Sherman’s “spectacles” were programs of very short plays performed on portable tabletops propped open on the sidewalk—or in the park, or someone’s apartment—in which he would physically manipulate and create semantic “dramas” around inanimate objects. He created and performed eighteen “spectacles” in all (12 solo and 6 group performances).
“A typewriter sits in the middle of a desk surrounded by a litter of screwed up paper, notes typed on file cards, and reference photographs of architectural details, erotic sculpture and gay pornography. Copies of the one-page synopsis of the novel are stacked on the desk, setting the fictional parameters as it describes the novelist’s thwarted attempts to write, his ultimate seclusion and his indulgence in clandestine sexual activities inspired by and in defilation of the building’s sleek Modernist architecture. The synopsis ends with the first line of the novel: ‘A novelist is living in an exquisitely crafted modernist house …’, a line we see typed on the sheet of paper in the typewriter.” (Kirsty Bell in Frieze Magazine, Issue 132, June–August 2010)
‘A Movie Will Be Shown Without the Picture’ (1979) by Louise Lawler.
In 1979 Louise Lawler screened the 1951 John Houston film The Misfits at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. She played only the audio portion of the film, leaving the screen blank for the duration.
