Elizabeth Folk

2014-2015

Giant felt hotdog, chairs, sound

(play video below to hear excerpts of soundtrack)

2015, 2016 

Collaboration with Ally Bortolazzo 

Performance with movement and competition (attach the hairy ping pong balls to the blowing fan). Aging, competition, gender, sexuality, expectations, waiting, bullying, desire ...

2013

Site specific performance/installation. 

-Upon entry, I greet visitors and asked to remove their shoes, sit in a small blue chair, and to gaze at their reflection in a hand mirror.

-Visitors are interviewed as they gaze at themselves in the mirror, and their feet are measured with a Brannock device.

-Their information is recorded in red ink on a section from last week's newspaper.

-Their information/the newspaper is shredded and added to the accumulating piles of shredded newspaper and the information of those who have gone before them.

-Participants are invited further into the installation where I am creating sugar cubes with my saliva, sugar, and spices (for color and health benefits) and drying them in the desert sun. 

-Participants are offered a sugar cube, water, aromatherapy, a listening ear, or cuddle therapy. They may stay as long as they like.

*All photos by Elliot Lessing unless indicated.

Performed at The Famliar Unfamiliar exhibition in Wonder Valley, CA organized by LA-based artist collective, Manual History Machines. 

2014, performance

Performers: Elizabeth Folk (creator, producer, director), Ally Bortolazzo, Rhyianna Chatta, and Charles Starr

2012, mixed media installation with sound (muffled recordings of speech therapy lessons emitted from interior of tent)

it couldn’t be any worse or get any better examines communication and revolution. I am interested in the function of language during times of radical social change and protest. I think most of us would agree with Leonard Peltier’s statement that “silence is the voice of complicity,” but how does a community of activists maintain its focus and coherence once many people are empowered to speak? When people from diverse backgrounds unite with passion in solidarity, there seems to be a moment where many things can get lost in translation, and as a result of semantics the movement risks diversion from its primary purpose- of getting diluted and defused. It couldn’t be any worse or get any better explores this moment.

The work was inspired specifically by the Occupy movement and its General Assemblies- daily meetings where Occupiers comes together and hold an open discussion forum. Agreeing upon a primary set of concerns and a finite list of demands has involved months of complex dialogue that has been both frustrating and productive, as well an essential time of discovery and empowerment. Roland Barthes spoke of the “failure of language,” and explained that “proper desire can produce only an impropriety of the utterance”. The direction and success of the secondary phase (moving from protest into activating change) of any social or political movement is determined by the ability to move beyond the moment where language fails and to find an objective, get legislation moving, and come up with a strategy. …the more I experience the specialty of my desire, the less I can give it a name; to the precision of the target corresponds a wavering of the name; what is characteristic of desire, proper to desire can produce only an impropriety of the utterance… .To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive (by the limitless expansion of the ego, by emotive submersion) and impoverished (by the codes on which love diminishes and levels it). — Barthes, Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse (20; 99)

2009

Life-sized board game
Ages 0+

• Roll the colored die to determine your dining destination.
• Roll the $$$ die to determine your bank.
• Wait to be seated in your restaurant of chance.
• Place your order with your server. Make sure you can afford it!
• Throw solid foods at the targets to control your server’s actions.
• Settle up your tab and don’t forget to tip your server.

Essay by Colin Gardner (appearing in exhibition catalogue):

Combining language, games, and ludic qualities commonly associated with 1960’s Fluxus and Situationist strategies with a post-Marxist investigation into the interpellative modes of production of late capitalism, Elizabeth Folk utilizes largescale installation, discrete sculptural objects, and interactive performance as a means of disclosing both latent and manifest iniquity within the service industry and commercial public space as a while. Constructed largely of felt- the material allusion to kindergarten art projects and Josef Beuys’ personal symbology is an obvious conceptual deceit- Just Play! Restaurant (2009) consists of a highly artificial, full-scale simulacrum of a restaurant constructed within the actual gallery space, prompting the spectator to “consume” the piece both as a café- referencing the political economy of everyday life- but also as sculptural tableau (i.e. as a formal “aesthetic” statement). The restaurant is divided into three “classes”- upscale, “TGI Fridays” casual, and greasy spoon- with a commensurate difference in menu offerings, décor, and most importantly, quality of service. Folk utilizes an aleatory board game variable to determine where visitors are seated and the kind of food and service they receive. The artist herself waits on each section, changing attire and demeanor in accordance with the level and quality of service expected. Through a form of “cryptic coloration,” the restaurant space thus stands in for a wide variety of class, linguistic, and performative distinctions found in multiple areas of life- from air travel, hotel service, theater, and concert-going, to education (e.g. streaming), housing, and the factory floor. However, in this case, the work’s inherent de-familiarization of its own spatial economy forces us into a position of active critique rather than passive acceptance, placing it closer to the didactic work of early Bertolt Brecht than “post-spectacle” resignation.

Essay by Colin Gardner appearing in Dreamtigers exhibition catalogue, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, June 2010.

2008-2010

Installation/performance

Glory Spa is a mobile spa vending machine. I transport the spa to public settings with foot traffic, insert it into the pre-existing landscape, and then lock myself into the spa to await the presence of clients. A spa menu and instructions are available on the face of the Glory Spa- customers are prompted to select desired services (hand/foot massage, manicures, pedicures) on the spa menu by ticking a series of boxes, to deposit completed menu and payment into the slot, to insert appropriate appendages, and to sit back, relax, and enjoy their selected service. Headphones with relaxing music are available.

This project was inspired by my fascination with anonymous interpersonal encounters, the politics of space and working conditions, and the consumption of services in our fast paced post-industrial society of "drive through love". Glory Spa serves as an interface for the exploration of issues of identity and disclosure, the production of public and private space, trust, proximity, permission, power, exhibitionism and voyeurism, and dominance and submission. The physical structure of the spa and the fact that I occupy a very small space while performing the services invites a critique of the liminal spaces that service workers occupy within the landscape of contemporary commerce. The context and nature of the interactions change in correspondence to the location of the spa (which have included street corners in a diversity of urban and suburban neighborhoods, public plazas, markets, art fairs, and art openings).