Putting the Balls Away is an interactive performance, a single channel video, and a video installation of the historic tennis match, The Battle of the Sexes. The Battle of the Sexes was the most-watched live sporting event of all time in 1973 that pitted chauvinist against feminist when women tennis players demanded equal pay to that of their male counterparts.
Billie Jean King defeated the former Wimbledon men’s champion Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes at the Houston Astrodome. The event sparked a debate that exceeded the sport arena and entered the homes of many Americans. Excerpts from the sports commentators, Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, exemplify the spirit of the match:
HC: There’s the velocity that Billie Jean can put on the ball and walking back she’s walking more like a male than a female.
RC: I just wonder whether Bobby would look better in a tennis dress . . . better than the shorts maybe.
HC: Billie Jean of course won the first set, to the absolute delight of all of the women in the arena. They actually stood and gave her an ovation and I suspect many in their living rooms did the same thing.
PERFORMANCE
During the performance video of one player is rear-projected opposite the live performance of the other. After each game the competitors “switch sides.” Putting the Balls Away was first performed at the Guggenheim as part of Rhizome’s Tenth Anniversary and one other time, in Houston, the original site of the match.
Excerpts from the sports commentators, Howard Cosell and Rosie Casals, exemplify the spirit of the match. At one point in the performance when the ballboys are unrolling the court a voiceover of Rosie Casals recalls the events leading up to the match. Rosie Casals is Billie Jean King’s most winning doubles partner and the only female commentator of the match.
SINGLE CHANNEL VIDEO
I made the single channel for the 35th anniversary of the event as part of a BCAT/BRIC Rotunda Gallery Video Residency Program. It aired it 35 years to the date, September 21, 2008, on cable television and on the web. This video has a different structure most notable are the addition of commercials from the 70’s as well as a music video encore.
VIDEO INSTALLATION
For The Mood Back Home: an exhibition inspired by Womanhouse, I created a video installation. Womanhouse was a woman only art installation and performance organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, founders of CalArt Feminist Arts program. Consciousness raising was intended to produced content and only women could come on opening day. In the installation I use a JVC Videosphere manufactured those between 1970-1974 shortly after the United States landed on the moon.
Special thanks to Rosie Casals; the Women’s Sport Foundation, Billie Jean King’s charitable organization; Justin Parson, Sport Essentials; Gertrud Wilhelm, Manhattan Plaza Racquet Club; the New York Junior Tennis League; and Leidy Churchman (as ballboy/sylist), Lara Comstock (script editor and press), Dean Daderko (as Gladys Heldman), Michael O’Neill (music designer and press), Josh Thorson (press), and Eli Robinson (as ballboy) for their support.
