This performance was an ode to the bay of Monaco, a desire for a sexual encounter with a body of water. It was the sequel to an earlier work, The way I feel it slipping all over me, which I was invited to perform on a yacht as part of a group exhibition for the Art Monaco fair in 2018. The yacht which hosted the exhibition was an ambivalent and hierarchical space, in which both artists and art works were restricted in where we were allowed to sit, stand, and what we were allowed to touch: we were perpetually reminded of our subordinate value.

 

In this dialogic performance, performed at As If at CCA Goldsmiths, we read a fictionalised account of this experience, in which sexual desire for the bay of Monaco becomes confused and conflated with the desire for dissolution and death, set against the backdrop of extreme wealth to which we were both adjacent and outside of. I read the main narrative of the text, and Beth interjected with citations from Rosi Braidotti and Astrida Neimanis, which expanded notions of watery embodiment, dissolution of boundaries and the disintegration of selfhood. The impossibility of death, death as a continuation of life, dissolving as the ultimate orgasm. 

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Throughout the performance, we were periodically fed with water from Evian water bottles and glass drinking straws. 

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All images courtesy Rosie Taylor.