NYAB Event - Rachel Mason “Filibuster”

Rachel Mason “Filibuster”

Envoy Enterprises (87 Rivington St.)

This event has ended.

The filibuster, a tactic for delaying a legislative vote by talking nonstop, has been around since Ancient Rome. In the past three months it has been used twice in the United States to disrupt legislative proceedings. Most recently, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis successfully spoke for 11 straight hours to fight massive changes to the state’s abortion laws. In March, in the U.S. Senate, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul conducted a 13hour filibuster against the nomination of John Brennan as director of the CIA to showcase opposition to President Obama’s drone strike policy.

In her new video work Filibuster, Rachel Mason performs the entirety of Rand Paul’s filibuster, lip synching to the voices in the Senate employing her signature character FutureClown.

For all 13 hours, Mason mouths the words of Senator Paul as well as the other senators whose voices are raised during the filibuster proceedings. In Filibuster, Mason seeks to understand the experience of being in the Senate and also what it feels like to participate in a challenge from within. Highlighting the absurdity of present day politics, Mason also attempts to directly enter the political theater by uploading each hour of her 13 hour video in the exact same way the Senator does in a single Youtube playlist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBIe5NhkGw& list=PLLQQJBoN1bsUrPBgy3on4cRM8Gv1j15

Marking its screening debut, Mason’s Filibuster will be presented in its entirety, as a single channel video projection in the performance space of envoy enterprises’s lower level from July 12August 2, 2013. The artist will present a special one hour live recreation on Wednesday evening July 24.

Filibuster is curated by Tim Goossens

Rachel Mason (1978) is from Los Angeles, California. She has presented work at the Queens Museum, Detroit Museum of Contemporary Art, Whitney Museum, School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Henry Gallery in Seattle, James Gallery at CUNY, University Art Museum in Buffalo, Sculpture Center, Hessel Museum of Art at Bard and Occidental College, Kunsthalle Zurich, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, The New Museum, Park Avenue Armory, Art in General, La Mama, Galapagos, Dixon Place, and Empac Center for Performance in Troy. Mason frequently performs in rock venues as well as in public places unannounced. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice, Flash Art, Art in America, Art News, and Artforum. Mason has recorded 10 albums of songs including most recently with her band, Little Band of Sailors, and her musical feature film, The Lives of Hamilton Fish, will premiere in the U.S. in 2013.