Ann Hamilton, Resident Artist Lecture 1993

Ann Hamilton presents slides of performance work from her “toothpick suit” made in graduate school at Yale, and additional work involving the body (her own and others), in various situations which relate the animate and the inanimate. Hamilton reflects on the surprises that came out of the work, such as the discovery that situations she had envisioned as sensual were closer to torture for friends who performed in the work for or with her. This led to increasingly complex, labor intensive installations which Hamilton wants simplified in order to engage the viewer by various means (the body and the senses) other than language, and to find ways to express her ideas concerning consumption and economies without being part of the problem.