Florence Logan
Show photos taken by Ingrid Mur and Jen Martin.
Bleeeurrghh (look at us we're disgusting)
Bleeeurrghh (look at us we're disgusting) is a site-specific and movement-based performance created and performed by Florence Logan, Romi Sarfaty, Sophie Sulliman and Kate Bradley, as well as 2 female-identifying healthcare workers: Mairi Stenhouse and Rachel Jane. Several other healthcare professionals participated anonymously in its creation through a survey. It was performed at the Glasgow Women's Library (May, 2022).
The choreographic performance used grotesque personas and the iconography of 'ugliness' to explore the socially unaccepted female body. The work was informed by the collaborators' experience of treating, touching and caring for the 'random/strange body' - we were interested in how intimate or sacred acts of touch and care change in medical settings. Through repetition, use of tension, shake and strain combined with tender acts of sister-like care, the choreography highlighted the complexity of our fear/revulsion/obsession with the female body and exaggerated its image until the glorified grossness alienates the body from its humanity and it becomes just a thing, a form, a flesh
All costumes were crafted by the performers.
This site-specific work was inspired by the sorting and categorising processes of the Glasgow Women's library archive, which paralleled the methodical medical/care practices performed on a daily basis by the healthcare workers. Throughout the piece, the healthcare workers/performers archive crafted body parts and bodily objects: a hand, some hair, some bile, old skin a blister/boil, a tampon. The choreography, contained in the cleanliness of the white tarpaulin, also reflects this methodical approach, inspired by the routine procedures administrated by healthcare professionals, like applying creams, tapping for a vein or carefully placing pillows to prop up a sore body).
Poster:
- put on ppe, including a face mask, gloves and a plastic apron
- take the creams to the room
- tell the service user we will now be putting their creams on them
- prompt them to pull up their sleeves
- take out some cream to my gloved finger, put it on the elbow and rub until it is absorbed.
- do the same for the other elbow
- prompt them to pull up their trouser legs
- repeat the same action like the elbows- but starting with knees, going down to shins, finishing with feet.
- put cap back on cream
- say "thank you"/"good job"
- leave room
- take ppe off.