Performance (1998 – 2001)

In this performance Mike Schertzer reads excerpts from his text Evidence while video images assembled by Vancouver video artist Joel Snowden are projected behind him. These images are composed of a set of slide-collages assembled from film trailers, found slides, and reproductions of his visual art. As well, Joel has created some video interjections and has incorporated the voice of Zoya Harris and the very appropriate (and appropriated!) music from Unwound, Low, and Burning Airlines.

This event is basically a performance of a text but was designed to be much more than a simple reading. As a writer, I have always found readings to be deficient renderings of the world and the energy delimited by the text. I have finally come to the conclusion that the fact that I always find readings boring and banal is because they are. Reading is not boring or banal, but the public performance of such an act is. Therefore, I have created a presentation which hopefully presents the complexity and the peculiar energy of the text in a clear and definitive manner. Concerning the aesthetics of the visual side of the presentation, I have always resisted attempts at hyper-technologizing my art practice. This means that I am interested in leaving traces of the creative act, stressing the artificial/constructed nature of any image. Although it is true that the video was digitally edited, the source images were primarily slide collages which were glued together. These slides would make any photographer cringe- they are scratched, covered in fingerprints (and whatever else was on the floor of my studio!), and have been stuck together in a very rough way. The slides were then videotaped and this live footage is what each 'still-image' is. There is movement in each 'still' but it is very subtle.

It is true that I always find a subversive thrill in taking the highly accomplished photography found on Hollywood film trailers (photographs which took tens of thousands of dollars if not more to create) and then scratching them, or bleaching them, or generally messing them up. It should be noted that my use of the products of popular (American) films does not represent any attempt at re-defining or re-working the lexicon of popular culture. I have no idea what these films are or are about. I never go to see Hollywood movies. I don't know who the stars are (other than perhaps their names). I feel I am something of an anthropologist (or a child!) holding up artifacts before some knowing public.

july 1, 1937

 
maybe there is no room for me here. maybe i am larger than i have assumed. maybe there is nowhere to house what my living entails, nothing to support what my living requires.

then again, maybe i am too small, too insignificant. maybe i have been dropped into this life and somewhere below is my proper place but i am too insubstantial to land.

maybe i am an angel who has been sentenced to heaven.

i am not where i should be and i have never been where i should have been. and with such a foundation on which to build i doubt i will ever be where i should be. it wouldn’t bother me if this was the price of existing, if this was the surcharge that everyone had to pay in order to have a life. but i seems i am alone in this predicament; others appear exempt from the conditions, from the limitations imposed upon my living.

this is not a situation i have imagined. this is not some fantasy that i force to perform on a barren stage, before row upon row of vacant days, nights…

this is real. i am not where i should be and i feel it, live it; i have always felt it, lived it, and have never felt or lived anything else.

i know it when i see someone talking on the telephone and think that the world was a better place while the phone was ringing. i know it when i feel, when i hear, the door in every thing, in every thought, in every emotion, closing forever before i can sneak through. i know it when crows, the janitors of existence, find my presence excessive. i know it when wasps, the terrorists of existence, find their cause in my undoing. i know it when dogs, the conscripts of existence, use me for target practice. i know it when a cat, a tireless saint of existence, recognizes my penance and finds a way to slink into my predicament to console me. i know it when any person i have ever shared a moment with leaves and there is no sound of their departure, no footprints in the snow, no impression left on a chair, a bed, no warmth on my hands, lips. i know it when i am sought by those who are sending me away, when i am admired by those who can only build pyres, when i am a burden to those who have been granted too much life, when i am caressed by those who are destroying themselves, when i am spoken to only by those who have already died, when i can love only the idea of someone who has never existed.

i know it when it rains and i do not get wet.

i feel it when a leaf falls through me, when a leaf tumbles over my heart as though it were a pebble on a street that is starting to dress for winter.

i know it. i feel it.

and it is endless.