In the Fall of 2009, I conducted a lecture class for The Austin Museum of Art’s Art School @ Laguna Gloria entitled Understanding Contemporary Art. Essentially, this class worked like a gallery hop… we visited four Austin contemporary art galleries/spaces in four weeks and talked about the work on display in an open/informal manner.
For our last class on 11/18/09, we visited Co-Lab, a new media project space that has played gracious host to many of my performances/exhibits. Recognizing that there was the potential to embed a performance into our tour of the space without the class’s knowledge that a performance was going on, I came up with the piece Dummy.
For this performance, I created an audio piece that consisted of my voice criticizing my teaching style and knowledge of contemporary art. This audio played on a television that sat in the middle of the room while I talked about Co-Lab’s history, talked about new media in general, and talked about the work that was on display on the grounds of Co-Lab. Towards the end of the performance, one student caught on to the fact that the voice coming from the television was my own, thus calling attention to the fact that I was performing.