It’s 25 March 2012, in the freezing stillness of an early Sunday morning under white skies, damp rather than crisp. There seems to be very few people about, but down by the seafront, near the start of the pier, there is a little activity. Some men are stapling covers onto fences surrounding the Adventure Island mini-golf. And a few people are starting to trickle in through the gate. I was one: number seventeen.
It was the coming together of Pitch and Butt – “An attempt to set the ‘Most Naked People to play a Miniature Golf Course in One Hour’ World Record“. Guinness had set a minimum requirement that 30 people complete the 18-hole course within 60 minutes for the effort to be recognised as an ‘official’ world record. Other stipulations were:
- The rules of miniature golf must be followed throughout the event.
- Participants must play the entire course in order and not miss or repeat holes.
- All participants must walk around the course.
- The use of a caddy is not permitted.
- One participant cannot begin shooting on a hole until the person before them has completed the hole. e.g. Participant 1 will tee-off on hole 1. Participant 2 cannot tee off until Participant 1 has sunk their putt and moved on to the next hole. This must follow throughout all 18 holes.
- It is not permitted for any participant to withdraw midway through the round.
- A log book should be maintained throughout the attempt and scorecards for each round must be provided.
- The event is continuous. The clock does not stop. One hour means a complete 60-minute cycle. The actual record attempt will start at 10am and so it must finish at 11am.
- A loud start and finish signal will be used.
Most importantly, the whole effort was a fund and awareness-raiser in support of the charity Prostate Cancer UK.
Despite a fair amount of coverage in the local papers – mainly thanks to magnificent efforts of local twins Emma and Sarah Burton who posed for publicity shots in the weeks before – it looked like the attempt might be thwarted. The organisers had turned up, the press had turned up, and the golfers had turned up… but the trouble was only 28 golfers had turned up. Where to find two more bodies for a chance of making the record official? To the relief of all concerned, at the last moment a gentleman from local radio and a lady freelance journalist lay down their clothes for the cause. Much respect to them.
So we got under way and we all got round comfortably with several minutes to spare. I may even have finished a couple of shots under par (or over), despite nightmares at the start and finish, and hitting a photographer’s foot halfway round. Strangely, however, the fearsome cold didn’t seem nearly so bad once we were naked and well into the game. Concentration is a wonderful insulator. As is the sheer fun of it.
Let the game commence: three pounds to get in, or free if you’re bollock-naked.
Ladies prepare to play through, while a chilly gentleman hunts for his lost ball.
A nice one of me, bending on a back hole.
Sarah in the classic stance, a candidate for Sports Personality of the Year.
Emma finishes with a flourish, while a local councillor thumbs his hand-held gizmo.
Three thousand pounds raised, world record set – all in all, a job well done.
At the beginning of February 2012 an email titled ‘Performance Shoot’ arrived. The artist Adam James needed bodies. Borrowing the mailing list built by JocJonJosch for Existere, he outlined plans for a series of performances building to a grand finale in summer: the Mudhead Dance. The first performance would be Mud Circles:
“In a nutshell, the shoot will involve a group of twenty masked naked participants walking in various circle patterns. This performance is for camera only, so apart from a very small crew there will be no public or audience whatsoever. Obviously you will be masked so you will maintain your anonymity in the photograph. The nude part will be quick, and will only happen once we have first practised the circular walking method, involving odd ways of walking, various speeds, simple patterns and repetitions. Once this is finalised, the masked nude version will take place. As all the performers will be wearing full head masks that I have been making over the past 6 months I think visually it is going to be amazing.”
The purpose was to create a looping film that could be used to promote the main event. I signed up, and on 25 February made my way to the V22 Studios to participate. It was a clear sunny day, but bitterly cold. More so in the vast warehouse space where the shoot was to take place after the sun had dipped below the horizon. First of all we were called down in sets of twos and threes for individual shoots before reassembling as a group for full practice and performance.
The hardest part (excluding the endurance of cold) was navigating in a circle whilst wearing nothing but a heavy misshapen eyeless headpiece. On the plus side it was a pleasure to work for Adam, and the group of performers he assembled had some wonderful characters. It was during a conversation on the roof of the studio, looking out across London skyline, that I resolved to put my life model work on a proper footing for the year ahead.
The Mud Circles crew (I’m in all the photos below so use that clue to pick me out):
Circling:
In close-up:
The film, presented as a triptych…
On 16, 17 and 23 July 2011, JocJonJosch – a London-based Anglo-Swiss-Slovakian art collective – presented three large-scale living performance sculptures at Testbed1 in Battersea. Together with around 70 naked collaborators, their aim was to create a work that represented “ideas such as the unknown and intangible fears that exist outside our protective structures”.
I joined the collaboration for its two rehearsals and three performance days. Multiple performances were presented each day, each one in front of a different live audience. In performance the naked artists and naked volunteers emerged from concealment in three corners of the performance space. We drifted slowly between diffuse standing audience members towards a blue square canvas under a skylight, assembled in tiers as a closed circle of bodies, and held for five minutes before softly dismantling and dispersing. The circle was made of units; the units were built of six bodies:
It was a conscious decision of the artists that there would be no photographic or video record of any performance. They would be preserved only in the minds of participants and the live audience for each unique event. Only the performance space is preserved in pictures:
In March 2012 the artists posted to Facebook asking participants to share their recollections in a book to document Existere’s existence. The following questions were posed, and a short deadline set for responses:
- There was a lot of naked people, in close approximate. Can you write something about the erotic aspect of the performance?
- Did the performance make you think about the body, your own or in general in any way?
- Did you see the performance as a collective or individual / existential piece?
- How did you interpret the performance, did it symbolise anything to you?
- What motivated you to take part & what were your expectations?
- How did the performance experience differ from your expectations?
- (a) You were asked to be in extremely close contact, whilst naked, with the other participants. Were you comfortable with this and why? (b) Did you feelings change during the course of the experience and if so why?
- How do you remember and reflect on the experience now; is there something in particular that remains with you from the performances and if so why do you think it remains with you?
Abroad at the time, I jotted down the questions and arranged some thoughts that evening over a meal. The next morning I posted this:
Reflections on Existere, posted from an Internet cafe in Athens, March 2012
The passage of time works quickly on memory, like a spoon stirring sugar into tea. Or dozens of naked bodies slowly coalescing, holding, trembling and finally fragmenting, drifting, disappearing. I was one such body, a performer of Existere, clothed or naked, participant in all rehearsals and performances. The memories remain but have started swirling.
Rehearsals clothed, limbering and loosening before practising, establishing roles, discovering strengths and weaknesses. Positioning the individual within the mass. Knowing one’s place in an intimate society with no predetermined hierarchy. And at last undressing for the undress rehearsal. Camaraderie in nudity and silence till the work was done, when laughter and smiles could quickly resurface.
Performances naked, with the essential extra ingredient: an audience. A clothed audience to undress us further, peeling back naked body parts to contemplate minds and perhaps ponder finding their own place in the larger organism. Perhaps some of them wandered in seeking erotica. They were surrounded by full-frontal nudity, layers of bare skin upon bare skin, but is this alone erotic? As a performer in the intensity of the moment this felt a wholly sexless show.
Thoughts of the body were focused on whether my body and the bodies of those around me would make the performance a success each time. Was the timing right? Is the positioning correct? How long could we hold? The concentration needed at these moments left little time for sexual self-contemplation or the appreciation of others. Concentration was divided equally between my own performance and that of the whole. I was determined that I should not fail; determined that no performance would fail. It never did.
For me there was no need to seek symbolism in the performance. This was Existere. It was enough that it existed. And more than that, it existed because a concept had been made reality by a set of strangers from wildly differing backgrounds and with wildly differing personalities, and probably wildly differing motivations for taking part. My own motivation was the new challenge of bringing my body out into the open. And the reason for seeking the challenge was the simplest of all reasons – it has become something I enjoy.
Having such a light motivation probably eliminated the need for expectations. It was understood that no photographs or film of the performances would ever be published, so this made each moment “of the moment”, and only for all time in the swirling memories of the performers and audience members. I expected to be clothed and directed, and then unclothed and trusted. And I expected to be trusting of others. That mutual trust was perhaps the greatest beauty of Existere.
The close physical contact necessitated by Existere presented no great concern as Existere was an anonymous mass of contact. It was never personal. Oddly perhaps, I felt more painfully self-conscious during the fully-clothed warm-up routine when random pairings would provide mutual support. This sensation became more vivid with each new day until by the last day I felt compelled to step outside until it was over. But nudity and contact within the piece: never a problem.
I am happy to have been a part of Existere. If the cry went up for a reprise, I would do all I could to be a part of it again, although in my heart I know we could never relive our finest hour: that grey afternoon when naked bodies assembled beneath a glass roof and the only sound was a drumming of rain and the sudden boom of thunder overhead. We never saw the lightning. It was within us.
My vague festering compulsion to participate in a Spencer Tunick installation saw its chance to be fulfilled when The Lowry commissioned him to photograph Everyday People.
The action was scheduled for the first weekend in May 2010. Places were strictly limited – applying on the first day of notice and following up with some robust begging was only sufficient to get me involved on the Saturday. But I was in, and in was good enough.
1 May 2010 was the Saturday in question. In the blackness of very early morning a select 500 queued up at The Lowry, waiting to be taken in bus convoy around various Salford locations.
The sense of anticipation and excitement among participants was palpable in the build up to the first shoot. Not even the harsh cold could diminish it. The absurdity of the situation, the liberation of joy, a licence to do the unthinkable, a resolute commitment to the greater whole… all these things brought strangers closer together. Friendships forged in that shared experience continue to this day.
It’s all about the mass, never about the individual.
But… here are some pictures of the mass with me, me, me highlighted:
…and here are The Lowry’s own video records of the shoot:
You’ll find me in the second one at the 1:00 mark, walking under a railway arch in deep conversation with Jenny Williams.
On 7 June 2009, the Sunday before first my naked contribution to an artistic project, I loaned my body to an altogether more worthwhile cause. PETA has often used the revealed bodies of its supported as an unshamed means of generating publicity. The ‘Bare Skin, Not Bearskin‘ action was intended to draw attention to the needless slaughter of bears to make headpieces for guardsmen.
PETA’s campaign calls on the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to stop using bear pelts to make headpieces for the five guards regiments and to have the hats fashioned from luxurious faux fur instead.
With dozens of other volunteers I arrived at a secret location south of the river in central London, stripped off, daubed my whole body with blood-like red paint, and then donned a robe and plastic bear mask ready for action. We crossed to the north of the river via the footbridge in front of Tate Modern where, on some steps between the bridge and St. Paul’s Cathedral, we dis-robed in front of a waiting press pack and began our protest cry: “MoD, go fur free”.
Three years on, the bears are still being slaughtered… but not all wars can be won in a single offensive.
Photos copyright McTumshie (Flickr).
Everybody – and indeed, every ‘body’ – has to start somewhere. For me, before life modelling came a desire to join in one of the large-scale installations composed and photographed by Spencer Tunick. His works bring together hundreds, sometimes thousands, of ordinary people at locations around the world, united by a willingness to disrobe for art or curiosity or the hedonism of the moment.
The anonymity of the crowd is as good a place as any to lose oneself or find oneself but, as there’s no knowing when or where the next installation might occur, I signed up to the unofficial Spencer Tunick Experience forum and waited…
And while I waited, I saw notices posted for other projects requiring naked volunteers. One of these was in my own county of Essex, at Prested Hall near Kelvedon. So I signed up, and while I waited for Tunick’s next big event in the UK, the Marie Treck photo shoot at Prested Hall became my first participation project. Sunday 14 June 2009: about thirty of us arrived, stripped to nothing, covered ourselves in paint, and were photographed in various formations.
Here are a few of the results:
I believe that’s me bottom left, bottom left, and centre.
And so it began…
steve ritter 