PANDEMIC PAUSE PERFORMANCE: PARTICIPANT-OBSERVER #VIEWFROMTHE28FLOOR
first performed on March 15, 2020
28th floor artist studio, New York, NY
performed 270 times in 2020
LULU LOLO
New York, NY
404779854f404779854a404779854b404779854u404779854l404779854o404779854u404779854s404779854l404779854u404779854l404779854u404779854l404779854o404779854l404779854o404779854@404779854g404779854m404779854a404779854i404779854l404779854.404779854c404779854o404779854m
PANDEMIC PAUSE PERFORMANCE: PARTICIPANT-OBSERVER #VIEWFROMTHE28FLOOR
LULU LOLO
Confined to my apartment in Manhattan during the COVID-19 stay at home order and afterwards a self-imposed quarantine, I created an ongoing series of conceptual performances exploring the relationship of the audience/performer dynamics. Using the proscenium of six large windows on the 28th floor that face East, West and South intersecting with 57 Street and Tenth Avenue as a framed stage, I chronicled the public scenarios of New Yorkers coping with their individual and collective confinement by migrating to their rooftops (picnicking, exercising, meditating, reading, ping pong playing, working, sunbathing, making music, and other activities). Most of these endeavors—previously done in the privacy of their homes—were now performative ceremonies of reality viewable from my high vantage point surveillance. I reviewed a wide variety of domestic social subtleties: a new baby, romantic exchanges, two elderly sisters’ social dinners, and the absurdity of playing tennis or putting golf on a rooftop in Manhattan. I contemplated if the performers were aware that I was their audience in coincidental events of public private seeing and being.