Image credit: Helen Leigh
KAREN ELIOT PRESENTS, 2015, group performance evening, The OutHouse, Edinburgh, UK
Karen Eliot is a multiple identity, a shared nom de plume that anyone is welcome to use for activist and artistic endeavours. It has been used to collectively and anonymously create works of theory-fiction and art. Karen Eliot’s main domain of operation seems to be sonic fiction, be it vocally transmitted texts or inaudible frequencies. According to writer eldritch Priest, as a composer "Karen Eliot belongs to nobody and is no one…the collective nature and schematic indirection of 'Karen Eliot' circulates her contradictions and inconsistencies in a way that keeps doubt and the status of her reality in play." She is a carrier, able to distribute ideas beyond their authors and create myths that hook into actuality, contingently affecting and being affected by it, and producing a real that was always already there.
For my performance introducing the evening, I made use of Apple's Irish female accent speak function (Moria) to transcript my thoughts on the flexible accent and the greasy evening ahead. I was then ceremonially rolled up into one of the rugs by the other Karens and left there for the night.
I got three rug burns.
- two small
- one big
