Images by James Casey
Portrait is an auto-biographical choreographed performance about memory, the passing of time, loss, and the photographic image.
Portrait is an interaction between Katy, the apparatus of camera technology and her projected image.
“Becoming an antique version of myself and creating a choreography in the projected frame as I perform, the first chapter of Portrait looks at how the camera creates the past out of the present. For my MA degree show and Brighton Digital Festival I developed an additional chapter for Portrait in which my Victorian self transforms, through further choreographed interactions with the camera apparatus, her image…”
The history of the camera inspired this work; how camera images (photographs or moving images) have influenced the way we view ourselves, our bodies and our concepts of time. In Portrait, I aim to speak about how the camera both records ‘objectively’ and simultaneously allows, through selection, omission and projection (by the viewer onto the image) for a transformation of the subject.
Comments about Portrait:
“Beautiful singing… haunting!”
“Moving.”
“The set-up for the second part is deliciously incongruous.”
“Simple, and rigorous.”
More information about the ideas behind Portrait can be found on these pages, Looking Back for the Beginning, Processes and Early Developments and Future Questions.
Performances:
September 2014, MA degree show and Brighton Digital Festival, University of Brighton
May 2014, work-in-progress, The Marlborough Theatre, Brighton Fringe. Part of the University of Brighton MA Performance and Visual Practices group show, Divination, with fellow artists Jennie Howell, Kate Lodge and Ryan M. McKelvey.
KATY PENDLEBURY 
