(Photo by Andy Vogt)
Last weekend I made a performance as part of a very unique opportunity presented by Amir Mortazavi of Highlight Gallery and David Kasprzak. Over the course of December and January ten artists have been making installations within a house in San Francisco’s Marina District, 3020 Laguna Street, using only materials found within the house.
I saw this as a chance to make a project I had imagined several years ago, one that required such an odd set of circumstances as were available in the drive-in garage in 3020 Laguna.
The idea was to float an effigy of myself above a dark pool. I would lay under the replica so that the image reflected in the water would line up with my own refracted image below the water. Then I would set it on fire.
The building process was unbelievably complex. I layered rice paper over my skin and adhered it in place, then split the shell open and reconstructed it. The level of detail was exquisite, with small creases and folds, fingernails and toenails. Ingrid helped me through long hours and around curves that I couldn’t possibly reach. The finished body looked like a giant cicada shell.
The flooding presented many challenges of its own. Several weeks were spent preparing the sunken floor to hold several tons of water. I waited until the day before the performance to fill it. The supporting wall held, and when night fell the darkened, flooded pool created a perfect mirror of the ceiling above.
There were many fortunate events and generous friends that made this performance possible, including an Emergency Grant from the Foundation For Contemporary Art in New York to capture this work on 16mm film. On my film team were John Rory Fraser and Christian Gainsley, who spent hours crafting an exquisite lighting set-up, and Ryan Malloy, who recorded sound. But even through all our trials, tests, and lighting experiments, we never set up all the elements at the same time. That would be saved for the performance itself, an unpredictable moment where I would discover if my vision was even possible.
(Photo Elisabeth Kohnke)
When I laid below the object of my intense labor, I was surprised to find how well it lined up with me, from nose to toe. There was no way to know that in that moment, the audience was seeing the same relationship, only with a third version of me, reflected on the surface of the water. The water was unshakably cold. For a few seconds I experienced my body rebelling against me, refusing to go under. My lungs refused to exhale the air that was keeping part of me above. In spite of that, I went ahead and lit the match and held it between my own eyes and the eyes of my double. I could see the flame flicker with my breath. Then I lit it on fire.
(Photo John Rory Fraser)
It wasn’t until the burning head began to collapse, until that second when I saw it falling toward me, that my body allowed me to do what I had intended. There under the water I opened my eyes and could see the yellow flames bouncing off the ceiling. I waited for them to die down before emerging again. Never before have I felt so strongly the sense of passing into another state of being and back again.
When I got up to leave, it was as though I was drunk. I could not keep a straight orientation. The memory of where I was seemed a distant place. Everyone was quiet as I walked unsteadily out of the basement.
It was something from a dream.
Dreamburn
Performance, 10 minutes
(more images)
