Itziar Barrio. The Perils of Obedience

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Inspired by social psychologistStanley Milgram's controversial1961 experiments on obedience, PERILS

confronts established rules and constructed situations. An analysis of seduction of power, the work cultivates conditions for unscripted consequences to probe codes and limits of film, performance, sculpture, and installation. Beginning in Bilbao in 2010 as THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE (- 1), then consequently staged as Casting and Rehearsal — THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE  and Casting TPO, the project so far has been carried out in the guise of a film set within the structure of a theater. Now, after casting and rehearsing in a black box, the project occupies a new container, its “final scene,” cited in a gallery space.

Following three videotaped “open rehearsals” at PARTICIPANT INC on May 25, 28 and 29, the scripted environment of the set will become the site for an exhibition of multiple sculptural elements that reveal underlying structures of display — sculptures as bodies, hooks, pedestals, and ubiquitous manufactured objects. The pairing of these objects and lingering film mechanisms reveal a lexicon and grammar comprising the field of operations of this time-based project. An instigation of sculptural forms derived from mass- produced objects, particularly the iconic JEFF IKEA folding chair from which the trapezoidal shapes in the exhibition are derived, expands upon the conditions given by objects. The combined endeavors constitute research, performative and sculptural, into factors of individual agency and decision-making.

Directed by Charlotte Brathwaite, with dramaturge by Anne Erbe, THE PERILS OF OBEDIENCE casts performers Prema Cruz, Kelly Haran, Miriam A. Hyman and Tanisha Thompson within parameters both fictional and non-fictional as audiences witness a performance and the making of a film. Designating the public as voyeurs of the creative process, the project analyzes its form in the process of constructing it.