Deborah Fischer

MFA Sculpture

Dedicated to the Providence River under the Mall, 02.17.2026

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect.

PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one.

CLOWN: Let’s stay here for a moment. Knowledge* collapses the thing it touches.

The drama unfolds as a sequence of actions around the Providence River. It begins at the level of the mall above, with a pre-recorded sales booth performer, and descends toward the river’s surface, its hidden history, and former configurations. Participants move through a structured reading exercise that gradually expands into an intimate performative situation: alone in a boat, accompanied by an actor-guide, passing through the touristic atmosphere of the Italian gondolas.

I’m not from here,
Truly yours,
DEBORAH FISCHER

*Looking is an ethical act. To see fully is to risk destroying what you want to preserve.

A bright orange stain in the middle of the river. Made from plastic bottles packed into orange plastic bags, vacuum-formed around a rescued bed into a compressed, airtight body. Inside, burned “mummies” made from thin black metal sheets, pressed into my body.

Orange Boat (Providence River)
Plastic bottles, orange plastic bag, vacuum-formed on fiberglass mesh and resin, black metal sheets
80 × 30 × 32"