We sat down for an exclusive interview with Tallulah Haddon to discuss their upcoming performance ‘I Left my Vibrator in a Cave’.
‘I Left my Vibrator in a Cave‘ is to be performed on May 1st as part of a live art event, ‘Discharge at Iklectic’, at IKLECTIC, Peckham Levels- Tickets here.
Where did the initial idea for I Left My Vibrator in a Cave come from?
The first r+d came out of experimenting with multiple materials I’d never worked with together. I made sculptures that looked a bit like stalagmites out of poured expanding foam. I set up a series of systems, a box with a hole in it that squirted out water (a performer was inside) and two performers outside collecting the water in a box with flour, they slowly kneaded the flour and water into dough. I used a camera, projected onto the wall to film different sections of the performance live. A vibrator was moving around on the floor on its own making a loud electronic drone. The vibrator had its own life and intentions. The materials were co-authors, generative and ever evolving. I wanted to set parameters but ultimately did not know what could happen. With the introduction of the blood as a material, our company began to explore what images, cycles and systems it generates.
You’ve worked across television and performance art from a young age. How have those different spaces shaped you as an artist?
Growing up, my mum was a live art producer and hosted performance salons in our house. The boundaries between performance and domestic space, between art and life have always been very blurred for me. I witnessed a lot of naked people covered in blood! That comes with pros and cons. It allows me to think differently. To have a different relationship to risk. To see how I live and who I live my life with, as a performance. I choose my collaborators carefully, with love and with curiosity, and sometimes with abandon.
Acting has allowed me to refine something very deep inside me with a microscope. I play with being behind and in front of the camera in my work, the gaze, who is looking, and how, has always played a part in my work.
Your sister, Mirabelle Haddon, is part of the work. What has it been like collaborating together on this piece?
Hilarious, profound and a little daunting. She can read my facial expressions like no one else. It required me to come to the work with an emotional honesty that was terrifying but eventually rewarding. As with each collaborator in this work, I am influenced and inspired by their personal practice. Her delicate, tactile and generous approach to making has really complimented my sometimes chaotic methods!
Throughout this work I got to collaborate with Mirabelle as an artist, we were able to develop a shared language and a sensory understanding of the world of the show, that she was able to improvise and play inside of. To see her come alive within the work was really exciting for me from a choreographic and familial perspective. We continue to practice telepathy, but to no avail.
What do you hope lingers with audiences after they experience the piece?
Maybe they will leave a little stickier than before. I want them to be left with a charge, a rawness, the feeling of having witnessed something. Somewhere between a fever dream and a memory, a memory of a memory, of a story someone once told you. I want it to feel like that. I want them to think of this performance every time they see blood, remember us writhing and playing in its incredible power and symbolism. To remember being in the cave with us.