Owen Parry
Fan 1. An ardent devotee or enthusiast
Fan 2. A device for creating a current of air or breeze
While undertaking my PhD study on trashy tendencies in contemporary art and performance practices, I met a fellow student who was undertaking his research on the button in contemporary design. Envious of the specificity of his miniature study object, which seemed to me open to a multiplicity of genius conceptual relations and uses, I began to fantasize about having my very own specific objet d’étude: I came up with the performance fan.
This lecture-performance stages this fan-tasy. It draws on fan culture and the utilization of fan devices across a history of popular and avant-garde performances from Ballet Mécanique to strip tease, from fainting for Michael Jackson to a Yoko Ono tribute act, from fan riots to an intimate encounter with a Polish skinhead with a Manchester United tattoo. It looks at how fans perform, the potentials of impassioned collectivity, and how the fantasy of specificity opens up a constellation of possibilities – real and fictional, human and non-human.
Biography
Owen G Parry (b. 1983) is a London based artist and researcher working in contemporary performance and visual culture, across theatre, gallery, club contexts and the Internet. His PhD study Trashy Tendencies: Indeterminate Acts of Refusal in Contemporary Art and Performance Practice was completed at Goldsmiths in 2013 funded by AHRC. Owen was Researcher on Performance Matters, a 3-year performance-research project with the Live Art Development Agency, Goldsmiths and University of Roehampton (2009-2012). He co-edited a special issue of Dance Theatre Journal (2011), and currently teaches on the MA Body in Performance at Trinity Laban.