“I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!” is a piece written for two performers who distort and obscure the projection of themselves by blowing into microphones, and another performer who controls the video camera. The physical choreographed relationship between the two performers was inspired by seeing Marina Abramovich’s work with Ulay and the recreations at MOMA this past spring, as well as my own experience being a twin.
The piece was designed to be demanding by creating long sustained notes and including syncopated, odd rhythms. By exhausting myself and my performer-double, the work invokes an experience of embodiment subject to limitations, injury, and eventual death. What happens when there is a discrepancy between intention and capability to carry out an action? How might this cause a person to view her own body as foreign and external to herself?
This work was the result of the VCW Workshop on real-time video performance and notation held by Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, where the performance also took place. The performers of this work were: Courtney Brown (Blowing), Gennette Gill (Blowing), Jacqueline Arias (Video Camera).
The video on the right shows the video effects of the work, giving a fuller picture of the performance. The work was written in Processing and Supercollider.