Cosey Fanni Tutti
'Selflessness 2'
Beachy Head

17.00 - 19.00 Sat. 28th May 2005
to celebrate the first five years of trace

A special installation presentation by one of Britain¹s legendary performance artists.

For one night only Cosey Fanni Tutti will be premiering a video installation with documents of her recent private art 'actions'

'Selflessness 2 - Funereal action at Beachy Head'
Cosey Fanni Tutti live action project

The main theme and aim of the series of 'Selflessness' live art actions is to address my feelings of alienation and displacement brought about by the 21st century Western 'lifestyle'. But also to consider the consequences of
superficiality - selflessness and hedonistic consumerism which distances people from one another in the true sense while simultaneously fusing everyone into a frenzied insatiable horde which makes only transient, superficial connections.

The essence of the live art actions is to externalise the internalised in an improvised, unconsciously personalised symbolic way. To communicate on a level that refuses superficiality. Personal and symbolic objects are utilised as a means of ritual awakening to facilitate opening up and release from preconditioning and expectation. Thereby instigating the emergence within the action of a recognition and 'revisitation' of personal experiences, a re-examination, reconnection and revelation, a manifestation of my 'sensation' of the site.

My actions are executed via anti-idiomatic improvisation. The element of chance discovery is key.
The only sounds recorded/present are the ambient sounds from the site. These sound recordings are used as audio source material to create the soundtrack for the final edited work.

The chosen sites, the materials/objects used and my own presence and private actions provide the means, and act as catalysts in the creation of artworks.

Each site has symbolic, personal, cultural and geographical significance. Beachy Head is a site that is synonymous with the end of life, a notorious and deeply personalised place that we tend to depersonalise and disconnect from due to its renown as a suicide site. The GPS reading serves to not only fix the location of the actions for future reference but also to make a connection outside this world as acknowledgement that we are part of something much greater than the world as we generally define it.

A bonding token from the live work is left in situ, a piece of myself. The existence of this token links the site with the nascence of the final work, thus reinforcing deeper connection.