Jason Driskill

Our guest lecturer yesterday at the Grad Center was Margaret Tedesco, a performance artist. Instead of merely lecturing about her life and development as an artist, she gave a performance. It was very interesting. Ms. Tedesco invited us into one of the long, narrow lecture halls where she was seated at one end. She was positioned so that we could see her profile as she watched a video projection on the adjacent wall. Since we were sideways to it, we could not see what she was watching. She narrated the events of the movie to us as they happened with a dry but gentle voice. She did not use names of characters, and her descriptions were brief.

The descriptions went something like this, “The man goes to the door. A woman answers. She has dark beautiful hair. He seems troubled by something and wants to talk to her about it. She feigns interest but it’s clear she cannot really be bothered. He wrings his hands nervously. Perhaps he is going to propose, or sing to her, or try to fool her into buying an insurance policy. Now we see the inside of her house. It’s immaculately clean and white. She has white carpet, and a white couch. It’s such a bright clean room. She is wearing a white robe. Maybe she just woke up from a nap, or stepped out of the shower. She invites the gentleman inside but clearly does not want him there.”

The narration was steady and almost monotone. As viewers of her performance we sat and watched her watch the movie, listening to her state what she sees. The projection featured no sound.

As a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 I found this to be an interesting concept. While both parties serve as filters for movies, she strives toward the opposite of the MST3K “experiments.” While Mike and Co. watch socially irrelevant films with little or no artistic integrity, Ms. Tedesco watches films that have a place in film history and have some social relevance. Her narration is simply the facts, limiting our awareness as viewers to the bare reality of what she sees. Mike and Co. layer what they are watching with literary, pop-cultural, historical, political references, using scenes or actions or events in the movie to pull on a wider well of social knowledge. Essentially Tedesco whittles away from the details of the film, while MST3K creates substance that wasn’t there in the first place. To see them tackle each others’ source material, if Tedesco were to narrate “Manos: Hands of Fate” or Mike & Co. were to riff “The Adjuster” the meaning of their activities would change dramatically - in both cases I feel it would fall flat. This is interesting stuff, and if I were a film major this comparison would warrant further application of film and social theories.

Tedesco’s Q&A after her performance was fascinating. I could have asked a million questions but limited myself to about fifteen, since I felt as if I was starting to test everyone’s patience.

Unfortunately Margaret Tedesco has little web presence. If you google her you can read about her in a few blogs and reviews, but I could not find an official website for her, nor could I locate any footage of her narration-performances. Bummer.

On the other had, nearly every episode of MST3K has been posted on Google video or YouTube. Over one-hundred forty episodes over the span of ten seasons… That should keep you busy for awhile!