Cartesian Exorcism

performance with computer,
manipulated video, table,
Leonardo window, drawing materials
1988

Images representing 500 years of Cartesian influence on scientific attitudes about mental illness slowly dissolve into generalized pixels, one after the other, on a video monitor. Sitting behind a Leonardo window (a drafting tool that breaks the visual plane into a grid), I try to draw each image before it dissolves into simple blocks of color. The performance ends when the paper became so absorbed with ink that it, too, began to disintegrate.