In conjunction with Performa 09, Scaramouche presents Einat Amir, "Ideal Viewer." Opening a voyeuristic lens onto conflicting authorship, "Ideal Viewer" is a two-phased series of performances, beginning with actors hired from Craigslist to improvise three biographical archetypes in Scaramouche's gallery space--a Crying Woman, an Ex-Boyfriend, and an Interpreter. After advertising the actors' services in the gallery and online, the second phase on November 21 will effectively give the reins to Performa's audience, enabling intimate, unmediated encounters between performer and spectator in the spectators' own private spaces.
Partly staged, partly improvised, partly real-time, partly pre-recorded, "Ideal Viewer" withholds any resolution as to what is authentic, fabricated, or otherwise manipulated. In the context of Performa's centennial celebration of Futurism, Amir's contemporary interrogation of authorship and gender roles deflates this historic movement's patriarchy and technological lust. Provoking sexual sport, "author function" dysfunction, and technological disorientation, "Ideal Viewer" explores sexual and artistic identity, blurring the very notion of what is "real."

Einat Amir (born in Jerusalem, 1979) currently lives in New York where she received her MFA in visual arts from Columbia University in 2009. Her video installations and live performances engage gender, sexuality, representation, communication, and other contemporary sociopolitical issues. Amir's work has been exhibited at Volta, Basel; Scaramouche c/o Fruit and Flower Deli, New York; Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Rosenfeld Gallery, Tel Aviv; CareOf gallery, Milan; Städtische Galerie, Bremen; and Digital Art Center, Hulon, among other venues.

Curated by David Everitt Howe. Selected by Performa 09 as part of "Lust Weekend."