IMPOSSIBLE

POPPY JACKSON

DEFIBRILLATOR PERFORMANCE ART GALLERY, CHICAGO 2014

DFB + SURROUNDING CITY ALLEYWAYS, USA

PHOTOGRAPHY / FILM : VERONICA MERKLEIN + TONGYU ZHAO / CARRIE RUCKLE

Created + Performed by Poppy Jackson

Curated + Produced by Joseph Ravens

Artist’s Assistants: Gabrielle Peterson + Michael Lee Bridges

▲ Breadcrumbs, Defibrillator Curator Joseph Ravens jacket, Ajax Bleach Powder, pigeon + arson-damaged garbage can > 50 minute duration

Inside Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Jackson sings the word 'Impossible' repeatedly from the floor, her arm raised with her fingers crossed in a gesture of hope or luck, and her body covered in breadcrumbs. She makes eye contact with each audience member as they enter the space opposite her. After 20 minutes, with her voice becoming progressively strained, she inverts her body on the wall of the space, then walks through the audience and puts on the curator’s, Joseph Ravens, jacket. She exits the space continuing the chanting of the word 'impossible'; when needing to take a breath, this word shifts to 'possible'. The audience follow Jackson and file down a thin passageway where she climbs up the walls, becoming an archway that the audience to pass underneath as she sings.

Jackson leads the audience down West Haddon alleyway, drowning the word 'impossible' by singing it directly into a large puddle that she lies at the edge of and face-down in. A party of men from the alleyway join the audience as Jackson inscribes the word 'BORN' inverted onto a central wall by cleaning it with Ajax Bleach Powder. She leaves a handful of breadcrumbs in a hole above this inscription and uncrosses the fingers of her other hand.

Jackson removes the curators jacket and pulls a large arson-damaged garbage can filled with water and trash into the middle of the alleyway and climbs onto the melted bin. Lastly, walking to the edge of the alleyway she crouches silently beside a live pigeon, rubbing her body and hair so that breadcrumbs fall onto the ground around the bird.

"Not only is the female body socially autonomous, but it is geographically as well, maintaining a level of “borderless-ness” communicated by the self-sufficient gestures that Jackson employs; within a single frame, point A and point B are depicted -- vastness, in spite of its changing environment, can still exist within a single body."

An Analysis of Poppy Jackson's Performance at Defibrillator Gallery By G. M. Peterson

Impossible formed part of Poppy Jackson's project Transatlantic Performance Practice, funded by Arts Council England and the British Council through the Artists’ International Development Fund awarded to the artist.

Pigeon, breadcrumbs, Defibrillator Curator Joseph Ravens jacket, Ajax Bleach Powder, arson-damaged garbage can Defibrillator Performance Art Gallery, Chicago USA 2014 40-minute performance Video: Carrie Ruckel Supported by the British Council & Arts Council England, through their Artists International Development Fund awarded to the artist