INSIDE/OUT

Profiles of A City
A project by Laura Barnett & Sandra Spannan

Contact: nycinsideout@aol.com
Press Representative: www.thekarpelgroup.com

THE CONCEPT - An Invitation to Look Within

As busy citizens of modern cities, it is our job to 'keep up,' to hurry from place to place. Instead of talking to the person next to us, we clutch mobile phones, headsets, and laptops. Instead of looking within, our collective gazes have been re-routed to the billboard, neon sign and kiosk. There is neither time nor space to reflect on our own private thoughts.

INSIDE/OUT is an invitation to pause, to meet one's fellow citizens, to look within. This invitation takes the form of an interactive, site-specific, free-of-charge window performance created by New York based artists Laura Barnett & Sandra Spannan.

In INSIDE/OUT, Spannan paints portraits of passersby and Barnett invites them to confide their deepest secrets. Thus far, INSIDE/OUT has been performed in New York and Berlin.

INSIDE/OUT is an ever-changing script, different each day it is performed. INSIDE/OUT is a vibrant dialogue between the artists and pedestrians; it provokes and inspires.

Thousands of New Yorkers and Berliners have participated in INSIDE/OUT, resulting in profiles of these two cities in their own words and images. Italy, with its rich history of portraiture and historic relationship to the act of confession, is an ideal place for performance.

PROJECT HISTORY and FUTURE PLANS

INSIDE/OUT represents the first collaboration between the artists from NYC (Barnett) and Germany (Spannan).

The project debuted as two separate entities (pieceportraits and Secret Confession Box) at the groundbreaking experimental chashama Theater (www.chashama.org) in the heart of Times Square, part of Windows on 42nd Street Festival of Site-Specific Art. Barnett was later invited to D.U.M.B.O. Art Center's Art Under the Bridge Festival (www.dumboartscenter.org); Spannan was included in Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's (www.lmcc.net) 'Looking In' series near the World Trade Center site. In each diverse venue - NYC's commercial crossroads, a gallery district, and the city's financial center - the projects were wildly successful. In early 2005, they decided to collaborate and in August 2005, they had an extended performance in Berlin's Galerie Tristesse.

In May 2006, INSIDE/OUT will be featured in a windows on West 44th Street in the heart of the Broadway Theater District, directly across the street from the famous Belasco Theater where Denzel Washington recently performed in Julius Caesar. Theatrical publicists The Karpel Group (www.thekarpelgroup.com) are representing the artists for this venue.

After touring a third country in the summer of 2006, they will create a book website of the series

INSIDE/OUT - THE STRUCTURE - PORTRAITS and SECRETS

The artists perform in a single storefront window; each performance is at least six hours long. The endurance aspect of the performance is key to its structure. The artists are generally in residence for at least a month, thereby becoming part of the neighborhood and community. Other times, the window functions as an installation with a changing collage of words and images. The gallery space behind the window is a show of selected portraits and secrets from previous performances.

PORTRAITS (Spannan)
Imagine an angel looking at you, only at you, someone who can really see you… then suddenly she appears. The artist is in the window dressed in white, an otherworldly figure. In front of her is a painter's palette. Throughout the day, she paints portraits of pedestrians, realistically drawn and rendered. As artist and subject silently agree to collaborate, there is curiosity on both sides. The chance encounter results in moments of great intimacy between painter and subject. The street audience has the opportunity to witness the painting; they, too, have taken a moment to pause. After approximately 20 minutes, the finished portrait is placed on the window glass. The subjects are now looking out; the pedestrians view a streetscape of faces, faces they might pass by every day though never really look at.

SECRETS (Barnett)
Secrets. Confessions. Little shames. Everyone has them. This project challenges passersby to 'air their dirty laundry,' and anonymously share their deepest secrets. The artist is in the window, her long white dress and apron a symbol of cleanliness and purity. On a clothesline above her are wooden pins from which hang envelopes, each stamped 'Secret' in red ink. Outside the window are pens and transparent paper. Passersby are invited to write a secret and seal it in an envelope. After a safe passage of time (the confidentiality of each participant is 100% guaranteed!) the artist removes a secret and hangs it up - like laundry left to dry. Stories, hopes, dreams - all in different handwriting - transform the empty window glass; the artist has become sheathed by a mural of the city's inner thoughts.

VISUALS

Sandra and Laura are cocooned in a window of white. At the beginning of each performance, the window glass is empty. The costumes, designed by Kate Hamilton consist of a long white skirt and white blouse, covered by a white, semi-transparent apron. Sandra wears angel wings and Laura's clothes are accented with wooden clothespins. The apron shape was inspired by the garment of a 19th century laundress combined with a suggestion of the angelic weightlessness. Each costume apron has over 15 yards of wire embedded in tucks and seams so the performers can shape the chiffon garments into frozen-in-time, gravity-less shapes, suggesting a certain timelessness and ethereal quality. As a utilitarian garment, the apron also provides pockets for tools - a rubber stamp, scissors, paintbrush, tape - thereby freeing the performer's hands.

The transparency of the fabric echoes the storefront window that separates the performers from the viewers on the street, glass that simultaneously provides protection and exposure.

The overall impression is both arresting, beautifully and romantically 'feminine' and suggestive of service, both practical and other-worldly.

White against white in the window box allows the performers to be a true blank slate, ready and willing for each new 'story' that is presented with each passerby.

IN CONCLUSION

INSIDE/OUT is performance art created for the public-at-large. It is a visually arresting and emotionally affecting piece that implicates and is accessible to all who pass by. INSIDE/OUT is not about passive spectatorship, but rather about engagement and participation - it connects the participants on the street, bringing an element of humanity to the alienating landscape of everyday urban life. It is about communication: communication that transpires between artist and audience, communication among audience members and communication with oneself. As the portraits and secrets from both Berlin and New York demonstrate, INSIDE/OUT touches people of all ages, cultures and backgrounds.

chashama is a non-profit arts organization that provides opportunities for performing and visual artists. We support the development of art by awarding grants, producing shows and providing subsidized studio, rehearsal and performance space. Since 1995, we have provided artists with a home and the support resources necessary to presentand create art that engages the community of New York.

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