A journey into the American West: The night of the Performance

A synopsis by way of explanation before you start to read...

Hi, I'm Lucy. I started my blog July 2009, to document my journey across the American West, and it now forms an archive of the Land Arts of The American West program 2009. As you can read below the journey took me far and wide with wonderful people, seeing wonderful places. When we returned from travelling we had 3 crazy weeks to put a show together. In that time I printed many photos and did 2 installations "off-site" i.e. away from the gallery space. One in an abandoned phone booth and one under a stairwell, both in different spaces within the University of New Mexico (UNM) campus. The tumble weed and barbed wire piece evolved further when I met The Chuppers - an electronic arts ensemble based in a wonderful recording studio filled with weird and wonderful hybrid instruments forged together from old and new technology. The Chuppers saw my piece under the stairs and were inspired to create music and video projection with my piece which I then in turn decided to "perform" for an audience. Around 40 or so people joined us on the night of the 18th Novemeber our audio, visual and corporeal performance...all of which is documented in my blog. This Blog has formed part of the Land Arts 2009 show at John Sommers Gallery, UNM.

Thursday, 19 November 2009

The night of the Performance

My tumble weed and barbed wire installation was under the stair well. I gave the Chuppers the audio I had recorded in El Paso, trains hurtling through the night. They had mixed the sound with clunky electronic beats. The guys had set one camera down the hallway on me and one on the tumble weed and barbed wire installation under the stair well. The images were mixed to appear on the wall next to where the audience were gathered. There were probably 50 or so people gathered together. Manny introduced the show and I started to stand up at the far end of the corridor. At this point the audience could only see me on the screen. As I made my way closer, the audience could see me, the installation and the projection. Some people were out of sight and they could only see the screen.