Performance
Undo Project Space, 511 West 20th Street NY, New York
2017-2020
Performance + Installation
2016
Gallery TPW, Toronto
Kobayashi presents a performance and exhibition based on two audio spools hidden inside an obsolete wire recorder purchased at an estate sale. The recordings capture the voices of a New York family spanning 1952 to 1954. The narrative contained in the recording is a puzzle peppered with fragmented and overlapping dialogue, a charming living room drama rich with the eccentricities of family dynamics performed for the tape recorder. Decoding the document and using it as both soundtrack and inspiration, Kobayashi creates a new installation containing videos, drawings and book works that reimagine the events, characters, and references from the recording Over several performances, an intimate audience is privy to a script ‘read through’ where Kobayashi acts as both director and performer, contextualizing the recording with her research (and imagination) and tangentially exploring character’s personal histories — from the Ivy League to the pornographic. In Kobayashi’s practice, “personal histories get farther from fact as we learn to tell a better story.” Say Something Bunny! plays with what authentic memory is, preserving narrative details from source material and fictionalizing the rest.
Say Something Bunny! in Working in the Theatre: Documentary Theatre.