IF I GO LIKE YOU

If I go like you

If I go like you… was first developed during the Panacea Festival at the Stockholm Modern Museum 2001 and consisted of myself walking around with a rack full of clothes asking the general public if they would like to change into somebody else’s clothes and view the art.

If I go like you… offered the people waiting in the entrance/foyer/queue a chance to change their personal state via the physical transformation of clothing. Proposing a mental shift in the relation to how they normally would present themselves in public through an action of performative reflection – on how when experiencing works of art one is asked to wear a new idea. How a different outer exterior would relocate oneself within a new frame of perception and recognition – a new way of being.

Clothes characteristically define who we are. They function as cultural identifiers – mapping and tracing histories, communities, countries, attitudes, tendencies and personalities. They can be openly shared or become priceless icons – both familiar and exclusive. They can allow safe passage or produce untold problematics. They can also falsely misrepresent, be misread and mislead. Potentially showing ourselves to be what we are not. Hence the assimilation into becoming part of a new community can be a simple as utilizing the dress code, blending and taking away distinctions even if we don’t share the same ideologies.

When we are in a gallery/museum situation we are within the frame of understanding another’s perception of the world. We try to adopt another viewpoint to possibly gain some different or even deeper understanding on a subject/image or idea.  We put ourselves in the place of another.

If I go like you…  How does one feel when wearing another’s clothes? Are we at liberty to express ourselves in another way? To look a certain way evokes a certain understanding of who or what we are – How we are seen and wanting to be seen – If I go like you…

PRESENTATION POINTS

2014   Enlighten, Canberra  (the dice version)

2013   Barrio, Adelaide Festival, Adelaide (the dice version)

2012    Sexes, Performance Space, Sydney

2010    Liveworks, Performance Space, Sydney

2007    Future University, Hakodate, Japan

2004    PANACEA, Dansens Hus, Stockholm & Downtown Art Space,    Adelaide

2003    Austr-aliens exhibition. PICA, Perth

2002    Queue here exhibition. CCAS, Canberra

2001    Panacea Festival, Stockholm Modern Museum