When trying to come up with an idea for this performance piece, I kept coming back to Marina Abramovic’s performance The Artist is Present. In this piece, Abramovic sat herself in a chair across from an empty chair, allowing viewers to approach and sit in a space with her. I was initially drawn to the open-ended-ness of this set up and how it allowed for so much potential. This made me think about what points I wanted to emphasize and how would I get that meaning across? In the video about Christine Sun Kim, I remembered how she described performance art as a “tool” which made me feel more comfortable with the performance aspect of this project. This was simply just another form of mark making, but what mark did I want to make?
I decided to mimic the set up of The Artist is Present in order to have a similar aspect of the possibility for chaos. I also decided on making this more lighthearted by adding the element of water. I would hold water in my mouth and wait for the viewer in the chair to mimic me. Eventually we’d both start to laugh, spraying each other with the water in our mouths. I wanted to make an emphasis on the nature of human intimacy by creating this sort of bubble between myself and the viewer. The interaction itself soon turns into a game of who can make the other person laugh first. I wanted to express how just one silly interaction can bring together two complete strangers.
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