So where the bloody hell are you? | Interview with Clark Beaumont

In conjunction with their solo exhibition So where the bloody hell are you? Clark Beaumont talk collaboration,  performance, and the 'Aussie' identity with Katherine Dionysius from Current Projects.

KD: You’ve said that you work exclusively as Clark Beaumont – neither of you have pursued solo practices for a few years. What were your individual practices like before? What inspired you to start working collaboratively?

CB: Our individual practices explored similar themes to the ones we delve into now as a collaboration. We just function better together. Our individual practices often, in the past, seemed problematic, stunted and generally less interesting to us.

Our collaboration began in university, sparked and fuelled by our mutual interests in performance art, youtube, cinema and television. We instantly had great chemistry and through collaborating, we have been able to create a stimulating and supportive environment, allowing for both a friendship and artistic practice to develop.

KD: The first work you created together was Undress in 2010, a performance video work, in which you begin tied together from head to toe in a web of string, and proceed to untangle yourself throughout the duration of the work. In subsequent works like Clark Beaumont Self-Portrait you attempt to ‘become’ each other. Can you talk a bit about the significance of ‘becoming’ other characters (particularly Australian women) in So Where the bloody hell are you?  

CB: Within our works, we’re interested in exploring the multiple facets of our identities, as: females, Australians, individuals, as a duo, fellow collaborators, consumers, creators, etc.

In So Where the Bloody Hell are you? (SWTBHAY) we focus on the relationship between ourselves and the ‘Aussie’ identity that ‘iconic’ Australian films project to us (Australians) and internationally, as well as our relationship with film in general, as a strong informative tool that assists in the construction of these identities.

In SWTBHAY, similarly to in Clark Beaumont Self-Portrait, we utilise role reversal as a key form of personal critique and reflection. As a duo in SWTBHAY, we play multiple personas, presenting our identities as somewhat fluid and intangible. Through transformation and characterisation, we attempt to create and recreate ourselves simultaneously. Rather than creating another stereotype within our video, we wanted to allow room for a multiplicity of identities on an individual scale, as well as on a national one. We believe that in doing this, we can create something more complex and true, comparatively to the common portrayal.

KD: SWTBHAY differs from your previous works in that it doesn’t so much take ‘collaboration’ as a central theme – your previous works really focus on your relationship with each other, particularly Future Predictions, which plays out various hypothetical scenarios about how your partnership may eventually come to an end. Looking at your practice from the outside, it seems to me as though this work suppressed your fears and freed you to explore ideas of identity outside your relationship with each other. Is that how you see it? Or do you feel that you’re still unpacking ideas about your relationship?

CB: We’re pretty natural in our creative process and so we trusted our need for introspection in Future Predictions. It was a cathartic endeavour created at a time of uncertainty as collaborators, as we both looked into the future, facing the end of our shared degree, concerned with how much longer this good thing could last. The artwork was developed on the premise that through living out these potential traumatic ‘breakups’ we would be able to, therefore, free ourselves of any genuine concerns, as, in a strange way, we would already have lived out those realities - like ticking an item off of a checklist and being able to move on.

SWTBHAY, on the other hand, was inspired by our recent time travelling overseas. Travelling is such an overwhelming experience that opens you up to the world and provides you with a better vantage point to consider life’s bigger questions. Travelling also makes you more aware of your nationality: you, as an Australian.

We’re interested in the Australian identity, how it’s constructed and how we may or may not identify with it. In this artwork, we do, therefore, take the main focus away from our relationship. However, the artwork’s disjointed narrative does lend itself to bleed throughs between the characters’ identities and we like to think that sometimes we’re interacting with each other even though only one of us is actually on screen.

Our natural creative process allows us to make whatever feels right at the time. The work we’re making at the moment is less epic, monumental and national; we are bringing it back down to a simmer and getting a little introspective once again.

KD: Your practice seems to have become more elaborate, work by work – from simple gestures of untangling (Undress 2010) or tracing each other’s shadows (Crossing Over 2010) to more scripted performances using costumes and props in the work you produced for BEAF earlier this year. SWTBHAY – perhaps your most ambitious work yet – uses a green screen to insert your own footage into existing films. Was this an intentional progression? What’s next?

CB: Video editing has become a crucial component to our practice, as previously our collaboration was predominantly focused upon the performance using video only as a source for documentation. Our early works, Undress and Crossing Over were predominantly about the physical and our relationship, using the camera only for documentation purposes. As our collaboration progressed, we have found editing our footage more and more appealing, as it allowed for greater perimeters to our performances. The video editing process provides us with the power to manipulate our image and actions even further, inserting ourselves into the digital world, and enabling us to explore key ideas within our collaboration such as escapism, duality, identity, and kinship on the big screen. Video has also become a powerful source of reflection and critique for us, allowing for a newfound awareness of our bodies – how they perform and interact – to develop.

Who knows what comes next! We don’t.