I produced Broken Tool: Reperformance as a remake of a video my sister created with her primatology lab. Both versions show a human and a gorilla coming into conflict over a stick tool the human uses to extract termites from a fake termite mound. In the original experimental context, chimpanzees sip juice while watching the video, and the primatologists track their eye movements in an effort to study object permanence and surprise reactions. I immediately saw the original video as performance art and wanted to re-create it for a human audience. I made two props for the re-performance that persist as sculptural art objects: a termite mound and a blanket.
Thank you to Beth Stafford Laird, Matt DaSilva, and Michael Dispensa for their peerless (re)performances.
