Are we on the same page

Collaborative performance with Henry Gepfer

Are We on the Same Page is a collaborative print-based performance between K. MacNeil and Henry Gepfer. In this performance, the artists sit across from each other at a table, with a vertical sheet of plexiglas between them. The plexiglas has a thick layer of ink on both sides, preventing MacNeil and Gepfer from being able to see each others movements. The artists use their hands to wipe away the tacky, opaque ink (largely unsuccessfully) in an attempt to find the other’s movement. Upon finding each other, they proceed to track their movements, creating a mirror image, but due to the materiality of the ink, the trace is continually lost, found, lost again. Throughout this, the artists struggle to awkwardly brace against the plexiglas and another human body; a physical expression of the difficulty in relying on each other. The resulting prints, though abstract, are a representation of this push and pull of lost and found between two people having a conversation within visual, performative language.

This work utilizes the medium of print and the conceptual framework of the “mirror” as a way to explore interpersonal relationships, communication, and breakdowns, and one's own reflection and definition of self within those relationships. Working together as friends and queer artists with similar practices, MacNeil and Gepfer explore the uncanny nature of their identities through this work. In trying to connect, missing, connecting again, this performance shows the dance of attempting to find each other through an opaque medium, and the struggle for connection. The resulting prints of this physical and communicative relationship registers this durational performance as a synchronous object. It serves as a map of two artists working with and, literally, against each other.

Exhibition Schedule:

Fried Fruit Gallery at the University of North Carolina - Wilmington (March 2024)
forthcoming exhibition at Open Studio, Toronto (Summer 2025)