Artist Project / Too Human / Animal Enough
Audition for a pair of koalas
Kathy Temin
Artist wanting two people to be part of an installation performance work. Fully clothed in animal costumes, playing the scene of two koala bears mating in an indoor public-art space. Weekends for a period of six weeks. Non-union performers. Pay. Begins mid-March
During 1998, I placed the above advertisement in Backstage magazine and New York’s free weekly The Village Voice. I received eighty phone calls responding to the advertisement. I returned everyone’s phone call and organized auditions with fourteen actors. Six of them were couples, two auditioned on their own with the empty koala-bear suit on the floor, and the last two pairs were organized according to coinciding schedules. With the exception of one Australian, everyone was American and none had seen a koala bear in real life. I videotaped the auditions to have a record that would help me decide who would be best for the parts. The final work, titled Pet Corner, was a performance over several weekends in March and April 1998 as part of P.S.1’s “Wish You Luck” exhibition.
The project here presents a selection of video stills taken from the auditions, that I have divided into two groups. This project for Cabinet is titled Too Human / Animal Enough.
Kathy Temin is an Australian artist based in New York.