Inside / Out

Description:

Through fragmented narrative and a layering of live and recorded media, Cathy Quinn’s multimedia performance  Inside / Out explored female subjectivity, surveillance, the somatics of fear, and technology’s mediation of intimacy, memory, and violence. Combining live action with prerecorded voiceover narration, music, and projected slides, the work was marked by various ruptures and discontinuities.

One vignette featured a voiceover recounting the story of a cougar with “human qualities.” After it enters a cabin occupied by women, they slit its head open, only for the story to fracture as a new character suddenly appears, observing the scene from their car.

In another, two female performers sit at a table beneath a desk lamp, reading from scripts about the physiology of fear and its evidence in the body and handwriting.

Elsewhere in the space, another female performer positioned behind a plexiglas sheet is fed food by a man, which she chews, spits out, and smears across the transparent surface. Offscreen, Hank Bull sings a barsong at the piano while overlapping female voices reflect on domination, social construction, identity, violence, experiences of being stalked, and the female gaze.

The video document of the performance, which is composed of excerpts, concludes in darkness with a woman’s prerecorded voice recounting a recent flirtation with an unknown lover. Here, the interrupted plots and fragments of the work accumulate in a monologue reflecting on sexual representation and the technology’s ability to control distance, shared experience, and desire.

Alongside Quinn, Inside / Out  featured performers Hank Bull, Brice Canyon, Kate Craig, Elizabeth Fischer, Joss Hurtig, Annette Hurtig, Susi Milne, Sandy Scofield, and Donna Zwarich. The performance included slides by Tammy Basaraba and Donna Zwarich, lighting by Matthew Myers, and sound  by Iain Macanulty and Elizabeth Fischer. The videographers, Kate Craig and Cornelia Wyngaarden, were not only documenting the work but also became part of the performance itself through their visible presence and live use of their footage.

Produced by Eric Metcalfe. 

Video documentation is available upon request.