The blinking in performance and the poetics of intermittent vision

Vision is often treated as a continuous faculty: the eye opens, the image arrives, and the viewer receives it. Performance disrupts that assumption. A blink interrupts the field, while darkness, glare, obstruction, repetition and delayed recognition make seeing feel temporal rather than automatic. What appears in a performance may be present only briefly, returning as an afterimage or as a memory assembled by the body.

Intermittent vision describes this broken rhythm of perception. It can be created through lighting, moving bodies, video edits, sound cues, silence, smoke, reflective surfaces or the deliberate withholding of an image. The performer may disappear behind a screen, turn away at the exact moment of recognition, or hold a gesture long enough for attention to become uncertain. The audience does not simply look; it waits, guesses, recalls and revises.

For a visual artist working across sculpture, two-dimensional art, video, performance, sound and installation, the blink becomes both subject and method. It exposes the limits of representation while allowing absence to carry material force. A body can be understood through the space it leaves, a voice through its interruption, and a mourning object through the repeated failure to make loss fully visible.

Alexandra Mawimbi’s practice offers a productive context for thinking about these shifts between presence and disappearance. Her portfolio and professional archive bring different media into conversation, with works that engage representation, mourning and living presence. The restrained presentation of the artist’s sculptural works allows the viewer to focus on how an object, image or action holds attention, releases it and returns changed.

Perception begins with interruption

A blink is brief, but it is not empty. During that fraction of a second, the mind preserves enough continuity to prevent the world from appearing as a sequence of disconnected gaps. Performance can make this normally hidden process perceptible by extending the interruption. A light may cut out just before a face becomes legible, or a performer may repeat the same movement with slight variations, encouraging the audience to compare what was seen with what may have been missed.

This creates a form of visual uncertainty that is different from confusion. The audience remains attentive because the incomplete image promises another opportunity. The act of watching becomes physical: eyes adjust, the head tilts, memory searches for detail, and the body responds to changing brightness. Intermittent perception can therefore turn passive spectatorship into an active negotiation with time.

In a gallery or theatre, the interruption also reveals the architecture of viewing. A black wall, a narrow doorway or a carefully controlled pool of light directs the eye while exposing its dependence on conditions. The work is never encountered in isolation from the room. Its visibility is shaped by distance, duration, sightlines and the presence of other viewers moving through the space.

The body between appearance and disappearance

Performance makes the body available as an image while refusing to reduce it to one. A performer may stand still long enough to become sculptural, then shift weight and restore the body’s vulnerability. A covered face can suggest anonymity, mourning or protection, yet the covered surface may draw more attention than a visible expression. Every concealment produces another kind of appearance.

This tension is especially significant when a work addresses representation. To represent a person, a memory or a social condition is to select what can be shown and what remains outside the frame. Intermittent vision keeps that selection unstable. The audience sees a fragment, loses it, and constructs a provisional whole that may be challenged by the next image.

Living presence is also felt through small signs: breathing, a hand relaxing, fabric moving, a pause before speech. These details resist the polished authority of a fixed image. They remind viewers that the body in performance is exposed to fatigue, hesitation and duration. The event cannot be fully separated from the conditions in which it occurs.

Mourning and the afterimage

Mourning often appears through absence, but absence is not visually blank. A vacant chair, a repeated name, a garment without its wearer or a light that fades at regular intervals can make loss tangible without illustrating it directly. The missing figure remains active in the viewer’s imagination. Its nonappearance becomes a pressure within the work.

The afterimage is useful here because it describes how an image persists after the stimulus has gone. When a bright form disappears, the eye may retain a trace; when a performer exits, the audience may continue to sense the body’s position. Memory behaves similarly. It does not preserve an event as a stable recording, but returns it in altered colours, incomplete details and unexpected repetitions.

Sound can deepen this experience. A voice heard from another room, a low frequency felt before it is identified, or the sudden removal of ambient noise can make the unseen body present. In Australia’s large exhibition venues, from Melbourne’s inner-city galleries to contemporary art spaces in Sydney, audiences are accustomed to moving between installations with different sensory demands. A work that asks them to listen while vision falters can interrupt that habitual pace and make attention more deliberate.

Light, duration and the ethics of looking

The control of visibility carries ethical implications. A performance may invite close attention while refusing possession of the person being watched. The performer determines when to face the audience, when to withdraw and how much of the body can be read. This can challenge the expectation that spectators are entitled to complete access.

Intermittent lighting creates a related form of restraint. Rather than flooding the room with information, it establishes limits. A dimly lit action may ask viewers to recognise their own desire to see more clearly, especially when the subject involves grief, identity or histories of representation. The incomplete view can be more respectful than an image that claims to explain everything.

Australian artists and venues also work within practical frameworks that shape this encounter. Copyright law protects recorded and visual works, while moral rights acknowledge the creator’s authorship and the integrity of the work. Documentation of a live performance therefore requires care: a photograph or video is not a neutral substitute for the event, and permission, attribution and agreed use matter when a fleeting action enters an archive.

The screen as a blinking surface

Video extends intermittent vision through editing. A cut can operate like a blink, replacing one space with another before the viewer has settled into the first. A loop may promise continuity but reveal a seam each time it restarts. Delayed playback, obstructed lenses and uneven exposure can make the screen feel less like a window and more like a surface that opens and closes.

The relationship between live performance and video is particularly complex. A recorded body can be paused, enlarged or replayed, while a live body remains vulnerable to time. When both appear together, the audience compares their kinds of presence. The screen may preserve a gesture that the performer cannot repeat, while the live action exposes the limits of the recording.

This contrast resonates with everyday Australian viewing habits. Audiences may encounter art on a phone during a tram ride in Melbourne, through a gallery projection in Brisbane or in a regional arts centre where the pace of viewing is slower and more social. The scale of the screen changes, yet the central question remains: what does the viewer miss when an image is consumed quickly, and what becomes possible when attention is allowed to hesitate?

Designing for attention in Australian spaces

Intermittent vision depends on the practical realities of exhibition. Daylight entering a room in Perth, the glare of a white wall in Adelaide or the changing brightness of a venue during a summer afternoon can alter how a work is perceived. Blackout curtains, calibrated projectors and controlled transitions are not merely technical conveniences; they determine the rhythm of access.

The local arts market also shapes how performance is documented and circulated. A live work may need photographs, a short video, an artist statement and installation views to reach curators, collectors, festivals and public galleries. Each document translates the original event into another form. The challenge is to provide enough evidence for the work to travel without flattening its uncertainty into a single definitive image.

Accessibility should be part of this design rather than an afterthought. Clear information about flashing lights, darkness, sound levels and movement through the space helps audiences make informed choices. Captions, transcripts, audio description and Auslan interpretation can open the work to different modes of attention. These tools do not remove ambiguity; they make it possible for more people to encounter the work on meaningful terms.

Recommendations for staging intermittent vision

A performance built around blinking and partial visibility benefits from disciplined choices. The aim is not to make the audience struggle for its own sake, but to reveal how perception is constructed and how presence can survive a gap. Repetition, pacing and sensory contrast should support the work’s emotional and conceptual concerns.

Useful approaches include:

These decisions can keep the blink connected to the larger concerns of the practice. A sudden blackout may evoke grief, but a repeated return of light can suggest persistence without resolving loss. A face that remains partly hidden may question representation, while a breathing body in the same darkness can insist on living presence.

The interval as a site of meaning

The most compelling aspect of intermittent vision is the interval itself. What happens between images is not simply a pause before the real content arrives. It is where expectation, memory and bodily awareness gather. The audience becomes conscious of looking, and the work gains a temporal dimension that cannot be contained in a still photograph.

For an artist whose work moves between sculpture, image, sound, video, installation and performance, this interval can connect apparently different media. A sculpture may hold a pose like a paused body. A video may make disappearance repeatable. A sound work may guide vision towards an unseen source. A performance may transform the viewer’s blink into part of the composition.

The resulting experience is quietly demanding. It asks the audience to accept that seeing may be partial, delayed and shaped by what has already vanished. In that condition, the artwork does not need to provide a complete account of mourning, representation or presence. It can make room for the viewer to feel how knowledge arrives in fragments, and how a missing image may continue to act.

Attend to the next exhibition, performance or moving-image work with the interval in mind. Notice the moment before visibility, the trace after disappearance and the bodily response to a sudden change in light or sound. Explore Alexandra Mawimbi’s archive, follow the works across their different media, and allow each interruption to become part of the encounter rather than a failure of it.