Nice To Meet You
Vandana
2015
Performance
10 Minutes
Kingston University, London
©Vandana The Artist
Courtesy Vandana The Artist
DESCRIPTION
Nice To Meet You takes the material logic of the performance video Sticky Rituals — brown packing tape wrapped with its sticky side out — from the domestic routine into social encounter. Where Sticky Rituals traps the body inside its own habitual cycle, Nice To Meet You extends that adhesion outward: every handshake sticks, every contact leaves a trace, and the social ritual of greeting becomes as physically binding as the private rituals we perform without awareness. The restricted movement caused by the tape — the accidental fall, the shout for help — exposes what the social ritual normally conceals: the awkwardness, vulnerability, and loss of control beneath the polished surface of “Nice to meet you.”
I appear in the space wrapped in brown packaging tape with its sticky side out and greet everybody present with a handshake and the words, “Nice to Meet You.” Spontaneously, I pick up bits of paper from the floor and read them aloud, accidentally fall over because of the restricted movement and shout for help, followed by an act of recording the surroundings with the camera being used to record the performance itself and watching my own video on display before leaving the space.
Vandana 