Strip, San Francisco, CA, August, 2003
The tie (and everything else) came off during amateur night at the Knob Hill Theater (male strip club) in San Francisco. Part of the Service Series.
In my continuing effort to pare down the technical aspects of my pieces I decided to make no modifications to article of clothing that was being examined. Strip was simply about the tie coming off. The hardest decision that I had to make before I did this piece was to figure out what kind of underwear this character would wear and what song he would dance to. Solution: ladies, purple, lace panties and Copacabana by Barry Manilow. Yes, there are pictures of the whole performance. Perhaps someday I will post them.
This is one of the diptyches that I created to deconstruct the uniform that I was wearing in many of my performance pieces from 1999-2002 in which I was taking on the role of a service person or busboy. There are seven diptyches in all that deconstruct my black shoes, black bag, black socks, black pants, black belt, white shirt and black tie. 2002-2004.
