DESCRIPTION:
Excerpted from Pamela Z's performance at The Kitchen, September 2010.

The traveler wants to carry all her luggage on, but meets resistance from the clerk at the check-in counter. She has to improvise to get her things on board.

Pamela Z's BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE is comprised of three components: A full-evening multi-media performance work, a gallery exhibition, and an interactive web-based artwork. This video shows an excerpt from documentation of the performance run at The Kitchen in New York.

(Visit Pamela Z's USA Projects page at http://www.unitedstatesartists.org/user/pamelaz)

Baggage Allowance is a sonically and visually layered work focusing on the concept of baggage in all its literal and metaphorical permutations. Through vocal performance with electronic processing, found text, and recorded interviews, multi-channel sound, interactive video, and sculptural objects, Baggage Allowance scans and inventories the belongings (and memories) we all cart around. The work explores the concept of baggage in its many senses -- physical, intellectual, and emotional -- baggage as impediment and baggage as treasure. Drawing from Ms. Z's extensive traveling and cartage experiences, text from found sources, and interviews with travelers who speak poetically about their memories of train travel and flying and their numerous baggage-related stories, the work touches upon the ball-and-chain-ness of dragging one's things all over the world.