Standing In, 1987, multimedia performance

Lynn Book’s original multimedia performance work, “Standing In”, was included in “Performance Chicago”, a co-curated event by the Renaissance Society, University of Chicago and the State of Illinois Gallery. Book, along with two other performance artists, Hudson and James Grigsby, presented their work at Beacon Street Theater, Chicago in 1987. In this project Book, using feminist theoretical frameworks, highlighted themes of presence and absence by way of multiple plays on the idea of the stand-in – someone or something replacing something else. Book’s increasing interrogation of the problem of Woman as representation was finding form here, and later with greater nuance in 3 works that ensued: “Legacy”, “Physical Vision” and “Gorgeous Fever”. Her emerging years-long collaboration with experimental filmmaker Sharon Couzin, finds her in a rare appearance as performer. Couzin herself was standing in as a director/shooter, as well as a complexly gendered lecturer on poiesis (bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before). Simultaneously, Couzin was collaborating with Book to create a 16mm film entitled, “Bouquet”, which premiered at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Footage from this film was projected on the white toga Book wore here, and again in the performance, “Legacy”, which also ‘borrowed’ the ‘jazz singer number’ that Book lip synched to her recorded voice. E. Jay Sims, another collaborator and cohort across several projects from the time, also performed, as well as Werner Herterich as male stand-in for director of the performance, who was, of course, a woman (Book).

Credits:
Lynn Book, artist, director, performer, writer, co-composer, staging
Sharon Couzin, filmmaker, performer, writer
E. Jay Sims, performer
Lou Mallozzi, sound designer, co-composer
Lighting designer unknown