University Art Museum Berkeley, 2626 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

Tom Marioni and/as Allan Fish, A Collaboration between Allan Fish and Tom Marioni (13th April 1971)

Description

Richard Beggs taped my heartbeat – put it on a loop and with an oscillating machine speeded it up to a 4/4 tempo equil. to a heartbeat at its fastest. the piece was 34 mins. long. first 15 min. was the heartbeat slowing down to a Dead stop. while this was going on I was sitting in a chair facing people sitting on the floor. i was wearing the Fish disguise and old clothes. on the tv monitor was my face as Marioni, hanging on the wall was a change of clothes. at end of 15 min. heartbeat was a constant hum and image on tv put on fake glasses, nose, moustache and hat while I (Fish) took off same disguise. that image was switched to stop frame. everything was frozen and I changed clothes, piled old clothes in a pile on the floor, went from orange to blue underwear. dressed in undertaker coat and cowboy shirt, heartbeat started slowly and monitor started, the next 15 min. was reverse of first 15 min. except last 5 min. i mixed two ½ pint bottles od white and chocolate milk into a 1 pint bottle that I dug up in my back yard. i drank the 50/50 mix while image on tv drank white milk. it was a reward for myself, when I was a kid my grandfather had a dairy in Syracuse n.y. and i drank milk from those little glass bottles. The video tape was an element in the piece and means nothing by itself. it was destroyed… (Marioni 1971: 2)