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11/10/2002

Street Show

Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown

The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) will open Street Show, an exhibition of contemporary performance videos that investigate urban space including works by The Surveillance Camera Players, Mario Ybarra, William Pope.L, Messieurs Delmotte, and Nao Bustamante. Street Show works against the stereotype that performance art must rely on the introspective and narcissistic exploitation of an artist's own body. The individual body of the artist is less important than how that body functions within, and is affected by, the urban environment. Street Show opens in Media Field, WCMA's video and new media gallery, on October 12, and it runs through January 12, 2003.

The works in Street Show can be divided into two general categories: those performances that are executed before unwary spectators in which the camera acts only as a documentary tool, and those in which there is no live audience and the performance is conducted for the camera alone. Each of the works raises questions about what constitutes public and private within the context of the city, a unique place where one can be completely anonymous while in the presence of thousands of other people.

By presenting their performances in the public sphere, William Pope.L, The Surveillance Camera Players, and Nao Bustamante provoke responses from unsuspecting viewers. One of many performances by Pope.L known as "crawls," Tompkins Square Crawl aka. How Much Is That Nigger in the Window? addresses homelessness as a constant struggle. Wearing a suit and tie, the artist crawls, alternately on his stomach and his back, along the street through the neighborhood of Tompkins Square Park in New York City. Nineteen Eighty Four by The Surveillance Camera Players depicts a performance of George Orwell's 1984 that is acted out in front of a surveillance camera in a New York subway station. The intended audience for the performance is the security staff monitoring the cameras as well as the unsuspecting commuters. The Surveillance Camera Players are dedicated to exposing the prevalence and insidious nature of the camera as a tool for social control, and Orwell's 1984 is a fitting vehicle for their potent message. Nao Bustamante's Chain South explores the pop cultural relations between Mexico and the United States. The artist, dressed as "Ronaldo McDonaldo," travels among McDonald¹s restaurants in Southern California and Mexico, presenting a contract from the 1950s that promises a free Big Mac meal.

In Messieurs Delmotte's Ce qui est fait le mal est fait, the city merely provides a milieu for absurd actions performed alone before the camera. Delmotte executes five short nonsensical actions reminiscent of the silent movie antics of Charlie Chaplin. An unidentified European city serves as the vaguely timeless backdrop in which the man-about-town protagonist provokes viewers with a stream of random violent actions against inanimate objects such as a bed of roses, a pile of dog excrement, and a traffic light.

Mario Ybarra's series of short works Walking Wounded is also intended for a video audience rather than a live one, yet it does rely on the nature of a specific city, Los Angeles, in which abandoned spaces and hidden corners are often forgotten and left to decay. In Walking Wounded, icons of Chicano culture are transformed into B-movie zombies who activate these spaces in Los Angeles. Ybarra¹s zombies draw our attention to spaces that are neither completely alive nor dead, such as an alleyway, empty parking structure, or burned-out building on an overgrown lot.

In the Image: 'Democracy when', Mario Ybarra.

Street Show is organized by Lisa Dorin, Curatorial and Programs Assistant, WCMA and Liza Johnson, Assistant Professor of Art, Williams College.

The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
Williams College Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive, Suite 2
Williamstown MA 01267
413.597.3178

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