Taubin’s “Performance That Began with a Train Ride…”
Amy Taubin’s solo career seemed to focus on the relationship between spectator/audience and actor. Taubin’s work initially inspired my desire to allow the audience to choose how they view my work. Her Double Occupancy (1976) gave its audience the choice of either seeing Taubin speaking into a microphone, but being unable to hear it, or hearing the text that she was speaking but being unable to see her. This ignites our innate competitive drive as humans, and as an audience, to view the better performance. I had been experimenting with the idea of having a live-stream of my performance, so that my audience can choose to either watch it in person or via social media – linking back to my exploration of how social media and the internet impacts society and the choices that we make. According to Noel Carroll:
Here, the concept of being looked at is presented not only as the condition of the performer but also as an inculcated element of the female identity in a male society in which a woman learns to conceive of herself as an attractive object of male desire. Taubin acknowledges this drive in herself
(Carroll, 1979, 54).
I found this interesting, and Carroll’s point inspired the following idea:
PERFORMANCE IDEA (inspired by Taubin):
More of an installation piece. I am stood on-stage with a clothes rail full of clothes, shoes and accessories. The audience enter (maximum 3 at a time) and can dress me up or down, removing and adding clothes as they wish, with the limit being stripped down to my underwear. There is a live stream of this performance online as it unfolds. This forces the audience to consider the way in which they choose to see other people, whether they prefer me to be fully clothed or scantily clad, with makeup on or off. Also explores the self and how we change our ‘image’ depending on our company.
Works Cited
Carroll, N (1979) Amy Taubin: the Solo Self. The Drama Review: TDR. 23 (1) 51-59. Available from https://library.lincoln.ac.uk/items/eds/edsjsr/edsjsr.10.2307.1145244?query=amy+taubin&resultsUri=items%3Fquery%3Damy%2Btaubin%26target%3Deds%26facet%255B0%255D%3Dfulltext%253Ayes&facet%5B0%5D=fulltext%3Ayes&target=eds [Accessed on 06/05/17].