Uploaded February 2023 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
In May 1969, Smith hosted a dinner party where silent attendants dressed guests in surgical gowns, provided medical tools for utensils, and served mostly raw food. Film footage was projected onto the walls, including a beating heart, waves, and nude people in nature. Audio of synthesized sounds layered over a heartbeat played throughout the meal. Smith wrote, "The situation was set up to be deliberately disorienting...If this was an ordinary social event, people would have interacted based on their conventional roles. To initiate change, those roles, which are defenses or barriers, had to be disoriented and released...This experience lasted for almost five hours. The piece was startling. Nothing of this sort had happened in Los Angeles. It was my first major performance."
This video is part of the Barbara T. Smith papers at the Getty Research Institute. View the finding aid for Smith's archive: https://primo.getty.edu/permalink/f/19q6gmb/GETTY_ALMA21155149520001551
Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be is on view at the Getty Research Institute from February 28, 2023 through July 16, 2023. Learn more: https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/barbara_t_smith/index.html
In May 1969, Smith hosted a dinner party where silent attendants dressed guests in surgical gowns, provided medical tools for utensils, and served mostly raw food. Film footage was projected onto the walls, including a beating heart, waves, and nude people in nature. Audio of synthesized sounds layered over a heartbeat played throughout the meal. Smith wrote, "The situation was set up to be deliberately disorienting...If this was an ordinary social event, people would have interacted based on their conventional roles. To initiate change, those roles, which are defenses or barriers, had to be disoriented and released...This experience lasted for almost five hours. The piece was startling. Nothing of this sort had happened in Los Angeles. It was my first major performance."
This video is part of the Barbara T. Smith papers at the Getty Research Institute. View the finding aid for Smith's archive: https://primo.getty.edu/permalink/f/19q6gmb/GETTY_ALMA21155149520001551
Barbara T. Smith: The Way to Be is on view at the Getty Research Institute from February 28, 2023 through July 16, 2023. Learn more: https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/barbara_t_smith/index.html
