My Barbarian at the New Museum
Los Angeles based collective My Barbarian delivered two enthusiastic performances to a small crowded room in the lower level of the New Museum over the July 4th holiday weekend. As part of the collectivea€™s New Museum residency program, the collectivea€™s members Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon, and Alexandro Segade produced and performed Post-Paradise, Sorry Again which operated in the style of a variety show-cum-theatrical workshop weaving together a series musical interludes, audience participation exercises, and short vignettes of ambitious performances followed by theoretical critiques by the cast. The evening opened with the introduction of their role for the evening as the Post Living Ante-Action Theatre in a campfire style sing-along by the trio who were joined here by six New York based artists including LTTRa€™s Ginger Brooks Takahashi and video artist Jennifer Sullivan. Audience members were brought to the stage to participate in ritualistic meditations and at one point invited to remove part or all of their clothing as the cast members did half way through the performance. Although typically energetic and bawdy, this performance veers from politics and societal ills the group has taken as a subject in the past and operates more as a wry self critique via a backwards glance at the tenets of collaboration in the 1960s counter culture. Adapting elements from the Living Theatera€™s 1968 landmark performance Paradise Now and antitheatera€™s 1969 Pre-Paradise, Sorry Now into a workshop format, the group openly and playfully explored contemporary notions of radicality in todaya€™s highly self-reflexive environment.
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