This is a free durational analog performance for TAP Grad Conference, Contact: Performing Proximity.
This project is a collaboration between Elizabeth Schiffler and Sarah Guilbault who have met several times virtually, but whose only physical encounters have been through the post. The duo has been thinking through the intimacy that gets pressed into the paper, across mail systems, and between letter-writer and reader.
In order to incorporate physical touch, we invite you to sign up and receive a piece of mail from us.*
Let’s be in touch.
*One letter per household, international letters OK! Capped at 100 letters--first come, first served.
Let's Be In Touch - SoundCloud file
Sarah Guilbault is a performer and scholar primarily following the possibilities of letters and other ghostly encounters. She lives in New York City with her roommate, a 1952 Smith Corona typewriter and an impossibly small dachshund. She is pursuing an MA in Performance Studies at New York University.
Sarah will also present a paper this week titled – Touch and Go: epistolary hauntings and shared affect.
Elizabeth Schiffler is pursuing a PhD in Performance Studies at UCLA, with an emphasis on performance, new materialism, food studies, and multispecies and posthuman theories. The inaugural Artist in Residence at the Pacific Science Center, with residences and video art screenings along the West Coast, her work sifts through the relationships and crossings between food and performance. Elizabeth served on the Performance Committee for the Center for Performance Studies Conference.
Special thanks to Levi Gillis for recording and mixing