ARCHIVE / ORIGIN WORK 01
Over
Stepping
The Line
Durational performance and installation
of remnants
Bristol · April 1997
THE FIRST KNOT
Unravelling lines of narrative - held in memory. A ritual of instruction, material and residue.
Sent to the headteacher first for playing football, then for arguing about it, A disused school becomes the playground to explore who draws the lines of acceptable behaviour—and what happens when they are crossed.
THE ROOM
Lines of Authority
Wearing a floral dress reminiscent of the one worn that day, A ritualised sequence of actions.
Untangling mass of bra straps from a hessian sack associated with school sports days.
Competitiveness and restriction. Making sense of entangled stories. Retrieving stories and reweaving.
Gathered Cherry Blossoms from the tree outside the window. - brought in from the outside. Like being picked off from the school field and taken by the dinner lady to the Head Master.
THE INSTRUCTIONS
Writing lines
Stories, fairy tales and nursery rhymes were plaited through the straps. Extracts from a book of social etiquette—instructions governing how boys, girls and young women should behave—were removed from the cupboard and copied onto the blackboard.
Audience members entered individually, sat on a school chair and were invited to write lines while the performance continued around them.
THE REMNANTS
Colour inside the lines. Contained. Accumulated.
The actions left an installation of residue and remnants: rules rewritten on the blackboard, stories plaited into lengths of bra strap, and material lines extending through the space. The straps—a material of feminine adolescence—remained mostly tangled and fragmented, spilling from the hessian sack.
Fallen blossoms, separated from the mother tree and their natural setting, covered the ordered room. Impermanence and innocence settled over its prescribed order.
THE CONTINUING THREAD
The lineage continues.
The work considered how stories, instructions and institutional spaces participate in shaping identity—particularly the learned behaviours and expectations attached to femininity.
Seen retrospectively, it introduced concerns that continue throughout Blunt’s practice: the line as both material and narrative, embodied memory, female experience, repetition, ritual and the remains left behind by an action.
ARCHIVE
Original proposal and documentation
Originally presented as A Nostalgic Reminder of School Experiences.
The proposal records the initial intentions for the performance. Some proposed components were altered or omitted in the realised work.