Abstract
This article examines catharsis in recent one-to-one performances I shared with UK-based artist Kira O'Reilly. Focusing on my inter-experience ofMy Mother(2003) andUntitled Action: NRLA, The Arches, Glasgow(2005), I argue that both performances can be read as troubling and elucidating ideas about the presence, nature and affect of catharsis. I raise questions and reveal my responses to felt states such as risk, intimacy and confession, and draw on hysteria and Kristeva's concept ofle vréelto articulate the embodied knowledge of my close encounters with O'Reilly's visceral body artworks. Ultimately I propose that O'Reilly's performance practice adopts cathartic strategies that activate aesthetic, formal and material kinds of feminist political responsibility in her performance ‘other’.
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