The Flying Project

"The Flying Project" presents a mechanism for the observation of the artist's role and its economy within institutionalized art. This performance that later became a video installation was composed by a structure allowing two people suspended in the air to propel each other above a large canvas on a stage. As the artist paints flying in circles above the canvas, a second participant, a local curator, would drag over the painting with his feet, smoothing out the paint. The machine ends up taking a big role in definig the marks made on the painting.

A series of metaphors result, critiquing abstract expressionism and the dichotomy in which the artist finds herself as she struggles to make art today. We documented the performance from different vantage points, and the video was projected on the painted 7m x 7m canvas. The final video installation is a painting projected upon itself, looking at the landscape of art and art objects.

Presented: 123 Pleasant St., Morgantown, WV, in May 2012.