Revisiting Catharsis in Contemporary Live Art Practice: Kira O’Reilly’s Evocative SkinWorks

This article examines catharsis in recent one-to-one performances I shared with UK-based artist Kira OʹReilly. Focusing on my inter-experience of My Mother (2003) and Untitled Action: NRLA, The Arches, Glasgow (2005), I argue that both performances can be read as troubling and elucidating ideas about the presence, nature and affect of catharsis. I raise questions and reveal my responses to felt states such as risk, intimacy and confession, and draw on hysteria and Kristevaʹs concept of le vreel to articulate the embodied knowledge of my close encounters with OʹReillyʹs visceral body artworks. Ultimately I propose that OʹReillyʹs performance practice adopts cathartic strategies that activate aesthetic, formal and material kinds of feminist political responsibility in her performance ʹother