affect me is an ever-evolving performance project by Sydney-based artist Bonnie Cowan. The project is, at its core, an effort to fully amalgamate Bonnie’s creative and personal lives by creating performances based on her interactions with strangers.
Meeting a willing participant over [insert preferred beverage or activity here] the interaction plays out organically, allowing conversation to flow and rapport to build. Bonnie then reflects on the shared interaction before performing the responsive, often interactive, performance for an audience of one - the participant. The performance becomes and offer of thanks for the time shared; a representation of the space created between two strangers.
Bonnie has interacted with 13+ strangers to date. In an effort to protect their anonymity, or, more accurately, in an effort to emotionally detach herself from the constructed relationship, she refers to them by number. For example, stranger 1 was a middle-aged couple, stranger 12 didn’t turn up to the performance, stranger 4 kissed her. Stranger 8 was an open book, while stranger 5 seemed guarded. Stranger 13 was exhausting, stranger 2 left her emotionally battered, stranger 11 got her drunk. Stranger 7 saw the metaphors she’d missed. She didn’t want stranger 10 to leave.
The project is considered not as performance, but as a lifestyle choice. It’s an exploration of what it means for Bonnie to live and breathe the artwork. To be the artwork. The project asks for vulnerability, at every step of the way, from each party. The vulnerability of sharing space and time and story with a stranger, the vulnerability of seeing yourself exposed through the eyes of another.
affect me had its debut development with PACT centre for emerging artist’s three-week Vacant Room residency in March/April 2017. Following that, Bonnie undertook a six-month residency with Shopfront Arts Co-Op in order to refine and explore the work further. In September 2017, Bonnie was commissioned to tour the project to Newcastle’s Crack Theatre Festival where she performed a trio of freshly-squeezed works to festival audiences at Alchemy café. In November 2017, Bonnie was commissioned to perform a durational variation of the work for Wollongong’s Viva La Gong festival where she performed a series of stranger’s responses to provocations.
The project will continue throughout 2018, indefinitely.
