This article explores and documents the work of leading Midwestern performance artist Julie Laffin, in the years since she developed a serious form of environmental illness (Multiple Chemical Sensitivity). This condition has effectively rendered her housebound and unable to appear in public, so that her previous live performance practice--which typically took place in public, urban spaces--has necessarily been curtailed. In attempting to reinvent her practice by other means (including performances by proxy, video and sound works, etc.), Laffin has gradually moved towards a more activist stance on environmental issues, while attempting to maintain a strongly personal aesthetic. Performance art has often been regarded as a form of intensely individual, even "narcissistic" creative expression, and this article asks what it might mean to consider environmentalism through such a personal creative lens. The discussion takes the form of a dialogue between Laffin and Stephen Bottoms, who has variously been a critic of her work, a collaborator in it, and a friend. (Contains 8 notes.)