Date Rape*

Date Rape

* In 2024 I realise how problematic this performance was. I’m keeping it here for archival reasons as I think about how to frame it within my early practice, as opposed to omitting it completely…HCJ

Date Rape July 2011 Noam Edry’s Goldsmiths MFA Degree Show

Edry approached me to perform an element of her MFA Degree Show. Date Rape involved me mingling in the crowd at the degree show. I would suddenly rip off my dress, begin screaming and running around the Laurie Grove Baths and end up in her exhibition space where I would crawl into a costume of a date (constructed by Edry) and lie silently for some time. I agreed to participate in this performance because of my intrigue in Edry’s work and because of the punning title. I enjoyed using my voice – I am interested in the concept of the scream – particularly Lacan’s definition of a scream as crie pur which in French, puns on crie pour. A pure scream cannot exist; it will always be a scream for an other to hear;

So the voice is transformed into an appeal, a speech act, in the same moment as need is transformed into desire; it is caught in a drama of appeal, eliciting an answer, provocation, demand, love.

(Description from Mladen Dolar’s 2006 book: A Voice and Nothing More.)

Date Rape

All content copyright © Hannah Catherine Jones 2013

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