The length that brings us closer

Abstract

Comparing works from the span of the author’s career, ‘The length that brings us closer’ traces a range of connectivity – inter-, intra- and extra-personal – through a reflective analysis of the sculptural wearable in visual performance. The oversized garments in Laurel Jay Carpenter’s durational, live work reposition the performer with a linear length of fabric, combining the body with larger space and situation. In these trailing dresses, the woman is tethered, contained and weighted, but she is also partnered: with architecture, with earth, with herself and with the surrounding community, inverting expectations of her reach to reveal an embodied scale of connection. Collaborating to construct and perform the ‘impossibly long’ red dress of Red Crest (2003), the artist develops an intimacy with the public, an interpersonal encounter that is often the form connection is presumed to take. Other dresses in other performances indicate the elasticity of connective forces, from micro to macro. A deep, intrapersonal focus is evidenced in Again with Gusto (2009), with the riant performer held to a plinth by her outstretched yellow dress. In contrast, in Of Wanting (2017) and Longva+Carpenter’s Lineage (2019), the visuals of these dresses slant towards spectacle – defined by way of feminist new materialism as an excess that breaks norms and compels awe – to manifest an extrapersonal connection, touching what is beyond the known.