Undoing, 2002
(2 hour performance with six months of activity in preparation)
Tic Toc Chicago Performance Festival
This piece is inspired by Sara's father’s terminal illness, and describes how mundane activity, beauty and horror can collapse together around such experiences. Over the course of six months, she dismantles 98 red sweaters, each taking 1 hour to dissect. During the culminating performance, dressed in a uniform that implies both a clinician and a factory worker, Sara dismantles the final 2 with surgical scissors into a basin of water, the strands becoming vivid and flesh-like when submerged. When one sweater is completely dissected, she lifts it out of the water (it is quite heavy), and carries it over to add to a pile of the other 98 sweaters which are also wet. The pile resembles a bright pop art fiber work while also having an intensely visceral aspect and a quality of many lost everyday items - occasionally a cuff , a row of buttons or half an arm can be made out in the pile. The overall effect is beautiful, disturbing and infused with the steady intensity of a labor that is either benign, horrific or both.
Images: Klaus Eisenlohr