MIMUS, 2012

Mimus, presented in three acts, taps into the farcical side of Cold War ideology epitomized by public hearings in the era of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Kelly’s dialog is based on the testimonies of activists in Women Strike for Peace, who initiated lobbies, petitions, vigils, and most famously, demonstrations against nuclear testing in sixty U.S. cities in 1962. Their efforts were instrumental in prompting President Kennedy to sign the Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and the hearing led to widespread ridicule of McCarthyism in the media. Kelly’s excavation of the hearing (U.S. Doc. 2.791) is a performative act of remembering in which the durational aspect of the lint medium is central. Individual units are cast in the filter screen of a domestic dryer over several months and hundreds of washing cycles, then assembled as large panels of intaglio text.