Artist Statement
I enter a video frame situated in a gallery space containing a steel bed frame wearing a black mini dress with combat boots. Over the duration of 37 minutes and 17 seconds, I picked up the steel frame and positioned it in as many different orientations as possible. big break was scored by my actions which made the steel frame hit, smash, screech or scratch the concrete floor at different volumes which were all contingent on the force I applied. Over time the bolts holding the frame together became loose. I continued to work with the bedframe while it bent and warped in my hands until both the frame and my body had endured to our limits.
The performance video plays on a loop to suggest an endlessness to the unfolding duress of my body against a prefabricated framework that despite being acted on, was bending, but indicated no signs of falling apart. The sound element plays loudly off the monitor and fills the gallery space with the sonic residues of the performance.
Symbolically, the bed frame represents a structure which enforces another framework for the body. The bed frame utilised was prefabricated, which was a deliberate choice to draw attention to the fact that the body is always enduring within pre-existing frameworks and their subsequent inscriptions which are often beyond its control. In the performance, the bed frame was flipped, smashed, and moved continuously throughout the 37 minute and 17 second duration. The constant repositioning of the frame permitted certain perspectives to open where the frame began to look more like a viewfinder, a window, an obstacle course.
Biography
Chelsea Coon (b. 1989 United States) is an artist and writer whose work focuses on the shifting interconnections of the body, time, and space. She utilises endurance to reconsider limits of the body primarily through performance as well as installation, sculpture, painting, photography, video, and text. She has exhibited internationally in festivals, biennales, and galleries in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She received her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (2012), MFA at Tufts University (2014), and a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Theatre, Performance and Contemporary Live Arts at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Scuola Teatro Dimitri, Switzerland (2015). Recent writings included her essay ‘You Always Hurt the One You Love: Transference, Pain, Endurance’ in Rated RX: Sheree Rose with and after Bob Flanagan (Ohio State University Press, 2020). She is a recipient of the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography (2013), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant (2015), and the Australian Research Training Program Scholarship (2019-2022). Coon is a PhD candidate in practice-led research at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. She lives and works in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia.