The starting point of this performance on videotape was a citation from Freud: 'The unconscious system may therefore be compared to a large ante-room, in which the various mental excitations are crowding upon one another, like individual beings. Adjoining this is a second, smaller apartment, a sort of reception room, in which consciousness resides. But on the threshold of the two, there stands a personage with the office of doorkeeper, who examines the various mental excitations, censors them and denies them admittance to the reception room when he disapproves of them… The excitation in the unconsciousness… They can only become so if they succeed in attracting the eye of consciousness.' Two different rooms in the gallery are used for the performance. In th… first, Nan Hoover performs a ‘movement piece’, while Sam Schoenbaum reads out a text. Hoover slowly changes the posture of her body, thereby changing the shadow on the floor. Schoenbaum’s text is written as that of the ‘doorkeeper’ of the two rooms. There is a certain contrast between the two. Hoover uses her body, Schoenbaum his mind. What is happening in this room is recorded and played back for the audience sitting in the other room. Hoover can see the reactions of the audience on the monitors that are placed around her. She has to respond to what Schoenbaum says, perform her own movement piece, and, at the same time, respond to the audience. This generates an exchange of information between the conscious and the unconscious, the audience and the performers. The exchange turns into a dialogue. Read more...