Care Performance,
Live Performance with Hospital Bed and Participants, 2019

Care is a performance work where the artist places the participant on a hospital bed. The work displays the nuances of care between the carer and the care receiver as a continual negotiation. The hospital bed is a crucial instrument used in medical treatment. Often, at times of crisis, urgency, and stress, the body is placed on the bed to be investigated and assessed for survival. In contrast, once the situation is stable, it is also used to rest and heal.

In this work, I remove their shoes, help lift their legs onto the bed, cover them with the hospital sheets and secure the railings on either side. Once these are secured, I raise the bed as high as it will go, commonly used to roll the care-receiver into another position, toileting and other comfort-providing tasks. Once the participant is in place, I pull down the railing and hold the participant for as long as they want. The intimacy of this work invites conversations about the differences between institutional and informal care. Institutional or medicalised care practices focus on the body's functionality and medicalised measurements.

Informal care is given and received between family members, spouses or friends. This care involves knowing a person, their touch, their favourite clothes, or their favourite food. It supports the hospital's medical care. Understanding care depends on the other person’s needs and requires communication. It is also dependent on whether a person has this available. There is also learning and understanding of the body of the cared-for and how to provide comfort. Using touch and holding the audience, I re-perform this space as care that looks after the heart of the body, emphasising the power of physical connection to provide comfort. The action questions how we care for bodies in hospitals, within the boundaries and limitations of medicalised care.

Instructions: