Artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard are best known for their re-enactments of significant moments from the history of art and pop culture, such as their re-staging of David Bowie’s final performance as Ziggy Stardust 25 years to the day after the original event, and their recreation of a legendary performance by The Cramps at Napa State Mental Institute, to their more recent series of works re-examining seminal early video art from the sixties and seventies updated to feature young MC’s Plan B and Miss OddKidd.
Forsyth & Pollard’s new work for Site Gallery is part of the national Rules and Regs development programme. In each Rules and Res event, artists make new work in response to rules set by a curator as a challenge to explore new ways of working. Site Gallery set the following rules for Iain and Jane:
The Rules:
– The event must incorporate a live element and the audience must be implicated
– You cannot use recorded sound and images at the same time
– There must be an act of exchange
– You must include a sound from Sheffield
– You must work with a collaborator
Within these perimeters, Forsyth & Pollard have elected to reinterpret a seminal performance originally presented in 1975 by American artist Dan Graham called Performer/Audience/Mirror. In the original, Graham faces a seated audience, with a mirror covering the wall behind him, reflecting the audience back at themselves. The performance moves through four stages. In the first, the performer look at the audience and describes himself, what he’s doing and how he’s feeling. In stage 2 he describes the audience. In stage 3 he faces the mirror and describes himself and his movements, but based only on what he sees in the mirror. In the fourth and final stage, still facing the mirror, he again describes the behaviour of the audience.
Graham’s original performance will be reworked as Performer. Audience. Fuck Off. Forsyth & Pollard’s new piece takes on the basic structure of the original, but rather than the pervading style of New York performance art of the seventies, this new work will be something completely different. The artists will work with Iain Lee, a comedian and broadcaster who rose to fame as co-presenter of The 11 O’clock Show on Channel 4 and now presents the Sunday Night Show for Absolute Radio. He’s the performer. You’re the audience. Now fuck off…