When being told the location of our site specific performance, nothing jumped out at me straight away. It wasn’t until I took time to think of the words ‘retail therapy’ that thoughts started to arise.

Words such as cure, heal and treatment are associated with therapy. What does shopping actually ‘cure’ people of? How happy does shopping really make us and how long can this treatment heal us from reality?

These are questions I may consider when thinking about my practical work. For me, this is the most exciting part of the module as I the have no idea what direction the performance will take.

When we were first told that we would be looking at Retail Therapy, one of the initial ideas that came into my head was those old charity shops, buried with stuff, layers and layers of random items that you have no idea how long they have been there, who owned them before you, or where it has been in the world. You could pick up a book, for instance, that has been to a beach in Spain or gone travelling around the world and never know.
Also about that, when shopping, you are seen as a certain category of person, girly, indie, punk, hippie etc. and shops use this to try and draw people in. What if you don’t feel that you fit into a category?

My first thoughts when thinking about retail on the high street are worrying ones. I think of commercialism and debt and the big ghost in the corner….is retail on the high street dead? Most generations now spend most of their day relying on the Internet. We trust the Internet with everything, so much so that we even make massive purchases online. The idea of the buy with one click button provides an ease of access  for many customers across the world. Simply press the button and choose from a long list of destinations in which your product can  be delivered to. The problem with this is that over the past few financial years, more and more shops on our high street appear to be empty. It seems to go in a pattern, one shop opens two shops close. With big retailers specifically targeting the online market such as Amazon and smaller chains offering that much loved pair if shoes for 50 percent of the high street price, it’s easy to see why people would use the Internet instead of going onto the high street. The question is however what can the high street do to stop it?

We will be working towards a presentation of work in Grantham as part of the Gravity Fields Festival.