Anna Berndtson “Churned”
My best, oldest friend in the universe is a painter. He makes big abstract paintings. I think of these paintings, in the vernacular of theatre, as triple threats. They are first of all, beautiful paintings; secondly they are so big it is easy to looks at them as flat modernist sculpture; and lastly the process […]
Alice Vogler “An Evening of Messages”
Alice Vogler’s An Evening of Messages occupied a space at Rapid Pulse that was unlike any other work in the festival. She made neither a stand-alone performance with a set time (30 minutes in front of a seated audience, for example); or a durational work that the audience is meant to experience in whatever way […]
Jefferson Pinder
Black Labor mops the floor 2 men and 1 woman The floor is wet Long sweeping strokes Flow of mop tendrils Connect and disconnect on the grey floor Electric guitar Percussion in back left corner I sit against the wall Light shines on me as I type 2 people move the table “In 2001 Spike […]
Allison Halter “R Kelly: A Critical Appreciation”
Performance art utilizes real time, real space, and often times, real bodies. These are materials that everyone can understand, making the medium accessible to a wide variety of audiences. Performance art, however, has roots in conceptual art, which utilizes a language all it’s own. I am always enticed by performance that makes use of the […]
Jeffrey Byrd “The Boss”
Jeffrey Byrd describes his work as exploring metaphoric potentials of the human body the relationships between reality and artifice through original music and otherworldly vocals. To this should be added human relations and decision theory. His brilliant command of the audience that sat present during his performance was a great exercise in subjectivity and how […]
Interview with Anna Felicity Friedman aka the Burlesque Butcher
ET: On your website, alongside a photo of you, is a caption that I love: “Just a small feminist note…this is what a real, non-photoshopped, 5′ 7″, 127 pound, size 4 to 6 body looks like. Yes, I look chubby by magazine and fashion-industry standards, which gives you an indication of how misleading and manipulated […]
Zackary Drucker “The Story of Lynn Harris”
The theme of Thursday’s video series was Corporal Discomfort, a concept that echoed the unease brought about by each of the day’s performances. They all involved some degree of suffering on the part of the performer, eliciting a kind of sympathy pain from audience members. The descriptor “hard to watch” came to mind frequently. Carlos […]
Beverly Fre$h “Mr. Midwest”
Beverly crosses borders with his performance. The interlocutor identity that goes from preacher to hip-‐hop MC, to possibly mentally disturbed or handicapped individual plays off one another well. Whether this is intentional or just the outcome of the multi-‐faceted performer to watch Beverly is to be entranced. At the end of the performance you feel […]
Permission to Engage: Meaning Machines
“Meaning Machines, a 3.5 hour ensemble performance piece by Rooms, the Chicago-‐ based performance art duo (couple, team), Marrakesh and Todd Frugia, was exhibited June 4th, 2013 as part of the Rapid Pulse Performance Art Festival. 7 performers, dressed in white linen costumes were blindfolded and listened through earphones to a series of pre-‐recorded, individually […]