Mallory Catlett’s OBIE award-winning This Was The End returns to Mabou Mines this time as an installation where the audience becomes the actor.
“4 portraits, 4 characters converging as a record of a performance”
At once an artifact and an experience, Archive: this was the end is the afterlife of a performance as an interactive sculpture. Conceived and created by Mallory Catlett and Keith Skretch, in collaboration with sound artist G Lucas Crane, this audio/visual installation is the culmination of Catlett’s award-winning exploration of Anton Chekov’s Uncle Vanya.
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| Mallory Catlett's interactive installation, Archive: this was the end, |
Archive: this was the end allows the audience to reactivate the set - a cabinet wall salvaged from the old Mabou Mines studio - and interact with the physical and highly technical world of the piece. Video of the wall is mapped onto itself, layering the pre-recorded past onto the actual present structure creating a blur out of which video portraits of the characters emerge.
Unlike the live performance of This Was The End, you can now walk into and around the set following the moving portraits. Inside you discover the inner workings of the piece - stand where the DJ stood and watch him mix the work you’re experiencing. Opening and closing the doors lets you align the cabinet to match the video and sensors on the doors further trigger the installation’s play of depth and surface. This analog interactivity lets you experience what in optics is called the pseudoscopic effect, or reverse relief, when what is far seems near, and near, far. Here the past performance hypnotizes the present; to deny its erasure and remind us of the life before that continues.
The performance of This Was The End was originally developed in Mabou Mines 2009 – 2011 Resident Artist Program, premiered at The Chocolate Factory in 2014, and returned to Mabou Mines in 2018 for the company’s inaugural season in their new theater. During a March 2018 Residency at EMPAC /The Experimental Media and Performance Art Center in Troy NY, Mallory Catlett, Keith Skretch, and G Lucas Crane began exploring This Was The End as an archive and a ruin - a final phase in the life of a performance.
Peter Ksander’s set was reconstructed and Ryan Holsopple’s interactive design was expanded to create the installation. With a 15 member technical team new material was created with the actors and filmed from three perspectives.
The installation was completed at CultureHub in 2019. The subject matter of the work features performers over the age of 60 - Black-Eyed Susan, Jim Himelsbach, Rea C Wright, and Paul Zimet - who appear on video as the audience moves through the installation.
SCHEDULE AND TICKETING
The installation opens on JUNE 12 and runs through JULY 18, 2021 on weekends, Saturdays, and Sundays, from 12pm - 6pm at Mabou Mines, 150 First Avenue, NYC. The experience is ongoing with no start or stop time. Maximum 10 persons in the space at a time and first come, first served. Masks are required.
Tickets are $10 for adults (kids under 12 free) and are available at https://www.maboumines.org/
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