Crossing Territories: Live Art as a Mediator of Intimacy

‘I love Basildon’ was an art project conceived in 2009 as a response to a public art commission to investigate the spirit of place. Over a three-month period the public encountered the author’s interventions during visits to their local community centre, shopping precinct and ‘residents lounge’. As an artist and a self-imposed ‘independent researcher’, the author explored the possibility of using art as a research tool, combining sociological methodology with the act of live art. The ensuing visual data such as photographic portraits, props, costumes and field diary extracts are presented here, both as a work of ‘art’ which the public encountered and a unique ‘research output’. The author argues that this approach can provide a level of access to the public and can mediate ‘intimacy’ that is often inaccessible by traditional research methods. She challenges the notion of art for art’s sake as the piece extends the territory of art as a ‘multiple method experience’ for the spectator, audience, participant and artist – an encounter, a viable research tool, which has the potential to access the heart of a community. It is at the point of such access that intimacy becomes available in the public realm. ‘I love Basildon’ (2009) is presented as a record of the exchange of intimacy, a visual methodology and a ‘work of art’.