FIONA HOFFER
PERFORMANCE AND VIDEO
Included in this section are still images from performances. Please see the Vimeo link below to view video documentation of select performances.

2022 A short film composed of scans of copies of the artist's ID, copied over and over until they naturally become unrecognizable.

2016 Digital snapshot of performance ... A still shot from a performance piece in which I counted up to the number of days since my mothers death while tumbling in a circular motion continuously. Isadora software tracked my movement and projected them back onto me, pixelating and blurring the image according to my level of sound.

2016 performance ... This is an improvisational performance executed underneath the lofted bed of a friend during a party in his room. I walked into the room silently as people were hanging out and chatting, wearing goggles (not pictured) and bringing a roll of masking tape. Remaining silent throughout the piece, I went under the bed and created a porous barrier of tape between me and the rest of the party, at times wordlessly prompting some of the party goers to help me wrap tape around legs of the bed. Once the barrier was completed, I spent two and a half to three hours interacting with the tape by moving my body in slow repetitive movements, experiencing what it was like to feel my skin and hair be pulled by the tape, experiencing the resistance and the tension of my body against the tape, sometimes engaging the tape with my tongue and teeth, and challenging myself to simultaneously disassociate from the world around me while fully inhabiting my interactions with the tape. In improvisational performances, I like to allow organic moments to act as triggers for the end of the piece. Curiously, even though people were constantly on their phones during the party, there was someth

2016 performance ... This is another improvisational performance in which I experimented with saranwrap, tape, and a wire gardening structure. The piece explored themes of self scrutiny, transformation, compression, and audience interaction as eventually I offered up my body and the saran wrap and tape to the audience, silently allowing them to decided whether or not they would continue to wrap up my form, set me free, or stand by and watch. Again, like my other tape and saranwrap pieces, this performance deals with similar themes of pain and witnessing pain. During the whole piece, I had fellow artists improvising music and visual projections, creating a symbiotic relationship between my movement/ interaction with the materials and the music and video projections. This is a set up I have explored in other performances as well. Our interactions existed on a continuum, at times my movements controlled the music and projections and at times the music and projections controlled me.

2016 performance ... Stills from a piece in which I explored themes of grief by visiting the different rooms that have changed in my parent's house since my mother died and my father remarried. I took video of myself in various places in the house of note, the room in which my father's wife moved in pictures of her children, the room where my mom's ashes are kept and where pictures of my parents' were moved to etc. In these rooms I systematically applied strips of duct tape to the hair on my arms and legs. I worked my way up through the house to the final room, where all of my mother's clothes are kept, and slowly took the tape off of my body, eventually grabbing my mother's scarf for extra strength. This was a practice in experiencing pain, enduring pain, and a testament to the ability to survive through pain. In the video's last frame after I have taken all of the tape off, I wrap two more strips of duct tape around my legs and leave the room, thus acknowledging the repetitive process of grieving.

2016 performance and installation ... Saran Wrap, wood picture frame, curtains, chair, bike inner tubes, piano strings

2016 performance and installation ... Saran Wrap, wood picture frame, curtains, chair, bike inner tubes, piano strings

2016

2016 digital photo series ... This is one still from a series taken from a performance in which I applied tape to different parts of my body and then slowly took the pieces of tape off. While the video documentation of the performance displays obvious pain, this photo, and the others in the series (not shown), plays with the way that private pain displayed or experienced in public is often muted or lost in translation. I am interested in how the image, which captures the moment of pain, fails to fully translate that pain to the viewer.

2016 Still from video, interactive performance tape, musical instruments, Isadora software ... This is another interactive piece in which I experimented with tape and wrapping and unwrapping myself while surrounding by an audience. I left out musical instruments for the audience when they entered the space. Audience members improvised with the instruments and a relationship grew where sometimes my movements were being controlled by the sound of the instruments and sometimes it was as if my movements were controlling the music. Towards the end of the experience, people in the audience wordlessly helped me cut off the tape stuck in my hair and tangled around my body.

2016 Interactive performance, still from video

2017 Image from video, performance and video