Liz Winfield - Artist Statement

I am interested in the transformative powers of performance art. Watching a performance can transport the audience to another place or time. Performing a work can do the same thing for the performer. The real world fades away and is replaced with one that has new boundaries, new characters, and new possibilities. This ability to transform is one of the most important qualities of performance. It frees people from the ordinary and mundane. It allows an escape and a possibility of something beyond ourselves. Without it, we will always know what’s around the corner, who knocking at the door, or how the story ends.

My work is primarily multi-media performance art. I came to this medium after working within the more traditional genres of dance and musical theater. My performance works incorporate the body, movement, and sound and often video in order to communicate ideas about female space, power, and relationships. Because I am female, I cannot help but create work that has a female point of view. By using my body as a tool in my multi-media performances I am also redefining how the world views the female body. By controlling how I show myself and what stories I tell with my body, I can create new standards for the female form and new roles for the female storyteller. I see the act of performing as an act of owning my image and taking control of how it is represented.

Currently, most of my work is a collaborative effort. I am one-half of the performance group 3 card molly. Founded in 2003 by Tawni Bell, Ania Greiner and myself, we proceeded to create work that explores a layered approach to performance: creating poignant images that integrate movement, everyday actions and sounds, physical theater, and video. Our performances transcend the traditional framework of dance and theatre with a whimsical approach to often disturbing, weighty themes. Plot takes a back seat to the visceral experience. An underlying goal is to challenge the expectations of the audience, to experiment with the relationship of the performance to the spectator, and at the same time, to show a deep care and respect for the experience of the audience. Our creative process is completely collaborative; roles such as choreographer, director, and sound designer are fluid.

I like to work this way because it involves communication and agreement, which creates new meanings. It is ultimately an expansion of self through others where you can achieve what may have been impossible working alone. Collaboration also mimics our life experience in that we are never acting alone; it is always in response to stimuli from others. In this way, it cures us of the kind of isolation so prevalent in our society and moves us toward a more organic way of creating.

When collaborating, we often begin with fragments of ideas. These bits and pieces have come from every possible place: a movie, a song, trash found in the street, dreams, memories, and more. I tend to work this way outside of my collaboration as well. My solo work is often particularly inspired by dreams and memories. I find dreams afford me a surreal space of fluid image and sound that can create meaning and connection in new ways. Ultimately, working with a dream or a fragment from waking life allows one to free ideas, images, sound, and movement from their fixed places. It is when these things are allowed to move and float that exciting juxtapositions can occur and reality can be transformed.