Look Back - and to begin with, 1986, multimedia performance

“Look Back – and to begin with” was an original multimedia performance work by Lynn Book that was presented at Randolph Street Gallery in November, 1986. Book’s characteristic investment in the creation of images and inventive physicality was intact, and a new emphasis on voice was emerging in this approximately 45-minute work. She took up themes of time and memory, through symbolic and evocative phrases, inventing an inner logic of connections through vignettes (reciting a text she keeps forgetting inside a suspended picture frame) and object interaction (a toy organ whose loose keys sounded while Book moved and swayed with it in the darkness). Undercurrents of research included Book’s increasing interest in the status of the feminine within patriarchal culture from both political as well as psychoanalytic orientations. At the same time Book was drawing from other literary texts including Gertrude Stein’s “How to Be an American” and the 1920s satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, “Those Barren Leaves”. It was through the making of this performance that Book developed a significant practice that sustained over several decades - the audio journal - through which she theorized and practiced what became a practicable philosophy she termed, “voicing bodies”. This collection includes a short edited video work, shot and edited by Dave Jones and Suzie Silver, pages from the Huxley book (the only text used during the performance), performance development notes, structuration and cue documents, program and Randolph Street Gallery venue brochure.

Credits:
Lynn Book, artist, choreographer, director, composer, performer
Carrie Staffaucher, performer ‘double’
Luke Dohner, stagehand-performer
Michael Riley, stagehand-performer

Performance Date:
November, 1986, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago