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related info › www.laurenargo.com › www.myspace.com/laurenargo

other past exhibitions › Mikhail Baryshnikov: Dominican Moves › Dan Dutton: Ballads of the Barefoot Mind › Finding Family › Marvin Francis: Prison's Paper Trail › Anthony Goicolea: Ramp › Ilse Haider: Selected Works 1997-2002 › Hybridity › Life as Art › Looking Now › Past Highlights › Marc Swanson: Beginning to See the Light › Through the Rabbit Hole › John Waters: Unwatchable Series

Life as Art: Live Art Installation

Lauren Argo
June 4 – June 24, 2006
the enclosed window space at 21c Museum Hotel’s restaurant,
Proof on Main

For 21 days (June 4-June 24), Lexington, KY based installation artist Lauren Argo lived in an enclosed window space at 21c Museum Hotel’s restaurant, Proof on Main, at 702 W. Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky. With exception of bathroom and shower breaks, Argo only used a privacy curtain for changing. Virtually every aspect of her life on public display behind a glass wall in an 8 x 4 ½ x 12 space. Argo's installation was set in a small space filled with a few everyday living commodities and artistic materials. At the start of the performance, the back wall was blank to serve as a canvas for the piece. This wall was filled with collage throughout the weeks by the artist's inspirations and reactions to the experience. 

Those who were unable to view the installation on-site were welcome to watch live, online, on this site.

Life As Art: Artist's Statement 4 June 2006

It consumes me, my thoughts, my actions, my being.  Perhaps the questions keep me awake, wide-eyed in the dark because I have never truly been on display.  There is always an entrance and exit to make, giving bookends to the burlesque of “being”.  As an actor I am completely aware at all times when I am being watched.  I feel the sensation of eyes on me and my moves and reactions become conscious and precise.

In the bathroom mirror I make up myself for my own amusement: stare, stretch, frown, kiss.  Although I feel totally and completely alone, I am still performing for the mirror image of myself. Do we every stop performing, even for ourselves?  How can anyone on display truly live without performing? 

Webster’s Dictionary says that a performer is defined as someone giving a public presentation.  In that case, when an audience is present, the artist becomes a performer.

By exploring the ideas of public and private, reality and presentation, observer and performer, I am trying to find out if one can exist without the other.  Because the window insures that the artist is never without the possibility of an audience, can the artist ever be in a state of living and not performing?  The project’s purpose is to present private life in a public space and naturally express the experience that comes under such circumstances through performance.

After the performance, the back wall will become the physical representation of the experience.

About the Artist

Lauren Argo is originally from Cynthiana, Kentucky and is a Gaines Fellow Alumnus with a Bachelor of Arts in Theater from the University of Kentucky. Lauren's installations includes Will I Be Pretty?, Who I am and Who I am Not, Fingerprints (University of Kentucky), METTA (Philadelphia Fringe Festival), Compartmental Memory (Lexington's Downtown Arts Center, Cincinnati Fringe Festival), Inventing Beauty (2005 Kentucky Women's Writers Conference), One Of Everything: performing their words (2006 Kentucky Women's Writers Conference). Lauren's directing credits include Sure Thing(Balagula Theatre), assisting Benny Sato Ambush with A.M. Sunday (Actor's Guild of Lexington) Love Poem #98, The Quest for the Black Amulet, and Belle Breezing (University of Kentucky). Her acting credits include Margrethe in Copenhagen (Balagula Theatre), Surprise Theatre: Time Flies, Degas Cest Moi, Universal Language (Balagula Theatre) Rita in Prelude To A Kiss (Studio Players, Lexington), Mother Ghost in the world premier of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce (Singletary Center for the Arts), Hilton in Robin Hood (The Lexington Shakespeare Festival), and numerous productions at the University of Kentucky including Come Back To the Five Jimmy Dean (Sissy), The Glory of Living (Carol), and As You Like It (Celia). Lauren has been awarded two Oswald Research and Creativity Grants and the James W. Rogers Playwriting Award for her play, The Noise In the Room: based on the Diaries of Carolyn Taylor that was produced as a University of Kentucky Main stage Production in 2005. She currently lives in Lexington as a member of the Balagula Theatre group and plans to attend graduate school for Installation/Performance Studies.

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