What Animals?

The animals that are tagging along with me was a glib idea. I liked sounding like a band and not being alone while injecting my website into cyberspace. My girlfriend had created a barnyard at her site and it was a clear thing. Animals are clear.

But then animals have regularly appeared in the solo performance stuff I make without much intention behind it. They are often metaphors for emotions and marginalized groups...a shark is hunger/the desire to live/the elderly, pidgeons are the homeless, performance artists in Chicago are interviewee-animals.

I also think the animals is a good way to think about all the unintentional, unperformed stuff in a performance. Not more true or better but a piece of performance that is always there. Animals are our history and a foundation and a way to connect to the audience.

Coming from a more theater place I am shocked by the lack of emotion in the visual art I have interacted with over the last few years.