One of Many
2016 | Performance
Nordbecken I Karlsruhe | Instinct Gallery I Minneapolis |
Collaboration with Pedram Baldari
One of Many is a participatory performance in which a barrier of caution tape splits the audience into two groups. One group is contained within the barrier with the two performers, while the other group stands outside of it. At this point, the audience must decide to stay within the boundary with the performers or move out.
During times of political unrest, the act of blindfolding is often used by oppressors as a tactic of disorientation, control, and fear. While blindfolded, my collaborator and I move through the space and one by one blindfold each member of the audience within the barrier. This act results in the need to physically feel our way throughout the space, touching the faces of strangers, and creating an intimacy that is necessary to orient ourselves. Each blindfolded audience member is also moved around the space, further creating a sense of disorientation.
At the end of the performance, my collaborator and I find one another and remove each other's blindfold. Over the course of a half hours, we build an environment of transformative and transient shared experience in which disorientation is the new norm. Through the performance, we subvert an action often used to perpetuate fear into an exercise in empathy.