Never It’s Now Or, 2012, performance, 40 minutes.
with Muguette Guttadauria & Emily Mast, Mains d’Œuvres, St. Ouen, France
While in residence at Mains d’Œuvres, I worked closely with Muguette Guttadauria, an elderly resident of St. Ouen for one month to gather memory fragments, unfinished stories, and personal anecdotes related to Muguette’s idiosyncratic life. The resulting accumulation of details was juxtaposed to form a pointillist portrait of sorts, or rather a landscape comprised of various highly textured, emotionally-charged terrains. This splintered life story comprised only of subjective snippets intentionally poked at places where authenticity and imagination overlapped. The resulting performance was a hybrid between a classic theatrical monologue, stand-up comedy and so-called avant-garde performance art. Recurring memories, self-reflexive commentary and humor were all important components of this piece which was ultimately an attempt to assess and even rewrite one’s past in the present tense while looking towards the future.