ROBERTA BREITMORE
Performance in real life,
using real materials, experience and real time
San Francisco, San Diego, Italy.

ROBERTA BREITMORE was, for 9 years a private performance of a simulated person. In an era or alternatives, she became an objectified alternative personality. Roberta's first live action was to place an ad in a local newspaper advertising for a roommate. People who answered the ad became participants in her adventure . As she became part of their reality, they became part of her fiction.

Her childhood data was established before she was released into the world. ROBERTA reflected the values of her culture. She penetrated trends such as EST, WEIGHTWATCHERS and most significantly,experienced resonent nuances of alienation. Roberta saw a psychiatrist, had her own language and handwriting, apartment and clothing, gestures and moods.

Many people assumed I was ROBERTA. Although I denied it at the time and insisted that she was "her own woman" with defined needs, ambitions and instincts, in retrospect we were linked. ROBERTA represented part of me as surely as we all have within us an underside; a dark, shadowy anaemous cadaever that is the gnawing decay of our bodies, the sustaining growth of death that we try with pathetic illusion to camouflage . To me, she was my own flipped effigy; my physical reverse, my psychological fears. As can be inferred from the records of both of us, her life infected mine. Closure and transformation of her life meant as well my own individuation.

ROBERTA"s trail through time was converted to a comic book story in which SPAIN, a ZAP comic artist collaborated. All the elements of this story are "real". The police lineup are characterizations of people "Lynn" felt were taking advantage of her during this period.

Over time ROBERTA accumulated 43 letters from individuals answering her ads and experienced 27 independent adventures. Her most difficult test was staying in character during psychiatric sessions, and her most dangerous was being asked to join a prostitution ring at the San Diego Zoo where, to escape her "John" she transformed to " Lynn " in a public restroom. One hundred fourty four individual drawings and photographs track ROBERTA's conversion and remain as a record of her existance.

In her second year of life, ROBERTA'S adventures became so numerous that she grew into a multiple. Eventually four different people played ROBERTA, After zipping themselves into ROBERTA'S clothing they each began to also have negative experiences.

Perhaps it was the desolate, lonely hotel rooms that gestated into the fictional persona of ROBERTA. By collecting symbols of identity for occupants of THE DANTE HOTEL, or LADY LUCK, for example or by framing ambiguous objects so that they signified the character of the user through use,the nature and indeed, the very act of observation entered into her construction

I had hoped to hire an actress to play the part of ROBERTA. But originally she was scripted to commit suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge . Even in San Francisco I couldn't find anyone willing to go that far. So I had to become ROBERTA.

The implications of me assuming her identity didn't become clear to me for ten years. Ingested experience never ends but rather hovers inside like a bat, fanning its wings in your psyche

ROBERTA was at once artificial and real. She had credit cards, checking accounts, and more credit than I did. In traditional portraiture an individual's likeness concentrates on a facial image. I wanted ROBERTA to extend beyond appearance into a symbol that used gesture and expression to reveal the basic truth of character.. ROBERTA was an interactive vehicle with which to analyze culture.ROBERTA's chiarascuro profile was animated through cosmetics applied to her face as if it were a canvas.

Simultaneous to Roberta's life, Wim Wenders moved to San Francisco , took a hotel room on Post Street and developed the script for Hammett, The Thin Man. ROBERTA was The Fat Woman. She avoriciously consumed life .

When I was 7 my mother bought me a reversable skirt. It was maroon on one side, turquoise on the other. This garment made me understand that fragments could be complete in themselves, part of a whole and that most things could be turned inside out.

On more than one occasion, I left my house as ROBERTA, forgot something and had to return to my Jackson Street house, in costume and makeup. For years my daughter denied she was related to me. People assumed I was schizophenic.

ROBERTA'S TRANSFORMATION

In Taoist mythology the goddess CHAOS sacrifices her body in order to release through her corpse "the world". ROBERTA'S evolution from temporal victim to eternal victor was intended as an ascetic conversion that transcended values (good and evil) or gender definitions.

That all knowledge is based upon mystical insight gained through personal experience; by watching rather than thinking, by looking inside ones' self, is the foundation of Buddhist philosophy. Polarities are joined by their essences. The flow towards change, creates a cycle. ROBERTA'S life and death represented that cycle.

LUCRETIA BORGIA'S CRYPT

Researching the history of the Pallazo dei Diamonte, where ROBERTA was to be exorcised, I discovered that it was erected over the crypt of Lucrezia Borge. Her death in 1519 became the foundation's mortar (morte?). Borge's reputation for murder, promiscuity and political crimes reversed after she married her fourth husband, the Duke of Ferrara. In the second half of her life (her reverse cycle) she was a devoted patron of the arts. Four and ahalf centuries after her interment, Lucrezia Borge's myth provided the psychological draping for ROBERTA'S transformation.

EXORCISM IN THREE CYCLES

ROBERTA'S traumas became my own haunting memories . They would surface with no warning, with no relief. She began to control me. I was never free of her. She was buried deep within me, a skin closer to my heart. The negativity in her life affected my own decisions. The cure was an exorcism that would liberate oppression felt by contemporary women. The exorcism took place in three cycles.

SET I FERRARA

I was with Kristine Stiles, the first of the series of ROBERTA multiples . She was in Europe to research her dissertation topic, "destruction in art" . In the quaint village of Ferrara, we walked in and out of the sunlight. A charming outdoor cafe framed, like an alter , with hanging straw planters brimming with cerise geraniums seemed to be waiting for us. A shrine to the Virgin Mary stood at the entrance . In it were two identical glass vases decorated with a diamond pattern. They were precise replicas of objects that I drew when I planned the Exorcism. Intuitively, K. held out her skirt shielding me from view. And in the shadow of her protection, the public relics were removed from the alter , placed into my purse and eventually transformed into props in the performance.

ACTION TO INERTNESS

Two rooms at the Pallazo dei Diamonte were separated by a single rounded archway.I placed two identical pedestals each of which held the identical vases on both sides. . One held real flowers, the other, artificial identical blossoms. An illusion was that the archway was divided by a mirror with reality on one side and artifice on the other .

The performance began when a ROBERTA MULTIPLE ( entered the gallery. In her ROBERTA clothing and makeup she resembled the images on the wall. Slowly , she began her dance, a subtle emoting of ROBERTA'S body language and gestures. Each movement emphasized her disillusionment with life. Tape recordings of artificial tones that had been constructed out of her walk set the tempo for her movement. She slithered towards her construction chart ( which represented her "original conception" ) and paced back and forth in front of it until, in an unexpected thrust of fast motion she twirled into the archway, removing one of the vases from its pedestal (the one with artificial flowers) leaving the other untouched. In that moment, reality was fractured and displaced from its own reflection. She carried the vase to the construction photo, jerking her body as if she was posessed by a demonic spirit. Her body became an animated blur, a whirling cyclone.

Then, with no warning and before anyone could stop her, she took the photograph from the wall and set it on fire, placing the effigy into the vase. Through this act, the vase became a vail. The crushed photograph disintegrated into water and was absorbed into the dry ashes. The burning image filled the room very slowly with soft gray smoke. It was as if ink were dropped into the clear air, saturating it with deep pungent color.

Those who witnessed the EXORCISM claimed it felt as if they were like lead carp swimming through thick polluted air. Their eyes teared from the stained atmosphere.

ROBERTA stretched her body out next to the coffin-like sarcophagus that held the relics of her life. The relics of ROBERTA'S life were as relevent to her as Pavlova's slippers. They affirmed her existance in reality. As ROBERTA froze into her final position, witnesses left silently, one by one. Before the ceremony, ROBERTA was a sculptural life/theater performance, a socio psychological portrait. The EXORCISM and subsequent transformation through fire, water, air and earth, from white to red to gray to black, from rebirth out of ashes, represented a symbolic invocation that uncannily would unfold into my own life, irrevocably changing its direction.

ROBERTA'S CONFIDENTIAL PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATION

This 31-year old woman requested evaluation through a friend through whom appointment was arranged. While awaiting therapistıs availability, she wrote him two brief notes of moderate despair, but avoided telephone contact which had been offered. Spelling and word usage suggested mild disorganization, borderline intelligence, or limited education. Reason for seeking evaluation was severe alienation, and inability to find a roommate or steady employment.

She arrived early for the first appointment but requested to leave after 30 minutes as she had scheduled an employment interview. The therapist agreed to terminate the session since one of her primary concerns was finding a job. She was on time for the second appointment. Total time of evaluation was 80 minutes.

She described problems finding a roommate, finding a job, and gaining weight. While she hedged on having formulated a suicidal plan and tried to avoid answering questions on suicidal thoughts, she agreed she would not harm herself without calling the therapist, "at least for two months." Due to her limitations as a historian and guarding, the onset of her concerns could not be determined. Nor was she able to clarify why she had decided to see a psychiatrist at this particular time. Perhaps her financial status was a factor but it was difficult to surmise how she had supported herself for three years. She appeared relieved when the therapist offered help with seeking public assistance. Since she would be late she did not want to keep her employment interview appointment after the first session and had made no other attempts at the time of the second session.

Mental status revealed a tall, heavy woman who was not obese. Her childlike appearance was exaggerated by her soft voice and naivete. She was disheveled particularly at the first interview when her long blond wig was obvious due to improper placement. She wore large dark glasses throughout both interviews and sat sideways to avoid looking directly and hid her face behind her hair. She wore the same clothes to both interviews including a mini-skirt and knee boots. She was totally unaware of her seductive posture and recognized anxious body movements, such as pulling at her skirt, only when they were pointed out. There was no other evidence of anxiety. She was unable to recognize how her appearance and incongruent posture and mannerisms might interfere with object relations and insisted she looked like everyone else. Her affect was constricted and immobile and masked her mood of depression and fear. She asked if the therapist would give her shock treatments. The only approaches toward appropriate affect were brief sniffles when she perceived the therapist was chiding her for scheduling conflicting appointments and relief when the therapist offered help. She described feeling separated from the world by a glass box and difficulty distinguishing dreams from reality.

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