Tele | 2018 

Live performance, modified victorian furniture, Chroma Key paint, four monitors, two media players, two video cameras, HDMI cables, hardware, lights 11:52 minute digital video. 

A meeting of two: eye to eye, face to face.

And when you are near I will tear your eyes out

and place them instead of mine,

and you will tear my eyes out

and will place them instead of yours,

then I will look at me with mine.

-Carl Moreno (1889-1974)

The text on the TelePrompters in Tele is derived from a series of Sociodrama experiences I conducted in at SOHO20 Gallery with psychotherapist Dr. Nan Nally-Seif and a variety of participants. The issues explored in our sociodrama workshops related to increasing partisanship, the widening gap between liberal and conservative beliefs, and media.

Sociodrama is a dramatic play in which a group acts out assigned roles for the purpose of studying and remedying problems in group or collective relationships. It was developed by social scientist Jacob L. Moreno to explore sociological interests using the techniques he originated in psychodrama for psychology. Furniture painted Chroma Key green created a backdrop for two of the dramatic plays, which was set in the White House green room where casual meetings are frequently held. In these plays, participants role played as a treasury secretary, a representative of the middle class, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Throughout the workshop, participants would reverse roles with each other and have the experience of hearing their words spoken by another participant. Participants also reversed roles with politically divergent family members. The unique challenge of getting into the character of someone you have recently argued with is a strange exercise in seeing an issue from all sides and empathy.

Excerpts from the workshop are presented on TelePrompters and periodically read throughout the night by two performers as a way of further processing the original ideas through another layer of mediated performance and role playing.

The piece is titled Tele. Moreno coined the term “Tele” to describe the feeling of attraction or repulsion that emanates from and flows between most people, objects and animals on a minute-to-minute and day-to-day basis.