When I began working on IMMINENT COLLAPSE with Jasper Goodrich, I envisioned a duet that moved people through the converted spaces of Patient Info, set to the tune of loud rock music and loosely following the narrative arc of a drunken night out. I was thinking about the ways that alcohol can be used and abused as medicine, how having a few drinks can make me feel powerful and in control, and how specific songs can make me feel that way too. Covid-19 made a performance in a room crowded with people impossible and extremely unsafe, so Jasper and I worked together to translate the piece for Zoom. I performed the motions that would have taken place in the gallery from home, Brian Jucas acted as me in the gallery space, and Jasper used a large, hand-drawn map of the gallery to show a birds-eye view of how both myself and the people in the gallery would be moving through the space (backgammon pieces are audience members, I am the marker). Galen Odell-Smedley and Erik Sateren both assisted with camerawork.
IMMINENT COLLAPSE premiered at the virtual opening of OATHS at Patient Info in Chicago, Illinois on March 27, 2020. The July 11, 2020 closing reception of OATHS featured a video installation of the work accompanied by printouts of the many maps Jasper and I created together (pictured below). Full-length performance documentation is viewable here.
