Pissing in a River (Patti Smith) / Put on Your Best Art School Black and Your Best Abstract Expression / Mary Blue and other poems / Id in E Minor / The Ambassador of Sleep, video documentation
Sandra Lockwood
September 13, 1990
Creative Access Description
Colour analogue video of a series of short performances pieces that take place on a black dais in the midst of the audience, decorated with cut flowers. A projection in the background duplicates and sometimes triplicates the action on stage. The main performer is a young white woman with long dark hair, wearing a black dress with a low scoop neckline that exposes her shoulders. She sings, recites narrative poetry, and speaks to the audience via a cordless microphone, her delivery varying from soft and gentle to intense, even pained. She is accompanied throughout by a tall white man with dark hair cut in a mullet, wearing a black and yellow tie dyed t shirt. He plays a white bodied electric guitar in a hard rock solo style skillfully and with swagger. In the final performance piece, the woman, now wearing a white robe, arranges flowers on the floor before exiting the stage and delivering a short monologue from offstage. For the final sequence she is carried onstage in a white unitard and climbing style harness, sitting on the shoulder of a well built shirtless Cree man who attaches her to a rope hanging from the ceiling a few feet above the stage. She performs an aerial dance, spinning and flipping to a piece of recorded music: a melancholy piano behind her vocals. The music and dance gradually intensifies then calms and the woman collapses, hanging from the rope. The Cree man returns to the stage, unhooks her from the rope, and carries her offstage on his shoulder. The lights fall and in the dimly lit room the woman returns to the stage in her robe, gathers the flowers, and thanks the audience, who applaud.Description
Video documentation of Sandra Lockwood's performance cycle including the works Pissing in a River (Patti Smith), Put on Your Best Art School Black and Your Best Abstract Expression, Mary Blue and other poems, Id in E Minor, and The Ambassador of Sleep in the Vancouver Performance Art Series, featuring Zachery Longboy and James Raynor on guitar.Identifier
1990.0913 PIS V001Extent
1 Hi-8 tape, 00:28:19Tape Number
90-024Language
Artist
Sandra LockwoodPerformer
Zachery LongboyVideographer
Mike MacDonaldMusician
James RaynorRelated program
Pissing in a River (Patti Smith) / Put on Your Best Art School Black and Your Best Abstract Expression / Mary Blue and other poems / Id in E Minor / The Ambassador of Sleep (Related)In copyright. For uses beyond Fair Dealing, research requests, corrections, takedown requests, or other inquiries, please contact grunt gallery: archives@grunt.ca