I Made Everything (With Caro) by Anna Macdonald & Caroline Dubois
Materials: Film, Performer, diet coke, table, text
I made everything (with Caro) is a durational performance with film that explores the complex relationship between integrity, validation, self-esteem and visibility within women’s art. It emerged from the question: what level of achievement would feel enough? It is their second collaborative project.
In it the artists lay claim to a list of culturally recognised artistic achievements accomplished by women, since time began. They are voracious. They appropriate the achievements of every woman artist featured in the Whitworth, including their own, and the staff who work there. They include non-recognised outputs such as domestic labour, childbearing and admin skills. They include some men’s achievement and others from science, just because it is possible to do so. Some claims are true, some questionable and others openly fraudulent.
Live and on film, the artists perform a series of physical tasks over a long period of time with clearly self-generated constraints, which make them hard to achieve. Their movements are small, dogged and apparently pointless offering a potential contrast with notions of artistic ‘greatness’ in terms of scale, permanence and grandeur.
Anna Macdonald is a performance/moving image artist whose work has been exhibited at venues including; Artsdepot, London, Art Currents, New York, Bluecoat Arts Centre, Liverpool, Dascamdans, Belgium, Miden Festival, Greece and the International Video Dance awards in Barcelona.