It's been a little over two years since Brian Routh (my art partner and Husband), passed away after a very long and challenging battle with two types of cancer. Our last days together were moments ranging from very lucid earthly closures to wild shamanic visions and were easily the most profound thing I have ever witnessed. Being by his side when he died transformed me.
Brian was loved by many and had many fans due to his notoriety as a pioneer in performance art, most notably his partnership in the performance duo the Kipper Kids. When somebody like Brian passes away, and you are the partner, you are left feeling as if you're not doing enough for everyone else who loved his public persona. There are also the jolting recollections of the many follies of his youth, something that the man that I knew left behind long before I met him.
It is that persona that many of his admirers insist upon adhering to, and for good reason, as he broke down many stale and elitist establishment art conventions during those times in his life.
In some ways when I hear these recollections that are decades old of his wild often debauched ways, it also makes me realize the gift I was given by being able to witness the gentle and hugely ethical man that I knew. It makes the intimacy that we had was incredibly unique and private. He had learned many hard-won lessons in the last chapters of his life, and I feel incredibly lucky to bear witness to that.
Bereavement manifests in different ways for each person you have a relationship with that dies. In the case of Brian and I, I have had atypical grief, moments of great joy in remembrance of him and things he did to make me laugh. I had to try to suppress my laughter during one of his memorials that were very maudlin and overly saccharin, as I could vividly imagine the mockery he would make of it if he were physically there. But then, typical grief too, the loss of my interest in making anything creative, a depression that left me with just enough energy for basic survival.
But thankfully, the clouds are parting, and I'm starting to feel the spark of creativity again. I thought one of the best ways to kick off a larger project, would be to build an immersive interactive story of the history of Brian Routh's art.
In the last chapters of Brian's life, we worked quite extensively together, not in physical performance art, which he is mostly known for, but more with sound art and my digital art combined.
So it seems like a natural way to ease back into the creative world, by still working with Brian, in a way. Lucky for me, Brian left a tremendous amount of history Via written down in notebooks, stored on hard drives recordings of his early performances through to his last performances as well as the video art that he did with me, and his solo very shamanic and moving sound artworks.
The organization of this and designing the navigation is what I've been working on this summer. It's easy to go down a memory rabbit hole, and this is the part that is taking a bit of time and emotional strength to pick through. Once I get that all organized, I can start inputting the content rather quickly.
The plan is to build an interactive and somewhat immersive gallery in the visual style that Brian would create and create different rooms for each contribution he made in his long history of art. It's a labour of love, and so far, despite a lot of trips down memory lane, it's been a labour of love and a pleasure to be doing something creative again.
Stay tuned here for progress.