How men and women occupy public space in different ways
Walking In the Way: Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti.
Negotiating public spaces as a woman can be an experience fraught with challenges, judgments, or unwanted approaches. It is a topic explored by artists Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti in a fascinating series of performances that they began over a decade ago, titled Walking in the Way.
The artists explore the different ways in which men and women occupy space by appearing as men in a variety of cities including Dublin, Edinburgh, Madrid and Istanbul. They have revisited the performances in a retrospective currently showing at the South Tipperary Arts Centre in Clonmel, which will later tour to other venues. According to Cummins, the themes of their collaboration are more timely than ever.
“We are hearing from people how much we have been programmed, the expectation of you smiling all the time, that men assume you are looking for attention when you’re not. It is like you are carrying this around all your life. You get out of the way if you see two or three men walking along, you don’t draw attention to yourself. It wears you down,” she says.
Cummins and Mezzetti were experimenting with a performance collective when inspiration struck.
“Frances was trying out this way of walking when one of the male artists said she was being seductive, and she wasn’t," says Cummins.
"She was just changing the way her hips moved, the way anyone would try out the mechanics of walking. We were talking about how women appear in general — how you are taken as an older woman if you are in your forties but an attractive or interesting man if you are the same age. Then we said let’s spend a little time together to do this."
The duo appeared as men in Belfast. "The people in the collective with us came to see us and didn’t recognise us. That was really interesting, that we disappeared. They didn’t pick us out even though they know us really well.”
Cummins and Mezzetti got some initial instruction from a theatrical make-up artist on how to appear as realistic men.
“He took us through things like using the proper hair, real theatrical beards, side-whiskers and moustaches. He showed us how a man would wear his hair, and a little bit about colouring, to give a rougher look and a heavier brow. Then we took it from there. After that, we could do it ourselves.”
The artists went on to do a performance in Dublin inspired by their fathers, which they fittingly did on Father’s Day.
“Both of our fathers worked in Dublin, they were trained craftsmen so we thought let’s do this about them in the old part of the city they used to hang out in. We did it for a few hours, walking up and down. We have noticed in our research, the way men are really comfortable in the street, leaning on a wall or even just on a bin.
"We try all those things and you would be leaning on a bin looking up and down the street, nobody turning a hair or noticing.
"You are not afraid that someone is going to say something to you. This was another revelation to us.”
Taking the performances to cities abroad also brought a new perspective, says Cummins.
“It was a challenge to disappear and go to where all the men gather in the city — bookies or bars, for example. In Madrid, retired and older men would go play dominoes. It was amazing to be able to go into this kind of sanctum and for nobody to notice. That is our achievement, to be able to be part of something without the group knowing.”
Cummins views their work as going beyond performance art. Their performances are live, documented by photographers who must keep their presence hidden.
“We are artists who have come through making videos and video installations, we have all these other skills but our performances now, we prefer them to be live, in the real world, rather than appearing in galleries only. While the images will appear in galleries, our performances are out in the real world.”
The series of performances have also been documented in a new book, Walking in the Way: Performing Masculinity.
"We thought we really need to document this and have some people write about it and different aspects of it. We are absolutely thrilled with the book. It rounded off the whole process for us. To think it has been ten years, it has been an extraordinary experience. The opportunities just kept coming and we kept doing it.”
- Walking in the Way – A Retrospective, Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti, South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, until May 14. www.southtippartscentre.ie
