La Mamelle Arts Center, 3rd Floor, 70 12th Street at Market

T.R. Uthco (Doug Hall, Jody Proctor, and Diane Hall), Really, I've Never Done Anything Like This Before, He Said (8pm-10pm, 4th November 1977)

Description

The main portion of the piece – the “live” portion – was in the rear gallery at Otis. In the middle of the space, Doug Hall and Jody Proctor, naked to the waist, had their heads bound together with string. The men were illuminated by a circle of flashlights positioned around the floor. In the middle of the circle, the two men grappled with one another and carried on a dialogue that, under the circumstance, sounded remarkably reasonable. In the front gallery, this activity could be observed on a monitor flanked by two additional monitors on which tapes of three previously recorded activities were played in twenty-minute sequences. The performance was intended to last two hours. (Brennan 1977: 7)

This performance of “double monologues”  could only be seen live by peeking through the small opening where the gallery door had been left slightly ajar. In an adjacent room, the performance could be watched more easily as a live feed to a monitor that was placed between two additional monitors, showing pre-recorded videos of actions related to the live, spoken narrative. (Hall 2013)