The Rubin Foundation Presents: “Performance-in-Place: Hotline by Aliza Shvarts” and Tuesday, September 8 for “Conversation between Aliza Shvarts and Sara Reisman”

Conceived in response to the invitation to participate in Performance-in-Place, Aliza Shvarts’ Hotline is an interactive performance that will be distributed over a voicemail tree. From sex hotlines, suicide crisis hotlines, psychic hotlines, to tip hotlines, the anonymous telephone call is a poignant example of intimacy without proximity. Shvarts appropriates this somewhat dated, faceless technology to consider what makes the line “hot.” What kinds of things do we ask each other, confess to each other, or create with each other in the absence of an image—that is, when is our mediation absolute? What kind of connection does the face preclude and the voice allow? Building on Shvarts’ current work, which focuses on the power of testimony and the circulation of speech in the digital age, Hotline explores the voice as both a metonym of the body and metaphor for political agency. Beginning with a phone number, this asynchronous performance allows participants to choose from a set of options to advance a “choose your own adventure”-type narrative. At the very end of the experience, participants have the option of leaving a message—which will eventually be made public as documentation for the performance. The phone number will be released on Tuesday, September 1st, and able to receive calls 24 hours a day beginning Tuesday, September 1, through Saturday, January 23, 2021. On Tuesday, September 8, participants and audience can join Rubin Foundation Director Sara Reisman and Shvarts as they discuss excerpts from the new project. Hotline will also be a part of Shvarts’ Fellowship show at A.I.R. Gallery from Thursday, October 15 to Monday, November 16, in which there will be a physical installation of Hotline featuring documentation from the ongoing interactive performance.

Access Information: This event includes live ASL interpretation and captioning.

For more information on this event, please click here.