Work samples

  • Journey of the Invader Spirit

    Producer/Writer/Director: Mandy Morrison

    Animation: Tori Porter

    Music and Sound Design: Jason Charney

    Participants: Jose Carlos Conceicao, Mandy Morrison, Raimundo da Silva, Charles Silva, Dete Vieira

    Grupo de Capoeira Uniao, Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil, Escola Criança Feliz, Itaparica, Bahia, Brazil

    Through an invented creation myth, this cinematic work mines the exploitative nature of colonialism, and environmental degradations born of consumerism. Filmed in Bahia, Brazil, with local participants, a pernicious ‘Invader Spirit’ travels the land wreaking environmental havoc on the population. The Invader then gets challenged by both visible and unseen forces found in marine life, that take on the form of spiritual entities. 

  • Spirits of Promise and Loss
    2020 Multi-channel video installation with audio Gallery installation view (multiple angles) Duration: 02:37 Dimensions: 4’ x 40’
  • Housekeeping
    2018 TRT: 1:32 Single-Channel Video Installation 12' x 24.5' Password: clean Performers: Mandy Morrison, Tiara Francis, Sammantha Siegle In my most recent video and installation Housekeeping, I reference the slapstick comedy of silent films. In them, the protagonists are often working people, encountering circumstances that challenge their human limitations or undermine their efforts at keeping up with expectations. In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the assembly-line pace far outstrips the character’s ability to keep-up and adhere to what is required. In Housekeeping the protagonist is a middle-aged professional woman who is being challenged by youth, class and time itself. Seated placidly and alone in a hotel room, she is, at alternate moments, in situ with a pair of young hotel maids who are straightening her bedspread, beating her with brooms or mopping her naked body on a bathroom floor.
  • Boxed
    2017 2-channel Video Installation (Loop 2:25) Variable Dimensions, Approx: 11' x 27' x 8' Performers: Mandy Morrison, Samantha Siegel, Tiara Francis Director of Photography: Adan Rodriquez As the American proclivity of success and achievement is partially defined by home-ownership, and at the very least ‘having a roof over one’s head’, living apart from this norm, segregates those who have neither and casts them as ‘disposable’. Just as used and unwanted furniture is left in the street for garbage pick-up, those who are unable to participate in consumerist class ‘norms’ are viewed as unclean and-in turn- unworthy outcasts; victims of their corporeal existence. Unable to benefit from or participate in the ‘disruptive’ digital age, they exist in the marginal ‘cracks’ of exterior physical spaces. In the performative video work being presented here I am contrasting some of these overarching structural ‘cracks ‘against the corporeal.

About Mandy

Baltimore City - Bromo Tower Arts District

My video narratives, are informed by class, labor and physical agency.  Domestic workers were a regular part of my upbringing and later on, working in various capacities I also became a caregiver.  In working  a series of service-industry jobs, I wore corporate uniforms and both the spaces and type of work (waitressing) were defined by physical redundancies in patterns of movement. 

After attending art school (RISD), I worked in New York City as a print designer in the fashion… more

Journey of the Invader Spirit

2020-2023
This 15-minute video installation, Journey of the Invader Spirit  exhibited at the Peale Center, in 2023, weaves an invented creation myth with harsh environmental realities and metaphors for sustainable possibility.
 
Concept: In the video, a pernicious illegitimate ‘Invader Spirit’ travels the land blithely wreaking havoc on the local population by way of boundless forms of consumer lust, then later, punishing with detritus and waste. Eventually, the Spirit’s malevolence gets challenged a by a team of artful Capoeira (Afro-Brazilian) martial arts practitioners working with the aid of angelic oceanic agents. The video -filmed while an artist-in-residence at the Sacatar Institute in Brazil,  was populated with local staff, and residents as participants.
 
Process: During a Brazil residency, I was attending local environmental clean-ups, meeting and working with residency staff and a local Capoeira group regarding their participation in a video project that could reflect their interests and concerns. We were able to share and discuss ideas about labor, collective creativity, myth-making and the environment.

Exhibit  / Video Narrative
The video’s narrative, and exhibit, explores the exploitative nature of colonialism, and accompanying environmental degradations born of consumerism. The ‘Invader Spirit’ character represents the darker aspects of Western colonialism; the harm generated by all manners of pollution and how the pursuit of ‘stuff’ ends up degrading the  environment.  In the work,  the ‘Invader Spirit is challenged by defiant Capoeira martial artists, who want to defeat the darkness brought on by this Invader Spirit.
 
Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, acrobatics, and music and was practiced by enslaved Africans in Brazil at the beginning of the 16th century. It is now a popular globally practiced martial art. Aspects of the colonial histories of (port-cities) Baltimore and Salvador /Itaparica, Brazil, are quite similar in that both were active ports and places of public slave transport and plantation life through into the 19th century.
 
In this work, the Capoeira are aligned with the microscopic organisms and plant life found in oceans that scientific research is using in its in developing new types of fuel and natural products that can consume all manner of toxic waste from our oceans, rivers and land. The intention is to underscore the havoc generated by polluted waterways and oceans, and equally, how solutions to environmental problems- through science and research- may be found in the very marine life that are found in ocean waters.
 
Community Outreach
The Peale's Community programing provided a Baltimore City audience, with narratives of possibility, with an afternoon workshop taught by  Capoeira practitioner, Justin West. Additionally there was a talk on soil remediation with Robin Gunkel, PhD on her community project the Rhizae Collective to phytoremediate lead contaminated Johnston Square in Greenmount West. Additionally there was  an artist Q+A session with Peale Founding Director, Nancy Proctor.  
 
 

  • "Storm Delivery" Video Still from Journey of the Invader Spirit
    "Storm Delivery" Video Still from Journey of the Invader Spirit

    Video still of the  'Invader Spirit' creating a cyclone of detritus and waste.

  • Primordial Earth
    Primordial Earth

    An animated still of 'Primordial Earth' from Journey of the Invader Spirit

  • Video Still from "Journey of the Invader Spirit"
    Video Still from "Journey of the Invader Spirit"

    Video Still from "Journey of the Invader Spirit"

    'Offering', with performers from Sacatar staff.

  • Morrison_Invader_offering.png
    Morrison_Invader_offering.png

    Installation view at the Peale Center,  "Journey of the Invader Spirit" 

     

  • Invader_weather.png
    Invader_weather.png

    Video Still from, "Journey of the Invader Spirit",  Weather.

  • Rehearsal with local Itaparica Capoeira Group
    Rehearsal with local Itaparica Capoeira Group

    Rehearsal with local Itaparica Capoeira Group. They enthusiastically lent their talents and support for the project, and reached out to the residency artists to include us in their events.

  • Finding her superpower
    Finding her superpower

    One of the staffers of Sacatar, Dete Vieira, who volunteered to be a performer in the project.

  • Journey of the Invader Spirit, Video Still
    Journey of the Invader Spirit, Video Still

    Along with Capoeira practitioners, the 'spirits' are the faces of local school children from Itaparica, who volunteered to participate in the film.

  • 'Studio view following beach-clean-up and assembling Invader' costume.png
    'Studio view following beach-clean-up and assembling Invader' costume.png

    The costume for the "Invader Spirit", was the result of a collective beach-trash effort with the local community on Itaparica.  I used the collected waste  in its creation. This is an interior view of the studio in Brazil during the work-in-progress.

  • Capoeira Workshop at the Peale by taught by Justin West
    Capoeira Workshop at the Peale by taught by Justin West

    In Baltimore, 2023, at the Peale Center, I organized an open Capoeira workshop  taught by Justin West, during the run of the exhibit.

Spirits of Promise and Loss

2020
(Installation view) Six-channel video installation with audio
Dimensions: 4’ x 40’
Duration: 02:31 (loop)
 
Spirits of Promise and Loss, is an animation that uses photographic images of the Old Town Mall in Baltimore as a backdrop for the behaviors and movements of ghost-like characters that populate a decrepit model of utopian possibility. 
 
Old Town Mall was one of numerous experiments across the U.S. in urban mall development that strove to bring suburban shoppers, back downtown. By creating a thoroughfare developed to maximize pedestrian traffic such malls placed parking and cars on the fringes of the walkway, providing storefronts that faced one another on an open thoroughfare given over to walkers.  
 
It was to be the antidote to suburban strip malls, which drew customers away from urban centers. Enticed by the communal village experience, which featured a welcoming walkway, free of car traffic, the pedestrian mall generated hope for urban revival and long-term sustainability.
 
Initially popular, the Old Town Mall currently is mostly abandoned and many shop storefronts are shuttered. In creating this work, I am worked with dancers as models who generate unique movements that speak to different aspects of the mall’s past history, that are captured in video and translated into the drawn characters. 

Assitance in the creation of this project comes  from students of UMBC's Dance Department who generously donated their time as models,as well  from artist Chris Kozjar.

 

 

  • Six-Channel Documentation Composite_.png
    Six-Channel Documentation Composite_.png
    This documentation composite shows images from each of the six channels displayed in the installation. In viewing the work in situ, the panels appear gradually, so that all are never displayed simultaneously.
  • Gallery_Installation View_1.png
    Gallery_Installation View_1.png
    Installation View (south end of gallery)
  • Gallery_Installation View_2.png
    Gallery_Installation View_2.png
    Installation View (north end of gallery)
  • Panels_1+2.jpg
    Panels_1+2.jpg
    Panels 1+ 2
  • Panel_3+4.jpg
    Panel_3+4.jpg
    Panels 3+4
  • Panels_5+6.jpg
    Panels_5+6.jpg
    Panels_5+6.jpg
  • Spirits of Promise and Loss
    2020 (Installation view) Six-channel video installation with audio Dimensions: 4’ x 40’ This piece uses photographic images the Old Town Mall in Baltimore as a backdrop for the behaviors of ghost-like characters that populate a former model of utopian possibility. Old Town Mall was one of numerous experiments across the U.S. in urban mall development that strove to bring mid-century suburban shoppers, back downtown. Initially popular, the Old Town Mall is now mostly abandoned. This free-standing six-channel rear-projected video installation, standing four feet tall and over forty feet long, with panels hinged at an angle from each adjoining panel, references the Asian screen, once a popular decorative device used to separate interior spaces. With China as a competing economic power that has usurped the manufacturing base that was once the economic mainstay of U.S.
  • Diego_dance.jpg
    Diego_dance.jpg
    Dance Department Student Diego, generated a figure (accompanied by his own music and movements) serving as a model for the 'Dance Ghost' (panel 1).
  • Gretta Crawls.png
    Gretta Crawls.png
    Dance Department student Gretta, assists in generating 'crawling' motion (panel 5) used for creating the animations.
  • Drum Major.jpg
    Drum Major.jpg
    This images (from a video) was downloaded from the internet, and was the basis for the 'Drum Major' ghost character that moves throughout the piece.

Housekeeping

2018
 Single-Channel Video Installation with Audio, TRT: 1:43 (Looped Video)
12' x  26'


Performers: Mandy Morrison, Tiara Francis, Sammantha Siegle
Director of Photography: Aimi Bouillion

In this  recent video installation,  I reference the slapstick comedy of silent films. In them, the protagonists are often working people, encountering circumstances that challenge their human limitations or undermine their efforts at keeping up with expectations. In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the assembly-line pace far outstrips the character’s ability to keep-up and adhere to what is required.

In Housekeeping the protagonist is a middle-aged professional woman who is being challenged by youth, class and time itself. Seated placidly and alone in a hotel room, she is, at alternate moments, in situ with a pair of young hotel maids who are straightening her bedspread, beating her with brooms or mopping her naked body on a bathroom floor. The background audio plays an ad for anti-aging products, along with the sounds of running water.

This aging female’s professional body ricochets between poses of entitlement, invisibility, interclass intimacy and naked combat against young uniformed domestic workers in their attempt to smooth, clean, embrace or destroy her.

This project was made with the cooperation and the particpation of students in the Dance Department at Univeristy of Maryland, Baltimore County.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Video still from "Housekeeping"
  • Process_gestures_The head as a mop.png
    Process_gestures_The head as a mop.png
    UMBC dance student, Samatha Siegel exploring perforative gestures with inanimate objects (a mop and table) in preparation for eventual project shoot
  • Process gestures_Stare-Down.png
    Process gestures_Stare-Down.png
    Process exercises (staring contest) with dance students Samantha Siegal and Tiara Francis at UMBC that fed into the Hotel (Housekeeping) performance-shoot.
  • Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Still from Video Installation "Housekeeping"
  • Process_ gestures_Performing the Table.png
    Process_ gestures_Performing the Table.png
    Working with UMBC Dance Department students Samantha Siegal and Tiara Francis, using the table as a locus for performative movement and gestures.
  • Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Still from Video Installation "Housekeeping" with Tiara Francis.
  • Process Gestures_Performing the Table.png
    Process Gestures_Performing the Table.png
    UMBC Dance Department students Samantha Siegel and Tiara Francis, using the table to explore power dynamics as a locus for conceptual performative gestures.
  • Housekeeping
    2018 TRT: 1:32 Single-Channel Video Installation 12' x 24.5' Password: clean Performers: Mandy Morrison, Tiara Francis, Sammantha Siegle In my most recent video and installation Housekeeping, I reference the slapstick comedy of silent films. In them, the protagonists are often working people, encountering circumstances that challenge their human limitations or undermine their efforts at keeping up with expectations. In Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, the assembly-line pace far outstrips the character’s ability to keep-up and adhere to what is required. In Housekeeping the protagonist is a middle-aged professional woman who is being challenged by youth, class and time itself. Seated placidly and alone in a hotel room, she is, at alternate moments, in situ with a pair of young hotel maids who are straightening her bedspread, beating her with brooms or mopping her naked body on a bathroom floor.
  • Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
  • Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    Housekeeping, 2018 (Video Still)
    The Hotel Maids trying to "Clean" and smooth out the aging "Guest".

Spooks

2021
Dimensions: Variable
Single channel Video Installation with Audio
Duration: 2:26 (loop)
 
In this single channel video piece, random GIF’s downloaded from the internet are inserted into photo stills of a distressed fence surrounding  a vacant lot. 
 
The GIF file is a MEME of connective tissue, replicated and widely shared through social media. As it has inadvertently become an ephemeral means of social bonding, operating within minuscule yet infinite moments of repetitive gestures, and gaffes, within them are hopes for  recognition through remunerative clicks, downloads, and widespread monetization. Along with the embedded GIF’s are the bifurcated text from the historian Timothy Snyder’s book, “The Road to Unfreedom”. This inserted text is the result of eliminating nearly all of the words from a page of the first chapter  in “The Road to Unfreedom”, almost Buddhist in its reflection upon the sanctity of the present moment of political and cultural polarization.

This work was exhibited at the Tashmnoo Springs Pumping Station in the group exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance" in  September of 2021. The Tashmoo Springs Pumping Station is a historic waterworks facility in on  Martha's Vineyard. The town stopped using the Tashmoo Spring facility as its primary water supply in 1971.  The building and surrounding land became listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.
 

  • Spooks
    2021 Dimensions: Variable Single channel Video Installation with Audio Duration: 2:26 (loop) In this single channel video piece, random GIF’s downloaded from the internet are inserted into photo stills of a distressed fence surrounding a vacant lot. The GIF file is a MEME of connective tissue, easily made, replicated and widely shared through social media. As it has inadvertently become an ephemeral means of social bonding, operating within minuscule yet infinite moments of repetitive gestures, and gaffes, within them are hoped for redemption and recognition through remunerative clicks, downloads, and widespread monetization. Along with the embedded GIF’s are the bifurcated text from the historian Timothy Snyder’s book, “The Road to Unfreedom”.
  • Installation View_1.jpg
    Installation View_1.jpg
    Installation view of "Spooks" (with video by Anna Sun Park) in exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance"
  • Installation View_2.jpg
    Installation View_2.jpg
    Installation view of "Spooks" (with video by Anna Sun Park) in exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance"
  • Installation View_4.jpg
    Installation View_4.jpg
    Side View of Installation "Spooks"
  • Installation_view_5.jpg
    Installation_view_5.jpg
    Installation view of "Spooks" (with video by Anna Sun Park) in exhibit "Microbiology of Circumstance"
  • Exterior View_6.jpg
    Exterior View_6.jpg
    The Tahsmoo Springs Pumping Station's exterior provided for a unique opportunity to display the video externally during evening hours.
  • Exterior View.jpg
    Exterior View.jpg
    The Tahsmoo Springs Pumping Station's exterior provided for a unique opportunity to display the video externally during evening hours.

Boxed

2017 

Boxed
Documentation/Photo Stills, 6.61” x 17.15”
Two-Channel Performative Video Installation with audio
(mapped projections on panels and boxes)
Dimensions: 10’ 6” x 37’ x 7’3”
TRT:02:25 (loop)

Performers: Mandy Morrison, Samantha Siegel, Tiara Francis
As the American proclivity of success and achievement is partially defined by ‘having a roof over one’s head’, living apart from this norm, segregates those who have neither and casts them as ‘disposable’. Just as unwanted furniture and empty boxes are left in the street for garbage pick-up, those who are unable to participate in consumerist class norms are viewed as unclean and -in turn- unworthy outcasts; victims of their corporeal existence. Unable to benefit from or participate in the ‘disruptive’ digital age, they make shelter out of cardboard and exist in the marginal cracks of exterior physical spaces.

This project was made possible with the cooperation and participation of UMBC Dance Department students.
 

 

  • Boxed
    2017
  • Boxed_(Installation_site).JPG
    Boxed_(Installation_site).JPG
    Installation architecture for video projections
  • US I-83.png
    US I-83.png
    Under/Overpass; site of unsheltered bodies encampments.
  • Boxed_Video Still.png
    Boxed_Video Still.png
    Process, Video Still, Body with architecture
  • Performative gestures.png
    Performative gestures.png
    Dance student Samantha Seigle generating performative gestures in preparation for video shoot.
  • Performative gestures.png
    Performative gestures.png
    Performative gestures in preparation for video shoot.
  • Video Still.png
    Video Still.png
    Video Still, performance gestures

Arcosanti

2012-2016
TRT: 11:00
4-channel Video Installation with Sound
9'x 23'

A reflective performative work, filmed at the sustainable community of the same name located in Arizona. In it I use physical (bodily) aural and textual expression as a conduit for exploration of the architect’s creative and personal attempt to integrate natural systems with intentional communal living.
In considering an alternative to the frenetic/wired pace of urban existence, I ventured to this community attracted by its premise, unique building structures, immersion in nature, and isolation from other communities.
The site is something of a relic of the ‘60’s and early 70’s, in which counter-cultural experiments in agriculture and urban living had gained currency. Embedded in counter- cultural idealism, the reality –as well as resistance– to seeing such ideas made manifest in the Western world is continually evolving. Yet it is emergent, and as all structures are built on thoughts, such concepts are continually being re-imagined.
While historically iconic and architecturally influential, Arcosanti’s initial premise –to be a self-sustaining community for up to five thousand people– remains largely theoretical. 
In my time there, a bodily reverence for the site and its playful architecture, coupled with poetic observations about the community experience set against the scenic natural backdrop, inform the textual overlays in the piece.

Made with support from the Wexner Center’s Artist Video Program, Columbus, OH

  • Arcosanti
    2016, 4:00 excerpt, TRT 11:00, 4-channel Video Installation, Dimensions variable Arcosanti is a projected experimental town with a molten bronze bell casting business in Yavapai County, central Arizona, 70 mi (110 km) north of Phoenix, at an elevation of 3,732 feet (1,130 meters). Its "arcology" concept was posited by the Italian-American architect, Paolo Soleri (1919–2013). He began construction in 1970, to demonstrate how urban conditions could be improved while minimizing the destructive impact on the earth. He taught and influenced generations of architects and urban designers who studied and worked with him there to build the proposed 'town.' In considering an alternative to the frenetic/wired pace of urban existence, I ventured to this intentional community attracted by its premise, unique building structures, immersion in nature, and isolation from other communities.
  • Arcosanti (4-channel Video Still)
    Arcosanti (4-channel Video Still)
    Still of 4-channel sequence focusing on aspects of the architectural environment
  • Arcosanti (4-channel Video Still)
    Arcosanti (4-channel Video Still)
    4-channel sequence with performative actions taking place in the community theater
  • Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Performative action taking place on the site's steps.
  • Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Performative action taking place on steps that form a portion of the roof for the theater (on the other side of the structure)
  • Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Arcosanti (Video Still)
    I found myself feeling awe at the sense of possibility present in this environment. It both inspires and suggests varying types of ideas about physicality.
  • Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Arcosanti (Video Still)
    Crouching

All the White I Am (Photo Series)

2013-16
During the winter of 2013-16, I worked at a remote recreation facility for the City of New York. We had a number of youth groups who used our digital facility  to surf the web, and print images of themselves  taken with  cell-phones as well as images of celebrities, downloaded from the web.

As they would often leave cast-off images in the printer I would pick-up what was left behind, and  consider the overlap in our worlds.  I would then combine them with a variety of other images; some from the surrounding local area, and some performative actions. These images are a sample of that experience. 

 

  • Marrow
    Marrow

    12 x 56"

    Photo collage

     

  • All the White I Am
    All the White I Am

    12 x 56"

    Photo collage

Videos from the Blue Sky Project (projects resulting from participatory residency)

2008-09

In the summer of 2008, I spent 6 weeks working with rural young people in northern Illinois at an innovative artist's residency, called Blue Sky Project. The residency, which hosted an international consortium of artists,  paired working artists with young people in the creation of new work.

During  my residency we focused our attention on creating  performative pieces that examined 'context'; what  spaces mean, what are the expectations within a space,  how do we feel in these spaces and how could one disrupt these expectations.

We had the use of various commercial spaces and the building and grounds of a local community college.
Young people chose the locations and created their own costumes for certain perfomative experiences.

Blue Sky ran from 2006-2012 and was located initially in Woodstock, Illinois north of Chicago before relocating to Dayton where it was affiliated with the University of Dayton  from  2009-12.


 

  • Flag, 2008
    Flag, 2008-09 Single-channel performative video TRT: 08:58 Participants from the Blue Sky Project Artist Residency, Woodstock Illinois Working with youth from the surrounding community and engaging with ideas about performance and the body-in-context, we chose to work in a college gymnasium as a site for exploration. Examining its competitive and nationalist implications, and through the use of simple props, a series of performative gestures yields subtle political interpretations about the meaning of colors, fabric and space. Made with the support of the Blue Sky Project Residence
  • Play
    2008, 3:20 (Two-Channel Video) Working collaboratively with youth as part of the Blue Sky Project we create handmade costumes that reference native American culture and the Elizabethan stage, and generate a series of intimate performances that flout the restrictions imposed by formal theater protocol.
  • Working in the Crystal Lake Theater
    Working in the Crystal Lake Theater
  • Play (Video Still)
    Play (Video Still)
  • Play (Production Still)
    Play (Production Still)
  • Sleep
    Participants from the Blue Sky Project Artist Residency, Woodstock Illinois Working with youth and engaging with ideas about performance and the body-in-context, we analyze the classroom as a site for physical exploration. Discussion revolves around the classroom as an environment with the potentiality for learning, distraction, boredom, or indoctrination. The site is turned into an impromptu slumber party, with the results recorded in video. An invite is issued for other residency participants to see the video and come to a classroom of overturned desks and chairs.
  • Sleep (Video Still)
    Sleep (Video Still)
  • Sleep (Production Still)
    Sleep (Production Still)

Live Performances: Users (2016), 100 Days (2014), Cake (2004)

2015/16
Users
,
Performance, Dixon Place, New York City
Duration: 42:00
Excerpt: 11:00

Writer/Diretor, Mandy Morrison, in collaboration with Lori Greene and Gabriella Dennery

Users is an interdisciplinary performance, that illuminates the perspectives of two women on opposite sides of the cultural divide; one a professional female who works in data analysis, and the other a working-class law enforcement employee in the prison system. Taking into account a specific time frame, this interwoven narrative, examines the experiences of two fictive characters as they move through daily life, reflecting on the past and looking at the present relevant to their circumstances. How they see their place in the world, relative to class and race, is highlighted by a sudden act of violence

2014
100 Days
Duration: 30:00

Performance
Lyons Recreational Site, Staten Island, NY
 
Participants: Angelo, M. Angelas, Terry Bennet, Gabriella Dennery, Rachel Marie Carson, John Foxell, Lori Greene
Artist/Facilitator: Mandy Morrison
Assistant Director/Social Media: Lauren Denitzio
 
 
100 Days, a spoken performance, was conceived to capture a diverse range of perspectives. Ever since Roosevelt pioneered the 100-day concept taking office during the Great Depression, it has been used by the U.S. media,  and scholars as a gauge of political success and activism. In the lives of ordinary people however, 100 days is an arbitrary timeframe that can demarcate either, an incremental changes in the flow of daily life or a dramatic shift in one’s personal landscape through unforeseen events. Through the mining of personal stories, this series of interwoven narratives, illuminates a range of insights taking into account a specific timeframe from each participant’s life, as a point of reference.

The performance was presented on December 7, 2014, and made with the support of the New York State Council on the Arts.

2004
Duration: 10:00 / 
Dixon Place/Chasama Performance Space, New York City
Performers:
Mandy Morrison
Kelly Kivland
Rebecca Davis
Nora Stevens

Text and Audio Design
Mandy Morrison

Set Design: 
Mathias Neumann

Video Effects:
Jeff Morey

Using the construct of Marie Antoinette' s stance (and purported quote) toward her peasant population, "Let them eat cake!",  I worked with collaborators to generate a multi-media performance loosely based on the facts of her life.

Some of the visuals were derived from 1960's pop culture;   which included a vintage album cover of a woman sitting poised in a cake ("Whipped Cream and Other Delights), as well as tracks ("A Taste of Honey") from the album as background audio. We also used a hair styles and matching waitress costumes to reflect the era.

The dancers perform  as angry waitresses who serve up real cake from from a tier of the Antoinette 'Dress" to audience members, as the cake-sitting 'Marie' quips facetiously about her pesky subordinate 'help'.
The  main character derides all who are below her royal  'station' and at the performance's end, the waitresses turn on their 'Mistress' and attack her with knives and destroying  the cake/dress she sits in.

 

  • Users
    2015-16 Pwerformance Duration: 11:00 (edited) TRT: 42:00 Dixon Place, New York City Mandy Morrison With Lori Green and Gabriella Dennery
  • Users, Documentation Still.jpg
    Users, Documentation Still.jpg
    Documentation Still: Mandy Morrison ands Lori Greene
  • Users (documentation still).jpg
    Users (documentation still).jpg
    Performance documentation still: Mandy Morrison and Lori Greene
  • 100 Days, a Performance Conceived and Directed by Mandy Morrison, December 7, 2014 (TRT 30:00)
    2014 December 7, 2014 Duration: 30:38 Community Participant Performance Lyons Recreational Facility, Staten Island, NY Participants: Angelo, M. Angelas, Terry Bennet, Gabriella Dennery, Rachel Marie Carson, John Foxell, Lori Greene Artist/Facilitator: Mandy Morrison Assistant Director/Social Media: Lauren Denitzio 100 Days, a spoken performance, was conceived to capture a diverse range of perspectives. Ever since Roosevelt pioneered the 100-day concept taking office during the Great Depression, it has been used by the U.S. media, and scholars as a gauge of political success and activism. In the lives of ordinary people however, 100 days is an arbitrary timeframe that can demarcate either, an incremental changes in the flow of daily life or a dramatic shift in one’s personal landscape through unforeseen events.
  • 100 Days 8.png
    100 Days 8.png
  • 100 Days 6.png
    100 Days 6.png
  • Performance still.png
    Performance still.png
  • Cake: Performers: Mandy Morrison, Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens
    Cake: Performers: Mandy Morrison, Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens
    Performers Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens serve cake to the audiance.
  • Cake: Performers: Mandy Morrison, Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens
    Cake: Performers: Mandy Morrison, Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens
    Cake: Performers: Mandy Morrison, Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis, Nora Stevens
  • Cake, Mandy Morrison
    Cake, 2004 at Chasama, New York City; A collaborative performance based on the life of Marie Antoinette. With Kelly Kivland. Rebecca Davis, Nora Stephens. Set Design by Mathias Neumann Video Effects: Jeff Morey

Initial Public Offering

2001-04
Durational Performance
3:00 (excerpt, performance documentation)

Participants
Kelly Kivland
Rebecca Davis
Nora Stevens

And with help from
the University of Minnesota's Art Department

Locations
Downtown Minneapolis (2001)
Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex Street Market, NYC (2004)
Outdoor plaza, Metropolitan Museum of Art (2003)

On three separate occasions, I did a performance piece titled “Initial Public Offering” to arouse questions from a public accustomed to seeing lavish corporate promotions of new products targeting them as potential consumers. I distributed promotional buttons with a logo and query: “Who Decides What Matters?”  The product being pitched to consumers­­–The Co-Dependent Suit– which were two connected orange jump-suits  such as those used in the prison system and maintenance industry- had no tangible use.

My interest was to generate dialogue about the relationship between capitalist output, and the values purportedly represented by such products. 

Originally commissioned  in 2001 by the University of Minnesota's Visiting Artist Program

  • IPO, Performance  2001 in Downtown Minneapolis
    IPO, Performance 2001 in Downtown Minneapolis
    Giving our schtick to passers-by about corporate America and our co-dependant relationship to its value system.
  • IPO, 2004 at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    IPO, 2004 at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    People go to Essex street market to buy unusual food from local vendors and the gallery provides an interesting contrast to the shopping invironment.
  • IPO, 2004  (Poster and images) at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    IPO, 2004 (Poster and images) at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    Performance images plus the poster that showed in the gallery advertising the Co-Dependant Suit.
  • IPO, 2004 at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    IPO, 2004 at Cuchifritos Gallery, Essex St. Market, NYC
    The performers, Kelly Kivland and Rebecca Davis were terrific at animating the idea of the 'suit'
  • IPO-Metropolitan Museum of Art
    IPO-Metropolitan Museum of Art
    The conversatins and questions from people who were coming out of the Met were quite varied.
  • Orange Jumpsuite (Resource file)
    Orange Jumpsuite (Resource file)
    I was drawn to these suits for this project because of their use in the culture.
  • Initial Public Offering Mandy Morrison / mandymachine
    At different locations over a 2 year period (Downtown Minneapolis, Cuchifritos Gallery NYC, and Metropolitan Museum, NYC) I created a collaborative performance piece titled Initial Public Offering to arouse questions from a public accustomed to seeing lavish corporate promotions of new products targeting them as potential consumers. The product was the "Co-Dependent Suit" questioning rugged individualism and its premise. The group distributed promotional buttons with a logo and query: Who Decides What Matters?
  • Initial Public Offering (Give-Away Buttons)
    Initial Public Offering (Give-Away Buttons)
    Buttons were given away to interested audience who watched the peformance who wanted a commemorative keepsake to remember the performance's message: "Who Decides What Matters?"