Installation-performance documentation, 6/22, Swale House, Governors Island, NYC

Cod, sod, God (crystal flagon from Church Supply Warehouse), mirror, styrofoam, resin, gelatin, thread, rope, red wine, activated charcoal mousse, hay, homegrown mushrooms in polyester carpet, table, 2 chairs, woman in chair, looped video projection with sound

Video length: 21 mins, Performance length: 360 mins

Mundane violation is a participatory endurance performance inverting the supposed safety and celebration of a traditional family meal. By imagining the endurance required to survive meals in a near-dystopian future accelerated by private property ownership and climate change, the performance dissolves interiority and exteriority in a structured, public setting, under the guise of a shared meal.

The performance is centered around a dining table with two chairs, one at each end: one for the artist, and one for a participant. The artist must remain in a fixed seated position for the duration of the performance, 6 hours. The artist’s immobility is both embodied–the artist will be physically tied to the chair–and expressed: the artist is tasked with performing an outwardly “happy” facial expression, and upbeat attitude, to conceal and normalize the paralyzing bodily condition.

Participants may remain with the artist for as long as they’d like, and how they use their time is up to how they interpret the meaning of a shared meal.

The invitation for participants to join the performance presents an opportunity for members of the public to observe and sit with this (in)commodious dynamic, while remaining distant and perhaps paralyzed by their positionality.

This performance provides a container to explore the extent to which care, communion and community are contingent, impermanent and structured, in spite of their supposed universality.