Livestock, 2015. Performance, 90min. Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
Performance description for All the Other Energies - MCA ARTBAR
Get welcomed by our flirtatious and fabulous hostess Frankie Chow! You may
be lucky enough to get a red lipstick kiss, and a one of a kind Livestock
welcome!
This work explores the idea of power roles found in social relationships and within live performance art, where I compare the confrontational aspect of unauthorised audience interaction with sexual harassment.
In 'Livestock' I attempt to take the dominant role as the hostess or livestock keeper and see visitors as subordinate sexual objects or pieces of meat. My role is to select and "brand" visitors with a lipstick-ed kiss as a mark of ownership. The intimacy and romance of kissing and flirting are reduced due to the public realm and the amount of visitors I interact with and that the selection is purely random.
When a visitor's ticket is verified, I would ask for their hand and hold it as an employee stamps their wrist. After he/she has been stamped, I kiss the back of their hand to leave a lipstick mark. If I know the visitor personally, I may try to kiss their neck.
Photo credit: Andrew Christie @andrew_christie_
