Liza Bear and Willoughby Sharp
Video Performance Series

JANUARY 14, 1974 / WILLIAM WEGMAN This piece was in two parts. For the first part, “Pathetic Readings“, an audiotape was played while the audience viewed two blank video monitors, two cameras facing the wall, and an eight-pin connector hanging on the wall, rendering the equipment inactive. For the second part, “j. J-Jacobean, The Adventures of Jack, A play with the j words on page 538 of Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (fifth edition)” the video equipment was activated. One monitor showed a close-up of the page from the dictionary while the other featured a closeup of the artist writing a text about the j words.

JANUARY 15, 1974 / ULRIKE ROSENBACK “Isolation is Transparent” was a performance which used a video monitor and two cameras. The artist, wearing a mesh costume, constructed a spiderweb-like rope net which she nailed to various points in the space. The net had a circular opening in the center, which fit around the artist’s waist. The space was bathed in green light. The audience viewed the performance through a distorting, semi-transparent vinyl wall or with greater definition on a video monitor. This was Rosenbach’s first work in New York City.

JANUARY 16, 1974 / CHRIS BURDEN: “BACK TO YOU” with LIZA BEAR, LARRY BELL, CHRIS BURDEN, GERRY HOVAGIMYAN and MARY OVERLIE.  In “Back to You“, Chris Burden lay face-up on a sheet-covered table located in the gallery’s elevator. The elevator door was closed when the audience entered. As the audience filled the gallery, Liza Bear solicited a volunteer from the audience. Larry Bell volunteered and was escorted into the elevator by Gerry Hovagimyan. As he entered, the monitors came on, giving the audience a partial view of the inside of the elevator. Invisible to the audience, a sign above Burden read, “Please push pins into my body.” Mary Overlie lowered the elevator to between floors. There were pushpins in a small bowl filled with alcohol. Larry Bell stuck four pushpins into Burden’s stomach and one into his foot, all visible on the monitor. When the elevator returned to the ground floor, Larry Bell stepped out and the monitors were switched off.

JANUARY 17, 1974 / DENNIS OPPENHEIM: “RECALL” Oppenheim presented his installation “Recall” in absentia. A monitor mounted on a metal box showed a close-up color image of the artist’s lips speaking a monologue which related to the artist’s memories of turpentine. Positioned in front of the monitor was a steel pan, 4″×30″×10′, containing turpentine. The liquid reflected the image on the monitor. Oppenheim stated, “I’m using turpentine as a device to activate the memory, past experiences when the smell occurred. The material is actually inhaled—I stuffed cotton saturated with turpentine into my nose, and like a drug, it induced an alteration of consciousness; as my senses are filled with this smell, my memory slowly uncovers images of a past region in which the smell prevailed, as I verbalize them in a kind of rambling stream of conscious monologue. For me the smell is associated with my art-school years, the late 50s. What I find interesting is how a paint medium, when applied differently, can still be said to be accomplishing a similar result. … Instead of thinning down pigment, I’m absorbing the material into my sensory system and thinning out layers of repressed memory—I see it as a different function of a traditional material. ”

JANUARY 18, 1974 / WILLOUGHBY SHARP: “HELP!” After receiving a “Dear John” letter from former girlfriend Kelly Piner, artist Willoughby Sharp decided not to do a performance about his relationship with the other artists showing at the time. He chose instead, to present a video performance relating to his emotional state as affected by the breakup. Viewers at 112 entered a dim space; the only illumination was provided by four 19″ monitors placed at 15′ intervals along the south wall facing east. A twenty-minute videotape of an earlier performance by the artist at Mills College in Oakland, California concerning his attempts to love Kelly was shown first. The image showed the then-bearded artist sitting crosslegged and banging his back into a corner while he yelled about the difficulties of loving. When the videotape ended, the monitors went blank. In a few seconds, a live broadcast began. The image was now a close-up of the artist’s face. Tears streamed from his eyes and saliva drooled from his mouth as he read Kelly’s letter. The artist, who had taken LSD prior to performing, was stationed in an airshaft outside a basement window of the gallery. Andy Mann was the cameraman.

JANUARY 19, 1974 / VITO ACCONCI: “COMMAND PERFORMANCE” “This is the piece done right after what turned out to be the last live performances I’ve done; the piece, then, functioned as a kind of program piece, an announcement of intentions.
“The space is dark. At the foot of one column, a video monitor faces a stool in front of the next column; the stool is lit by a spotlight, from above—a video camera is focused on the stool, transmitting the image to a monitor in front of the third column, where a rug is set down for viewers to sit as they enter (the viewer can watch the stool position come on screen, become a show).
“The first monitor, facing the stool, shows a pre-recorded tape: my image, seen from above, the way a doctor might see me, from over my head. Words, then, fantasies, roll out of my head: I’m humming, drifting, I’m dreaming the space, I’m dreaming of you who happen to be there, l’m talking to you. . .”

JANUARY 20, 1974 / COSMOS SARCHIAPONE is a documentary photographer, particularly interested in process and raw materials. Over the years, he has frequented 112, photographing artists and events, and “claiming” as “Cosmos’ Found Works“, special “aggregates or formations of things left behind by others.” (C.S.) His Found Works at 112 include, the pillars, a basement window (before it was cleaned up), an ironing board with junk on it which someone had dragged in from the street, the wound up cable from Ulrike Rosenbach’s performance, and “the marriage of the facade of 112 to the window across the street.” (C.S.)

On Saint Sebastian’s Day, January 20, 1974, from 12:00 noon to 3:00 PM, Cosmos photographed all the people who came in and out of 112, as well as some passers-by. A rehearsal of “Prisoner’s Dilemma” was in progress inside, while Cosmos’ unpublicized portrait-documentary event took place place outside. Yearly, Cosmos acknowledges Saint Sebastian’s Day with special series of photographs. For him, the connection between the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian (he was the only saint to have been crucified on a tree) and Christ, was significant. By using this time peirod, 12.00 noon to 3:00 PM (the time of Christ’s crucifixion), Cosmos created a conceit between the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the documentary event. [from a conversation with the artist].

JANUARY 21, 1974 / KEITH SONNIER: “NEW YORK—L.A. HOOK-UP” The artist created a live feedback situation by connecting locations in two cities with an amplified telephone setup. At one location, the Grinstein residence in Brentwood, Los Angeles, there were ten people and six telephones while at the other location, 112 Greene Street, New York City, there were two telephones and approximately 300 people.

JANUARY 22, 1974 / RICHARD SERRA and ROBERT BELL: “PRISONER’S DILEMMA” with ROBERT BELL, BRUCE BOICE, LEO CASTELLI, SPALDING GRAY, SUZANNE HARRIS, GERRY HOVAGYMIAN, RICHARD SCHECHNER, and JOEL SHAPIRO A documentary audiotape prepared by Richard Serra’s brother, dealing with methods used in criminal investigations, was played as the audience entered the space. Then the audience viewed a videotape made at 112 on January 20, 1974. This videotape began with Suzanne Harris singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and then continued with a dramatic situation involving a District Attorney (Richard Schechner) who tries to get suspects to turn state’s evidence by confessing to a murder. Interviewed separately, both suspects (Gerry Hovagymian and Spalding Gray) are given the opportunity to sign. They are informed that if they both sign, they get ten years in prison; if one signs and the other doesn’t, the one who signs gets off free while the other is imprisoned for fifty years; in the event that neither sign, they both serve two years in jail. The work of the three camera people (Bob Fiore, Babette Mangolte, and Mark Obenhaus) was directed by Richard Serra and Carlotta Schoolman, operating an S.E.G. The second part of the evening consisted of a performance which the audience could only view on monitors, since a cardboard wall had been built down the center of the space preventing the audience from viewing the performers directly. In this section, modeled after a TV quiz show, the Master of Ceremonies (Robert Bell) offered another “non-zero sum game” similar to the one presented in the first part. The contestants (Bruce Boice and Leo Castelli) were offered bribes; given the choice of situation A or B, the least desirable outcome was to spend six hours alone in the basement of 112.