EVIDENTIARY BODIES

Evidentiary Bodies, the performance
Microscope Gallery & The Whitney Museum of American Art
October & November, 2016

Armed with portable, fixed and live projectors and cameras, the artist moves about the space projecting video onto inflated balloons, photographic prints, x-ray scans of her own body, as well as onto the bodies of the audience members. One person extends to many and many people extend to one, challenging the concept of the proscenium screen and the stable audience. The performance also includes live sound by Scott Norman Johnson on cello.

Of the performance, Hammer wrote:

“Much of my environment has been medicalized for the last twelve years as I’ve lived with ovarian cancer.  I invited the public to enter this hospital space by donning OR booties and walking through multiple screenings made of hanging X-rays.

CANCER IS NOT A BATTLE.
CANCER IS A DISEASE.
THERE IS NOT A WAR ON CANCER.
THERE IS CONCENTRATED RESEARCH.
CANCER HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE MILITARY.
MILITARY LANGUAGE IS MISLEADING AND WRONG.
THERE ARE ABERRANT CELLS NOT DEADLY FOES.

Live cello, multiple projects of text and image onto walls, photographs, bodies, and balloons defined this performance of my commitment to living a vital life with this disease.  Six attendants assisted in their white lab coats.  At the end, I stood on the rotary projector table with a small handheld projector as I was turned 360 degrees projecting an image of my naked body walking through hand painted 16mm film.