AUDIAanderson4 - Jerome Joy website

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!!1975 — At the Shrink's ---- — — ''installation held at Holly Solomon Gallery, May 11- June 4, 1975''{br}{br} — — ''1975 - video projection onto small clay figure with audio''{br} \|t [../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink.jpg]\|t \|t [../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink2_374.jpg\|../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink2.jpg]{br}{small}(Photo credit : Scott Bowton){/small}\|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- '' ''At the Shrink's'', 1975{br}Super 8 film loop (3:13) and clay{br}8 x 4 inches{br}{br}---- — — ^[[Watch an excerpt of the video loop\|http://www.li-ma.nl/site/catalogue/art/laurie-anderson/at-the-shrink-s-a-fake-hologram/838#]^]{br}{br}---- ''At the Shrink’s'' : a little mud figure appears covered by a video image of Laurie at the psychologist, creating a sort of false or fake hologram with sound : a recorded story. The idea of materializing in 3D the two-dimensionality of the image returns in several of her performances where an image sent from a projector envelops the performer’s human figure dressed in white.''{br}{br}\| \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ''Anderson positions the eight-inch tall clay figurine in the corner of a gallery and projected onto it a Super-8 film of herself sitting in a chair (giving a two-dimensional image and three-dimensional form) : a clay "sculpture" that had been carefully molded to conform to the proportions of her filmed body. An audio recording of a story about a psychiatry session accompanies the projection, and the video-projection figurine looks as if it is talking. She is telling an anecdote about a session with her psychiatrist. Anderson eventually comes to the conclusion that she and the psychiatrist see things from a totally different angle, both literally and figuratively. From then on, visiting the psychiatrist becomes superfluous.{br}{br}This installation, which seems to offer an alternative to Anderson-the-live performer, later informs Anderson’s development of “Dal Vivo” (1998). Here, the intersection of body, projection, and no voice (or body, projection, and voice as in ''At the Shrink’s'' where voice constitutes subjectivity), foregrounds the constructedness of the body and voice as temporal, ephemeral, and surface entities. As projected, flickering images and sounds that exist only as long as the mechanics of the projector and the duration of the films continue, the body and/or its voice are fragile entities that only gain a sense of substance and depth via the sustained illusion of the visible.{br}The projection is a kind of staging, a décor in which the narrative has a natural place. Anderson plays with the space in which the projection is shown : a game of scaling up and down whereby the space in which the story takes pace is eventually relativized. Everything seems different from what it is in reality, both in the narrative and in the images shown.{br}Part of the point of this installation, said Anderson, was "to make someone else talk for me . . . it was a way of doing a performance without being there". It was a surrogate for the performance artist's own body, parroting back words pre-recorded by the "real" Anderson. The conceit of ''At the Shrink's'' --"doing a performance without being there"-- meant that a key element of "performance art" as such was attenuated. After all, one of the most important notional definitions of performance is that it is predicated on the presence of both performer and audience in a particular time and particular space, on the embodied immediacy of the performance event, on "live gestures". ''\| \|t [../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink4_374.jpg\|../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink4.jpg] [../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink5_374.jpg\|../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink5.jpg]\|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t {small}''On this example, the moulded clay is positioned{br} on the ground in front of a radiator,{br} giving you an idea of the scale.''{/small}\| [../files/articles/anderson/1975_shrink3.jpg] \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- — — '' “A while ago I spent some time seeing a psychiatrist and I’d get to her office about eight in the morning and sit down. She was sitting in a corner and on one side of her was a window and on the other side a mirror. And she could tell by slight movements of my eyes whether I was looking at her or out the window or at the mirror. And I looked at the mirror a lot and one of the things I noticed was that on mondays it was perfectly clean and clear but by Fridays it was covered with lip marks. And this was a process that was surprising at first and then gradually I got used to it and eventually I started to depend on it.{br}Then one day, in passing, I said, “It’s like the lip marks that appear on your mirror.” And she looked at the mirror and said, “What lip marks ?” And I realized that because of the way the sun was coming in through the window and hitting the mirror that she couldn’t see them. So I said, “Why don’t you get up and sit in my chair ? You can see them from here”. So she got up and I had never seen her out of her chair before ^[She could actually walk !^] and she came and sat in my chair and she said, “Oh! Lip marks !”{br}The next time I saw her was the last time. She said that she’d discovered that her twelve year old daughter had been coming into her office during the week and kissing the mirror and that the maid would come in over the weekend and wash off the marks. And I realized that we were seeing things from such literally different points of view that I’d never have to see her again.” '' — (Laurie Anderson) ---- \| \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t \|t ---- — — '' This small, animated sculpture ^[a wee homunculus carved out of light, according to [Eu Jin Chua\|http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.106/16.2chua.html]^], is typical of Anderson’s style in that it combines the most commonplace (visiting a psychiatrist) with the most strange (lip marks) : « a mixture of the most mundane things with a fabulous twist on them » (Laurie Anderson, in Stories of the Nerve Bible).{br}The viewer walks into a dark room and towers over the tiny figure of Anderson seated in a chair, talking. The image is amazingly lifelike in its subtle movement of hands and feet. {br}In addition to being a visual pun (« shrink »), the image captures what Anderson was feeling like at the psychiatrist’s office : diminished and constrained. The psychiatrist is out of touch with her own body (« She could actually walk ! »), out of touch with her daughter, out of touch with her sexuality (lip marks), and out of touch with their patient. While there are clear parallels between the figure and the narrative, there is also an opposition between the image and the text. The image remains static, caught in the psychiatrist’s chair, repeating her story ad infinitum. On the other hand, the character in the text is dynamic and empowered (« I realized… I wouldn’t have to see her again »).'' — {small}(Jessica Prinz, It’s Such a Relief Not to Be Myself : Laurie Anderson’s Stories from the Nerve Bible, In Sidonie Smith & Julia Watson (Eds), Interfaces : Women / Autobiography / Image / Performance, Ann Arbor : The University of Michigan Press, 2002){/small} ---- \| {br}{br} {br}{br} ----
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