Tracy + the Plastics: “ROOM at The Kitchen” (2005/2014)
This Video Viewing Room revisits ROOM, a 2005 installation and performance by Tracy + the Plastics and Fawn Krieger at The Kitchen. Using what had been the original main performance projection (which was shown amidst Krieger’s installation and three other projections), Greenwood created a video in 2014 when she began re-performing and documenting every past Tracy performance. This video was available to view from June 7–21, 2021, and is now represented on the page by a video still. An introductory text, images, and ephemera accompany the still.
This presentation is organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator. In conjunction with this Video Viewing Room, a livestream event Wynne Greenwood and Colin Self In Conversation took place on Thursday, June 10, 2021.
Tracy + the Plastics is a band created and performed by Wynne Greenwood, which came out of the DIY scene in the Pacific Northwest at the end of the last century. Performing in basements, living rooms, and punk clubs, Greenwood would inhabit all three band members, singing live as Tracy while interacting with band members Cola (on drums) and Nikki (on keyboards) as video projections behind her. The project soon found a home in visual art spaces too, and Tracy + the Plastics was invited to participate in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. Those biennial performances took place at The Kitchen in April 2004. Soon after, The Kitchen commissioned Greenwood and sculptor Fawn Krieger to create ROOM, an installation and performances which situated Tracy + the Plastics in a kind of deconstructed “living room” alongside and close to the audience. Together they explored identity and communication, re-imagined 1970s feminist consciousness-raising groups, and questioned the state of radical feminism. ROOM premiered in February 2005 at The Kitchen and was then restaged at Moore Space, Miami in September–November 2006.
This June, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the release of their first record Muscler’s Guide to Videonics and their first US tour, the entire Tracy + the Plastics discography is being reissued by the label Cruisin. Greenwood reflects that “Spring 2001 launched Tracy + the Plastics into public and professional life. For me, the early days of Tracy + the Plastics were a flourishing of queer art networks and alternative economy. I’m reissuing the Tracy + the Plastics discography both as an honoring of that project and as a reconnection to the structures and communities that nurtured and alivened it and me. This reissue also comes at a time when I am making new music and preparing to record a new record. As I turn back towards writing music, the Tracy + the Plastics reissue has been an exciting, surprising, and instructive excavation of my song-making.”
In conjunction with this Video Viewing Room, Wynne Greenwood will be in dialogue with artist Colin Self on Thursday, June 10 at 2pm EDT as part of our 50th Anniversary Conversation series.
Video and images: 1) Sill from Tracy + the Plastics, ROOM at The Kitchen, 2005/2014. Performance and video, sound, color, 44:39 minutes. Original 2005 work by Tracy + the Plastics and Fawn Krieger. 2) Left and right: Tracy + the Plastics in collaboration with Fawn Krieger, ROOM, 2005. Performance view, The Kitchen. ©2005 Paula Court. 3) Flyer for Tracy + the Plastics in collaboration with Fawn Krieger, ROOM at The Kitchen, February 7–12, 2005. 4) Left and right: Tracy + the Plastics in collaboration with Fawn Krieger, ROOM, 2005. Performance view, The Kitchen. ©2005 Paula Court.