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
What is that artist lady talking about? a post by Hector
Yes—we’ll be at the Waffle Shop on Friday but there is NO WAY I am doing those weird things she mentioned in that last post. Acting out craigslist monologues? The hashtag thing? Forcing me to get onstage and have a talk show? That’s no way to treat a dummy with my condition.
She makes it seem like I am ALL TALK and NO ACTION. When I go out on the town, I want to do kareoke! I wanna dance!
Dear fairy godmother, please, PLEASE make it so I don’t have to do artsy-fartsy bullshit performance things. It’s not just unpleasant for me, but think about the audience. They’ll get indigestion trying to figure out what the heck is going on while eating waffles!
Uh-oh. Gotta run. I hear footsteps! See you at the Waffle Shop this Friday Night (June 10th) at midnight for my/The Hector Can’t Talk Talk Show.
Artist T. Foley Kicks Off New Art Project at Pittsburgh’s Waffle Shop
The HECTOR CAN’T TALK Talk Show
“The Waffle Shop’s first talk show hosted by a ventriloquist dummy who’s reticent to perform in public.”
The HECTOR CAN’T TALK Talk Show features Pittsburgher T. Foley as the interpreter for a ventriloquist dummy who wants his own talk show, but is reluctant to perform in public. Foley is an artist already known for “throwing voices” via her cell-phone based public art project, Locally Toned (www.locallytoned.org). At midnight on Friday June 10th at the Waffle Shop in East Liberty, the artist will lend her ear and voice to Hector, helping him to get his start show business (while she mines content for new artworks).
Public participation will be encouraged during the one-hour show, en-restaurant and online, to crowdsource creative content for a new series of videos about issues of voice (to be later enacted by Foley and the dummy in a studio setting). The online audience will be invited to help script a video short entitled VENTWITTOQUISMs, by tweeting verbal responses to hashtags issued by Hector on various themes. The live audience will be prompted to participate on stage, as guests, helping the artist and the dummy prepare dramaturgy for STAND UP (a video featuring monologues poached from Craigslist personal ads). Select content developed within The HECTOR CAN’T TALK Talk Show will appear as part of Foley’s contribution to the Gertrude’s Lot exhibition in September at the Andy Warhol Museum curated by Eric Shiner (part of the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial).
*Participate in the project (or follow the dummy) at twitter.com/ventwittoquisms.
