Aalish Leece is a Manx artist currently based in London. She has featured work in a number of group exhibitions including Unsettled Matter (2015), Bin Bag (2016) and Stubborn Comfort (2016) as well as preparing for her upcoming solo show at Holdron's Arcade in July 2017.
Through a combination of practice based and written research, Leece confronts a crucial issue in the perceived binary of presence and absence, arguing that through the use of technological media, this binary ceases to exist.
Although primarily performative in nature, Leece’s practice has relied upon the idea of the performative act being experienced by the viewer after the initial event, or in separate geographical locations. This defies the means by which performance art has traditionally been orchestrated and experienced by the audience; in which an artist or performer shares a direct space and time with the viewer. This same intimacy can now be achieved remotely through utilisation of alternative media.
Imagine for a minute that you and I are in a room having this discussion. Now imagine that instead, we are both in separate physical locations and are appearing to one another through a screen. I am still able to maintain a dialogue with you, and yet our physical presence is not shared. I am present with you, appearing in a digital form that reflects the physical, able to fully engage with the situation; and yet I am also present elsewhere. Simultaneously, we are in some way absent in both scenarios and physical locations. Where once these terms existed only as a binary, through the use of a proxy they are no longer mutually exclusive of each other.
This theory is not an entirely new one, having been mentioned as early as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave through his discussion of the impossibility of unmediated forms. Leece, however, situates these ideas within a context much more relevant to our contemporary culture.
Leece aims to explore the way in which relationships can be formed and maintained solely through this new dynamic of mediated presence. Taking multiple forms simultaneously - text, image, sound, film, performance and generative media - Leece’s practice is fully representative of this idea. She illustrates through a highly diverse body of work the many different fragmentations of presence that can occur in relationships between people and the way in which these vary based on the forms through which they manifest. As such, this direct link between written theory and physical practice is vital to her field of research.
Having explored Bolter and Grusin’s theory of remediation, Leece poses the idea that in an increasingly digitally connected society - in which social media directly responds to its audience’s need to constantly perform and be performed to - it is absolutely crucial to determine the effect this remediation has in the larger context of digital culture and on human relationships as a whole.
We share infinite versions of ourselves continuously with our own audiences. We are fragmented over multiple conversations, relationships and portrayals of self through infinite commonplace forms of technological mediation – and so the question is posed - how many pockets are you in today?