Continuum Live Art Series, Second Night (might be NSFW, depending on where you work)

Dean Liscum

Before Continuum's Live Art Series, Second Night on January 4, 2013 had even officially begun at Avant Garden, I almost committed an act of performance art myself. Heading east on Westheimer, I whipped into the parking lot and my headlights focused on a guy sweeping the parking lot. I stopped before I completed "Pedestrian crash test dummy", but just barely. At most venues, I would have wondered WTF? and probably said something to the guy. But this wasn't most places. This was Avant Garden, where nothing seems out of place. So, I took it in stride and headed inside for a pre-show drink.

Inside, the organizers are still organizing, so I take my drink to the back patio and there's the sweeper.

Daniel Bertalot

He pushed the pile of potting soil and twigs across the patio and then fashioned it into perfect square. Once he perfected it, he extracted a note book from his jacket and recorded the measurements.Then he began pushing it across the courtyard.


Daniel Bertalot squaring dirt

I later learn that he was Daniel Bertalot and this was his performance piece Control/Intervention. Nevertheless, I was ready to believe that he was Avant Garden regular and this was just what he did on the first Friday of every month.

Bertalot wasn't the only one competing for attention in the courtyard. Another guy, artist Joshua Yates, had strung twine about 2 ft off the ground between two poles. Trundling under the tables and chairs and along the edges of the courtyard, he was methodically scavenging specimens from the court yard.

Joshua Yates

He then placed his collectibles: small rocks, leaves, dirt, detritus into small plastic zip lock baggies (a.k.a. dime bags). Finally, he clothes-pinned each bag on the twine to complete another portion of his piece, Aggregate.


Dime bags as an art medium



I kept waiting for someone to shout "dude, that's my rock! I marked it with my pee last week."

These were "durational" pieces. My experience of them was before the show officially started. But they both persisted with their performances through out the night.

The evening officially began when someone shouted into the patio that a performance was starting up stairs. As I headed up stairs, I caught a glimpse of the schedule on a dry erase board propped up on the piano and Jonaton Lopez told me that Julia Claire was the host. I very quickly realized that Julia Claire was the most passive-aggressive host I'd ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Not once did she call us to order or draw our attention to an act (OK may be once but sotto voce without a microphone just doesn't work in a bar.) There was a lot of pointing, and people not-Julia speaking for Julia and introducing shows as if to suggest that "Julia recommends..." or "Julia would prefer..." or "Julia commands your attention...", but Julia would be damned if she'd actually say that. Pine for Julia's firm direction as I might, I never experienced it, directly, and yet performances happened.

I entered the upstairs performance space to witness Kelly Allison duct tappe a box of Brillo pads to her crotch and one to her ass. I immediately assumed this piece protested the practice of removing all ones pubic hair and how that played into the prepubescent female\pedophilia sexual aesthetic that permeates the culture. Then she said "I am your mother," and walked back and forth as if she were on a n imaginary runway. I just smiled Freud like.

Do these Brillo pads make my butt look big?

Allison picked up two pails, declared "I am your mother," and walked the invisible rope.


Kelly Allison NOT returning from Fiesta, but she could be

She wrapped herself in a flag. "I am your father." Then in a series of taping and declarations and runway walks, she affixed to herself toy rifles, teddy bears, cables, and with each new taping she declared "I am your brother;" "I am your sister;" "I am your stuff," and  "I am your sons and daughters." Allison put on fins and struggled to walk the walk. "I am your anxiety."



She draped a tire around her neck. "I am your shame." Finally, she placed an egg-shell helmet over her head, which amplified her labored breathing, and walked the runaway one more time. "I. Am your pride."


performance art or Japanese game show

She de-burdened herself, neatly piling up the paraphernalia, and stated, "I am your friend."

I Am... worked for me, but in what became something of a theme in the evening's performances, it kept on working after it made it's point. By the time Allison became "my pride," my attention was checking out the crowd. The end of the piece, in which she deconstructed her costume, brought me back.

The bystanders that distracted me turned out to be the next act, Buddha Slain, which consisted of RainDawg and a two other artists. They gathered in the middle of the stage and started to chant individually "Me!"

Buddha Slain

After a few refrains, the artist disbursed among the audience and shouted in randomly selected members' faces. "Me!...Me!...Me!"


Me-ing with member of the crowd

Some shouted back, "Me!" Some backed up, there bodies signalling 'yeah buddy, it's all you and then some.'


aMErica

The chorus of Me's crescendo-ed, and then suddenly all three feel silent. The other two performers turned toward RainDawg and he screamed out "a-ME-rica."

Simple, short, and spot on. If they'd have wrapped themselves in Allison's American flag, they could have entitled the piece "a-ME-ricaN Politician".

RainDawg yield the stage and David Collin's green doppelganger took it. How do I know it was green? Because I, and everyone in the crowd, could see all the green. He was completely nude and armed with a guitar.  

Did you have dreams of Kermit like this too?

I must admit I got a little excited. My pulse quickened as I thought 'Aww, he's going to sing "It's Not Easy Being Green".' Or, I figured he was going to sing a political ditty supporting the Green party, which he represented in last year's election for the U.S. Senate.

Much to my chagrin, he didn't burst into a Kermit classic. Instead, he asked if anyone in the audience was from out of town. Crickets. Then he broke into a song about nudity declaring among other things:

• He was not naked because this was art. He was nude.
• Male nudity is viewed as "threatening"
• Female nudity is viewed as an "invitation"
• Labia rhymes with Scandinavia

The performance was an interesting take on a public service announcement, but I don't expect it to replace Conjunction Junction anytime soon.

After the song, the performance veered off course. Collins offered anyone in the crowd $50 if they'd would get naked and join him on stage for an interview. At this point, the performance lost its rigidity, shall we say.

The price is right format with a green twist.

No one got naked (Did I mention it was cold? Notice how in all the pictures everyone is wearing their heavy winter coats.) However, someone did join him on stage. Collins meandered through the interview as if he hadn't prepared the questions. Finally, he called on 5 more clothed volunteers to the stage to help him play a game that resembled the "Price is Right" using true values instead of monetary ones. Collins would ask the interviewee a true or false question and the volunteers would hold up signs saying "truth" or "bullshit." Are you confused or disinterested yet? I was both and was ready for him to get his green ass off the stage. And he did eventually but long after the impression of the cleverness of his performance had been eroded by the grating annoyance of the game show.

Julia made some sort of subtitle motion and then one of the Continuum members announced that the performances were moving to the courtyard. I stepped out on the back patio and almost onto this guy that was sprawled out on the floor. The situation wasn't really noteworthy except that it was kind of early for people to start passing out. A couple people were staring at the prostrate man. I took a second look and noticed that he was wearing only short-sleeves and that he was perfectly positioned for a steady drip of water to land in the middle of his back.


Be sure to tip your bartender. Those drinks are a knockout.

The regular bar crowd was also starting to peak, which can make things interesting. Part of the intrigue or at least some inadvertent humor of these shows is that during them Avant Garden continues to operate as a bar. Most of the patrons are there for the show, but a few literally walk cluelessly into a performance.


Ryan Hawk complete with water soaked back

The artist, Ryan Hawk, continued to lay motionless as his shirt became drenched with what I can only imagine was frigid water, which I assume was the choreography of his performance. He also lay motionless as various bar patrons cussed and belittled him and placed an ashtray on his back, which I assume was not part of the performance. On both fronts, it was an extraordinary display of self-discipline.

As Hawk persisted motionless on the terazzo, a woman in the courtyard started ringing a hand bell. As she rang it, she approached the patio. A man produced an identical hand bell and began ringing in tune. Then another person began ringing bells in unison with the other two. Then another. One bystander in a fashionable wool pea coat said to his date, "I think we walked in on a jingle bell flash mob." 

Jingle-bells flash mob...

The ringing intensified as the ringers moved closer together. It happened so organically and then proceeded so quickly that it was almost over with the ringers in an orgiastic heap before I knew that I'd witnessed a performance, Bells of Folly, by Jonathan Richie and Molly Brauhn.


or jingle-bell orgy?

Ryan Hawk cannot be tempted.

Belled out. It was time to move inside for a Jim Pirtle and Nestor Topchy performance. Having been disappointed by their performance in the first Continuum series, I approached the stage with low expectations. Then one of the members of their ensemble rolled in a motorcycle through the side door and Jim Pirtle took the stage as Stu Mulligan with Nestor Topchy accompanying him on stage playing a leaf blower.

Amanda playing the motorcycle

Stu in his pseudo-eastern European accent burst into a version of "Silent Night" or "Sound of Silence." I made out about 3 words of the entire performance. After Pirtle's opening line, Nestor kicked the leaf blower into high gear and Amanda, playing solo motorcycle, revved her engine. There appeared to be some sort of musical composition or progression guiding the musicians, but I'll be damned if I could identify it.


Look! It's Mick Jagger and Keith Richardson on the leaf blower

Stu slurred and shouted into the microphone, plowing through the lyrics with a dramatic inevitability that was matched only by his enthusiasm. Strutting the stage like a Honey BooBoo in need of an attention fix, he lost his wig.


Let me put my microphone next to your 2-stroke engine.

Nestor faithfully accompanied him on the leaf blower, blowing him, blowing the groupies lined up along the stage, blowing the fans foolish enough to fill the front row.


Topchy blowing his fans away.

Stu croned. Stu crowed. Stu even yield the microphone and his spotlight to the motorcycle for a brief solo.

Industrial Strength Blow Jobs

Pirtle and Topchy played their parts to a "T". Their lampooning of pop idols and performance art had me belly laughing. This was Pirtle at his best, analytical and satirical of the culture at large and himself in the confines of an intimate bar with electrical outlets and a wheel chair ramp up to the side door.

BlackMagicMarker took the stage next. His performance started with him quoting a bible passage, Isaiah 66:6 (I'm a fan of the King James version.), which basically talks about divine retribution.



BlackMagicMarker

His performance has a familiar trajectory. Bible passages, guitar feed back, and then he ends up shirtless and covered in blood. One of the refrains, "Christ understands," contradicts the passage of retribution, but it works well within his portrayal of Christ as both a martyr and a sympathetic figure.


reverbernation

Personally, I'm thinking he should rock this show at Lakewood Church.


Joel Osteen after the fall?

After the fake blood was cleaned up / smeared into the floor, Jade and two other performers in 1960-70s hippy-esque attire took the stage. Jade held a colorful sign with a peace symbol on it and positioned herself between the two male performers. They began "singing" or as any middle school choir director would describe it, chant-yelling "peace", "happiness," and "love". They did this for a while and I was never quite sure if it was a command or an offering or a complaint or a flower child with Tourettes as it seemed to be random and unfocused. They stole their ending from the spontaneous bell ringers and simply collapsed into a funky peace-love-happiness pile.

Time Parallels

I'm not sure if I got it in the first 15 seconds or I just never got it at all. If it was a re-enactment of a peace protest, it didn't have nearly enough drama to compete with the Vietnam War reenactment, The Battle of 11th street, for verisimilitude or audience participation. If it was a post-modern appropriation of the peace protest as art, I could have done without the Al Jolson stunt.


Black face and Peace as the new gang sign

By the time they were done, so was I.

Next, we moved outside to the back patio where Koomah and Misty Peteraff (Sway Youngston) began ...and it consumes me.

call me Misty Peteraff

Koomah removed his clothes, neatly folded them, and placed them in a stack next to him. Koomah stopped at his black bikini briefs and revealed a chest wrapped in saran wrap.


Koomah modelling my Summerfest attire

Sitting on the cement tile floor of the patio, he placed black firework snakes on his legs and lit them.


This usage of black snakes is not recommended by the manufacturer.


I watch cartoons.

Meanwhile, holding a bucket with the words "What consumes you?" written on it, Misty P. ascended a chair. She would call out "What consumes you?" and then extract a slip of paper from the bucket and read its inscription: "sex," "fashion is pointless," "you," "anxiety," "I watch cartoons," and others.


"The gentleman with green skin is concerned that your knee is on fire. Here let me Instagram that."

The piece ended unceremoniously, not with a bang or a whimper. Peteraff quit reading and Koomah matter-of-factly dressed. The two parts of the piece never fully congealed into a whole for me. Still, I liked them both, individually.

The group went upstairs to hear Aisen Caro Chacin, Tyson Urich, Melanie Jamison and Alex Tu do a sound performance entitled Rococo.

The cookie monster after hours.


Aisen and band

I'm not a music critic or a sound performance aficionado, but I felt the monostatic buzz. It was a musical progression of not chords but noise: screams and blowing into glass cylinders and spheres, and banging pots.

After Aisen's session, the noise reverberated throughout the room. Then, Jajah and friends began to perform Old Yet New Beginnings. The piece begins with African music, yoga poses, and the pacing an flipping of an officious yellow legal pad. Then Jajah weaves in a creation narrative, "In the beginning..." His beginning is perfection, filled with 4 elements: wind, earth, water, and fire.

He discusses the concept of reciprocity. To paraphrase him, it's what you do to survive: balance, rotation, balance, sing, be what we were, be what we are. Does that description seem disjointed? Good. Because it is disjointed, like walking into the middle of a ritual.

Jajah with Mother Earth in the background

Then he shifted into capoeira style dance with another performer. That was pure Brazilian ballet.


Capoeira

more badass capoeira

The piece ended in a game, a fight for a dollar. According to Jajah, the dollar represented man or his life. The first combatant to pick up the dollar with his mouth won the game of life. I didn't even notice who won because it was such a beautiful game.

Getting Beattie with it.

The final performance of the evening was conducted by Unna Bettie. Dressed in tie-dyed smock and tights, which she could have stolen from Jade's performance, Bettie proceeded to disembowel a mattress. She extracts ice blocks from the mattress and molds them into a green brain-like ball. She then climbs into the mattress, forces stuffing and ice in a manner that resembles feces. I can't help thinking of both Josephy Beuys and his relationship to felt and when Han Solo stuffed Luke Skywalker in to a Tauntaun's stomach.

Bettie does bedding.

After Bettie emerges from the mattress, she stands it up against the door so that lights shining through the door illuminate the mattress. Continuing to disembowel the mattress, she sheds ice from her tights. (Apparently, it was there the whole time.) She then wedges / hangs / suspends the ball of ice in the middle of the mattress, and it glows like entrails from one of those human body educational toys.

Tag still on. Warranty in tact.

And then it was time to go to sleep and discover the meaning of all that I'd seen. Only not on Unna Bettie's icy entrail furnished mattress.

Up-side Down People: A Talk with Kelly Alison

Virginia Billeaud Anderson

In an artist statement that appeared in the exhibition catalog MFAH published in 1985 for Fresh Paint, The Houston School, Kelly Alison announced she had decided to allow spontaneity to direct her approach to neo-expressionism. She had discontinued, she said, “looking around for something that had meaning and then painting it,” and would instead allow her paintings to “live apart from ordinary perception and have their own meaning.”

In 2008 I wrote a newspaper article about her Theory of M exhibition at G Gallery and gained insight into the manner in which Alison incorporates randomness into her process of drawing and painting on layered collage elements. She begins a painting such as Blood Money for instance by researching how many times the U.S. government propped up a genocidal dictator since her birth. As images come forward, a Cambodian dragon, Nicaraguan horned-devil, missiles, and gun-pointing Uncle Sam’s, they are executed on a ground of newspapers, magazines, sketchbook drawings, and hand-written notes from Philosophy and History classes, while she is in an altered state she describes as “in the moment.”

Alison’s practice is to mindlessly fill sketch books and notebooks with drawings and stream of consciousness writing while engaging in ordinary activities such as talking on the phone. If she applies collage pieces densely it is because she believes this material corresponds to the background noise of television and computer media bombardment. “When I’m doodling an unexpected form such as a burka might surface,” she said, “and I don’t pay any attention to the way I apply the collage layers, don’t think about or over-analyze. It’s guided by the subconscious and put there randomly. There’s subconscious stuff happening.”


Kelly Alison, Blood Money, 2007, Mixed media on canvas, 92” x 76”

When I previewed Pick Your Poison, an exhibition of thirty of Alison’s newest works at d. m. allison art through April 27, I noticed a few deviations from the past. Some paintings have little or no epigraphic components. And coloring is different. Alison used pastels and lollypop tones for the works’ circular patterns and other abstract forms because those colors are ridiculous near images that represent astringent or tragic subject matter. Her process still involves randomness, and her narratives are still ambiguous. Hoping to understand the artist’s newest works, as well as her development in the past few years, I asked her a few questions.

Virginia Billeaud Anderson: Years ago Art in America made the brilliant observation that your “vocabulary of figurative symbols” included “up-side down people.” Almost thirty years later your newest works are filled with up-side down people, figures are falling up-side down and drowning up-side down, with their shoe bottoms visible. What’s all that?

Kelly Alison: The falling and drowning men are part of an ongoing obsession with the words “Falling, Burning, Drowning Man.” I showed the falling man last year in my Twist of Fate exhibition and I’m now showing the drowning man at Dan’s. Once I painted a drowning man I just kept doing some form of it over and over. I suppose it’s because of pessimism about the chaos in a system that’s ruled by the status quo, day after day after day, I just can't get away from it. I feel helplessness on my own part. I have no idea when I'll paint anything about a Burning man, but it will probably relate to activists and political protesters who self-immolate. To come back to your point about the figure’s legs, they represent man as anonymous, as lacking a soul. The shoe bottoms are inspired by the work of Philip Guston and also that upturned foot in Max Beckman's The Night. Man’s predicament is further allegorized in the flowers.

VBA: When asked the meaning of one of your human comedies you frequently say you are unsure of the arts’ meaning, yet to discuss pessimism hints at meaning.

KA: I’m unsure of meaning. I suppose this work generally relates to mortality. Death is finding its way into my artwork, artist have died, Bert Long and Daniel Kayne, and my mother’s sister, colleagues at work. It’s happened so much lately I suppose I’m more aware of how short life is.

VBA: Kelly, you actually painted a burning man. I recall a painting made before 2007 that was full of writing, along with dismembered body parts, fractured architecture, and a hand grenade. It had an entire paragraph about Kennedy backing Diem to prevent the Communist takeover of South Vietnam, and the 1963 burning suicides of Buddhist monks. The center of its composition was dominated by a large red abstract form, which I’m certain was your burning man.

KA: Those notes were from a history class.


Kelly Alison, Drowning Man, 2013, Mixed media on canvas, 45 x 32

VBA: Drowning Man has the motif of a sinking boat. Please comment on that.

KA: The sinking boat forces the viewer to ask the question "what happened here?" Again it is a statement of doom, these painting are all about doom, whether real or fantastical. The figures have lost their humanity.

VBA: Although the new works have less text, there’s still some interesting scribbling. Drowning Man for example has the words “Secret Police,” “165 Dead, 6 Children” and “December 1948, My brother woke me up by saying they had come.”

KA: The text in Drowning Man and the other paintings is random. I purposely keep it that way to allow synchronicity as I proceed. It helps for the work to talk back to me with its own ideas. I create text from doodling a couple of hours every day while watching TV or talking on the phone, or during meetings. The words “Secret Police” deepen the mystery of "what happened here?” Also there are random words from a show I was watching about a bank robbery. Another painting contains an image of an automatic weapon called the Glock, because I’ve been following the gun debates. My art still has drones, many are the tiny spider photography drones, because I’m fascinated by the technology.

VBA: I see Kelly Alison in Game of Drones. She’s that small hair bow-wearing figure that holds an umbrella, and it’s not the first time you’ve put her in a painting. Another time she was a bent over stick figure at the bottom of the composition, with the entire narrative balanced on her back.

KA: She is an additional vehicle for my story telling, a narrative tool, as well as a self portrait.


Kelly Alison, Game of Drones, 2013, Mixed media on canvas, 45 x 32

VBA: You did the same thing in 2011 in House of Cards which was exhibited in Art Car Museum’s Fourteen exhibition. Its self portrait was in the form of a crawling baby and it had a machine that spit out dollar bills and drones on its back. In that painting Baby Kelly was somewhat of a focal point.

KA: House of Cards related to the financial mess. The cards coming out of the magic-hat represented mortgage backed securities, houses were under water, a bird that turned the lever of power stood on tarot cards, and the ten of diamonds and jack of clubs symbolized fraud and greed. And yes, the machine spewing out dollars was the Fed printing money and the military using drones, with the whole thing balanced on the baby’s back. You probably noticed I painted a second crawling baby at the top of the composition, which was a salute to Keith Haring’s Radiant Babies.


Kelly Alison, House of Cards, 2011, Mixed media on canvas, 7’ x 10’

VBA: I get all worked up when you reference other artists. The “anthropomorphic flowers” that populate the new works are derived from Yayoi Kusama’s large polka-dot decorated flower sculptures, and her novel "Violet Obsession," in which a young girl talks to flowers as agents of the universe.

KA: The image of the man’s tied-up hands in last year’s Twist of Fate show similarly cited Richard Serra’s 1968 film “Hands Tied.” Serra made a flickering black and white video of a man’s hands, bound at the wrist with twine, struggling to untie the central knot. As soon as the hands break free the struggle begins all over again. The paintings voiced the absurdity of life and death, our perpetual battle to stay afloat.

VBA: What’s with the UFO’s?

KA: UFO’s are one of this series’ allegorical apocalypses, along with asteroids, floods, drone strikes, voodoo, drought and nuclear attack. All of these, alien abductions included, are allusions to mans’ folly, and helplessness and inability to escape it. Your question made me think more about it. I included UFO’s because they are pop icons, just like the other catastrophes in Pick Your Poison are very iconic in a pop sort of way, as seen on CNN etc.


Kelly Alison, Carried Away, 2013, Mixed media on canvas, 45 x 32

VBA: UFO’s are now on beer. The flowers are strange. In an artist statement you called them “victims” of the various apocalypses, but at the same time indicated they are divinatory.

KA: Both, I’m interested in plant consciousness and plant shamanistic power. Many ancient cultures believed that plants, like animals, are consciously aware of human beings and seek to heal us with their energy. Jagadish Chandra Bose experimented with plants’ nervous systems and believes they feel pain and have awareness of affection.

VBA: I failed to catch this in the past, this is the first time I see the influence of Surls. The guy’s sculptures can be so botanical, and weirdly anthropomorphic and totemic. I’m also seeing similarity between some of your disembodied eyes and the eye clusters Surls rendered in graphite in 2010 for Drawings on the Wall: She Speaks with the Blue Angel at Barbara Davis. I wrote a newspaper article about those drawings, which I found mystical and erotic. At the time he acknowledged their metaphysical import.

KA: He was influential. Once I created a motif and then realized it was his woodcut.

VBA: You mentioned being inspired by an Asian art exhibition at MFAH. Could your shift in colors relate to that?

KA: All those candied colors, and I went to China and that opened me up.

VBA: I saw a triptych and several other pieces you made just before a trip to Peru. The forms which replicated the Nazca lines and some patterns in nature were mesmerizing.

KA: I was anticipating getting closer to some kind of inner knowledge, and even the possibility of the extraterrestrial. Collage placement and brush work in those works were intensely random, I tried to be almost worshipal, letting my skin pour into it. I was in a state of mind, in a way you could say it was like a prayer. I felt something calling me.

VBA: OK, tell that fun story about the big-city curator’s trip to “the country.” It was 1984, before you had a studio, and you were painting in your husband’s barn in Brazoria County.

KA: And the barn didn’t have any doors. Barbara Rose was organizing Fresh Paint and came there to see my art, and my husband’s cows came in the barn and stood near us like they were looking at the art.

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.