August 15, 1995 at the Climate Theater. A collaboration with Ann Barth & Tim Daniel.
Ann made aesthetically resonant works of art in any medium where she applied her thoughts. She approached Tim and me with an invitation to do a performance as part of Ron Leeson’s Forecast at the Climate Theater. The work would be a meditation on the word permanent. Soon after, Tim gave me an eight minute soundtrack, and I edited and synched video in accordance.
The evening of the performance we had no idea what Ann was planning to do. When our segment arrived, a stagehand placed a chair in the center of the stage, and the lights darkened. I rolled the video, prompting Ann to walk out. She headed directly for the chair, sat down and fixed her gaze upon the audience. She held that position until more than halfway through the video, when the music is stopped by a voice shouting: “Stop!”
If you are meditating on permanent and chose a word to express it, stop is the utterance par excellence. Permanent is a stop: the stopping of change. And when this moment arrived, Ann jumped up, lifted the chair and smashed it while falling to the stage floor. For the next [ ] seconds the theater was full of silence, darkness and stillness. The sound and image continued, and she remained frozen through the concluding minutes.
For me, the performance showed two states of permanence with a dramatic act of impermanence separating them. Maybe because I did not know what affect the piece would have until I saw it (as part of the audience), or maybe because of the harmonious result, Permanent is a unique and treasured memory.
