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Penumbra, performance action
Cleveland Performance Art Festival, April 23 1999



Materials: 1 Digital video camera, 1 Digital video projector (+1500 lumens), Full-width floor-to-ceiling scrim, wireless microphone, Stethoscope, 3 tubes white body paint, 2 Zelco micro flourescent flashlights.

A digital video camera is positioned at the center of the audience space on a tripod at the height of the performer. Just infront of the audience the scrim is streched to cover the entire field of their vision. Deep into the stage of the theatre the video projector faces back out at the audience and onto the scrim. The digital camera feeds directly to the projector but remains covered with its lens cap until the performance begins.

The unique qualities of the scrim allow for projected light to be seen and appear opaque to the audience but any place of shadow or darkness in the projection remains translucent. I perform between the scrim and the video projector during the entire action until its end.

The lights are lowered and the video projector is illuminated by removing the lens cap. The digital image in the video projector is flipped so that it is an exact reflection of the view from the audience and is projected back over the scrim. This creates a video loop similar to when two mirrors face eachother. The video echo is broken only by the body of the performer entering between the light of the projector and the camera.

Using the flourescent flashlights I begin a series of gestures and actions that illuminate the body and space in altering patterns of light and shadow. These patterns are reprojected back over the performance area, creating a video image of the body's shadow rippling out and away to the edges of the screen. The sound for this piece is created using a live wireless microphone and a stethoscope to mic the live sounds of my heart as during the actions.

This piece was driven by a desire to integrate the element of documentation as part of the construction of the performance. Documentation gives the performance permenance and is thus bound to it as a means of record, but I wanted it to be integral to its creation. I also wanted to render the ephemeral gestures of the body permenant but reveal the paradox of that attempt. The body is in a constant state of resistance and yet bound with time to entropy.