Love Lies Bleeding 2004
Love Lies Bleeding
Soundworks Art-trail, Cork
21st June 2004
The Burren College of Art Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare
2nd November 2004
National Review of Live Art UK (NRLA)
The Arches, Glasgow
10th February 2005
Special Thanks to
Soundworks Unlimited Cork & Nikki Millican (NRLA)
Love Lies Bleeding – is a deep red pendant amaranth, a velvet tassel flower.
The performance Love Lies Bleeding uses the image of this flower along with an act of keening or caoineadh*, a traditional Irish crying lament which develops over 4 hours. As the hours pass, the vocal requiem becomes deeper and softer in the voice and more aurally beautiful. I begin to tear my elegant black evening dress in shreds until it hangs in long ripped tassels, like lacerated pendants of the amaranth. I move around the space, standing, kneeling and lying. The audience enter and leave at will.
The work is a declaration of love and loss with expression and eroticism. I extend the experience of anguish into the pleasure of lamentation and the release of expression.
Projected on a screen within the space is a 10 minute long video loop "mouth with love lies bleeding" - in the video I perform a fellatio of kissing and consuming the edible amaranth flower.
*Keening or Caoineadh was a formalised crying, weeping, wailing song performed by women at wakes and funerals in Ireland. Traditionally, it was the older women who performed, taking turns to lament all night long as the body was waked. The Keening took the form of a cry to God “Oh a Dia Oh” interspersed with wordless vowel sounds.
The song was wordless
The singing will never be done (S Sasson 1886-1967)