Brain Dress, video documentation
Lori Weidenhammer
February 7, 2002
Creative Access Description
Colour digital video of a work of performance art in a small gallery space. The video opens with an image of a green grassy meadow under a blue sky projected on a large screen. A piece of music with a warm piano melody and masculine operatic singing plays. The music cuts, the lights come up, and the camera pans back to show a single performer, a white woman with short curly hair wearing a white laboratory coat, standing next to a table covered in a white table cloth. A silver pot sits on the table. She sings briefly in an operatic style before breaking into a narrative about the scientific and cultural properties of onions and the necessity of multitasking, which she proposes to demonstrate by cooking onion soup while singing. She goes on to humorously consider online techniques for cutting onions without crying as well as stage techniques for making oneself cry. Her monologue continues considering memories, lemons, grief, and other topics, occasionally punctuated with bars of opera singing. Eventually she starts slicing onions and the introductory music plays again. The lights dim and she removes her lab coat, the project image shifts to an animation of the human brain and then a thunderstorm. Sound effects of a thunderstorm play, followed by a ringing telephone. The performer's monologue continues, detailing phone conversations with her grandmother. The projection shows a video of the woman with a pot of white hyacinths in bloom tripping and falling out of the frame. She continues, telling stories of her grandfather, brain scan mapping, the history of neuroscience, telephone technologies, weather, etiquette, telemarketers, and other topics. Various archival images and videos of rural life are projected and sound effects play, including recordings of her grandmother's voice. The audience reacts with laughter from time to time and applause at the end of the performance.Description
Video documentation of Lori Weidenhammer's performance Brain Dress.Identifier
2002.0207 BRA V001Extent
1 Mini-DV tape, 00:42:00Tape Number
02-007Language
Videographer
Paul WongArtist
Lori WeidenhammerPerformer
Lori WeidenhammerRelated program
The Brain Dress (Related)In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca