Howdy,
The first week of the
Drive By Performance Series, curated by Seep @ Links Hall, is behind us and accident free.
The New City has made us the Tip of the Week and has a brief review, which includes some comments on my piece, "The Bee, Direction, and the Driving Lesson".
I only show I got to see last weekend was
Beatriz Albuquerque's "Livre". The audience was given a small piece of paper with a simple instruction/score and then were rotated into the car and the performance for three minutes. The car was then driven, rather furiously, back and forth in a parking spot while the audience did their score and Beatriz wrapped the insides of the car in string with a rather serious expression on her face. My instruction was to repeat my name for the three minutes.
I found the visceral effect of the car moving forward and back very engaging and mirroring the caught/entangled feeling of the process of wrapping and the repetition of my score. A friend of mine suggested that the choice of running a SUV back and forth had an environment angle which I could see somewhat but can't really articulate much beyond a vague commentary on the addiction to gas. Honestly, because of the car (a jeep I think it was) being kinda old, I just assumed that was the what Beatriz had to work with.
I felt like there were three kinds of knowledge in the piece. The visceral/physical knowledge of the car moving, a more symbolic/rational knowledge of the string wrapping, and an oblique knowledge of the scores the audience performed. Together it was a rather short, rich aesthetic experience that I didn't feel moved to dissect.
Erik
