Friday, March 27, 2009

I'm Your Pusher



This is an edited video of the performance Carol and I did during the opening reception of the Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum. The piece lasted 15 minutes and consisted of me pushing Carol for the duration of the performance.

Our performance work has been dealing with the negotiation of relationship and space and the tensions that accompany sharing close quarters. This particular work has the stronger performer dominating the other by pushing relentlessly and never allowing the smaller performer a chance to recuperate.

I really felt like a jerk while we were doing the performance and I even had a spectator tell me that it should have ended with Carol socking me in the nose. With a comment like that I think the piece must have made an impression and it was confirmed when we had someone come up to us at PS1 a few weeks after the performance and ask we were the ones who did the performance at the Queens Museum and we responded yes. I then added that I my chest was covered with bruises the next day and his response was "good, you deserved it"

5 comments:

Bill Donovan said...

Jonas, this is really smart. I think you two are onto something.

Katherine said...

If you do this again, I would ditch the Thing 1 and Thing 2 union suits though. Why not just wear regular jeans and tshirts? Aren't the union suits sort of mortifying to wear anyway?

Katherine said...

PS. You know about Teh-ching Hsieh and Linda Montano's 1 year performance where they were tied to each other with an 8 foot rope for an entire year during 1983-84, right?

http://www.tehchinghsieh.com/

Jonas Olson said...

Hey Katherine, I am glad you bring up the red suits. We have done performances in the past and wore the jeans and t-shirt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpgR9OyuNxs) but we decided to try something that would set us apart from the audience while still having a reference to a domestic setting. The suits did set us apart and we did stand out at the museum and they were mortifying to wear until a minute or two into the performance, then I forgot what I was wearing by forcing myself to concentrate on the performance. So in that way they were the right thing at that time.
and I know about the 1 year performance. i think that would be a near impossible feat to pull off.

Hugo strange batman Arkham city said...
This comment has been removed by the author.