We have been working collaboratively since 1998 and consider an interactive process our most vital medium. Our performance work centers primarily at the interface of the body and the digital. Our object-based work explores mimesis, transformation, consumption and waste – most often in the form of sculptural collage and painting. Regardless of the medium, we tend to create inside long-term durational performance pieces* that each produce their own, independent bodies of work (what we term “micro-projects”).
Our current practice investigates and relays our experiences with public/live art as it concerns issues of identity and truth within the artist-audience relationship, the body as art object, and the practice of art as an exploration and critique of everyday life. We continue to work in a variety of media at the intersections of net.art, video, performance and painting.
*
From December 2005 – May 2008, we performed being: paul and kate, constructing ourselves as a scientist and a philosopher focused on influencing personal identity through the isolation and control of fundamental daily variables. It was during this time that we began to think of our work in terms of “perpetual performance,” as we were directly engaging people in a variety of public settings including an evangelical church, a public library, a contemporary art gallery and our neighborhood streets.
From May 2008 – May 2009, we performed the New American Cowboy Project under the names Beauregard and Lily Mae Sage, a construction that assumed the outward appearance of an American icon: the cowboy. Using our bodies as catalysts, we soon found ourselves regularly engaged in conversations about America: what it means to be patriotic, what the cowboy as symbol represents, what we as Americans must do to transition successfully and meaningfully into the future.
During this time, we lived illegally and without privacy in a 200 square foot space at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We were literally performing for an audience (some aware and others unaware) at all times. This continued to push our ideas about identity, perpetual performance, and social sculpture as experimental mechanisms within our art/life. In August 2009, we entered/opened Fishbowl, an experimental, live/work project space located in a storefront of the Tri-Taylor neighborhood of Chicago. During this time, we performed an ongoing live work entitled Apprehending the Everyday, where the hours of our daily activities (eating breakfast, taking a nap, etc.) are posted and each of our actions are available for public observation and consumption.
In August 2010, we left Chicago for the fountain strewn pastures of Kansas City, MO. We are currently living, working and teaching there. In August 2010, we started writing a column entitle Art + Sex - available at The Faster Times and Ovi Magazine. More writing is sure to come.
