Performance
Les Petites Morts (2020)
Performance for video, 10-channel installation
Every day for 10 consecutive days in October 2020 Laura Ohio filmed herself eating a lobster. Les Petites Morts subjects the viewer to a simultaneous experience of the 10 videos that resulted, asking them to confront the dubious lines between voyeurism and exhibition, seduction and exploitation, performance and identity, privilege and commentary on privilege.
Like much s3x work and s3x-adjacent work (mukbang, ASMR), the performance of feminine sensuality in Les Petites Morts exposes how straight consumer culture depends upon self-aware queer acts of class drag and feminine drag, where ‘passing’ is a subtle performance. These moments of ‘passing’ are so skilfully embodied by their performers that they do not register as queer in any sense identifiable by an algorithm for discovering “queer content”.
A white woman mocking white wealth and opulence by filming herself eating lobster alone in a stupidly fancy dining room—this is queer (as anything that reveals the artifice of straight culture must be queer), but not in the same way as blue hair or girls kissing. Even the overwhelming repetition on 10 screens defies the algorithm: it is impossible to experience Les Petites Morts on your phone.
But viewing this installation as a radical statement of criticism is insufficient; there is undeniable pleasure on display here as well, as 10 Lauras crack shells and slurp up butter. Les Petites Morts asks where pleasure fits into the enactment of a straight fantasy, and how pleasure shifts uneasily between performer and audience, consumer and consumed.
Performance for video, 10-channel installation
Every day for 10 consecutive days in October 2020 Laura Ohio filmed herself eating a lobster. Les Petites Morts subjects the viewer to a simultaneous experience of the 10 videos that resulted, asking them to confront the dubious lines between voyeurism and exhibition, seduction and exploitation, performance and identity, privilege and commentary on privilege.
Like much s3x work and s3x-adjacent work (mukbang, ASMR), the performance of feminine sensuality in Les Petites Morts exposes how straight consumer culture depends upon self-aware queer acts of class drag and feminine drag, where ‘passing’ is a subtle performance. These moments of ‘passing’ are so skilfully embodied by their performers that they do not register as queer in any sense identifiable by an algorithm for discovering “queer content”.
A white woman mocking white wealth and opulence by filming herself eating lobster alone in a stupidly fancy dining room—this is queer (as anything that reveals the artifice of straight culture must be queer), but not in the same way as blue hair or girls kissing. Even the overwhelming repetition on 10 screens defies the algorithm: it is impossible to experience Les Petites Morts on your phone.
But viewing this installation as a radical statement of criticism is insufficient; there is undeniable pleasure on display here as well, as 10 Lauras crack shells and slurp up butter. Les Petites Morts asks where pleasure fits into the enactment of a straight fantasy, and how pleasure shifts uneasily between performer and audience, consumer and consumed.
Performance for Cello (2019)
Zero Gravity International Performance Art Festival, dc3 Art Projects
Zero Gravity International Performance Art Festival, dc3 Art Projects
Humble Roots, Golden Hair (2019)
Zero Gravity Performance Art Festival, dc3 Art Projects
Zero Gravity Performance Art Festival, dc3 Art Projects
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Dwelling
2017 24 hours Collaboration with Brooke Leifso For 24 hours people were invited into a house to witness the inhabitants as if no one was watching. |
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Mourning Line, 7 hours. 2013
Latitude 53 |