Conform

A social experiment and participatory performance

(Performed during lifted lockdown restrictions in a pod)

We are brought up in a world full of societal rules and ritualistic actions that I wanted to explore deeper…

…. explore; due to an incident I had down the local pool when I realised I forgot to shave my legs ………and I mean, they were proper long!

Feeling the restraints of this I embarked on a year long social experiment. I began to grow the hair on my legs, purposefully, in order to take account of the public reaction. Well, not only the public reaction but also my own inner anxieties that crept up during random unveilings in public places.

So I grew the hair on my legs ..and after a while I noticed that people didn’t really notice at all. It was all my own inner demons thinking that people gave a crap based on comments probably made in social situations when I was a teenager, and not at all related to my previous thoughts; of clothing companies post WW1 trying to sell the new commodity - short skirts - by posting adverts of women with bare legs, wearing said skirt and by doing so has lead women to embark on the masochistic ritual that 90% of women take part in today to impress the opposite sex or feel better about themselves.

I wanted to create a setting where the public, in this case pod, would perform the “barbaric” - maybe a little dramatic - act themselves. Inspired by durational performance art of the 60s..

Performance Sculpturalism was born:

I positioned myself in sculptural formation. Wearing a handmade bra created out of clothes hangers to represent the world of commercialism, and a thong. .. I had to maintain some sort of dignity :) lol..

The intention was for members of the public to really embody what is asked by society themselves by removed the hair from my legs.

Using wax strips with the word Conform written on them they were guided through a series of steps.

After, statements were made as to how they felt they had to conform to what I was asking of them based on given instructions. Some tried to get out of this instruction through random acts of welcomed deviousness….altering the piece entirely and making it unpredictable.

Photographs by David Hegarty