Mara Ravins

 STATIC INTERFERENCE

Performed by Mara Ravins and Caroline Mardon (Static Interference) at Cafe Concert performance space on Yonge St. below Adelaide on the night of March 19, 1982, 45 minutes, followed by bands Sledgehammer Pie and Dagmar.

This performance explored one’s self definition in relation to objects.

Plastic clothes lines were attached to our limbs and looped over ceiling pipes. with numerous objects attached to the other end such as a radio, easy bake oven, dead chicken in an evening gown, a bathtub. Each gesture would trigger the movement of the whole set in a battle of weight and control.

The two of us were attached by a white umbilical cord. We moved from our separate, absurd, domestic rituals into a simultaneous monologue about the “real thing”, indulging in a spontaneous showering of Coca Cola. In a desperate attempt to get at an object, lit above the head of the audience, we sent the whole set cascading down as we cut our ropes. Amidst a field of broken household objects, we digressed to abusing each other as objects, ie. a sink, a toilet, until we finally cut the umbilical cord. Caroline was put in a garbage bag. Mara retired to an armchair, put a TV set on her head and relaxed to the orders coming from a tape recorder.