Hard Felt (Script)

Hard Felt (1977) included images and the silhouette of a live performer projected from inside a vacant storefront onto the shop’s scrim-covered, street-facing window. The piece was staged on “The Strip,” near 10th Street on Peachtree Street, Atlanta (GA). Images here depict preparatory drawings and notes; documentation of the actual performance has been lost. Viewers on the street, looking at the shop window on the evening of the performance, saw a projected image divided into an upper and lower register. The upper contained the silhouette of a man slowly rocking in an old-fashioned rocking chair. The man was holding something with a wire or wires trailing off to the side.

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The lower register contained three side-by-side projected slide frames, apparently randomly synced, containing disconnected, hand-written phrases and images of a man’s face. The hair and beard of the man seemed to match the “live” silhouette in the register above. Depending on the synchronization, the projected phrases could make fleeting sense or be total non sequiturs. Images of the face became like punctuation marks. Close observation clued viewers that the man in the chair was possibly controlling the slide projections via remote control—but viewers were unable to ascertain whether the man was able to see the results of his control. 

Review of Projected Fronts exhibition

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