Beth Heinly

BIO

**Update: my performance art is influenced by the internet, as in, surfing the web. Like the widely shared experiences via major social media outlets. I am interested in modes of identity stemming from gender, race, class.  I draw comics about my personal life experience, which is pretty shallow. *sigh*  Some personal info is that I live in Philadelphia and I am a member of the artist-run gallery/collective Vox Populi.  I don't know how I got in.  Pretty sure the majority of the membership hates my art & me.

Go on.

Ok, so for the longest time, like, 4 months, I've left this space blank.  And really, it still is cause you have the power to delete this <i>right now</i>, but if you refresh the page it'll only come back, so I guess if you really think about it power is only an illusion, but that's not what my art's about.  I hate to say it's about anything because my ideas change all the time, well not all the time, but like every 4 years.  That's because human beings who aren't dead inside are always learning new things, which changes our perspectives.  Everyone knows that except maybe children or they know, but they don't know they know.  Anyway, my performance art is definitely NOT REAL.  Looking back I've noticed that I typically take on different personas, like an actor, not like Marina Abracomvic or any of those ladies, like Yoko Ono or Fluxus people or what I thought performance art was for the longest time: <i>real life simulations, like Tilda Swinton napping at MOMA, which is crazy and confuses me because she IS an actor, uh, actress.  Maybe that's what Cornelia Parker is saying here - like what I'm saying right here - that real is different now or what is real?  We hate immediately because Tilda is rich and famous and that is so fake and art is so real. Wait...this is supposed to be about me. </i>No, I'm trying to be fake because thats more real to me.  Even the most real performance I've done - singing the Star Spangled Banner in 4 part harmony with my old high school singing friends - wasn't real because it was re-creating a memory.  I don't think re-enactments are real. My personas always have some connection to what is real, like visiting a psychic, a celebrity fitness trainer, Bette Midler, an artist - and they're personas I want to be, apart of myself and I'm pretty sure I'm real.  In fact, I am so real that it gets me in trouble sometimes. But they are only dim reflectionsof myself, not entirely Beth, but reflections of what I precieve around me.  And if I'm only lightly reflecting them to you, than those performances are like 3rd removed from their reality, but maybe by then it's a new reality birthed from what is real.  My next performance I am performing as dead, so maybe that means something is ending and I am beginning to change my mind again.  I draw comics too and those really are real.  People I love, people I hate, my soul mates all are drawn there exactly as I see them.  The thoughts and coversations all really happen.  I guess it's eaier to be realwhen I'm not thinking about art.  It doesn't make them better either because they're real.  Being fake is fun and teaches me a lot about reality though it's bad to not know you're being fake, like, when your ego is so blown out of proportion you can't see what's real.  Am I projecting? I can't be.  Not if I notice.