the kitchen @ the moore presents...
ROOM by tracy + the plastics and fawn krieger
august 12 - october 15, 2006 (opens to the public september 9)
ROOM is a series of collaborations between tracy + the plastics and fawn krieger. we design and build rooms structured by ideas of non-hierarchical building: building out instead of up, connecting the audience and the performance space, and exposing the structure. we ask how the projection of an imagined utopia is something to build with, practice, interrupt, and realize.
where is the present space of radical feminism? we locate and expand it in our dialogue with objects, bodies, time and space. what happens when those things change on us? what happens when our dialogue changes on them?
ROOM creates a domestic space that is external, aggressive, and performative, a space to move in. we explore the possibilities of sound and action as we place them in a social history and in a room.
tracy + the plastics go on tour and stay at someone's house after a show. finding homes within a home. leg warmers, tea leaves, dawns and sunsets, northern lights. privacy, deja-vu, an open window, a place to try to get comfortable. we stay up late until it's early and ask how feminists are guests.
how do we give each other the space to dream? how do we make an alternative accessible without selling out? how do we expand without colonizing? do we re-define compromise when we re-imagine a middle ground?
we build this gray-area, this in-between space, this room for movement. an unfolding landscape of hallway landings and entryways, porches, patios, and mezzanines. we construct these fragmented stages with wood, paint, and railings, light and projected video. and then we interrupt them, making temporary domestic structures out of blankets and sheets, towels and tablecloths we borrow from the audience.
grabbing a sheet, cola, the drummer, tries to make a bed. across the room, nikki, the keyboard player, takes her contacts out and can't see. the audience occupies the space between these two life-size video projections. as nikki reaches to give cola a blanket, her gesture extends into the audience space. her blurry vision mistakes the audience for her bandmate. when does space become another body we must contend with? this negotiation uncovers folds and tears for us to enter and respond to.
opportunities, moments, pockets. tracy + the plastics share these fabrics with the audience: hanging them up, tearing them, and tying them together. these borrowed linens remain available to the public throughout the installation. to practice self-governing. to engage with, to build with, to change with, to move with.
we continue to practice non-hierarchical building as ROOM becomes nomadic. interrupting linear narrative and physical space, questioning binary systems, emphasizing process, and raising conversations between temporary and permanent.
make-shift living on common ground. we make ROOM for settlements.
first commissioned and presented by the Kitchen, NYC, in winter 2005. inspired by the consciousness-raising groups of the 1970's feminist movement, ROOM at the Kitchen offered space to listen. we de-center this space as we make more ROOM at the Moore Space.
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