Dead Already, Last Installment
GUEST BLOGGER: David Everitt Howe
As a fictional artist, a group of artists, and an art space, Reena Spaulings Fine Art is intrinsically experimental, the kind of place that can seemingly only be found very far away from the conventions of Chelsea. To be specific, in an unmarked dump in the heart of Chinatown. But if the ambitious programming at this gallery is any indication, Emily Sundblad and I should be best friends forever.
“Dead Already” purports to dissect an exhibition into distinct categories and time frames, building blocks for micro-exhibitions. There is a pink carpet for dance, a sound system for music, projectors for video, dollies carrying Koether and Gordon’s haphazardly stacked artwork, and wooden barriers for spatial division. The conceptual framework of “Dead Already” was disappointingly weak. The curatorial thesis only held water as a clinical metaphor. Exhibition autopsy, get it? However, the live performances by Ei Arakawa, Alan Licht, Karl Holmqvist, Stefan Tcherepnin, and K8 Hardy were chaotic, intense, and exhilarating.
Ei Arakawa’s “Two Grahams” breathtakingly manipulated Martha Graham choreography with Dan Graham’s bootleg punk rock music. Martha Graham’s revolutionary choreography is based on the idea of contraction and release, inhale and exhale. Graham manipulates the body with tension, internalizing it until it explodes. Unlike ballet, Graham technique is ugly, honest, and harrowing, with bodies bent over, feet tensed, and lots of floor work and falling. Graham technique is a perfect internalization of punk.
“Two Grahams” created an abstract criticism of art commodification using conventional art packaging props. As soon as the performance began with writhing choreography and a wailing introduction by Jutta Koether, all but three dancers exited the space and began constructing a structure in the plaza outside on East Broadway. A live video feed of the process was projected onto a wall. After the dancers returned, they forced the audience surrounding them to sit down along the wall. The performers stretched glassine-like plastic sheeting from one side of the space to the other, and then staple-gunned the plastic to the wall directly above the viewers’ heads. A plastic sheet was also stretched from floor to ceiling of one end of the space, blocking the exit. The audience was, pun intended, packaged. Beneath the fort of plastic sheeting and wooden divisions aligned across the stage, posed performers were shuttled as art objects from one side of the stage to the other on dollies. For the performance’s conclusion, the plastic was ripped off the wall and discarded, and booklets were stapled together from video documentation and supporting material. Not even the structure outside remained, as it had already been disassembled. Using art handling props for a sort of punk opera, the performance echoed Koether and Gordon’s teasing treatment of the art object for ‘Dead Already’ by devaluing it and assigning value elsewhere, namely to the ephemeral and informal dynamics between performer and audience. ‘
K8 Hardy also flaunted the audience/performer dynamic for her “Live” performance, which was noteworthy for her aggressive barks and howls directed towards the audience, and at times at no one in particular. Dressed in a sort of futuristic warrior costume, she spoke into a microphone and wandered the space as if lost. She seemed to be playing victim of political helplessness, a bystander of tangled debates on queer and feminist rights. Drowned in feedback and synthesizer, she kept repeating, “This is a performance. It’s how we communicate,” followed by the question “Do you hear what I’m saying right now?” addressed several times to viewers. She eventually abandoned talking and instead opted to use the more direct language of thrusting her hips on the floor and blithely licking the carpet. ‘
A frivolous spectacle of eighties amazingness occured as revolutionary experimental musician and composer Alan Licht rose from a cardboard coffin for his performance “Dance” midway through the day, aiming a projection of music videos all around the space and onto the spectators to a thumping soundtrack. Even Arakawa was dancing. ‘
Immediately following Licht was a long, repetitive poetry reading by Karl Holmqvist of his amusing “Horses, Horses.’ Stefan Tcherepnin rounded out the roster, contributing the humble but beautiful performance “Composition For Amplified Piano Sweeping Noise.” He composed a piece for the piano, which was nothing very exceptional until near the conclusion, when the dissonant feedback and piano became complementary notes. It was surprisingly emotional, a perfect summation of this exhibition’s last day.
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REVIEWS
Posted by Guest Blogger | Friday, May 11th, 2007 |
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In Chekhov Lizardbrain, Pig Iron Theatre Company takes inspiration from the writing of playwright Anton Chekhov and autistic writer Temple Grandin to explore the mind of the seemingly schizophrenic and autistic Dmitri/Chekhov Lizardbrain. The result is at once puzzling and provocative. While Chekhov Lizardbrain often moves into apparently irrational juxtapositions, the surrealist elements of the play never become too abstract: Pig Iron elegantly walks the line between abstraction and representation, balancing conceptual experimentation with more traditional theatrical form. Their success also stems from the strong physical element of their theatre, which always keeps their acting grounded in the body. Through the puzzling window into Dmitri’s mind, Pig Iron creates a world that is at times scary, moving, funny, and entertaining. As we watch Dmitri’s memories and language break down, we are drawn into the comic and tragic aspects of this mind’s workings, sometimes recognizing glimpses of our selves in it and at other times feeling like he indeed belongs to a different species.
