Kira O'Rielly 1 - Thursday July 24, 2008

Kira is working with different types of engagement here at Visualize, through three different pieces.

Typically her past work has asked, "What is the body?", its traces and extensions, particularly in light of the impact of science and technology. It has explored historic and present-day bleeding practices such as leeches, cupping and cutting, involving the audience in these most intimate, visceral acts. For example, one piece invited audience members to cut her with a scalpel. This one-on-one performance became a discussion about the viewers' willingness to participate, to "perform" what was asked, to be culpable for injury. Sometimes her intents are explicitly political, and sometimes they investigate ambivalence and play, but they almost always explore the ways in which power and subjectivity constantly shift.

Her first performance at Visualize was a "weighing in" by blind justice. A naked and blindfolded Kira held two bowls into which audience members were invited to place objects of significance.

The presence of her body in the space was intense, particularly since it wasn't merely an image: for the performance to function we needed to approach her, to put our offerings into the bowls she held aloft, to be proximate and to engage. Hers is a female body, containing different meaning than the universal male form. Our culture ascribes greater vulnerability to female nakedness (and certainly our histories as the victims of violence reinforces this)

I was astounded by the audience's willingness to play, to bring in thoughtfully considered objects, to engage. Some of the delightful pairings presented for weighing included; a mirror and a "thinking of you" card; pieces of paper upon Israeli soldiers and Palestinian freedom-fighters were named; fish hooks and Disney flashcards to teach children about "time and money"; money and the Bible; water and crushed water bottles. As the three-hour performance evolved, the trail of these props/offering/traces grew in the gallery, a gorgeous trail of resonant objects. Paul Couillard felt that to approach her body respectfully, he, too, needed to become naked, and so he did.

As the performance went on, the rigors of the physical task became more difficult for the performer. The audience metaphorically, psychically held Kira until she could do it no longer. And exactly at 10:00 p.m., when the performance was scheduled to conclude, without signal or timepiece Kira set down her bowls that had contained fire, cement, salt, and everything else we had brought her.