B: Speaking of accumulation and the domestic, there was a piece I did in San Francisco in 2003 or 2004 called Who Me House (figs. 14 & 15). I think of it as my first work. It was in a storefront in the Mission District, and it was in this little room off the sidewalk, with these floor to ceiling windows, and it was probably 18 feet by two and a half feet. It was kind of lifted, raised maybe two feet off the ground, and there was a little cubby hole I would climb into.

figure 14

Who Me House, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artist

The performance was 15 evenings, and every night it lasted from 7:23-8:23pm (slightly arbitrary but I liked the numbers — I was young). I had various things I would do. I would slowly start to bring things into the space, and it was very much improvised. I had objects, I would read, I had a chair, and as I continued, I had paint, and I would paint on the inside of the glass, just markings, almost tallies. I don’t remember what my logic was behind them or what the paintings signified, but it would accumulate. It was very spare but it would accumulate. And I’d have a glass of wine, maybe, and I always wore a similar outfit and would wear my hair a certain way. People would see me and get used to me being there during this period. There was light inside and it was dark outside at the time, and people would sit and watch and they’d come back and make fun of me or interact, just a whole score of things.

figure 15

Who Me House, 2004. Photo courtesy of the artist

It was the idea of living in a place, almost the nesting element, of bringing various things to kind of start to... well, it’s almost like an act of transference between you and your intimate object. I mean, I don’t want to get too psychoanalytic about it, but we start to have these ways that we... that’s what fetishizing is, it’s getting attached to these objects and projecting these elements on them. It’s definitely discussed a lot in psychoanalysis, but it’s just a very lovely thing about being in somebody’s space: you see that kind of intimacy that’s produced through those relationships with objects and with materiality.

M: Was there any difficulty about performing in your home? Did you ever feel any ambivalence about it? And then what is your relationship with the dance historical element of performing in the home?

B: I didn’t do a ton of research about that, but if you have specific examples, I could speak to them.

M: Well, I was thinking specifically, I guess, about Lucinda Childs, when she had everyone up in her loft while she was dancing in the street.

B: Yeah, Street Dance -- that was actually Robert and Judith Dunn’s loft.

M: Oh, I didn’t know that.

B: Yeah, because Robert was teaching a class that was based on John Cage’s principles of chance and teaching those principles to all of the --

M: The pre-Judson group, right?

B: Yeah, exactly, from 1960-1964.

M: OK, so maybe there aren’t a lot of examples —

B: But there are!

M: There must be.

B: There are. You have Yoko Ono’s loft... Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer and Robert Morris performed there. Simone, especially, had all her constructions. Yoko Ono’s loft was a performance space. Yeah, it’s the question of the loft, of live-work space, ultimately, and also the salon, which is something I grew up with. My mom is a classical pianist, and our house in California is basically organized around two concert grands, nine footers. They make this wraparound puzzle piece with the keyboards facing out, and that’s the center of the house. Always, growing up, there was music. My mother’s specialty is chamber music and two-piano stuff, so there were always people in the house because she has these incredible pianos. There would be salon concerts. There still are! (fig. 16) Performing in the house as far as chamber music is concerned is not uncommon at all.

figure 16

Nicki Bell performing in her home. Photo courtesy of the artist.

M: Yeah, that’s a long tradition. I mean, that's where chamber music started, right? That’s why it’s called that.

B: Chamber. Exactly.

M: So did you have ambivalence? And was this your first performance in your home?

B: Yes. Well, no, the Who Me House piece was in a live-work space, but it was a very large building and I had a room in it, but it was very separate so I don’t think of it in that way. But yeah, this is the first time I’ve ever done anything like this. I think I negotiated my ambivalence about it by being very ambiguous in terms of publicity — I think it was more apparent once people came, but I never really said it was my apartment. And the thing that I found most fascinating is that people didn’t want to ask. That’s at least what I sensed. They didn’t really want to ask and that was fine by me. For the people who came, yeah, certainly, they probably put it together. And, you know, I’m in and out of this apartment -- I’m not here all the time.

M: But it is your home while you’re in Detroit.

B. Yes. But it's interesting, I did actually plan to rent the apartment before I planned on living in it. That came later. But the way in which I've negotiated the public-ness of the project --

M: Well, you shut your bedroom door, to the extent that I actually wasn't even sure if there was a bedroom.

B: Yes, and I put some stuff in there, but I don’t have a lot of stuff, really. I bought these benches specifically for the performances. Really, the only thing that’s in here that would be here anyway is the Wassily chair and the books. This is all Scott Z[acharaias]’s audio stuff, the theatre light is clearly from the theatre, from the WSU theatre department, specifically. So I had almost everything out, all those little glasses I bought for the performance, even a year and a half ago. I haven’t acquired much stuff or I didn’t bring many things here because this apartment has always been about this piece for me. That’s why I’m here.

M : And as a result, there’s something almost monastic about it, spartan.

B: Yes. And it's an apartment, it has a carpet and it’s the whole Mies Van Der Rohe thing, but I do feel like it’s a studio. Not in the sense of a living space but in terms of an artist’s studio. Especially once I finally got the benches and set them up, and when I started to bring people into the space, the space started to make more sense to me because it was always meant to be this, for me. It’s always an apartment that is about the performance that I'm working on, that I’m going to do here. So this is my studio, basically. It’s interesting how that has revealed itself to me.