JONATHAN MAYHEW
APRIL 2016
PROXY
Adrianne Rich wrote, in the poem ‘North American Time’, ‘everything we write will be used against us in the end’. Today very little of what is written digitally is safe; are emails and most digital communications are captured and stored ‘just in case’ to protect us from future threats. It is getting harder to express your self freely without the fear of repercussion. Words can be misconstrued or taken out of context. I am not what you see and hear. Proxy allows the author the freedom to be vulnerable via the performer; a stand in, for all the writer cannot say. The truth will set you free, but not until it is finished with you.
Proxy is a performance, a text to be read aloud and at once redacted, as the words are lost in the wind, so too are the lines on the page as they are blacked out with ink.