Performance and Stage-Set Utilizing Two-Way Mirror and Video Time Delay, 1983
Documentation of the performance together
with Glen Branca at the Kunsthalle Bern
Video, black and white, sound, 45 min 45 sec
A restructuring of the gaze informs this installation/performance work, produced
and performed by Graham and musician Glenn Branca for Graham’s
1983 retrospective exhibition “Pavilions” at the Kunsthalle in Berne, Switzerland.
The audience was seated on the right and the musicians on the left,
therefore facing (and observing each other through) a large two-way mirror. A
video screen seen through the two-way mirror showed a six-second, time-delayed view of the room. Graham writes, “Conventionally, the audience
identifies with the performer by gazing directly at his/her frontal, eye view.
In this set-up the audience must look through the mirror in order to see
the performer playing his/her instrument. At the same time a member of
the audience sees other audience members (including himself) gazing.”
(Electronic Arts Intermix)
