Photo: Rob Weinberg, U.K.
Tamatea and Sonja at the beginning of the five minute performance,
July 12th, 2002.
As you can see, we had to
move over the icing sugar (another artist's work) and there was also a briefcase
in the way below me and around the corner there was a t.v.
Photos: Vince de Cicco, U.K.
I think these 'things-in-the-way-of-a-mother' who moved along close to the images suited the piece.
Tama, who moved at a greater distance from the wall didn't have these obstacles.
First I started the metronoom.
Then I moved slowly,
stuttering the text
(at that point I turned to face
the baby images)
Tama did his own thing of ballet-like steps along and beyond me.
On the floor is the metronoom, ticking at about 40 times per second with next to a small wooden recorder.
I continued with:
, while gazing at the
image and resting on the crutches.
I
turned and moved while muttering,
I then turned to another image with the text:
Now I turned at the doorway with this text (which was the same text on the
baby image at this point)
Photos: Rob Weinberg, U.K.
 "Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children Hidden excitedly, containing laughter Go, go, go, said the bird, humankind cannot bear very much reality." Tama stopped playing music and tip-toed behind me. |
"They yelled at me because I was carrying a baby. I was bad because he was not at home. The world is hard, cold involved and it's no place no place for a baby." "Go!"
|
Photo: Rob Weinberg, U.K.
(I looked at Tama saying slowly:)
Tama repeated
while I put the crutches on the ground and picked up the piles of
postcards.
We then walked through
the audience giving out
the postcards (each had
an image of the baby
with three different sets
of the texts),
gradually walking
towards the door.
I was amazed at the silence.
I had expected that people would start talking. Then they clapped.
What a buzz!
And it wasn't over yet!
I had to move the cloth because someone else would do a performance in that
space. So I did the re-hanging during the opening and in a sense that was
a performance too, but now more like the other performances also happening
at the same time. People doing stuff over a longer period which the public
stopped to look at before moving onto something else.
The Wrapping for a Marginal Citizen video was shown in kitchen as you can see here.
The 12 minute video with shots the washing line of baby images, the shots
of the baby in the kitchen sink, etc looked good in the kitchen and with
the line of the wrapping hung high around in the gallery space.
