Happy Birthday

In the performance video HAPPY BIRTHDAY, 2005/2007, a single voice is layered to form a party of multiple voices. The artist crawls about, at first setting up a tablecloth on the floor in anticipation of the event. We don’t know if this is the artist’s first birthday celebration or her last. During the course of the party, the artist becomes increasingly anxious, realizing as she does that she is either happily alone or alarmingly left out. The expectation that others will arrive quickly dissipates as Katz, like a bad child, dabs at her cake, destroys it and eventually paints on top of the chocolate with cans of Williamsburg paint, left-over from her earlier years as a painter. Running time: 8:40.