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TORTURE
performance/installation |
@
DUMBO Arts Festival 2008 |
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Participants
must enter into the projected space to get to the performer,
becoming performers themselves. Some tentatively approach
and gingerly, slowly remove images with the forceps
which they have chosen from a selection of instruments
ranging from relatively benign, blunt instruments,
to nasty looking potentially damaging, sharp, toothed
instruments. Others take pleasure in gripping and ripping
the image stickers off. |
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| While
the piece seems to offer catharsis for the collective
guilt of American atrocities, by allowing the participants
to engage in unburdening the performer of the weight
of the imagery, like surgeons cutting away dead tissue,
it also draws the participants into this ethereal world
and forces them to confront the images on a personal
scale, while being bathed in the symbols of warped national
pride. Committed to interacting with the vulnerable and
passive performer, the participants must complete the
action that is far more "real" than anticipated and exit
the space with the artifact of atrocity at the end of
their instrument, giving them time to study and assimilate
the gravity of the image in hand, and realize it is but
a drop in the ocean, a single almost un-noticed action,
that hardly makes a difference. It is only through collective,
accumulated effort that any real impact is achieved:
at once reminding the participant of their lack of power
and showing that change can be accomplished through group
action. |
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