Jessica Paris: Grip

Can you see me? Enough of me?
Get a closer look. Lean in. That’s it.
Can you feel my hot breath on your neck? Softly. So soft you can’t find the edges.
Can you hear my skin rubbing against your jeans?
Do you want to?
Shall I let you?

Grip is an ongoing enquiry into the duality of power dynamics and the performing body. Through a choreographic performance that feels exposed yet secluded, Jess invites audiences to cross the bridge between sex work, pop culture and performance art. In doing so she exposes assumptions about the sex industry and challenges the passivity of observation. Jess also performs a body that grew up watching noughties’ MTV and warmly reveals the complex depictions of power, wealth, femininity and sexuality in pop media.

The piece is performed in near nudity and has images and descriptions of objectification.

Created by Jessica Paris
Performed by Jessica Paris
Performer (film): Gioia De Martino

Jessica Paris

Jessica Paris is a performance artist from London playing primarily with her body as a medium. Her work in the sex industry forms the basis of her current intermedial praxis examining power, persona, money, class and femininity through sensory research.
Her work straddles Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s mathematical and repetitive use of the human body and Ryan Heffington’s embodied choreographic style to create unique and visceral movement pieces that add to the ever evolving and thriving contemporary art dance scene.

Into the New 2024

Grip is part of Into the New 2024, a festival of contemporary performance made in Glasgow. Into the New showcases work by the final year BA (Hons) Contemporary Performance Practice students from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Accessibility

Content Warnings: Flashing lights, Partial nudity
Trigger Warnings: Sex work, Objectification