Bike Veil Bride

Endurance and durational art are genres of performance art associated with intermedia in which the artist puts themself through some level of trial, in the case of durational art, for an extended period of time. A widely known example is The Artist Is Present by Marina Abramović, who silently sat in MoMA for hundreds of hours as over a thousand visitors took turns sitting across from her. As an intermedia student, I wanted to experiment with endurance art for the first time to figure out how it might develop my practice. American wedding culture is arguably consumerist, exhibitionist, and a hindrance to independence. The props I used were a used wedding gown that had been disposed of at a thrift store and my bike. I put on the used wedding gown and publically wore it in an unconventional manner, on a bike ride. A secondhand wedding dress can often be obtained for less than the price of many cycling kits or even just a casual outfit bought new. Wearing one during the work demonstrated the disposability of an object sought after and saved for by so many. My secondhand dress would also become a “remnant piece” at the end, a reflection of the trial my body had been through and evidence of the performance that had been. Originally, I intended to sell and donate all of my clothes, buy the dress, and wear it as my clothing for a semester or so. This was incompatible with courses that involved welding, etc, so I thought I might buy the dress, wear it for three days or so as a trial run of the performance, then decide on a longer time period. This project needed one more parallel with a wedding, love. I chose to include the love of my life, cycling, through the use of my bicycle. Wearing something beautiful but impractical while doing something I live for, thereby hindering my ability to perform the activity, was exactly the trial and visual metaphor I wanted. My route was a single track mountain bike trail in Coralville. Documentation of the honors endurance piece was a video, shot on a Rebel T3 with a portable tripod and edited with Adobe Premiere. Further record was provided by the wedding outfit, a dress now full of burs, muddy shoes, and the veil helmet.