Melia Efstratis Chendo
Get on the Couch, 2026
with Denisse Griselda Reyes
This performance stages the psychoanalytic session as a live, unstable encounter between two bodies shifting roles of authority and vulnerability. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, performance, and improvisation, the session constructs an analytic space in which transference, projection, and free association are activated and made visible. Through role-play and improvised dialogue, the tension of the analytic duo is explored as a relational performance rather than a fixed hierarchy.
Chendo and Reyes experiment with camera feedback to further destabilize the fixed binary of the looking analyst/seen patient. A live video feed mirrors the session, emphasizing the role of delay and repetition in meaning-making; participants encircling the analyst’s chair and analysand’s couch are invited to gaze upon each performer with a camcorder projecting video in real time. Connected by a 100-foot extension cord, the movement of the camera through the audience forms a physically taut enclosure around everyone in the space, arousing the erotic collectivity and tension that activates both psychoanalytic work and performance art. Together, Chendo and Reyes perform analysis as a mutual, contingent process rather than a unidirectional cure.