Performance-in-Place:
Hotline
by Aliza Shvarts
Call 866.696.0940 for Hotline,
open from Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 12am
to Saturday, February 6, 2021 at 11:59pm EST
Conversation between Aliza Shvarts and Sara Reisman
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
6 to 7:30pm EST
This event was held on Zoom
Image courtesy of Aliza Shvarts. [Image Description Top: A red glossy circle with the image of a telephone and the word “HOTLINE” in white. Below the red circle, the words “by Aliza Shvarts” are in grey font. Bottom: In this image are two hands and forearms covered in arm-length, black latex gloves crossed.]
Conceived in response to the invitation to participate in Performance-in-Place, Aliza Shvarts’ Hotline is an interactive performance that will be distributed over a voicemail tree. From sex hotlines, suicide crisis hotlines, psychic hotlines, to tip hotlines, the anonymous telephone call is a poignant example of intimacy without proximity. Shvarts appropriates this somewhat dated, faceless technology to consider what makes the line “hot." What kinds of things do we ask each other, confess to each other, or create with each other in the absence of an image—that is, when is our mediation absolute? What kind of connection does the face preclude and the voice allow? Building on Shvarts’ current work, which focuses on the power of testimony and the circulation of speech in the digital age, Hotline explores the voice as both a metonym of the body and metaphor for political agency. Beginning with a phone number, this asynchronous performance allows participants to choose from a set of options to advance a “choose your own adventure” type narrative. At the very end of the experience, participants have the option of leaving a message—which will eventually be made public as documentation for the performance. The phone number, released on Tuesday, September 1st, will be able to receive calls 24 hours a day through Saturday, February 6, 2021. On Tuesday, September 8, participants and audience joined Rubin Foundation Director Sara Reisman and Shvarts as they discussed excerpts from the new project. Hotline will also be a part of Shvarts’ Fellowship show at A.I.R. Gallery from Thursday, October 15 to Monday, November 16, in which there will be a physical installation of Hotline featuring documentation from the ongoing interactive performance.
Hotline International Callers: If the toll-free number does not work on your phone, try using Skype.
Event Access Information: This event included live ASL interpretation and captioning.
To read a transcript of the event, please click here.
Bio
Aliza Shvarts is an artist and theorist who takes a queer and feminist approach to reproductive labor and language. Her current work focuses on testimony and the circulation of speech in the digital age. She received her BA from Yale University and PhD in Performance Studies, NYU. Shvarts was a 2014 recipient of the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, a 2014-2015 Helena Rubinstein Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, a 2017 Critical Writing Fellow at Recess Art, and a Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2015-2019). She is currently a 2019-20 Fellow at A.I.R and a 2020 Artist Fellow at the National Arts Club. Her artwork been shown across Europe, Latin America, and the US at venues including the Tate Modern (London), Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA (Prague), the Athens Biennale, Universidad de los Andes (Bogota), Universidad de Chile, SculptureCenter (NYC), Participant Inc (NYC), LACE (Los Angeles), the Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), and Artspace (New Haven, CT). Current and upcoming solo exhibitions include Purported, currently up at Art in General, which surveys the last decade of her practice; and Potfuch, a new commission on view later this year at A.I.R. Her writing has been published in Whitechapel Documents in Contemporary Art: Practice, The Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, TDR/The Drama Review, Women & Performance, and The Brooklyn Rail. Awards include 2008 Lloyd Mifflin Prize for English at Yale, 2017 Franco Coli Dissertation Award from NYU, and 2019 Young Scholar Award from the International Association for Aesthetics. She has taught at NYU, Barnard College, Parsons School of Design, the Pratt Institute, and is currently full-time Faculty in the MA Contemporary Art program and Sotheby’s Institute of Art – New York. She has also been a guest commentator on MTV.