When I presented the performance It’s Natural to the audience for the second time, I applied the foam onto cotton fabric instead of elastane, and the result was a much greater struggle to get inside. The cotton did not give me the space to enter the body as the elastane had, demanding a much stronger physical effort from me. I had not tested it beforehand as I had in previous instances, so when I performed it live in the gallery, the level of challenge, and perhaps exhaustion, added a much more visceral layer to the work. In this gallery presentation, I did not use the spotlight, only the pedestals; however, the ending of the performance became clearer and more defined through the complete removal of the foam body after struggling to inhabit it. In this documentation video, the process of exhaustion and the remnants left at the end of the presentation function as traces of the performance’s ephemerality and of the effort to emerge from that body.

Returning to the subject of the pedestal. The pedestal was an important element in the development of the performance It’s Natural. I want to step back in the timeline of the process to explain a little more about the context in which this work was created. It’s Natural marked the beginning of my work-in-progress for the MFA in Intermedia, and therefore the beginning of my artistic research. This performance was first initiated and presented during a critique class, where the task was to develop a project out of theoretical and artistic concepts and to justify one’s practice in relation to theory. Because the program emphasizes process within Intermedia, a term coined by Dick Higgins to address art happening in dialogue between different media⁹, I saw in the use of the pedestal an object that could connect my performance to other artistic forms. Traditionally, the pedestal functions to elevate and stabilize the artwork, conferring authority and fixing it as an object of contemplation. 

In my performance, however, this role was subverted: instead of securing stability, the pedestal became a stage for instability and risk. It no longer elevated the body as a fixed object of authority but exposed its fragility, functioning as a staging of vulnerability itself, the vulnerability of identity, revealed as something unstable, shifting, and performative.  It evoked the stillness of sculpture, yet the presence of my moving body destabilized that stillness, producing an image that oscillated between object and action, sculpture and performance. Alongside the pedestal, the spotlight became crucial for exposing the way the body is perceived as a construction. As Butler reminds us, what we call the “natural body” is already produced through regulatory practices. Under the spotlight, my body was not seen as simply organic or natural; it was framed, staged, and made into representation. Together with the pedestal, these elements added further layers to reveal how bodies are inscribed by power hierarchy, under control. Rather than supporting an idea of a given body, they exposed the very norms that attempt to rule and confine it.

The paradox that I absorbed through my readings of Butler, and that resonates in my own sense of anguish, is that without norms there is no subject, but with norms the subject appears fixed. It is only in the repetition of those norms that agency can emerge. This paradox became visible in my artistic research, though at first in an unconscious way. I was not initially thinking of using the pedestal and the spotlight, but these elements appeared as the process unfolded, once I reflected on the process of doing. This reveals something fundamental about artistic research: unlike the scientific method, which requires each step to be justified beforehand, artistic research allows meaning to emerge in and through practice. Knowledge is produced not by applying a pre-existing plan but by working with what arises, and then reflecting on it.