Exercise 6: Utilising Lived Experience

The blurring of art and life has always been at the core of my practice, even before I knew how to name it. I now realise that what I do: writing poems to people who may never respond, filming personal moments filled with metaphor, layering stories with memory and emotion—is directly aligned with the work of artists from Fluxus, the Gutai group, and Latin America’s radical creatives like Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark.

What these artists did was erase the divide between artist and audience, between the personal and the performative, between life and the artwork itself. In the process, they gave permission to speak honestly, intimately, and openly—even when it felt messy or unresolved.

My Practice as Lived Experience

When I created The Bird Who Came From Afar, I wasn’t setting out to make a video artwork. I was trying to make sense of an emotional storm, to document and honour a connection that shook something awake in me. In hindsight, I was staging a personal happening, much like Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” or Allan Kaprow’s “Happenings”, which invited real-time vulnerability and presence.

I see now that the poetic pieces I’ve written—Aeolus and Nausika, The Rare She-Cell, and the story of letting the seashell go—are living artefacts of my experience. Not polished, but raw. Not fixed, but open.

Like Joseph Beuys, who believed that “everyone is an artist”, I’m starting to see my everyday life as a sculptural material. The people I meet, the things I say, the things I let go of—they are all part of a continuous artwork.

Artist Inspirations and Reflections

Hélio Oiticica’s participatory works, such as the Parangolés (fabric structures worn and activated by the viewer), made me reflect on how movement and embodiment bring work to life. What if my stories could be worn or re-enacted by others?

Lygia Clark’s “Relational Objects”—which could only become meaningful through tactile interaction—mirror my desire to create intimate, inner experiences through poetic imagery. My drawings, text, and videos are often about inviting someone into a headspace, not just into a gallery.

Nam June Paik and Yoko Ono’s Fluxus experiments, with their irreverence and emotion, reassure me that my expressions—whether filmed or spoken—don’t need to be finished. They can be imperfect offerings, invitations for connection.

Working Ideas and Artistic Decisions

Going forward, I want to incorporate more lived moments as performance, not in the theatrical sense, but in the honest, fluid, and vulnerable sense.

Some approaches I may explore:

Letters never sent: A small series of poetic letters written to friends, filmed being burned, buried, or left in public places. A Fluxus-like action, balancing catharsis and ritual.
Street interventions: Placing fragments of my poetry around Castletown or on found objects—shells, pebbles, postcards—as a way of embedding art into everyday space.
Audio diary: A performative monologue captured while walking the Isle of Man coastline, reflecting on memory and change—like a hybrid between Beuys’ “I Like America…” and Ono’s “Voice Pieces.”

A participatory work where viewers can respond to a poem by writing a word or drawing a mark—releasing control and letting others join the process.

Conclusion: The Journey Is the Work

This exercise reaffirms something deep in me: that the work doesn’t begin when I pick up a pencil or press record—it begins the moment I feel something deeply and allow it to move me into action. Whether that’s a poem, a message, or a visual response, I want to live my life as if it’s already a canvas.

I am not interested in making static objects. I am interested in making living echoes. Things that breathe, change, and carry part of me inside them—like a seashell the tide decides to carry, or a bird flying across geographies in search of a place to land.

Like the Fluxus artists, I believe art happens in the in-between—between people, between places, between moments. And I want to keep working from that space