A Live Exploration into the Social, Psychological and Physical Boundaries of the Body

Lock In is an ongoing project that provides a platform for artists working in durational performance to open up a critical debate with their live and non-live audiences.

Now with a permanent home, Gallery Lock In, the project also hosts socially engaged visual art exhibitions and has been set up to enable artists to run their own workshops.

ABOUT:

Community Art Centre was the first to host the series of durational performance art pieces that followed the concept of a “lock in” with an exclusive audience of 30 who were not permitted to leave for the duration of each event.

The audience was chosen at random and the performances were not visually recorded; rather, they only existed in the moment they were experienced and were archived through the written responses of the audience, in depth interviews with the artists and reports from the press.

The artists were invited to respond to the idea of confinement, using the body as primary material to explore elements of physical, psychological and social incarceration. The physical endurance of the artists was responded to by the endurance of the spectating audience, with the aim of pushing the limits of what an audience can and want to experience.

“Lock In” is the boundaries of the space but also the social, psychological and visual boundaries of the body. By being locked in we can break out of social norms and boundaries that dictate everyday experience and challenge people’s perceptions of the potential of the body to relate to wider social and/or psychological issues.