Peccatum Mutum (The Silent Sin)

"A Spy: Hester Reeve Does the Doors" is a videotape by Suzie Silver, performance by Hester Reeve, music by The Doors. Based on a performance created and performed by Hester Reeve on March 8th & 9th, 1991 at Club Lower Links, Chicago, for the program, Bait and Switch (organized by Iris Moore and Suzie Silver.

Based on a Swedish folk tale, The Sausage tells the humorous story of two sisters, three wishes, and a calamitous obsession with a sausage. The Sausage is the first completed episode of Fairy Fantastic! a fairy and folk tale series presenting gender fluid adaptations of classic tales.

A Victorian fairy tale told in the patois of an adventure video game, The Happiest Day is a journey back to a time that never was. Meandering through a cut-out computer-animated forest we come upon strangers enacting odd and playful rituals. These live-action sequences are loose reenactments of 1960’s and 1970’s performance artworks restaged in an Arcadian setting. The ecstatic jouissance of the original performances, with their primitivist nudity, shamanistic catharsis and pointed immediacy is re-located to a fabulous storybook world.

Love is an obsession. Pop culture is filled with love songs. What can the musical expression of the word “love” mean? Here, one of the great vocalists of the twentieth century, Peggy Lee, sings us some clues.