A few months back I received a phonecall from Francesca Steele – a Plymouth based Performance Artist – who asked me to photograph her for an upcoming book being produced by the Plymouth Arts Centre to coincide with the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow performance arts show which is taking place at The Slaughterhouse – a nearly 200 year old dis-used slaughterhouse – at Royal William Yard in Plymouth this month which is being curated by Marina Abramovic. The deadline for the images was extremely tight but we pulled together a two location shoot over the course of two days; one studio shoot with a black background and a second on location at The Slaughterhouse itself; Francesca was great to work with and the images were delivered in time and so far with a lot of very positive feedback so I’m looking forward to seeing the finished book. Francesca’s current project – Routine – has involved her transforming her body within the relatively short space of a year through the adoption of bodybuilding training, diet, and finally competition, and we did another shoot together at Francesca’s first bodybuilding competition – Miss Plymouth 2009 – a few weeks later where I produced documentary photographs both backstage and front of house of the preparation and competition. I decided to do a little Q&A session with Francesca to give a better insight into what the project is all about.
SK: How did this project begin; where did the idea come from?
FS: The idea for the project grew initially from working with [bodybuilder and gym owner] Stuart Core on a different project – Horticultural Healing – a rehabilitation project for clients with acquired brain injury. Stuart collaborated on a series of photographic outcomes to the project, also working with a magician Christopher Howell; the photographer for this project was Manuel Vason – commissioned by Groundwork South West in Plymouth. Also around the same time I had been working at Derriford hospital in the Histopathology lab – which included the cytology unit and also the morgue – here I was working with the body in a dislocated, close up and visual way, using microscopes to examine, and learning more about bodily and cellular structures. With both of these projects on my mind and also at the time feeling a dissatisfaction with elements of my practice, the idea formed to use my own live body as more than a ‘tool’ within my work. To attempt to make the body/life into an artwork, in some sense. I started going to Stuart’s gym – Core Fitness – and felt aware it was unlike most gyms I had been to, and that the atmosphere was quite different. I felt fascinated when I heard men talk about food, and when they were so critical about their physical form and aimed for constant improvement. I talked my idea over with Stuart, and with his and Lewis Breed’s help and consistent advice and support I began to body-build. It took me some time to get around a few aspects of it; as a woman the focus had always been on eating less and losing weight, lots of cardio etc, but to body-build I had to completely change my diet and actually eat all the food I was told too and aim to gain weight. It did take me a while to really understand – and stop fighting what I’d been brought up culturally to believe about my body. To be honest this took me a couple of months – where initially I lost weight rather than gained, but it did eventually sink in! I set the goal of competing in a regional bodybuilding contest to have a goal and timetable to work to. This gave me 8 months of gaining and 4 months dieting down for competition. I gained a stone and a half in my gaining period and lost it during my diet – although my body changed dramatically over the year – and although I was the same weight at the beginning and the end of the year I looked completely different.
Backstage at Miss Plymouth 2009
SK: How does such a long term project translate into an individual live performance piece; for example the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow show which you’ll be appearing in?
FS: Simply – I don’t think it can. I have always thought that one of the biggest and more difficult tasks of being an artist is in the selection of what you show. Obviously with this work, it has become impossible show to everything – and really now this year is coming to an end it feels more that the process of making work has just started rather than finished. Competitive bodybuilding has two main elements - the work that you put into your body, lifestyle, food & exercise – and the showmanship of posing and performing on stage. For the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow project, I am going back to my established one-to-one performance practice with some of what I have learnt from the performative side of bodybuilding. I am looking at the piece as a long slow tense piece of choreography where viewers have the opportunity to view one at a time.
SK: What you were aiming to achieve when you started this project; were there specific goals you had when you begun, and if you did do you think you’ve realised them or have they changed during the process?
FS: Apart from the duration act of bodybuilding for a year, there were initially a number of aims or ideas; these were partly to do with data collection and to investigate masculinity and feminity. The data collection I found fell to pieces as I went along. I found the process of bodybuilding itself to kind of wipe it out; it seemed to become irrelevant - and the data really didn’t change much! As I became more immersed in the lifestyle of bodybuilding it seemed less verbal or intellectual – but almost more of a meditative act – more about calm concentration and attitude making it possible to push yourself further and further; which somehow left less room for diary keeping. I was also interested in investigating masculine and feminine beauty; what attributes a female could take on or borrow from masculinity and where these boundaries between feminine and masculine lay in terms of the aesthetic of the body. I gave myself the goal to compete to give me a real objective to work towards and to help me to try to follow the process to the best of my ability, and also for the work to exist in the world of bodybuilding rather than just that of art. During the process most of my goals have changed as I have begun to understand more about competitive bodybuilding and can contemplate more of what its potential is within my art practice. I have decided to continue bodybuilding and competing, and using it as source and fuel for my artwork; I feel a year is really only enough time to get started and I am still enthusiastic and excited about what the future possibilities and dialogues can be for this work.
Francesca Steele will be performing ‘Routine’ at the Pigs Of Today Are The Hams Of Tomorrow taking place at Royal William Yard in Plymouth over the 22nd/23rd/24th of January 2010 with the book publication launch taking place on the 21st.
Plymouth Arts Centre presents The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, a curatorial collaboration with the Marina Abramović Institute for Preservation of Performance Art. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow will stage, document and discuss groundbreaking international performance art in order to examine and sustain the future of the medium. The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow takes place over three days at Royal William Yard with performances by six renowned artists and artist-collectives.
This is the first curatorial project of the Marina Abramović Institute. Marina Abramović has pioneered performance art for over four decades on an international scale. Her major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opens in March 2010.
The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow is a translation of the title of a conceptual piece of writing by Georg Jappe published by KunstForum International in 1978 on the contemporary state of art practice in relation to global political agendas.
