Outpost
Perched above the public, I select individuals while looking through a telescope, and describe each in “objective” detail over a loudspeaker system audible to the subject and those around her/him. Nothing is hidden, all the mechanisms of the voyeur are exposed in the act of verbalizing the gaze, with the amplified voice demarcating a zone of surveillance. This performance turns surveillance inside-out, presenting spectators as spectacle, and audience as both subject and object. The piece is typically performed for two hours (its premiere took place over five days, two hours per day) in order to emphasize it as durational labor, and so that it moves from intervention into a more "normalized" relationship with its context.
Presentations:
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, "Without You I'm Nothing: Art and Its Audience", January 2011
Grunwald Gallery of Art, Hope School of Fine Arts, Indiana University in Bloomington, "Waveforms", October 2011
Chicago Cultural Center, Industry of the Ordinary: "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi", August 2012