Laurel Jay Carpenter | Texas A&M University - Commerce (original) (raw)

Papers by Laurel Jay Carpenter

: Studies in Costume & Performance, Volume 8, Issue 2, 2023

Comparing works from the span of the author’s career, ‘The length that brings us closer’ traces a... more Comparing works from the span of the author’s career, ‘The length that brings us closer’ traces a range of connectivity – inter-, intra- and extra-personal – through a reflective analysis of the sculptural wearable in visual performance. The oversized garments in Laurel Jay Carpenter’s durational, live work reposition the performer with a linear length of fabric, combining the body with larger space and situation. In these trailing dresses, the woman is tethered, contained and weighted, but she is also partnered: with architecture, with earth, with herself and with the surrounding community, inverting expectations of her reach to reveal an embodied scale of connection. Collaborating to construct and perform the ‘impossibly long’ red dress of Red Crest (2003), the artist develops an intimacy with the public, an interpersonal encounter that is often the form connection is presumed to take. Other dresses in other performances indicate the elasticity of connective forces, from micro to macro. A deep, intrapersonal focus is evidenced in Again with Gusto (2009), with the riant performer held to a plinth by her outstretched yellow dress. In contrast, in Of Wanting (2017) and Longva+Carpenter’s Lineage (2019), the visuals of these dresses slant towards spectacle – defined by way of feminist new materialism as an excess that breaks norms and compels awe – to manifest an extrapersonal connection, touching what is beyond the known.

10 Together: Performances by Longva+Carpenter, 2022

“Visceral Fermentations: Duration, Intimacy and Collaboration” by Dr. Laurel Jay Carpenter frames... more “Visceral Fermentations: Duration, Intimacy and Collaboration” by Dr. Laurel Jay Carpenter frames durational practices within performance – including a slower-than-usual pace and a seemingly wasteful expenditure of time – as not only a resistance to Capitalist logic, but also as a gateway to intimate connections, a worlding-between. She knows this first-hand from her work over 10 years within the performance duo Longva+Carpenter.

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"10 Together: Performances by Longva+Carpenter" is an artist-edited monograph of collaborative practice in durational visual art performance, providing a chronology of work presented from 2010 to 2020 in galleries and public spaces, in city centers and small towns from the rural USA to islands in Norway, with stops between in Finland, Poland, Germany and Czechia. The publication provides an international, intersectional and practice-focused survey of the collaboration, with crisp images and insightful essays which detangle and designate the artists’ creative methodologies as vital to current performance discourse. An essay by practitioner/researcher Dr. Traci Kelly (UK/DE), offers an overview of the partnership as a commitment to intersubjectivity through material relations and bodily labour. The publication also contains reflective and critical writings by each of the collaborators: Terese Longva (NO) and Carpenter (US/UK), bringing forward the philosophical voice of the artist. An introduction by Rita Marhaug (NO) and a foreword by Dr. Sandra Johnston (N. IE) – both leaders in the international field of visual performance – position this work in a feminist lineage from the opening pages.

Something Other, 2020

A visual art performer examines her experience as witness to a durational action; it all comes fu... more A visual art performer examines her experience as witness to a durational action; it all comes full circle at John Court’s work, presented by Oui Performance, York, UK.

Powidoki, 2019

Paper translated from English to Polish. Following the thread of the Feminist New Materialists, i... more Paper translated from English to Polish.
Following the thread of the Feminist New Materialists, in “I Live in this Dress” the author, a visual art performer, examines the workings of materiality and identity within her own practice. The process of three recent works, Point Out, Touch On and Red We (all 2017) includes the design and construction of a sculptural wearable and techniques of traditional garment making—fabric draping, sewing and embroidery—to reveal a co-embodiment and shared authorship between artist and garment, woman and dress. This deep commitment to the material underpins a shift in selfness toward a collective identity, or alterself. Insomuch as the making makes the performance, the author suggests, the making makes the performer.

Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, 2019

Following the thread of the Feminist New Materialists, in “I Live in this Dress” the author, a vi... more Following the thread of the Feminist New Materialists, in “I Live in this Dress” the author, a visual art performer, examines the workings of materiality and identity within her own practice. The process of three recent works, Point Out, Touch On and Red We (all 2017) includes the design and construction of a sculptural wearable and techniques of traditional garment making—fabric draping, sewing and embroidery—to reveal a co-embodiment and shared authorship between artist and garment, woman and dress. This deep commitment to the material underpins a shift in selfness toward a collective identity, or alterself. Insomuch as the making makes the performance, the author suggests, the making makes the performer.

Body, Space & Technology, 2018

Full citation: Hope, B., Newland, I., Main, A., Rumley, C., Carpenter, L.J., Wozniak, P., Sykes,... more Full citation:
Hope, B., Newland, I., Main, A., Rumley, C., Carpenter, L.J., Wozniak, P., Sykes, L. and Maurissens, M., 2018. Performances. Body, Space & Technology, 17(1), pp.131–152.

See pages 140-143 for the CarpWoz contribution by Laurel Jay Carpenter.

K[ ]NESH Space, 2018

Comparing works from the span of the author's career, 'Sliding Scale' traces the elasticity and s... more Comparing works from the span of the author's career, 'Sliding Scale' traces the elasticity and slippage in the consideration of scale through a reflective analysis of the sculptural wearable. The body serves as a standard measure; the oversized garments in Red Crest (2003), Again with Gusto (2009) and Of Wanting (2017) each adjust the scale of the performer with a linear extension from the back, connecting and conflating the body with larger space and site. The woman extends, connecting to architecture, to earth and to the surrounding community. In these performance garments, she is also tethered, contained and burdened. Yet, her determination transcends the circumstance, overlapping and inverting multiple measures—shifting scale to scope, and revealing subtle gradations across additional aspects of each performance, from spectacle to intimacy, archetype to identity, and self to collective. This is the sliding scale of scale: the range of small to big, equally balanced, and big to small, revealing how scale, in its relationality, can never be fixed.