Outer SPACE 2: Greenbelt Center for Performance Research

Displacement opening March 9th, 2008

Jonah Bokaer of Chez Bushwick, and former Merce Cunningham dancer in collaboration with John Jasperse of Thin Man Dance opened the doors to the Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last month. The opening exhibition of Displacement included visual art as well as performances by Ann Liv Young, Kayvon Pourazar, Amanda Loulaki, Matjia Ferlin, and Jonah Bokaer in collaboration with Michael Cole. Displacement's intention was to:

"[promote] dialogue about the rapid development of places, communities, and neighborhoods, and the resulting emotional and physical displacement of individuals within the urban context." (artist statement from curators Elizabeth M. Grady and Julie McKim)

Displacement opening March 9th, 2008

The Center for Performance Research is housed on the ground floor of Greenbelt, an eco-conscious building in Brooklyn. This will be the first 'green' performance space housed inside of a building in NY and is L.E.E.D. certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). CPR will offer performance makers cheap space to work and present as well as a large storage basement for storage of props and materials. Their goal is to attain a high level of sustainability, in support of both performance and the environment. Though there is nothing particularly innovative about their mission: providing space for artists, creating community dialogue etc - it is exciting to see their relationship with biotechnologies and their ability to house more design heavy work. I'm excited to see what will come out of the CPR in the future.

| CPR | Greenbelt | Images via Center for Performance Research |
| Updated link CPR |

Outer SPACE 1: Center for Performance Research

Founded in 1988 by Richard Gough and Judie Christie, the Center for Performance Research (CPR) was revolutionary in its efforts to archive and make available performance documentation and materials. Attached to Aberystwyth University in Wales, the CPR is responsible for producing performances; facilitating workshops, conferences and festivals; encouraging international exchange amongst other artists and publishes the academic journal Performance Research. Currently they house printed materials, audio-visual works and a video archive.

First Supper - Aberystwyth, Wales 12|07|2007

Currently the CPR, after 20 years of operation, is facing closure after losing its funding from the Arts Council of Wales. If you'd like to sign their petition to remain open, please follow this link.

What I find most exciting about the CPR are its multifaceted functions. Both resource center and facilitator for live research, their job is to act as a living, concrete receptacle for a medium whose very nature is ephemeral. How do we working with performance document our work? And what is the reason or need to do so? What does the work become when it is no longer exists in its original live form? These appear to be the questions addressed by the existence of the CPR - but how do we interact with it as a resource center?

First Supper - Aberystwyth, Wales 12|07|2007

Located in Wales, and with virtually no free online material, to what extent is the CPR a model for performance research/spaces/facilities of the future? Their performance material on sale is extensive and well shelved, but what about us who can barely afford used books? They're based on appointment only, which in the past for me has limited my ability to wander about and discover new materials (as was my experience with the Performing Arts Museum of San Francisco). They do, however, offer residency and internship options - and seem accessible enough through their website. They're also in the process of throwing a festival Giving Voice 10 focusing on the performance of voice and the use of voice in live-art.

In the increasingly digitized world, I'm thankful for spaces like the CPR that allow you to physically interact with the materials. They are reference only, so you can only interact with them to a certain extent. Maybe some sort of hybrid between a physical and a digital resource center will be the future for performance research, but as for the first steps - the CPR has clearly pointed us in the right direction.

| Website | Online Store | Images via CPR |

The Outer SPACE Series

The Outer SPACE Series will focus on contemporary performance spaces that are either experimental in their function or location or are devoted to live, creative performance research. There is a current crisis, not just in the performance world, but in other art practices around the acquisition of space. Space to bring in international artists; space run by community members; space that is affordable; space that is large enough to house multiple sized scales of work. The need for artists to move their work outside of sanitized museums and museum practices can only be facilitated by alternative spaces, but first we must come up with concrete and sustainable ways of doing so. Currently, at least in Chicago, there are many live/work spaces facilitating performance events, and doing so with varying degrees of success - but tend to always be minimalist in form/content and must always be restricted either by neighborhood regulations, inappropriate zoning, the living conditions of the folks who run the spaces, lack of funding for advertisement or residency options or are in-accessible to the differently-abled. Yet for now, they are the best spaces to look for contemporary and up-and-coming works.

Allan Kaprow, The Courtyard, 1962. Happening at the Mills Hotel, New York

The Outer SPACE Series will focus on those spaces who have attempted to work towards transforming how live-art is approached and perceived and perhaps how contemporary performance has adapted and transformed to the opportunities and restrictions they present.

| Image via Met Museum |

DV8: The Cost of Living

A boy dancing out his sexual aggression to Cher.

A man with no legs determined to finish the day.

A woman who looks like Amy Winehouse spinning 100 hula hoops.

DV8 Physical Theater's The Cost of Living, released on DVD in 2004, has haunted how I frame movement since I first encountered it a couple years back. Originally produced for the stage as can we afford this / the cost of living in 2000 and then again as the cost of living in 2003 - this made for film version in 2004 continues today to win awards for its aggressive movement as well as its cinematic efforts. Beautifully weaving in surrealist fantasy, whimsical narratives and sexual energy, Director Llyod Newsom's approach to physical theater has been to move away from the abstract, modernist elements that still dominate most contemporary dance and aims at making meaning with postmodern focuses on everyday gesture; the dance club; child's play; grind-core; slam-dancing and other movements from vernacular dance practices. Though not as queer oriented as some of their past works, we still find unusual parings; a homo bathroom cruising scene and a lot of public eros.

"The Cost of Living was shot on location in Cromer on the Norfolk coast: a typical, old-fashioned and faded English seaside resort. The summer season has petered to an end. An air of desertion hangs over the town. Eddie and David are disillusioned street performers. Eddie is tough, confrontational and not afraid to defend his belief in justice, respect and honesty. David is a dancer who has no legs (as he is in real life), watching him makes you reconsider accepted notions of grace and perfection. He is quietly determined not to let his disabilities or society's prejudices get in his way. A series of inter-linked scenes show Eddie and David's encounters with other people; some are incredibly hard-hitting, others exhilarating because of their sheer physicality." (from their website)

DV8 has been investigating the gendered body, the racialized the body, the differently-abled body, the modern body - the live body - since 1985 and continues with their current touring of To Be Straight With You ; a live dance theater piece with a multi-ethnic group addressing issues about tolerance and sexual identity.

| DV8 website | videos | Images via DV8 |

The SSION

The SSION is an electro-punk rock disco crazed ball of filth from KC MO that makes me cream my pants - every time - without fail. I first saw them when we both performed at the first couple of Whoop-De-Doo's (a showcasing of Kansas City's contemporary art) back in 2006. Frontboy Cody Critcheloe's live performance is undeniably invocative of his predecessor's , Queen's frontman Freddie Mercury's, loud and over the top theatrics. But much more perverted. His cult followings are two-fold: 1. the calculated, performed following of boys dressed in 80's, Keith Harring inspired prints and spandex and 2. the public following of hipsters, radical queers, dirty art school kids and fourteen year old girls.

In terms of their live performance, they're on par within their contemporary genre of visual performance art bands, including: Leslie and the Ly's, My Barbarian, Kids on TV and the like - but definitely in the more exciting vein of Homocore. Typically performed in front of projected images, Cody's movements are contained, loosely choreographed and somewhat improvised and the energy stems mostly from their visuals: costuming, animated backgrounds and the sweaty, sweaty boys.

What is most impressive about Cody's performance is his mastery of persona both on and off stage. Philip Auslander's latest treatment of persona in Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music throughly articulates its tri-fold nature:

" ... I see the performer in popular music as being defined by three layers: the real person (the performer as human being), the performance persona (the performer's self-presentation) and the character (a figure portyaed in song text). p4 "

Of course these three elements are overlapping and intersecting (especially in the improvised moments), but Cody's mastery of the spectacle of persona is of particular interest. Cody, as visual artist, steps outside of Cody from the SSION to direct, construct and implement spectacle. This is most evident in their Myspace pictures of them on set, filming one of their music videos. They are all imbued with sexually anarchy, but a well considered anarchy. As Cody carefully adjusts the camera in one shot then sits open legged and ready to fuck on top of some busted car in the next, we see the small gaps between the different layers as proposed by Auslander. Offstage, you're faced with this sweet kid from Kentucky that probably once delivered your newspaper until he found Fifth Column.

What if we extended this treatment of persona to gender, racial and all other subject identity performance? This reminds me of what post-colonial writer Frantz Fannon had to say about existing in triplicate when a young white boy called him a nigger on a train. He said he not only existed as Frantz Fannon, not only as the nigger in the white boys eyes but also as the universal black man. Perhaps persona is just that - a careful and well considered performance of what we perform everyday. If done well, we buy the spectacle as whole, as truth, as completely outside of us; as with the case of David Bowie, Cher and the like. But when the cracks are left open - when the drunken dancing of a beautiful boy rips down the projector screen and falls into the crowd laughing - we find the human us and perhaps a new sexual, anarchic contingency worth being open to, even if it takes a few drinks:

" I don’t think about it in terms of “role model.” It’s bigger than just a gay thing, and I think it’s the great thing about being a musician or an artist when you can help out other kids in that same place. That really awkward phase where they can either pick up on something a little bit more outsider if they’re interested, or just go down the same path their families always went down. I think it’s great if kids are into what we’re doing and want to do something similar. That’s awesome. That’s what punk is about in one way or another." (from an interview with Gavon Laessig)

| ssion.com | videos | ssion myspace | Images via Ssion |

Gob Squad: Where do you want to go to die?

Last night a couple of my friends met me after work for drinks and dancing at Berlin. Amidst a crowd of young sweaty hipster gay boys, my friend and I turned to see a mutual friend of ours standing still, hands over eyes - sobbing. The degree of contrast between his emotive stillness and the thrashing of hands and heads to some cheesy house beats was so visually arresting. It reminded me of this video piece I fell in love with called: Where do you want to go to die? by Gob Squad, the European performance collective.

I'm not sure if it was the cheap wine we had been drinking that skewed my perception of time, but things were moving in extreme slow motion. Perhaps it was the doubleness and the in-betweenness of the spectacle of the dancing crowd and the private, wearing physicality of our friend that made my reception of his breakdown feel so extrasensorial. The drama about a lover and his lack of commitment was disclosed later - but it wasn't nearly as dramatic as that fleeting moment on the dance floor. These are the moments Gob Squad is after; small, painfully familiar and of the everyday:

"Gob Squad often place home-made magic and spectacle next to the banality of everyday life, setting theatre and the “real world” on a collision course and capturing the results on video." (from their online artist statement)

| website | Image via Gob Squad |