It Means Mischief (2012)

Hamlet is a trap baited with poison, which courses from one character to the next, and flows onto the play's audience.
 

This installation is comprised of six films in which the principal characters in the play perform their own disappearing acts as they attempt to distinguish themselves from one another. Each is allowed a single line of text which unravels their inability to identify with the roles they are assigned. By attempting to isolate a consistent sense of self they distill a poison 'whose effect holds such an enmity with blood of man that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body, and with a sudden vigour it doth posset and curd, like eager droppings into milk, the thin and wholesome blood.'
 

Like the original play, this installation revolves around a mouse trap, or a play within a play. This is a performance in which audience members are invited to sit across from the artist and operate a mechanical device by which their presence is absorbed by and absorbs the artist herself. The encounter between them takes place at the border which surrounds a black hole called an event horizon, a point from beyond which nothing, not even light, can escape.

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This installation was created for Brink Festival 2012, at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London, as part of the MA in Performance Practices and Research.

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The video art and documentation of this work were filmed by Jonathan Shohet.