Drag, a screaMachine performance
@ Moving Image Gallery, New York City, 2000
installation/performance with data projection and soundtrack. 10 minutes, 2000.
artist drags bible across image while holding his scrolled birth cert. behind his back

Drag at Moving Image Gallery, 2000

"Drag" consists of a data projection on the floor of the gallery. Prior to the performance, it shows a mock open bible on the floor. The bible is between 8 and 10 feet in size, and its text is clearly legible, revealing that it is an amalgam of tracts from the real bible, all referring to sexual rules and regulations, controlling female and, to a lesser degree, male behavior. Gathered together, the texts make for a synopsis of christianity's attitude toward sexuality. During performance, the artist drags a real bible, by means of a string attached to his penis, across this image of the bible. As the real bible tracks across the image, it apears to erase the image revealing another image below. This new image is one of the artist and wife, naked against a plush red fabric background, involved in an embrace, loving but not pornographic. The artist drags the bible in an inward spiral, slowly eating away at the upper image and revealing the below until all of the' rules's are gone and sexual happiness remains. After performance, a view of the performance in progress, shot from directly overhead, is projected on the floor and looped. The viewer sees the bible laid on the floor as before, but now sees it being erased and reappearing, only to be erased again.

For a close up view of the mock bible: click here

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Click here to go to Drag @ DAC Gallery, 2008
 
   
performance at MIG

 

© Gearóid Dolan, 2004. All rights reserved