Jessa Fairbrother - Working with the self

I have been meaning to write about Jessa Faibrother for a while as I have been looking carefully at her work to inform some of mine, almost gaining permission to try things out from her, after having being directed towards her site by my tutor, Andrew Conroy. The other day I received her blog update; in it she discusses some questions that I have been asking myself too.

Fairbrother was asked what her work is about.  She struggled to answer and gave what seems to have been in her mind fairly stock answers, although I thought they were pretty valid.  She is interested in gesture, psychoanalysis, and also "performance of the mind" - these are the things that have interested me too although I suspect we are coming at them from different places.  Fairbrother explores how women are conditioned to perform certain roles and expectations and The Rehearsal (Dedicated to Augustine) looks specifically at women's gestures in connection with an asylum:

"Photographs consciously reference those made in the Salpêtrière Asylum at the end of the 19th century, where observations of women who had experienced trauma became central to constructing a visual language of hysteria."

In another series, My two blue hearts on your two blue sleeves, Fairbrother looks at gestures of grief.  So gesture is certainly key to her work, and female gesture of particular interest.  I don’t think gesture should be underestimated.  I know from my old acting/drama school days that gesture was something Brecht was interested in and his actors looked at gesture as a way of building a character; gesture of power, poverty, or violence for instance.  

Last year when I was working out what could be done with a camera (I still am but I mean when I was at the beginning of this adventure - a phrase of Fairbrother's to be honest) I took a photograph that was really all about learning how to use a speedlight to give the impression of multiple exposures within one.  While figuring it out I felt nothing like the sense of despair and rage that the image conveyed - in fact I was thrilled by my experiment and had loads of fun playing around with what was possible.  The image did say something of what I had always wanted to say.  I would talk for years about wanting to write.  If someone said 'what do you want to write about?', I would answer - I don't know - just some sort of a horrible scream really.  So when I saw the photograph I was pleased that I had at last found a way to express that.  But it wasn't like acting where I always felt like I was forced to scoop my innards out - it just happened through gesture and a trick of light.  That's not to say it wasn't real and genuine - I think, know, it was.  But I didn't feel it at the surface then. I like that about photography.  It reveals things – a bit like Freudian slips can. When I look at the image now I find it quite embarrassing and think it's pretty crass actually but I do appreciate that it may have been a start of something for me (image here) - and gesture was something that I understood then to be incredibly important.

I've digressed and stopped talking about Jessa Fairbrother and instead talked about ME (ironic, heh?) - so back to her; the rest of the blog post is an attempt to answer the question - what is her work about - more fully. Fairbrother struggles to say it is about her Self and to believe that that is valid.  I don't blame her for having this difficulty – about using the self in one’s work.  It's a tough thing to get over - I know this because I spend ages wondering why I keep working with ME in the assignments for this course; am I, after all, just this vain, narcissistic, ego-maniacal, solipsist? 

Jessa Fairbrother writes,

"Then I skirted, yes, skirted round the issue of “me” – because in my head I was thinking: “Surely it’s rude to make work about ME. Who is interested in the ‘me’ unless the ‘me’ concerned has a very unusual life with lots of dramatic twists and turns?"

and 

"I worry it’s about myself and no one else is interested and it’s indulgent and narcissistic, I said. “Do you think Tracy Emin or Marina Abromovic wake up in the morning and worry about that?”"

I have asked myself the same about Tracy Emin and nearly included some notes on this in my last assignment - but edited it as I'd waffled on for way too long.  I wonder if she does worry but I suspect not – be interesting to find out.

However, I attended a study visit today to see and listen to Elina Brotherus speak, which made me so happy. These questions about working with the self were answered for me fairly succinctly and the great thing was that I began to understand the answers the moment I looked at the work.  We were able to ask questions at the end but Brotherus merely confirmed what I had discovered while listening to her talk.

I will discuss this more in another blog about Brotherus.

In the meantime I will continue to look at what Jessa Fairbrother is doing.  It’s fascinating and she’s certainly looking at some similar themes to the things that swim around in my own head. 

Jessa Fairbrother's blog
Jessa Fairbrother's website