Situating her work in public spaces such as movie theatres, bank vestibules and newsrooms, multimedia and performance artist Liz Magic Laser explores how politics, psychology and technology affect human instincts. Often collaborating with actors, doctors, political strategists, motorcycle gang members and her own audience, Lazer’s practice echoes the concept of epic theatre coined by Bertolt Brecht. In the project I Feel Your Pain (2011), actors were conducting staged conversations with the audience in the movie theatre. The actors’ dialogues were appropriated from speeches and exchanges made by politicians and were adapted by Laser to reveal the theatricality of her source material, resembling domestic dispute, and blending public and private lives. The artist’s focus on theatrical tactics, and questions of power dynamics inherent in performativity produces provocative and engaging scripted performances that reveal the psychological underpinnings that operate in corporate and political cultures.
Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...
