Title: The Ampersands: Crushing My Body
Category: Performance
Year: 1995
Synopsis: This was one of several sections of a collaborative performance that we jokingly called "The Ampersands New Free Trial Performance Pak". It was a collaboration with friends of mine, Seán Judge, an actor & musician and Marc Gratama, a musician. In this piece, you can see Seán tilting backward slowly and gradually titling upwards again. What you can't see in the clip is that we're standing back to back; he's leaning on me while I lower him down and then back up. It's perhaps a form of extremely minimal dance...

Production Notes: In this clip, you can probably make out what the voices are saying: "Crushing my body / Crushing my body / So slowly, slowly / I can hardly feel it / Planet / I'll become a planet / So slowly, slowly / I can hardly feel it". We used the recording technique that we picked up watching "Twin Peaks". While recording on tape, we phonetically pronounced the desired phrase backwards. Then, when you play the tape backwards, the phrase becomes intelligible, but the vocal inflections sound very odd.