You Want a Piece Of Me?
by Bea Parsons

You Want a Piece of Me? was a performance that took place in Second Life, the online virtual world. The performance was based on the experience of consuming cultural goods in order to experience another culture or to become the Other. As a woman of Aboriginal and European descent, I have often experienced the feeling of existing outside of either of my heritage backgrounds. I have searched for belonging through the use of cultural signifiers such as traditional food, music, art, and personal adornment. For this performance, I wanted to share the experience of being a visitor to one's own culture.

For the performance, I created a skin that transformed my avatar into a large gingerbread woman. I wore a headdress and danced outside my neon-pink teepee. Participants were invited to "eat" a piece of me by clicking on my avatar. Each click made a part of me disappear. The performance ended when the avatar had been completely consumed by the party guests, and all that was left of me was a floating headdress. While the party fostered an atmosphere of play and celebration, the act of eating the avatar insinuated a darker tension, implicating cannibalism or self-sacrifice.

You Want a Piece of Me? was created to exploit the particular traits of Second Life, especially those that are difficult, if not impossible, to produce in real life. For example, a real-life version of this performance would require me to make and serve a 5'4" cookie decorated to look like me. Though baking a cookie this size is do-able, making it dance would have been quite a trick!

Artist Bio

Bea Parsons recently completed her BFA in Art Education at Concordia University in Montreal. Bea's studio practice is based in painting and drawing, but has recently begun to branch out to include performance, video and installation. Bea draws from her experience as a person of Aboriginal and European descent to explore themes related to cultural consumption. Her installation and performance work have been exhibited at The Darling Foundry, Art Mur, and the VAV Gallery. Bea is currently a Research Assistant for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace.