Conversational Placements
Conversational Placements–a lucid, articulate one-woman tour de force–represents a breakthrough in the Art Institute’s conservative curatorial policy in its 107-year-old contemporary art series, American Exhibitions: it’s finally included performance art. And Conversational Placements represents a breakthrough in the form: it’s the first one-person show I’ve seen that’s built seamlessly out of characters created from real-life interviews. These characters introduce their stories but in some cases stop midway, their stories intersected and interrupted by those of other characters. Smith adopts the posture, facial expressions, and intonations of the originals, and the result is a conversational weaving together of widely disparate viewpoints.
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Smith is able to find a chord of sympathy even with the more negative personas. At the same time, the pervasive ambiguity creates a certain coherence and authenticity in this study of the contradictions manifest in our society. Where have we found ourselves? No one should be surprised to see that it’s not a pretty place but a place of great antipathy, ethnic hatred, and despair. And Smith’s is not a pretty picture, but it’s a good map of the territory.
