RECENT PERFORMANCES VIA ZOOM

What happens when we use technology as the form and content (in response to Marshall McLuhan's famous provocation) to be creative? Here are a few recent examples how I have attempted to explore this question via Zoom. I also reflect upon this question in a recent interview: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fb2h84zkvjx2zfo/inspirational%2036.%20lee%20campbell.pdf?dl=0

SEEING/NOT SEEING performance by Lee Campbell at POETRYLGBT, INCITE! and LONDON QUEER WRITERS 





‘This is WONDROUS! Cor! FAB!! What IMPACT Can’t wait for a full IMMERSIVE theatrical experience of this! Awkward interactions with non queer population’ very trippy…wow this is disorienting.  Very immersive.  I also smuggled Gay Times!’ 

This performance is performed and recorded live via Zoom making usage of its green screen effect. The images that you can see are drawings and paintings I made between 2005-2007 and 2018-2019 and photographic stills and moving image recordings that I took between 2011-2019 on various iPhones. 

This short spoken work performance charts teenage-hood; discovering one’s sexuality in private, away from one’s parents. As a teenager, you do not really know who you are. This performance  is a self-reflection - a ‘this is what it was like’ to come to terms with my homosexuality; of me finding somebody attractive (men) but not really knowing what I am. I speak my personal truth, my personal history of seeing and not seeing to confront the politics of seeing and underline how validating seeing can be but also the difficulty of not being seen. Whilst it can be understood as one person’s (my) narrative so too can it easily be read as lots of different voices layered to talk about wider levels of experience with various references to cultural context that (any)one can relate to: George Michael, late night tv, bad porn. Part of the performance includes reference to a dad and son (me and my dad) conversation exploring what one is seeing and what the other is seeing about the same action of men in football with one person viewing it one way and the other a different way. Here we travel back in time to 1996, to a football match between Chelsea and Aston Villa courtesy of a cassette recording played through a tape recorder made at the time of the match. 


                                                    POLARI PUPPET  (2020) 



A performative reading of the text delivered via Zoom that pushes Zoom’s visual aesthetics as a means to frame. The text was written by me to accompany the exhibition Radical Ventriloquism which I curated earlier this year at Kelder Projects, London. The reading operates as a self-portrait of  all different levels of me; on the tape recorder, me speaking with back turned and me reading that disintegrates and gets mashed up by the end. A collision between me reading a lecture and reacting to the sounds of (my voice but distorted) gay slang Polari on shuffle there and then. But more than a self-portrait - a triptych of multiple ‘I’s: me ‘speaking through’ the finger, me speaking with my back turned and me on the tape recorder. Only some people can understand the Polari slang and therefore makes you think about who the audience is in terms of levels of understanding.

MORE ADVENTURES WITH RUFUS (2020)  

 





“More adventures with Rufus” by Lee Campbell (London, UK) dur 20min


This performance relates to what Lee and his partner Alex remembers about a shared experience: a day out with Rufus the dog, the dog they dog-sit. As individual memories arenʼt always shared, the conversation might reveal some startling yet humorous differences in terms of each personʼs recollection. Like the previous performance, A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS, Lee will continue to make a series of drawings about their recollections but a major shift will be that Lee will no longer speak to Alex as a finger, this time Lee will speak directly to the laptop screen as if the audience are Alex. Essentially Lee will have an argument with the audience! 


 #TEST3 10 words/10 days/100 artists




Just finished 9 days of drawings. Thank you for inviting me to take part in #TEST3 10 words/10 days/ 100artists An experiment in drawing and networking 27.10.2020 - 05.11.2020  #100drawingsnetwork @q_plus_i #drawing #performativedrawing 

A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS (2020) 



 
A DAY OUT WITH RUFUS by Lee Campbell. Extending Leeʼs previous performances into gay male coupledom – HOW CAN I GET MY PARTNER TO BE MY FINGER? and WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER? – this performance is centred around a conversation that takes place between a gay male couple – one present – Lee, and one technologically distant, – Leeʼs partner, Alex. Alex ‘speaks throughʼ Leeʼs finger via a tape-recording. As a result of lockdown, many of us have spent far greater time at home with our partners. Lee and Alexʼs ongoing conversations about getting a dog form the narrative content . This performance relates to what Alex remembers and what Lee remembers about a shared experience: a day out with Rufus the dog, the dog they dog-sit. As individual memories arenʼt always shared, the conversation might reveal some startling yet humorous differences in terms of each personʼs recollection.

PERFORMED AS PART OF ONLINE PERFORMANCE ART FESTIVAL 17 (OPAF17)ON OCTOBER 23RD 2020

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER? 
(NAME OUR DOG!) (2020) 
 


WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR DINNER? (NAME OUR DOG!) (2020) explores gay male coupledom and taps into many of things that Professor Jacqui Gabb from The Open University writes about in her recent article, ‘It’s raining cats, dogs and diapers! The intersections of rising pet ownership and LGBTQ+ coupledom (2019) in which she talks about the ‘ways that young LGBTQ+ couples are planning their futures together, around and through their pets’.

PERFORMED FOR ONLINEPERFORMANCEART.COM 16TH SEPTEMBER 2020

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