This photographic documentation of my performance, entitled, “Portraits—Memory” speaks to my current practice-based PhD project, “X Portraits—Toward a Realized Poetic Play.” In my project I am working in and developing a hybrid form of performative-text called the ‘poetic play.’ My inquiry addresses the question: How can a dialogic practice-based investigation of the hybrid form of the poetic play through the five individual sense modalities assist in the aesthetic situating of, and subsequently the fully realized definition of, the poetic play?

“Portraits—Memory” is one piece out of a poetic play sequence entitled “Portraits.” The series moves from an original pre-text called “Portraits—Sketches,” through ten parts to the final piece, “Portraits—Post-Dendritic.” The pieces are progressive, alternating between performative realizations and textual iterations, each part being both informed by the preceding piece and informing the work that follows. Various medias are involved in these realizations and texts. My goal is to continue the inquiry into what this form can do within the context of the contemporary social and artistic dialogic landscape.

Each piece in the sequence addresses motifs that are universal to the entire series as well as themes that are specific to itself. “Portraits—Memory” address the universal motif of nationalism as well as it’s own local themes of memory and the sense of smell. “Portraits—Memory” was performed at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in London involving the prior audio and visual performative realizations entitled, “Portraits—Visemes” and “Portraits—Distillation” being played and projected through a large plastic sheet that I had drawn upon in the previous “Portraits—Scoring.” “Portraits—Memory” was an installation and movement piece using candles as olfactory memory triggers and wire to generate both a common line through the iterations and a burning of the previous lens in order to induce the coming of the following iteration.