vespers5

Program December 8:

Charlemagne Palestine - Body Music I/Body Music II
1973-74, 20:30 minutes, black and white, sound

Produced by Palestine at Art/Tapes/22 in Florence, Italy, these works are seminal performance-based exercises. Palestine calls Body Music I "a study in the vocal-physical responses of a species caught in an enclosed square room." He begins this ritualistic piece sitting on the floor, establishing an aural rhythm by banging his knees against its hard surface. As his momentum builds and accelerates, he rises and hurtles himself with intensity against the walls, as if trying to escape from confinement. Body Music II continues this physical intensity, as Palestine wanders through the labyrinthine hallways of a villa, recording with a hand-held camera. Moving faster and chanting into the reverberating space as though trying to escape, he creates a frenetic visual translation of his physical movements and energy.

Charlemagne Palestine - Running Outburst
1975, 5:56 minutes, black and white, sound

In his performances, Palestine often uses teddy bears and toy pandas as what he terms "symbols of identification, like another reality of myself." In Running Outburst, these symbolic objects, placed at specific points in his loft, serve as surrogates for Palestine, who remains invisible behind the camera. Chanting, he runs from one object to the next while holding the camera. His movements reach an hysterical intensity, and then slowly subside to a gentle rhythm. Using the camera as an extension of his body, Palestine constructs a visual seismograph that charts a cathartic release, placing the viewer in the position of a voyeur, as well as a surrogate who sees through his subjective point of view.

Terry Fox - Lunar Rambles: Pedestrian Tunnel
1976, 32:45 minutes, color, sound

Terry Fox - Lunar Rambles: Brooklyn Bridge
1976, 33:04 minutes, color, sound

The Lunar Rambles series documents five unannounced performances by Fox in five outdoor locations in New York, which took place over the course of a week. In each of the downtown sites, which ranged from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Fulton Fish Market and Greenwich Street, Fox would play a large metal bowl and a parabolic steel plow disc with a rosined violin bow. The resulting tapes were then screened each day as part of a larger installation at The Kitchen. In each piece, Fox's ritualistic performance is observed by a distracted camera, which also scans the surrounding urban landscape and passersby. The near-ambient, droning sound, together with Fox's minimalist performances within the mid-1970's New York environment, result in oddly mesmerizing studies of time and place.