The Best of Pan: Green Blob saves Cello Fury from Naked Tutus (NSFW)

[Dean Liscum had been blogging for Pan for a while when he wrote this post. He had even started blogging about performance.  But his humorous appraisal of this anarchic show seemed to prefigure his later writing on performance art in Houston. He was an eager participant, willing to allow himself to be moved by what he was seeing and experiencing, but also willing to have a laugh. Dean's performance posts have been some of the most popular in the history of the blog--possibly because of all the nudity in them, but I hope all those people searching for naked performance artists took the time to read Dean's great writing.]

Dean Liscum

In the dead center of summer in Houston, Tuesday's are dead. Monday's are even more livelier because it's industry night and you can buy drinks for you favorite bartender and s/he can remind you what a lousy tipper you are and how lame your game looks to the rest of the bar.

In the art world, they're even deader. So, when one of the members of Continuum forwarded a FB invite to Southmorehouse's event Naked Tu-Tu Tuesday #27. I glanced over the invite (excerpted below), reviewed my desolate social calendar, and clicked Join.

This is a ballet themed NT so bring your naked self and your Tutus to Notsuoh on Tuesday July 31st for an evening of ballet, music, and audience participatory performance art featuring Cello Fury from Pittsburg, PA (that does not mean "Prince Albert", folks) and Continuum, a local Houston performance art troupe (who will also lead a movement workshop).

To get such a sweet spot we have already volunteered to do an exhibitionist improv and definitely goofy dance routine while they play. Just kidding - maybe...

The phrase that caught my attention (and inspired my attendance) was "audience participatory performance art featuring Cello Fury." What the hell, I thought. I like Cello Fury's music, and even though I've never participated in a performance art piece before, I figured that I could undulate to the rhythm in a way that would make my white boy ancestors proud or at least play the equivalent of a performance art landscape prop.

I also discounted the theme spelled out in the title due to three facts:

1. The invitation included the following disclaimer: "...There will be lots of people wearing clothes. Please, no pressure on them. The idea of NT is to make everyone comfortable with whatever their choice of attire."
2. Although we're not technically in the Bible Belt, we are below it. Even though the dirty south may be on the down low, we don't admit those kind of things or show them in public.
3. And finally, I took the line "PA (that does not mean 'Prince Albert'...), as an implicit guarantee that come what may, I wouldn't have my frenulum staple-gunned to my thigh. (At a place like Notsuoh, it's a good guarantee to have.)

Tuesday arrived and so did I. The show was on the second floor of Notsouh. I opened the door and raced up the stairs into a re-enactment of Marina Abramović and Ulay's Imponderabilia by two Continuum members. The performance art piece involved a naked (except for a stocking cap) male and a naked female on opposite sides of an entrance. Anyone who wanted to pass through the threshold had to walk between the two naked figures. Because of their presence, the entrant had to turn sideways and face (and come in contact with) either the naked male or the naked female.



Members of Continuum re-enacting "Imponderabilia"

This performance greeted everyone who showed up to the audience participation training. I was perplexed by the choice before. I was also fully aware of the political-social-sexual implications that I was forced to ponder. So rather than make a decision, I made multiple decisions and passed between the performers sometimes facing the male, sometimes facing the female until, like a over indulgent child at a free carnival ride, I was asked to let someone else take a turn.



I was mostly worried about stepping on their toes with my boots.


I could have ridden that ride all night but someone threatened to get out the staple gun.

On the second floor, it was a pretty sparse crowd. Maybe 20 people, half of them naked Southmorehouse regulars wearing more smiles than tutus.

The remnants of the first performance was being cleaned up. It featured Christine Cook fully experiencing her cake and ending in what any foodie (or your id) would enviously label a "foodgasm."



Have your cake and wear it too (photo copied from southmorehouse FaceBook page)


photo by Hilary Scullane

Next on the agenda, Continuum members, Sway Youngston and Jonatan Lopez re-enacted another Abramovic\Ulay performance piece, Light/Dark. This work started with the two artists sitting cross-legged across from each other staring into each other's eyes.



boy sees girl Abramovic-style

They then took turns slapping each other, tit-for-tat or rather whap! for wham! as the blows resonated in the space.


slap and ...


(tongue) tickle

The exchange evolved or devolved into a wrestling embrace. Both performers remained seated, but managed to lock arms and hold-grapple-pull-twist each other climaxing in an embrace-kiss. For the denouement, they then re-established the separation and the slapping until the piece simply ended.


Continuum members varying interpretations of the naked tutu

After pondering that painful performance (a metaphor for relationships? romantic love? the life of an artist? Continuum dues?), the audience drank beer, took photos, and lamented the fact that Texas has 367 miles of coastline and one clothing optional beach, which is Hippie Hollow in Austin. (At this gathering, I observed that naked people talk about being naked and nakedness issues as opposed to the geopolitics such as the war in Syria or the economic crisis in Spain.)


Rosario and Rosalinda plead with artistically inept

Around 9 p.m. instructions for BalletSutra began. I was excited. After all, this piece inspired me to show. Not because it was entirely new (Lopez had previously performed YogaSutra), but because it aspired to make the inartistic (namely the inartistic me), artistic. I figured if they could turn me into a performance artist, who knows what other transformative powers their art might possess.



The piece began with an introduction of our teachers, Rosario and Rosalinda, who apparently hailed from some undisclosed latin american country or a Jorge Luis Borge short story. Rosario explained that we would perform this sutra in front of the band Cello Fury as they played one of their sets. Rosalinda explained that the philosophy of BalletSutra involves a "dominate" and a "submissive," which seemed a more accurate description than just having a lead and a whatever that other person is.



The R's then walked the participants through the 5 movements of BalletSutra. There was twirling, flapping, kneeling, and something like a pirouette. It felt like a cross between tango, two-step, and ballet, but mainly it was slow and deliberate and the intentionality gave it gravitas. We performed the 5 movements until it appeared that either we had mastered it or that if nothing else we were more likely to injury ourselves on an out-of-control spin than a member of Cello Fury.



Beware: BalletSutra in progress

Our instructors congratulated and dismissed us. Then we waited for the band and their fans to arrive. Neither of whom knew that a group of naked tutu-ists, newly schooled in the art of BalletSutra and eager to show off our mad skills, was awaiting them.

They arrived and their presence inspired some to frolic frenetically on stage and ...



all around it. The roadies looked a little flustered. Cello Fury's fans did some jaw dropping, but the stayed and everyone settled in. The opening act started playing and everyone relaxed...or at least relaxed as much as they could if you were at a family gathering and uncle Leo refused to put his pants on.



Then Cello Fury took the stage and began to play. BalletSutra did not commence. Turns out that Notsuoh's upstairs stage is not quite as big as the members of Continuum thought. So out of safety concerns and\or in deference to Cello Fury (who wasn't warned of\invited to\ approved of, or collaborate in the whole BalletSutra thang), Continuum called off the performance leaving several of its supporters dressed in tutus, primed for dominance and/or submission, and without an expressive or creative outlet for their 5 new dance moves.



So Cello Fury jammed on (in a similar fashion to the video but this is not the performance), encouraging audience members to dance, and some did. But, no one BalletSutra'd as they boogied.



Meanwhile, 4 members of Continuum regrouped in a space next to the crowd and performed the "Green Blob." This performance consisted of a constantly moving, changing amorphous mass of green humanity.



Faces, feet, hands, and haunches protruded and then receded from the giant green organism as it slithered, shivered, and undulated across the floor. I was mesmerized as my mind tried to identify the creative anatomies that were limned in green. How could a thumb-nose-hip be in that configuration? And before I could puzzle out the pose another emerged.



The piece lasted for several minutes until the exhausted members emerged to applause. The consensus among those who'd seen it performed at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair and Bar Boheme during Continuum's turn at Cultured Cocktails was that this performance was a 'great' Green Blob.



Continuum members and their supporters. What you looking at Willis?

I left the evening tutu'd, artistically un-transformed, but better for the experience.

Continuum Live Art Series - Opening Night (part 2)

Dean Liscum

...I wasn't that disillusioned. The holidays just got in the way. Here's part 2.

Next up, in the evening was Kelly Alison assisted by Emily Sloan. Allison's piece started with her stating how much she liked Christmas and what a wonderful time it was for her. Then she began to deconstruct why? As she spoke, Sloan strapped white balloons to Allison's body.



Alison revealed that like many of us, what made Christmas so joyful was the presents under the tree. In her family, that meant 40 presents decking the halls. (8 people times 5 presents or it might have been 5 people times 8 presents...my memory fails me as I'm sure any study of fruit flies--the laboratory equivalent of art bloggers--reveals is inevitable when you add alcohol to an art blogger and then give them memory tasks). Her family often waited to wrap the presents on Christmas eve out of sheer necessity (buying presents up until the last minute and\or working until the last minute). That was also the precise moment at which her father would pick a fight with her mother. Irregardless of the subject, the result would be that her mother was left "holding the bag" and wrapping the pile of presents by herself. An exhausting and Herculean task that left her mother exhausted and Alison upset.



By the story's end, Sloan had transformed Alison into a white balloon-festooned, human cross. Given the context of her narrative, I presume that the number of balloons was 40, but I didn't count them. Long white candles were distributed among the audience members, who lit them and then proceeded to pop the balloons and thus liberate Allison, who at this time bore a striking metaphorical resemblance to her mom, with the flames.

Now that's what I call putting the cross in Christmas.

Somewhere in the space-time continuum surrounding Alison's piece, Unna Bettie began circulating the room with a collection box that read "Collecting Money for My Performance". A few (Ok one) audience members tossed a dollar or two in but most of us did what we normally do when confronted by a request for money whether to support the arts or political-humanitarian causes or the youth of America or someone's meth addiction, we did a quick mental calculation donation = less money for sex, drugs, and alcohol, and then stared blankly off into the distance until Bettie and her box moved on. Then Unna Bettie took the stage, spilled the money on to the stage, stripped down to a leotard, and assumed the yoga position referred to as "plank". She held this position for minutes: 2? 5? 6? until she collapsed on the money. She lay there, caught her breath, stretched, and then repeated the process. Again. And again. 4 or 7 or 9 times. (So many so, that I actually missed the end. Her endurance "outworked" my bladder.)

It was the simplest form of work. Hold your body in a position. It was also the most Abramovic-ish piece of the night in that the artist's exploration of her own body's limitations within a certain context, in this case work, enabled the audience to re-assess their own definition of the topic.



What is work? What should it be? And at what rate (monetarily, socially) should it be rewarded?



Bettie's performance didn't answer the questions. It did emphasize the ambiguity that surrounds our definition of work in the digital age and in the context of the immigration debate and who's willing to do what kind of work for how little remuneration?

After so much work, we needed a break. Our host moved us outside to the courtyard where a large A-frame structure that could have been an over-sized easel stood. Randi Long hammered a single 2" x 4" horizontally across one of the A-frame's sides. Janna Whatley mounted it. Long then hammered another board above that one. Whatley ascended it. Long removed the first 2" x 4" and attached it near the top of the other side of the A-frame. Whatley climbed over the hinge and onto the board on the other side. Long removed the other board and hammered it in below Whatley. Whatley descended to it. The end.



Ascend, descend. Almost childish in its simplicity and yet (and probably because of it's childishness) I really enjoyed it. The right combination of elegant, arduous, precarious for me in that space-time.

The descent concluded, our green-haired, red-pantied host ushered us upstairs.

On the second floor, the audience circled around Julia Claire Wallace. Her hands were dipped in black paint and she held them up in a gesture of supplication or surrender or greeting. She slowly rotated. While spinning, she declared that she was seeking authenticity and asked the audience to help. The request was structured as a proposition. Her performance was "help(ing) you, help me; help(ing) me, help you." Then she disclosed as either a disclaimer or a rationale to help that she is of average intelligence, average clerical skills, and not the best artist. That inspired the crowd to erupt into riotous, foot-stomping applause. When the cheers died down, Wallace led us in a chorus of "This little light of mine."



Having inadvertently shifted into literalist mode, I looked for the light. None. So I'd have to take points off for continuity. That and if you're looking to me to validate your authenticity, you took a wrong turn on your existential journey.

The childhood theme continued with Zubi Puente and Y.E. Torres' work Let's Play Doctor, which sounded promising until I witnessed what type of doctor. The piece opened in a nursery with a phallic menagerie of stuffed animals: a two-foot velour cock and balls, a bear-like animal with a hole where the head of the cock fit snugly, a teddy bear with a fur-lined erection, and a ballerina princess. Zubi as the ballerina princess protagonist came to life, produced a pair of scissors, and proceeded to both dreamily and matter-of-factly circumcise her teddy bear-erectus.



The bear sat calmly as the ballerina removed the furry foreskins. I squirmed, suffered a pre-conscious nightmarish flashback, and then silently, screamed.



Her mission as mohel accomplished, the ballerina danced back to her place and then tranquilly turned back into a doll.

Freud in the house! The act of the circumcision appeared playful. But, in what context can one truly deem taking a pair of scissors to someone's genitalia a form of child's play? Given the assortment of odd stuffed animals in attendance, I opted to interpret the act as vengeful. Perhaps, it was a politically based, negative fantasy inspired by stories of female genital mutilation that are publicized in the media periodically. Perhaps, it was a personal exorcist. Off! Off! damn foreskin! Off! Perhaps, it was something in between.

The performance art drew to a close with Perpetual Dawn by Christine Cook and Sway Youngston. Dressed in black, the two artist entered the performance space with their hair tied up and black mop buckets in their hands. They placed the buckets on the floor and knelt beside them. Having let down their hair, they connected themselves by each fastening an end of a bungee cord around their necks.



Simultaneously, they dipped their heads into their respective buckets soaking their shoulder length hair with soap suds. Then they began to mop the floor with their tresses. The crowd went momentarily silent. All you could hear was the wet sound of their hair sweeping across the floor.



Our M.C. grew agitated and made a pro-feminist crack along the lines of "so all you guys are just going to watch these women do all the work." It was greeted by a few uncomfortable chuckles. Then he offered, perhaps out of jealous, perhaps out of longing, to join them.



I must admit, I too wanted to participate. His co-host cut him off, "let them finish their performance." He quieted down. My heart sank. I realized that the audience's participation would have turned it into a different performance piece altogether. It would have become communal and cathartic, instead of being the sensual and redeeming act that it was.

We remained transfixed as Cook and Youngston metaphorically cleansed the second floor of Avant Garden, the evening, and us.

P.S.

According to the agenda, I realize that I missed a few events, most notably Hilary Sculane and M.R. Miller's individual performances. I stayed until the first set of Say Girl Say was over and then I turned in. It was an enjoyable experience, but an exhausting one. So rest up, because Continuum and I will do it all over again at Avant Garden on Friday, December 28 for Continuum Live Art Series, Second Night.

Continuum Live Art Series - Opening Night (part 1, NSFW)

Dean Liscum

On the last Friday of November, Continuum's Live Art Series Opening Night occurred at Avant Garden. The performances kicked off a 6-month residency at Avant Garden that will include workshops along with performances through April 2013. I attended the event, which started on time and ran on schedule because they had more performance art than you could shake a neon green recorder at. Here's what I saw.


southmorehouse presents' David Tyson Moore and his day-glow phallic symbol

southmorehouse presents' David Tyson Moore and Laurette Cañizares served as the M.C.s and  got things started with their performance Be A Woman 2. In it, the couple prepared for hosting the show. Cañizares went through her beauty routine and Moore mirrored her. It started and ended in slapstick. The two took the stage dressed in matching bra, panties, and head scarves and end in sport coats, his and her matching iridescent wigs, and hats.


Laurette and David...

However, a few moments slipped into intimacy. Whether intentional or accidental, I don't know.



After Mirror, I went to the back of Avant Garden, where Christine Cook had set up her piece This Body Is... In it she stood stark naked and stoically next to a chalk board that had the words "This Body Is" written on it. Adjacent to it, a small table with a cup full of colored chalk stood. The implication was that the audience was invited to comment on the performers body. To do so one had to get in the performer's personal space. You could think what you want or say what you want--Reubenesque, zaftig, pleasingly plump, fat, enveloping, squeeze-ilicious, etc.--but that was just talk until you recorded it in chalk.





The power in this piece lay in the fact that you had to not only write your thoughts/feeling about it but you had to confront the artist and subject while you did.

In the attic, Militia "Malice" Tiamat performed Know Thy Self. In this piece, audience members experienced it one at a time. A guide greeted me at the stairs and instructed me to form a single question and hold it in my mind until it resonated through my body, until I felt it in my feet. Then I was ready and could enter. In the midst of fog and disco style lights, I ascended the stair into the attic. I sat before "Malice" and asked my questions. She stared at me for an instant and then answered confidently and calmly, "No, you're not. Not now. Not until spring."


photo by Steve Patlan 

I've never given fortune tellers or futurist much credence. I still don't. But Tiamat's performance had a satisfying feeling of mystery and possibility. The Jean Michel Jarre atmosphere didn't hurt.

M.C. David urged the crowd upstairs into Noelle Dunahoe's performance of Lights. In it, she sat in an old fashioned rocking chair and choreographed a light display show of bald bulbs as if she were spinning a yarn for her kith and kin by commanding her own limited universe of constellations.


photo by Hilary Scullane 

During the light display she asked a series of questions. Here's just a sampling:

Are you alive? 

Have you grown? 

Have you changed? 

Can people change? 

Have you known Love? 

Are You loved? 

Do you love? 

Was it worth it?

And then it just ended.

Next it got emotional (ok, more emotional) as Koomah injected the emo with The First Time I Say... in which s/he used a red marker to draw red circles (symbolically kisses? cuts? orifices?) on her/his arms and face.


S/He circulated the room with a bowl of band-aids and invited audience members to place them over the circles. After which, s/he ceremoniously tore them off one at a time.



Finally, s/he stripped to the waist displaying the eponymous slogan The First Time I Say I Love You temporarily tattooed across her/his torso and screamed "Love".



I'm not sure if s/he seduced anyone in the crowd, (I've tried screaming "Love" at someone before with no luck), but it shifted the mood to raw.

Perhaps this was intentional in preparation for Minotaur Blues by Jonatan Lopez. Perhaps, not.

The piece started in total darkness with Lopez clothed in a transparent sheet and white boxer briefs. He circled the room, illuminating his face with a flash light and confronting audience members with his apologies for his transgressions and for what he deemed were the transgressions of life. "I am sorry for..." was his refrain. He then shifted from sorrow to anger, lashing out at the artist Daniel Kayne for killing himself and declaring that he, Lopez, used to think suicide was an act of bravery but now knows it's an act of cowardice. The Minotaur then talked of his own slow self-death caused by grief and meth usage. He pulled out a glass meth pipe and smashed it with a hammer, and then another and another.



Finally, he scooped up the broken shards in his hands, thrust them into his crotch and masturbated, smearing the resulting fluid on the floor and on the wall spelling out "Help".



At first I was a little confused and stupidly literal minded. Lopez played the Minotaur but he did not appear as the half-man, half-bull. I didn't get the connection. By the end, even I got it. He was the Minotaur in a maze, but the maze that he could not escape from wasn't built by Daedalus. The maze he couldn't escape was life: its highs, its lows, its end. I'm not sure if he was sorry he couldn't help us or that we couldn't help him.

RainDawg followed Lopez's performance with his Homage to Daniel Kayne. He stood up straight and brought his hands together in the traditional christian gesture of prayer and intoned "I want to perform with Daniel Kanye." Repeatedly. And of course he did just that--invoked the memory of Daniel Kayne and incorporated that memory into his performance in the mind's eye of the beholder. He ended the piece with same line followed by a single word. "Again."

I hope, for the sake of Kayne's memory, that RainDawg and others do.



After that series of performances, I needed some fresh air and a drink, so I got one at the bar outside. Unfortunately, in doing so, I missed a large portion of Love Exorcist performed by Tina McPherson via streaming video from the "exorcist stairs." (I put that in quotes because I don't know if that's the stairs from the movie of the same name or the scene of an actual exorcist or a really dark, that is dark as in cool, goth bar). I do know that the exorcist was a success and the woman was un-loved or de-loved and it wasn't painless because she cried.



And due to technical difficulties (a.k.a. the Love Demon), this following random fashion show stream briefly interrupted the exorcism...



...or maybe it was part of the exorcism. I'm not sure.

At this point in the evening I also became unsure of the order of events. Let's just say it seemed like the next performer was Chuz Martinez in The Destruction of A Dream whereby the artist Jimi-Hendrix-ed (yes that's a verb) an acoustic guitar. I could bore you with a blow-by-blow comparison of their processes and techniques. Instead, let's just say that Jimi had a good sledge-hammer swing and kerosene, where as Chuz favored a knife, but with the same result.



I'm not sure if the Dream represented the music industry in general, an ex-lover, the U.S. drone strike program in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the state of acoustic guitars, the rise of poverty in the U.S. or the failure of technology to actually transform our lives rather than help us trivialize and devalue ourselves at the speed of Moore's Law. Whatever metaphor you picked to read into this performance, it was destroyed/conquered/defeated.

While the staff at Avant Garden was cleaning up the remains of the guitar, Jade, with the help or combative assistance of RainDawg, performed The Doll Bride in the Guilded Cage. It consisted of his character, the groom, forcing the doll bride to do something against her will. It wasn't exactly clear what his goal was or what she was objecting too. In what I witnessed of the performance, they embraced, struggled, she broke free and hide in the ladies restroom. Then she emerged, they embraced, struggled, and she broke free. The metaphor was as obvious as the behavior is common place. As one drunken observer noted, "I see that shit at this bar every weekend."


Love or Wrestling in 19th century costumes

Without, I suspect, the mid-19th century costumes.

Jade about to be hugged or harassed

Black Magic Marker followed Jade's piece with the Gory Story of Love. Love turned out to be Agape and not Eros. BMM started off wearing a black mask with a red sequined something on it. He played a base guitar and talked about the greatest love a.k.a. the crucifixion story. He then took off the mask and crowned himself with a ring of thorns and continued to thrash away at his base, all heavy-metal and reverb.  A cross appeared.

There was blood. There was proselytizing.

Just me personally, but if I've got to choose on a Friday night, I'll take bloody masturbation over crucifixion.

Tentative Title (hey that's what the program said), which was Evan McCarley's piece started stealthily in that she, like everyone else in the room, was standing around drinking a beer. I assume that it started either when she ordered it from the bar or when she meandered near the stage but the performance didn't attract my attention until she threw the beer down at the edge of the stage and smashed the glass. Then she took her seat on the stage, removed her shoes, and began to cry, then to sob...hard, as in someone drop-kicked a kitten type sobbing.



She stood up mid-sob and removed her shirt. She removed her pants. Still sobbing, she embraced a few members of the audience.



Then she returned to center stage and thanked the audience. Thanked us for what I'm not sure because I didn't know the context. So instead of feeling somewhat voyeuristic and removed from the whole piece, I decided that it was a tribute to those who died in the recent attack of Gaza by Israel. In this context, the piece worked for me, except there wasn't enough hard sobbing...but then there couldn't be.

Next, it was Nestor Topchy's turn. I'd been anticipating this all night. I'd even mentioned it to patrons at Lawndale's opening as I left early. Then I experienced I Got Nothing on Laura and Jim, which was Nestor standing on stage and apologizing for not performing. He said that he wasn't going to perform because Jim refused to perform and Laura was going to have a nervous breakdown or a stroke or both if she had to perform. He called Jim to the stage. Jim came and stood on the stage. Nestor mentioned that performance art is not entertainment and it's OK to fail. Nestor then pulled out some pants that were way too big for him, christened them "big boy pants" and put them on as ostensibly a metaphor for taking responsibility for his failure to perform and thus "wearing the pants." Then he put a paper bag on his head, tore a hole in the front and stuck his nose out of it. Finally, he invited the audience to rub noses with him (possibly in solidarity, possibly as consolation) as he left the stage.


Big Boy Pants? Always a boy never a man?

Now I realize this could have been a brilliant performance in which the performance is a non-performance, and I totally didn't get it. It could have been a performance about being unable to perform, about impotence, about fear of failure, about failure, about aging, about creatively calcifying, about performers losing their creative edge.

And perhaps it was.


Performing but not performing

Nevertheless, if it was, it was both brilliant but it was not convincing. It was like having two stars of Houston's first generation of performance artists stand before an enthusiastic crowd of performance art's next generation and say "Oh if it's only you, I prefer not to," and then rubbing their noses in it.


Rubbing your nose in it

(to be continued...after I overcome my disillusionment)