NOTETOADISTANTGOD
2010-2018
Durational performance
Blindfold, drawing/painting materials, paper or wall surface
Duration variable: 1–3 hours
A blindfolded durational performance structured through constraint, repetition, and the live act of markmaking
NOTETOADISTANTGOD is one of Hamilton’s foundational performance works. The work is built from a small set of conditions: the artist is blindfolded, the duration is fixed, the material palette is limited, and the work unfolds through touch, memory, gesture, text, and repeated contact with the surface.
The work does not begin with a predetermined image. It begins with a situation. Vision is restricted, duration is held, and the body must work from within those limits. Marks accumulate through pressure, reach, rhythm, hesitation, and return.
Although the work predates Hamilton’s practice-based PhD research, it establishes a method that later becomes central to it: working from authored constraints rather than toward a fixed outcome. In NOTETOADISTANTGOD, constraint is not an obstacle to expression. It is the structure through which the work becomes possible.
The work also acts as an important precursor to later sound-image works such as The Butterflies in My Brain, where mark-making, projection, machine sound, and live processing become part of one responsive system.
Project Description
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In NOTETOADISTANTGOD, mark-making is treated as a durational action rather than as image production alone. The blindfold changes the conditions of making: the hand can no longer rely on sight to correct, organise, or complete the image. The work must instead be made through bodily orientation, accumulated marks, repeated gestures, and direct contact with the surface.
The performance foregrounds process over finished outcome. What matters is not only the drawing left behind, but the conditions under which it was made: the time spent in the space, the restricted vision, the physical effort, and the gradual build-up of marks and text.
Each performance produces a different result because the work is shaped by the conditions of the site: the scale of the surface, the duration set, the material used, the position of the body, and the limits of movement. The final surface records these conditions, but it does not explain them. It remains as a trace of the performance rather than as a complete substitute for it.
Mark-making / Performance / Document
NOTETOADISTANTGOD exists across live action, marked surface, and documentation. In some presentations, the performance is witnessed directly. In others, the video document becomes the remaining form of the work, standing in for the body after the action has ended.
This relationship between performance and trace is important. The marked surface is not the whole work. The video, the duration, the site, and the memory of the body working within constraint all form part of how the work is encountered.
Within Hamilton’s wider practice, NOTETOADISTANTGOD marks an early and important articulation of a physically situated method. It shows a way of making through constraint, duration, repetition, accumulation, and direct response to site. This method later informs Hamilton’s practice-based PhD research, Composing with Site: Re-authoring Sound-Image Across Physical and Digital Environments, where the question becomes how such physically situated ways of making can be carried into sound, installation, and digital environments.
Selected Publications: