DAVID SAMI
Selected Works:
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Nodes
Somatic Incisions
Vertical Series
Blank Chamber
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Blank Chamber (2018) is a show at The Cooper Union which constructs a stage without a performer. The objects that populate it — microphone, stool, spotlight, drum — are the props of self-presentation, rendered in flat color on unstretched paper and pinned directly to the walls, floor, and ceiling of the space. Stripped of a body to organize them, they become symbols of a performance that never arrives. Together they construct a stage set without a performance, a broadcast without a signal. The work asks what it means to represent the apparatus of spectacle rather than the spectacle itself: what remains of the self when its instruments are present but its subject is absent?