80 Langton Street

Judith Barry, Past, Present, Future Tense (10th September 1977)

Description

A multi-dimensional performance environment, it is my model for the unconscious, a triptych of simultaneous events separated by time, a metaphor built into a metaphor and then turned in on itself, predicated on the idea that the present is created out of the past in predicting the future and utilizing synthesis as the primordial form belonging to consciousness. The action of the piece occurs in a pre-constructed environment deliberately suggestive of other places, conjuring other associations. While the narrative is passing through the slide projectors at the rate of one slide every fifteen seconds, I am constructing an illusory series of object-images from a piece of wire mesh and speaking phenomenologically about my activities. The narrative is actually five narratives culled from women’s histories--past, present and projected futures. Questions posed in one arena seem to be explored in another. I was assisted in the piece by Susan Kampe and Deirdre O’Connell.