Sunday 7 November 2010

Research- Ursula Martinez

Another artist I got told to look at and a brilliant one. Perhaps controversial and not to everyone's taste, but Ursula can't be accused of making boring projects. She's a cabaret performer mixed with artist, writer and performer all rolled into one and based in London.

The project I'm particularly interested in is a show she performed called "My Stories, Your Emails" which mixed spoken word with art, comedy and all done on stage for a hilarious outcome. The project started when a video of her performing cabaret got published on the internet without her knowledge and consent, but somehow entailed her email address getting leaked due to it containing her name. The result? Lots of odd and often overly sexual emails sent her way from men all over the world.

Sometimes she replied and held conversations, sometimes she received photographs (often x-rated ones) from the men and decided to make a project out of it. I didn't get a chance to see the show, but it sounds brilliant. She received permission from all of the men to use their emails and images and it's a project that explores identity and also what the internet can do. It links people and this is another case of showing how it can make people more honest. It explores that aspect of loneliness and the search for love and human contact which is something most of go through. Though perhaps not in this way!

I can't find a video clip I can add to this blog post, but it is another way of approaching the subject of identity and it uses the social networking/internet side of things.

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