WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT ME

What We Talk About When We Talk About Me was made in response to a prompt from curator Chanel Kim to create a durational performance work for the opening of the Ephemeral Memorable exhibition presented by MURMUR at Mammal Gallery.

Taking its title from Raymond Carver’s famous short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” in this piece I invited one person at a time to share a drink and a conversation with me, however the only topic on conversation would be me.

Each participant was provided with a list of rules; they were allowed to spend as much or as little time with me as they would like and we could talk about any topic, as long as that topic was myself. In keeping with the exhibition’s theme of ephemerality, none of these conversations were documented.

There’s a tension that exists in the piece between the absurdity of the narcissistic gesture and my commitment to remaining completely present and open to whatever questions asked by the “audience”.