This durational performance was made as part of a three day performance workshop with Belfast-based Performance Art organization BBeyond, exploring the concepts of Presence, Subject and Object.

Prompted to use an object to make an improvised performance, I chose a pair of gold 8-inch stilettos.

In writing about Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Tiukało makes the claim that: ‘For the author of The Second Sex an authentic human being is an independent individual expressing both the subjective and objective elements of his/her body’ (2016, p. 82).

Inspired by the writings of De Beauvoir, I used this performance to explore the relationship between my body and my stilettos, as objects and subjects in order to find new ways of moving through space and time.

This is a performative work using sculpture and moving image with pole dance as a movement methodology, exploring the inevitable deterioration and breakdown of stiletto heels created from plaster.

Using these stiletto heels as tools and art objects, I explore how this destruction may ‘…give rise to opportunities for creative behaviour’ as the process of dancing in shoes which are designed to break forces me to reassess my prior embodied knowledge and skill in pole dancing (Engman, 2018, n.p.).

Exhibited as part of ‘Anemoia’, an exhibition of works in progress by the MA Fine Art students at Limerick School Of Art & Design, in the Church Gallery, the ‘Untitled’ performative moving image piece approximately 7 minutes in duration along with the resulting broken plaster stilettos.