You Live Here, Too, Friday at the Brick

The Charlotte Street Foundation’s 2011 Rocket Grant projects are becoming, to some extent, realities. Last Friday, artist and social worker Julia Verling performed her final piece.

The image above will need unpacking. It happened at the Brick on a First Friday. Called You Live Here, Too, Vering’s performance was a surreal, plotless one-act that starts when a mannequin sits down to watch a 30-minute self-help video. Elderly women in the video play the role of a fourth-wall-demolishing data-entry specialist, whom Verling — in the absurd, impossible role of playing a mannequin — talks to, watches and self-helps her lifeless self into empathy with.