Chloe Giles

Rehearsal, Performance, Reflection Repeat

By Chloe Giles

Rehearsal, Performance, Reflection, Repeat is a filmic installation that explores how everyday performative movements are informed by systematic understandings of the self. Presented in the context of a social media intoxicated world, Chloe Giles has committed herself to exploring and uncovering the psychological impacts that technology has had on the minds of her generation, and how this has informed the performativity she understands we partake in everyday. 

Rehearsal, Performance, Reflection, Repeat presents specific rituals in an endeavour to become the ‘self’; critiquing the meaning of self for an individual. Following in the footsteps of artist Cindy Sherman with her 1977-1980 photography series, Untitled Film Stills, Giles critiques meanings of the self when our everyday rituals are informed by what we see online.

Reflecting on the way in which social media trends have contaminated her own sense of self, Giles documents herself applying her daily makeup which she now realises is in its entirety, informed by the trends of beauty she sees online. The video reflects her individual experience in a generation who struggle to maintain a sense of self within a world which implores us to become something else.

Further, Giles questions the role that the camera has in reinforcing these performative activities as she recognises its inherent part of her everyday. Responding to Jeremy Dellers artwork Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992, Giles recognises that her generation faces an entirely different reality in the wake of surveillance. Understanding that now people have the tools and the platforms to document and post any imagery which they chose to take, Giles recognises that underneath the makeup, and clothing, her generation are stuck in the process of preparing for the camera. Rehearsal. 

Rehearsal, Performance, Reflection, Repeat stands not only as the verbal narration of this artwork, but informs the process which we are all stuck in. Tied not to time, but subliminally within every moment. Rehearsal, Performance, Reflection, Repeat incites both feelings of solidarity and discomfort, mirroring in practise and in theory, the experience of feeling and being watched daily, while never really knowing where the watchful eyes of a person or camera are situated. Thus, informing the Performance. 

The audience can be made aware of the performance if they find themselves having their gaze returned. Donned in a mask representative of the ‘self’ we create through these rituals, the gaze given by the depicted in the film returns not only the gaze of the audience, but the gaze of the camera surveilling this performance. Occurring simultaneously, through her returned gaze she hopes to hold the viewer in the space, just as the camera holds her in the performance. Evoking feelings of discomfort, Giles hopes to simulate the experience of being watched, and perceived. Making the audience acutely aware of the impact of not only the camera, but the performativity this informs. 

With this, Giles hopes to bring her audience to reflect on these processes of becoming their self. As Catherine Bagnall recognises within her artistic practise, makeup and garments both have the power to shift the perception of the self, and ones perception of the world. When we don our masks perfectly moulded to our face, Giles implores that we all consider who this mask is for, and what informed the creation of it. So that we can endeavour the world as ourselves, or not, but either way become aware of our-selves. Reflection. 

Reference List

Sherman, Cindy. Untitled Film Stills. Museum of Modern Art History. 1997. 

https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1997/sherman/

Deller, Jeremy. “Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984-1992”  The Modern Institute. Accessed November 2023. https://www.themoderninstitute.com/exhibitions/everybody-in-the-place-an-incomplete-history-of-britain-19

Bagnall, Catherine, Kate Collier, “Transformational Strategies: The Margiela Rabbit and the Gecko Girl” Shapeshifting Conference: Auckland University of Technology. 14-16 April 2014.