Walking performances, actions, roaming alter-identities.

Elizabeta ideas...

The city is a place that is constantly being made and remade, performed into being by many different pressures and actors, myself included.

My walking had a radical intention. Although more subtle and ambiguous than a protest march, I had similar objectives. I might not have been carrying a placard but I was protesting against dominant representations and actions upon the urban space. More than a statement of protest I wanted to have an effect. Brian Massumi   (1992) describes that various stages of the process of "becoming other", a radical and transformatory assault on State hegemony proposed by Deleuze and Guattari. This energy arises out of cracks and vacancies, the spaces of oppertunity, forming autonomous zones. It then adopts camouflage, disguising itself so that state representations cannot recouperate it. Finally it "comes out" revealing it's true radical colours. I like to think that walking the streets as an over the top carnival of one is a microcosmic version of this process. Coming out into public space in this way I am "becoming other" myself, and perhaps, opening up glimpses of a "becoming other" city. I decided to create a performance identity based on Elizabeth the 1st. Since she had a particular love/hate relationship with Spain and both countries where engaged in competition for conquest of the "new world", I felt that she was a very relevant symbol of colonialism for intra England/Spain research. I chose to make my Elizabeth's dress from packaging gathered from Barcelona's most commercial and touristic streets. I wanted to make evident the connection between historic and neo colonialism as evidenced by multinational corporations. I was also attracted to the process of night scavenging, a kind of urban hunting and gathering, a way to interact and explore the city, paying attention to details and disguarded messages. Since rubbish is a product of this city, therefore so is my temporary performance identity. The city isn't pristine, everything is up for grabs, even mythology. The costume collages and absorbs many different elements. As well as the branded packaging I have included colonial imagery downloaded from the net, historic representations of slavery and empire. The headpiece is shaped like a galleon, symbol of conquest, journeying, slavery. Walking though the city. I am at first glance carnival queen, a closer look reveals the disjunctive elements: colonial maps, framed by burger king and 18th century portraits of slaves carrying their masters wares to market, elements of oppression, history and truth, distasteful little bits of gristle, that cannot be easily digested by consumerism.

Scavenging seems to me to be an interesting way to build a character, staying true to the processes of appropriation, hybridization and cultural bricolage employed by us all in the constant (re-) negotiation of identity. In the end, my Elizibeta became something other than the Colonial clown I had original conceived of her as, she became a vessel for discovery.