
The video Predictable marks the initiation of a one-sided dialogue series born during the pandemic when live performances were put on hold and my audience turned into a virtual entity. Attempting to revitalize the performance event, I began to film myself. The camera became my audience. What was once a live performance turned into a recorded one, and thus, I changed my medium.
The work explores the unrestrained human desire for control, particularly in artists. A creator wants to control his audience, a performer wants to control her viewers, and each of us, at times, would have wished to control those around us. Art uses manipulations to control the viewer. These attempts of control are often disguised as freedom. The work dissects the mechanism of this manipulation, exposes its operation, and uses it on the viewer.
How does it work?
I declare my intent to perform an action - 'I am going to do this and that.'
followed by my prediction of the audience's reaction - 'You will feel this and that.'
I then perform the action, asking afterward, 'Did you feel what I said you would?'
The core tension of the work persists in the gaps between statements and actions, expectations and execution, as well as within the viewer's private experience in front of the screen — the fourth wall of the recorded performance. The gaze from both sides of the screen, the mutual search for eye contact, touches on the dominance of screens in our lives. The tragedy of our times unfolds as human communication, relationships, and love are confined within glass-shielded boxes. The work is a contemporary diorama where people crave eye contact, but the eyes looking at them reflect a different reality —the beams of light, the camera lens, the artifice of art.
Predictable (2021)
Video work, 32:23 min.
Directed, written, and performed by Sharon Zuckerman Weiser
Camera: Uri Zamir