Lee Campbell 

CLEVER AT SEEING WITHOUT BEING SEEN

2021/2022

CLEVER AT SEEING WITHOUT BEING SEEN is a 15-20 minute live Zoom performance combining performance poetry and visual moving imagery made up of my personal archive as an artist of nearly 25 years. It nails a specific talent queer people need to acquire, the title.

Through colourful, immersive, structured, organic and disorientating collage, this performance narrates the experiences of young queer people through my personal autobiography. The performance starts from the idea that queer existence itself is inherently performative; engaging the various roles that present themselves in a world of diversity. The idea of building a queer identity was so different pre-Internet. The world wide web introduces new possibilities for the construction of queer identity. In the manner of bricolage – building and constructing from what is at hand, piecing together images and visuals available on the Internet and elsewhere to explain one’s identity to oneself. Sharply and poignantly, the performance evokes many of the feelings that are so common to discovering one’s sexuality in adolescence ('I got very clever/Very clever at seeing/Without being seen'). The work is raw and authentic, with the artist sharing with the audience his own journey to authenticity and emphasising the message ‘just e yourself’.

BIO

Dr Lee Campbell is an artist, performance poet, experimental filmmaker, writer, Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts London, and founder of Homo Humour, a project  that explores humour and LGBTQ+ storytelling through film and performance poetry. His experimental performance poetry films have been selected for many international film festivals since 2019. This year, Lee had his first solo exhibition in North America of his poetry films, See Me: Performance Poetry Films at Fountain Street, Boston USA. 

www.leecampbellartist.blogspot.com

https://filmfreeway.com/LeeCampbell

Insta: lndnqueerfilmmaker

Twitter and Facebook: leejjcampbell