Remote intimations: performance art and environmental illness

Abstract

This article explores and documents the work of leading Midwestern performance artist Julie Laffin, in the years since she developed a serious form of environmental illness (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity). This condition has effectively rendered her housebound and unable to appear in public, so that her previous live performance practice – which typically took place in public, urban spaces – has necessarily been curtailed. In attempting to reinvent her practice by other means (including performances by proxy, video and sound works, etc.), Laffin has gradually moved towards a more activist stance on environmental issues, while attempting to maintain a strongly personal aesthetic. Performance art has often been regarded as a form of intensely individual, even ‘narcissistic’ creative expression, and this article asks what it might mean to consider environmentalism through such a personal creative lens. The discussion takes the form of a dialogue between Laffin and Stephen Bottoms, who has variously been a critic of her work, a collaborator in it, and a friend.

Keywords:

• environmental illness
• performance art
• chemical sensitivity
• site-based performance
• collaborative performance
• safe housing
• Julie Laffin

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions of Clover Morell and Julie Genser in the development of this essay.

Notes

1. Images from some of these performances can be viewed at www.julielaffin.com.

2. For further information on MCS and other EI conditions, see http://www.ei-resource.org (click on the link for ‘Multiple Chemical Sensitivity’).

3. For images, see www.artnet.com/magazine/features/cassidy/cassidy6-30-05.asp.

4. See images at www.clovermorell.com/index.php?/collabo/shield.

5. See http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/realestate/10nation.html.

6. One illustrated version of the Snowflake story can be accessed online at http://performancefootprint.co.uk/projects/snowflake/.

7. The New Mexico videos can be viewed online at www.performancefootprint.co.uk/projects/house-home-van/.

8. See www.reshelter.org.