game & operetta

Description:

Laurel Woodcock presented two video installations, game and operetta, both of which used self-reflexive humour to examine and revise the role and mediation of the performer.

The genre of the operetta emerged in the mid-eighteenth-century as a diminutive form of performance in comparison to the full-blown opera. Short, amusing, with some spoken parts, an operetta represented an alternative form of performance that set itself apart from the fully cast grandeur of its predecessor and contemporary. 

In Woodcock’s installation, the term operetta takes a modernist form as musical comedy or musical theatre, incorporating spoken dialogue and dance that somewhat imitated its precursor.

Woodcock incorporated thematic cuts from popular culture that played with the viewers’ perception with a juxtaposition of unfamiliar elements in order to disassociate and reconnect to the cultural cross-section. It featured video projection and sound, where each element assumed the roles of dance, dialogue, and music.

An exhibition opening took place Nov 2, 2002. 

This exhibition was part of the Popular Format series.