Joan Jonas is a seminal American artist whose work spans decades, a  key influence of mine, her practice makes extensive use of layering to create complex, multi-dimensional experiences that intertwine identity ( including various alter-egos), storytelling and myth. She does this using a variety of media: live performance, drawing, installation, video, sound, and photography to create dense, textured environments. In her foundational feminist work Organic Honey (1972) and one of her later pieces Reanimation (2012), I have written about her work  Sweeney astray: disgust at the thought of unknown places (1998 ) in the Bodies in Dissent module, where she performs wearing costumes, uses the voice of the poet Seamus Heaney as an alter-ego and explores the fluidity of identity in times and places of war through layering and contrasting images.   

How she uses the layering?

In these artworks Jonas she layers live action with video monitors, drawings, and soundscapes, creating a space where the boundaries between live event and recorded image, object, and action, are blurred. In discussing Organic Honey, Robert Ayers (Jonas, Tate 2018.) says:

“By carefully handling personal objects like fans, dolls, stones and spoons, the artist metamorphosized from one identity and female representation to the other: from herself the artist to Organic Honey, the erotic seductress. The perception of the piece became more multilayered because of the real time action in the context of the installation.” The action was also live streamed.

In reanimation for e.g. Jonas combines live drawing, movement, video projections, text, sound, music, and objects simultaneously. She draws live at a desk while a video camera captures and projects her drawing onto a screen, layering the live action with photography and sound.

How I am using the layering and to what effect?

I am using many of the same media to explore similar concepts e.g. drawing live, photography, sound, objects – to explore gender and fluidity through alter-egos. I am not using video in this performance although I have done in the past when working with only one alter-ego and it is something I will return to.

I hope the layering surrounds the audience in a complex sensory and conceptual field, encouraging active engagement as viewers navigate images, sounds, and actions. This is intended to resist singular interpretation, inviting multiple readings and emotional responses. The layering disrupts linear storytelling and stable perspectives. The audience negotiates shifting viewpoints and fragmented images, which destabilizes fixed meanings and encourages a participatory, reflective mode of spectatorship. I hope it has a unifying effect and less assemblage, depth and immersion.

Note: For another artist who uses layering in a different way, I include in the lineage of my work, Jenna Fox, a UK artist who works with similar concepts to mine, she is currently using layering of objects – pouring concrete on the dresses of herself as a child at different ages (also uses different media to layer). Very interesting, playing with time, very difficult and slow operation. I will learn more about this going forward.

ii) Multiplicity

Sin Wai Kin is for part of my lineage as an artist working with multiplicity in relation to their alter-egos and characters. Their works challenge binaries of many kinds, particularly gender. (And I acknowledge their use of drag.) I am particularly building on Sin’s work, “A dream of wholeness in parts,” 2021. The video work formed part of the exhibition, It’s Always You at the Blindspot Gallery, Frieze London and was nominated for the 2022 Turner Prize. There’s also the piece, “It’s always you” where they embody a boyband, and centre on interaction of multiple characters, using them as a system to explore and dismantle binaries related to gender, identity, and reality.

How they use this operation

Sin’s operation of multiplicity with multiple characters involves assembling distinct archetypes into a fluid collective, using traditional opera roles as a framework to expose and subvert societal binaries. Through performative makeup, costume, inter-character dynamics, and speculative storytelling, they create a complex theatrical system that embodies multiplicity, challenges fixed identities, and invites audiences to reconsider the nature of self and reality e.g. in their work A dream of wholeness in Parts, characters like the Universe and The construct have twin selves. For Sin their dramaturgical operations are both conceptual and embodied, rooted in Taoist philosophy, Cantonese operatic tradition, and contemporary queer theory. Sin Wai Kin conceptualizes their multiple characters as a collective or "multiplicity as one body," where distinct personal narratives and identities coexist and are performed simultaneously. They use film extensively, I feel the mediated nature of film invites a more reflective, distanced engagement with multiplicity, and it emphasizes the constructedness of the world..

How I am using the operation and to what effect?

What I distil from this multiplicity operation is the way it allows Sin to unfix identity and present it as fluid and relational rather than singular and fixed. I’m hoping the multiplicity creates a relational universe. In this performance I’m not using film, I want the liveness - physical embodying of multiple selves to creating a more direct embodied experience that can shift fluidly in front of an audience (well I’m working towards this, it might not be very fluid at the moment!) but I aspire to a shared, co-present experience where multiplicity can be felt as a communal and relational.

Another artist who uses multiplicity in a different way, again with similar alter-ego concepts is Lynne Herschman Leeson, whose ego Roberta Breitmore is inhabited by many other artists and members of the public over the years. I’m keen to explore other artists inhabiting my alter-egos to give a new perspective. That will be part of the on-going research.

iii) Points of view

Nisha Madhan and Julia Croft are New Zealand-based performance artists who collaborate closely are known for their innovative dramaturgical approach called “liquid dramaturgy.” Nisha Madhan and Julia Croft use dramaturgical operations of multiple points of view to create performances that are non-linear, fragmented, and intersectional. Works that I have in my lineage include Power Ballad (2017) and Working On My Night Moves (2019), which use points of view to create performances that are part performance experiment, part karaoke party, and immersive theatrical experiences.

How are they using this operation and to what effect?

This dramaturgical approach supports their conceptual goals by enabling a multiplicity of perspectives to coexist, challenging dominant power structures, and inviting audiences into a more complex, embodied experience of the work. Their creative process is open and chaotic embracing improvisation and fluidity, which allows multiple ideas and energies to spark and coexist, reflecting the complexities of lived experience. This energy spark is one of the motivations for my practice – although I focus more on the agency that comes from experimenting with different points of view and challenging myself.

More generally, reviews of their dramaturgy and practice report that they thrive on the interaction of diverse perspectives within the creative process, enriching meaning and fostering reflexivity.

How I use points of view and to what effect

Their work also gestures toward feminist futures and possibilities beyond current oppressive systems – this is important to me but not in my work explicitly, they use different characters points of view as a tool for imagining alternative worlds, whilst I am using it points of view – often opposite to my own as a way of challenging norms around older feminist women. (Madhur says of their work, “essentially, it’s about watching someone trying to create their own universe different to the one we live in, and then they create universe after universe and eventually get to the stars.”) I’m creating alter-egos who become distinct entities, they do this through cognition, behaviour and effect, not so different although they are creating a fantasy world,  (but world building might be an operation for my future research. 😊 )

( Another artist I am very interested in using points of view in a different way, is Nina Conti – a UK ventriloquist, uses humour, voice, and animals to voice different points of view. I’m not going in this direction but there’s a lot to learn here.  )

Highlight the relation between dramaturgical operation and concept

Concept – As described in the programme notes for the DRA performances as above – my concept is the community (not the transitions / third spaces – that will be explored in the DBR.)

Four alter-egos and an artist inhabit the same space for the first time. Who will show up and how? Might they become a community or refuse to engage? It’s a moment of not knowing; an improvised experiment that starts with psychoanalyst Philip Bromberg’s idea that a healthy identity involves fluid movement between distinct self-states of cognition, affect and behaviour. Inside the artists’ mind there is randomness, moments of clarity and chaos.

We-dentity is about expanding ourselves, challenging norms and exploring different ways of being. It matters because society needs more we, less I.

i) Layering

I am using layering because it presents and mirrors a multifaceted way of seeing the world, because it allows multiple and meanings and temporalities to coexist, this supports my concept of multiple alter-egos performing and expressing themselves in different forms. In the experiments in the development of my current inquiries I have found this to generate new connections, responses, and data. I am also using layering like Joan Jonas as an aesthetic response to challenge fixed notions of singularity and gender through the interplay of images, performance, film, and fragmented narrative. By layering performance, drawing and film with storytelling I hope to connect personal, cultural, and contemporary issues. This multi-layered dramaturgy allows for a poetic exploration of identity that is non-linear and open-ended.

ii) Multiplicity

I am presenting bringing my four alter-egos into the performance and focusing on an aspect of multiplicity that Sin also uses in the above pieces – a focus on inter-character relationships and dialogues. This is at the heart of my concept as I attempt to understand how the alter-egos work as a community (or not), how they relate to each other, interact with, and reflect on each other. I hope this also supports the concept by showing the constructed nature of identities and that multiplicities can challenge societal norms. Through this performance experiment with the group of alter-egos – and what comes next – I hope to extend the dramaturgy into a philosophical and embodied inquiry.

iii) Points of view

I’m using points of view to support the concept of multiple distinct entities of cognition, behaviour, and action. It’s a show don’t tell operation. It supports my  conceptual goals by enabling a multiplicity of perspectives to coexist, testing, and challenging norms and inviting audiences into a more complex experience of the work. I hope the interaction of diverse perspectives within my creative process, enriches meaning and fosters reflexivity.

 I am using a combination of layering, multiplicity, and points of view to deepen meaning, to provide a rich the range of narratives in order to support the overall impact of the performance experiment. The different dramaturgical operations work together hopefully to provide coherence to the performance – for e.g. because there are multiple alter-egos with layers of images and media, there is multiplicity in all aspects of the work. Because there are different points of view, associated with the alter-egos, we will see how their community evolves or not.

I will think about this more and reflect and build on the first showing. After the feedback I will be in a better position to see how coherently the choice of operations worked and if they were synthesized effectively.

Thanks for reading.

Dawn 

Performance experiments - electives assignment

Blog assignment - Performance art practice as research elective

Welcome

Here I am sharing my thoughts, process, plans and reflections on a series of performance experiments in a major gallery in Nottingham UK. I am building on the elective undetaken as part of the MA Performance Practices at ArtEZ.

Trust in Change: On world politics- overcoming structural political boundaries by thinking with the body VestAndPage.

I am an older feminist artist. I work with four alter-egos who make performances artworks using different media. In my practice I explore ideas of agency and becoming, in both a personal growth sense and at a political level, I reject society’s norms and want to become the person the universe needs me to be. In the experiments my 4 alter-egos performed in response to a major art/science exhibition, Cosmic Titans - an exciting and daunting opportunity.

https://www.lakesidearts.org.uk/exhibition/cosmictitans/

I chose this exhibition because of the direct connections to the Body In Dissent module, performance and essay (e.g. Karen Barad’s work on entanglement and quantum identities and Ruth Gregory on superposition). I felt the exhibition missed the body and that bringing the body (and the alter-egos bodies) could both add a human dynamic and provide a destabilising intervention in the space. I made a proposal to exhibitions curator and scientific advisors on this basis, and they agreed.

What are the given practice as research approaches and methods I am choosing to explore? How have I applied this method / how it resonated with me?

Approach 1:  Rhizomatic research methods

This method was introduced to us during the elective and the technique was used when we undertook the exercises on day 1 i) global political institutions and day 3 ii) climate change.  

In the elective we looked at rhizomatic research (a concept from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 1980 ) using a wide range of data, memories, conversations and in different forms. From this I  expanded my approach to researching the performance experiments in a non-linear way e.g.  opening 50 tabs about blackhole mergers, flicking through them superfast for gist, connection and essences, using memories of space education, approached baffling scientific documents as a strange language and immersed myself in clips of stars collapsing. I’ve attended lectures by internationally known physicists, met with astro-physicists who work on art/science collaborations and met one of the artists whose work the alter-egos are responding to - Conrad Shawcross. (www.conradshawcross.com ) I want to research rhizomatic research further and experiment with what that means for my practice. This is a first engagement with the method, but it made me think differently about the topic, the way I collect data and the documentation e.g. I am experimenting with slow-motion filming to draw out nuances, audience and scientist feedback.

Approach 2: Site responsive

In the elective, this method was introduced to us in both Day 2 and day 5. Ethan Sammons Ericson (Colleague and Artist) invited us to perform with him in response to the trees in the Sonsbeek Park. The tree attunement process we undertook was a fluid interaction between us as artists, individual and groups of trees (more fluid than a site-specific response might be.)

I had done a site responsive performance before but found this new method which comes from a folkloric / mythic tradition to be very useful in its stepped attunement process using multiple sensory inputs. The method invited us to connect to and reflect on different levels, the individual trees , the types of trees / genus / wood and the broader geographic political social context.

Applying this method gave a structure to responding to other artists work in my performance experiments, it added depth and new insights, including responding as the alter-egos. I asked myself about where the agency was in the space and why that mattered. (See picture: The Green Witch by Arin Murphy Hiscock.)

Photo from Ethan Sammond Ericson

Other methods: i) creative writing. In the elective on day 1 I found writing from a different perspective helpful. In the global politics exercise we were writing then embodying /speaking the words. I very rarely write with/through my alter-egos, as they don’t have scripts, however I am using this method in one of the experiments below.

ii) Also I am aware I’m using another method highlighted in the elective: guerilla tactics. I am inserting my body (and characters) into a formal exhibition space . Although it’s not illegal / technically guerilla, in the sense of some of the inspiring artists we looked at in the elective e.g. the Guerilla Girls or Nan Golding’s inspiring All the Beauty and the Bloodshed film work, because I have permission, the experiments are still an intervention. My alter-egos do not necessarily behave in a controlled way or would like the work.

What questions was I looking to investigate in the experiments?

·       How can I use my emerging practice framework (see diagram below) for my four alter-egos in the exhibition at the same time? 

·       What forms and methods of documentation would allow me to clarify learning and generate qualitative data?

·       How is it for my alter-ego to work with other artist’s work?

·       In what ways is this space speculative? Traces / spectres of what’s gone before?

(I have not responded directly to these questions in this blog but will do so in another post. Particularly I want to write more about the theories of speculative spaces bringing in Foucault and others. )

Below is my emerging practice methodology - I developed it as a result of the Body in Performance Module – I’ll also be testing / using this for the first time in designing the experiments. It includes theoretical and artistic references.

Sketch out the performance experiments based on the methods / approach?

What were the performance experiments?

·       4x 30minute performance responses to the artworks in the exhibition – 25mins plus 5minute transition time - total duration was 2hrs 10am-12.00pm 8th April 2025

 · There are 4 alter-egos: Doris, Donnah, Tatyana and the little one – each alter-ego responds to one artwork and walks around the space, leaving traces / objects in each other’s spaces.

 ·       At the end of each of experiment / sketch there will be a collapse which mirrors cosmic events in the universe that collapse and re-form as something else.

 ·       Each alter-ego will respond in the moment, a broad outline will be in place, but it will be live and exploratory.

 ·       There is also the experiment as a whole and with the audience. The gallery is open to the public.

Communicate and articulate artistic decisions in the experiments  

Artwork: Ringdown by Conrad Shawcross

Alter-ego – Tatyana – responded in her own way exploring concepts of discipline and control in both an institutional (gallery) and cosmic setting. Based on the expanded rhizomatic research she used her ribbon skills  (operation/ technique) to interpret the phenomenon of the black holes merging and synthesize this with her gymnastics discipline (in contrast to the artists installation (see experiment 1 photo below.)

Artwork: Blind proliferation by Conrad Shawcross

Alter-ego - the little one – the key operation here was play. The alter-ego moved between three locations, next to and under each of the desks in the physicists’ desks, actions include shining a torch, using her magnifying glass, throwing dice and sitting on the floor by the edge of the light cage.

I chose to film a rehearsal of the alter-ego and project it into the space, giving the opportunity for playing with the projection, using mirroring, refraction and repetition operations.  This operation is new to me, it connected to ideas and emotions of wonderment and curiosity prompted by the piece; it engages with ideas of the multi-verse and quantum identities being present live. The costume and reflective materials used enhanced the refraction and multiplicities.  The first clip is Shawcross’s installation Blind Proliferation. Followed by 2 experiment photos below.)

Artwork: An Early Universe by Alistair McClymont

Alter-ego Donnah responded this piece,  she chose to move through three phases of the creation of a new universe… chaos, fluctuation, stasis. Donnah loves the chaos, rolls with fluctuation but stasis is new for her. She will intra-act with 3d printed sculptures (prototype models made by the scientists in dialogue with the artist. To me, this was an intense and primal performance which I haven’t quite processed yet, I have been doing some creative writing to help with this process.

Artwork: Begriff des Körpers by Daniela Brill Estrada and Monica C. LoCascio

Alter-ego Doris – responded to this installation. It was new to me to do a one-to-one performance based around comprehending the body in space. Exploring spacetime as it curves around objects, and particularly as it curves around the heart. In this experiment I used writing creatively from alter-ego Doris’s perspective, not my own – much as we did in the elective.

Identify and manage risks when engaging with the given methods / approach?

Isn’t performance art always a risky business?  I feel vulnerable every time I perform. In this case in a serious art centre, I was in a gallery where there hasn’t been any performance in the last ten years. I found it daunting but also a highly supportive environment.  

General risks

The curator involved me in their normal risk assessment, I have not included it here because of the word count but the technical risks included: testing of equipment to British Standards PAT, trip hazards – cables and props etc, obstructions e.g. to fire escape routes, filming privacy GDPR / data privacy protocols in the UK, obtaining permission from the public caught on camera, personal safety, slips falls, interfering with the other artists work (although I said I wouldn’t one of my alter-egos works with anger and dissent, she is unreliable.)    

The artists involved might not have given permission. I managed this by producing a detailed proposal and the curator reached out to them individually. Being specific about how and where I might use their work was important (as their work is in the documentation / film of my performance experiments.)

I am dealing with 3rd party intellectual property and binding my performance to it in a way I haven’t done before. I managed this by doing research, talking to other artists and being clear about how I present the work. Even so this felt like something I need to reflect more on.

i) Rhizomatic research – One risk and real nervousness of mine, is that taking a fluid, non-linear stream of consciousness approach to researching the topic is that the response it seen as trivial or pseudo-scientific, that in my lack of understanding there would be some friction (not a negative thing in my mind but something new for me.) I had to accept the overwhelm. In managing it I have been explicit in my programme notes that I am using the physics / science as a metaphor, allegory, aesthetic interpretation. As mentioned above, I realise I’m only starting with this research method / process.

ii) Site responsive / guerilla tactics – risk of the alter-egos in this space. Whilst they perform in the public space some of the alter-egos have not intra-acted before with an audience, one is pretty much always very angry and often destructive.  I am managing this through briefing the invigilators and relying on them enforcing agreements /  commitments in my proposal. I also had an invigilator (or assistant of my own, supporting me with costume and with timing issues – this was really helpful.) The risk that the alter-egos did not behave as themselves (or were constrained by the formal environment and over-controlled) was real – and with it the threat that the work suffered) but this did not materialise. The alter-ego Donnah fully expressed herself and took over the space in a full frank bodily way (and stormed out at the end.)

I also reflected on the politics of the experiments looking back to the questions raised in the elective. From the feedback I received , although I wasn’t aware of it at the time, the space was destabilised. The audience felt unsure of what to do when and how to react to some of the actions. The vulnerability I felt , was picked up by some members of the audience, the older female body in different forms appeared powerful at times, at others isolated, possibly offering a way out of the stereotypical constraints on women. 

iii) Creative writing – this worked for me well, there was the risk that the performance became scripted, but I trusted them and that worked.

The elective was very stimulating, the process of the performance experiments and this blog have provided me with a major learning experience in very new territory. It has also built my confidence to do more experimentation in my practice with new methods, to stretch and grow.

Are my alter-ego's real? They think therefore they are....

When Donnah one of my alter-ego’s smashed up an old colonial tea chest with a pick axe in a public square, the deputy manager of Specsavers opticians called the police. Her customers were scared. Despite the presence of a camera operator and support person explaining the nature of the performance, and the fact I had (sort of) permission, I chose to stop the performance and tried to explain. But Donnah did not want to stop, and carried on. I know there was part of me in that scenario thinking why should I stop, but had it been only people pleasing Dawn, it’s highly unlikely I doubt I would have continued.

A few people have asked me questions about the alter-egos, are they “taking over” and when is it really me “just acting.”? I would usually say something about the feeling in the moment, and the concept of a pendulum swinging in and out, sometimes slowly so there are longer periods when I feel totally immersed in one of the alter-egos and other times when Dawn/I are very close to the alter-ego and there are rapid and fluid transitions. (This is more in the realm of a “persona,” a constructed public face or role that blends the performative and the personal.) But it also depends on the alter-ego, how long i’ve worked with them, is it the start of the process and what they are doing and where. In the studio or my local park there where I am very comfortable, I can lose Dawn for hours. Although “I” am also always there.

This rings true, as my audience they know it’s not entirely Dawn they are watching but also it clearly isn’t….

This work with alter-ego’s has a long history with some fantastic artists I really admire (more on this later) there is a lot to learn from. Richard Schechner’s book mentioned in the previous blog and above , shares some relevant distinctions between the “make believe” - where an intentional boundary exists between the performance (on a stage for e.g.) and the everyday reality, and “make belief” where the performances intentionally blur the boundary. This rings true, as my audience they know it’s not entirely Dawn they are watching but also it clearly isn’t. My alter-ego’s have costumes but sometimes they don’t wear them.

My alter-egos are secondary identities that i’ve constructed, they allow me to explore facets of identity that are markedly different from me, they are deliberately crafted, sustained and experimental, they play with different normals. Like Lady Gaga I have an approach that links to the idea of a networked self/ selves. There isn’t one individual self, I distribute multiple potential selves across different fields / variations. You might meet Doris, Donnah, Tatyana or the little one in many different forms and contexts, thinking about different questions, making artworks in different forms, feeling themselves… in a non Cartesian dualistic way :)

Before the beginning... MA Performance ARTEZ Netherlands

The instant gratification monkey has been bane of my life in the run up to starting my MA in the Netherlands. Suddenly there’s only 2 weeks to go and the monkey in my brain is presenting me with all kinds of distractions - going for a bike ride, searching for new tracksuits online, watching the clouds roll in on what was a beautiful morning. Fortunately no visits (yet…arrrgggh) from the monkey’s mate - the panic monster.

I’ve known about the requirement to start a blog for months and this, my first post as an art student, has been a task I just couldn’t tick off. I’ve never found myself procrastinating before so Tim Urban’s TEDtalk on the subject was super helpful and its meant that here I am, writing.

Before we start the course, there’s been a summer reading list and lots of re-training my brain to read academic articles. I’m treating the list as a gift, some really interesting/dense stuff and it’s also forced me to practice reading on a screen. I usually need to print out difficult texts and scribble all over them but that’s not practical when you’re studying abroad and you can’t take reams of paper with you. I’ve reflected a lot on my writing and my art practice and am already starting to understand more about what I do and how it fits within a performance framework. Here’s one of the key texts that I’ve stuck with and will post more about that next time.

So just need to press save and publish and I can happily eat an ice cream in the park.

Coming Soon: In Our Shoes

Launching in January 2022, this inspiring book provides a unique learning and reflection opportunity for any professional working in the family justice system. It's a chance to understand what it’s really like to walk in the shoes of children and young people as they navigate often difficult family situations. From them, you'll gain a better awareness of how your work can influence their futures.

The engaging and diverse first-person testimonies of children and young people cover their experiences of family court proceedings, family conflict, and health and wellbeing, as well as demonstrating the positive impact that determined listening can have. Sometimes a challenging read, this book asks the reader to reflect on their interactions with young people, it’s a catalyst for change.

Our Futures Now: Barnsley 2030 - The Place of Possibilities

The launch of this inspiring new book brings Barnsley's vision 'the place of possibilities' to life. From the resilience shown during the pandemic to what people want to see, through real scenarios and imagined moments. These stories and poems glimpse the future and show what is at the heart of this borough: proud, confident, and determined people. 

And there’s a beautiful bold and seriously big (A2!) handmade version of the book by artist Cath Long. The big book is touring libraries around the borough with an invitation for residents and communities to add to the 50 stories in the book. This collection has a life of its own.