Socially mediated ventriloquism--a series of live and recorded performances featuring artist T. Foley and Hector the Dummy.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Slide show from The Dummy Is Present performance at Clarion University—April 17, 2012.
Images from the January 6, 2012 performance of The Dummy Is Present at The Andy Warhol Museum! Thanks to photographer Anna Lee-Fields for most of these images. The set also features screen-capture images from the ChatRoulette performance.
Check out a clip from the video, On Display, which travels to Franklin Street Works in Stamford, CT. It’s been included in the exhibition Heavy Rotation (February 24-March 16, 2012).
About the video:
Hector the Dummy gives voice to otherwise disembodied Internet confessionals in monologues based on thousands of published men seeking women ads on craigslist. Performing the scenarios in mundane personal settings featured in posters’ photographs, artist T. Foley animates a range of masculine display-attempts that vie to attract the attention of women online.
The video is part of a series of live and recorded performances featuring T. Foley and Hector the Dummy. In this “body” of work, the artist makes use of the original virtual being, a ventriloquist dummy, to speak to the ways individuals represent themselves online.
If you want to understand the school of thought or philosophy behind our work, you should watch this gentleman’s lecture on Relational Aesthetics.
Yours truly, Hector
.
While he was at the Andy Warhol Museum, Hector received a post card from someone claiming to be his mother!
Read the recent article in Pittsburgh’s City Paper about T. Foley and Hector. Story by Amy Kuhre; photos by Heather Mull.
From the live performance, The Dummy Is Present, on ChatRoulette on Friday January 6, 2012 at The Andy Warhol Museum. Artist T. Foley operates Hector the Dummy and the wonderful Jen Melvin assists. Thanks also to Scott Davidoff, Brad Heiple, Eric Shiner, Anna Lee-Fields and Carl Cimini for their assistance leading up to and during the performance.
Join us for a live performance of The Dummy Is Present at The Andy Warhol Museum on Friday January 6 at 7 pm.
In this re-interpretation of Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, 2010, random visitors to the Web site Chatroulette* may sit silently (or not) across from Hector the Dummy and the audience at The Warhol Theater, for a duration of their choosing.
In her performance, Foley manipulates the dummy on Chatroulette, and searches for unwitting partners online. Moving the action from the gallery space to the big screen (via projection), she invites the live audience to participate, magnifying transitory online exchanges, and taking spectators to a wholly unpredictable place.
*Chatroulette is a website that pairs strangers from around the world together for webcam-based conversations. Visitors to the website begin an online chat (video, audio and text) with another visitor who is chosen at random. At any point, either user may leave the current chat by initiating another random connection.
PLEASE NOTE: Due to the nature of the Chatroulette.com, adult content may appear (onscreen) during the performance.
Mail call for Hector! The Andy Warhol Museum received a very unusual postcard addressed to him (12/12/2011).
