Jan Manzil

My Life in Arte - Jan Manzil

Hello, my name is Jan, I see to myself as a fem – minimalist , because I do performances that cover issues of being a feminine woman in the 21st century and they are tiny performances, I don’t do a lot, tiny tiny things which have big complex meanings, little tiny things which mean big huge things. Anyway so I hope that this will help you alot.

Sometimes when I think of my work I feel that I am an entertainment machine, I’m your little entertainment machine, I’m like a lawn mower and you are all my little blades of grass, I come up to your untidy bodies and cut off your newly grown heads, I veer this way and that way. As I move along I collect you in my grass cuttings bag and when I’m full I go to the compost heap and empty you out with all the other dead grass.

Well sorry maybe this analogy is not so clear, I’m tying and confusing you in all manner of postmodernist theory that you don’t wanna hear. I think really when you watch my work you need to understand that you are in charge, I’m a lawnmower, but a ride on lawnmower entertainment machine and you have to get on my seat and steer me in the direction you want. Sometimes I am going onto the path and sometimes veering across the football pitch, sometimes I get a stick stuck in my blades and that’s when you’ve gotta turn me over, pull the stick from my blade and sharpen me up and then off we go again, so if you think of me as a ride on John Deer lawn mowing device then I think maybe we understand each other, you and me.

OK I’d like to start with a poem that I made using found footage, I like to work with found words and see where it takes me, you may recognize some of this as I haven’t changed it all.

You get a shiver in the dark
It's been raining in the park but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowing Dixie double four time
You feel all right when you hear that music ring
We are the sultans,
We are the sultans of swing,

So, I’m divorced……yeah you know well well I remember when I met my husband, Sirus, I was painting a picture of the animals in the park and he walked past with his dog, I noticed him because he was so good looking and had such a kind face, he was an artist, he was so skilled, he made amazing sculptures of dogs, he wanted to cook for me, to iron, he was a new man and I could see through his clothing that he had a good body, a huge cock. Where I come from we say that if you’ve got a big cock it means that you have long fingers and you’re black but sirus was a maverick he differed from that he was a small white man with false arms.

Well we got on really well, got married after a week but as soon as I moved in he changed, he locked me in the house making me clean up all of his dirt and filth, he treated me like a Hoover, it was disgusting, day in, day out, I used to dream that he thought of me as a Dyson, you know all cosmopolitan and expensive but he told me I was just a second hand Electrolux to him with a dodgy belt, he never wanted to change my bag! I used to walk around bursting with dirt, it was so painful.
Anyway those days have scarred me so much, I wake up in a cold sweat at night with images of brooms and rubber gloves and Sirus’s covering me in filth, so, lots of my work’s now about those days. I was so unhappy until I got my place on the BTEC art course at Swindon Community College, it was fantastic and it only cost me ten thousand pounds for a year that was a different day for me and a happy one when I walked through the doors I knew my life had begun again, life begins at 40!!
I'll tell you more next week!