Kathleen McDermott and Monica Duncan
(2022)
1 hour
Performance: Led Jackets
“How it Slips”, a collaboration between Monica Duncan and Kathleen McDermott, is an improvisational performance in public space. A lone performer discreetly wears a long, closed coat. Without announcement, they begin a process of choreographed revealing. As they open their coat, a strong beam of light emerges from ultra-bright leds sewn into a reflective lining. The action is a surreal appropriation of a gesture of violent revealing (flashing) and choreographed seduction (stripping) and a consideration of how femme and queer identifying bodies reveal and conceal themselves in public spaces––a careful choreography of signals and signs. As a self-contained light source, they merge body and utility in a way that is both practical and visually absurd, as the very form of their body is effaced by light.