The number 9 guided thepresentation format. Nine separate 9-minute performances were given 9times in 9 discreet spaces in a warehouse-like art gallery at the MilwaukeeInstitute of Art and Design. Each audience member chose a sequence and routethrough the two-hour show. We had four minutes between performances todecide where to go next, with a brass bell and M.C. Joe Riepenhoff to keep uson schedule. If, like me, you look to structure for meaning, this wasabout overstimulation, multi-tasking, social networking, too manyresponsibilities, short attention spans; or it was merely whimsical.
It was also exhilarating,adrenaline-producing, heady fun I worried I would miss something, and of courseit was impossible not to. With no second chance, I had to think fast. Should I save Marc Tasman till last when all 10 years of his Polaroidself-portraits have been mounted on the wall? Can I get past the crowd inHeather Warren-Crow’s area without stepping on her as she crawls on the floorin a blindfold? Should I go back to Marie Mellott and Yahuda Yannay’soccult-like mathematical room, now that I realize they’re giving 9 completelydifferent performances?
Or see why A. Bill Miller’s projectedchalkboard drawings are suddenly animating at top speed? Or what the nudemodels are talking about this time while a new group of audience tries to drawthem? Or watch the beautiful dancers again to see if the paper towels make moresense to me this time? Or view the Chilean couple’s ritual again, but this timewearing a beaten silver Protector mask, a possibility I only discovered as Ileft their performance? Or wait, there’s a great spot to sit on the floor inKim Miller’s mysterious “Stand Up” area and my legs are tired now.
The crowd was big (240people) and smiling. We were free to interact as situations warranted. Italked with old friends and enjoyed the reactions of strangers of all ages andstyles. There was a real sense of occasion.
Each performance wassupposed to reference the number 9 in some way, and these artists had notrouble obliging while still making careful, serious art. I saw new work by oldfriends, and was introduced to artists I’d never encountered. I wish I’d hadmore time with all of it. Here, following the route I chose, are a fewimpressions.
1) Artist models PegiChristiansen, Alice Moore and Sarah Wilson: I surprised myself by trying drawthem, but that was clearly how we were meant to respond to the three nakedGraces or Fates changing poses thrice before our eyes. They spoke quietly oftime speeding up and slowing down. Their bodies spoke of that, as well.Later, these walls were filled with the drawings of audience members.
2) Dancers Monica Rodero andDan Schuchart: 9 lighted candles; a tidy line of 9’s on one wall, a chaos of9’s on another. She poured a line of white sand on the floor. He broughta roll of floppy paper towels, which made another line on the floor. She walkedon that and began to separate the towels with her feet. He placed 9 sheets oftowel around the floor and partnered her in splendid lifts as she picked themup without setting foot on the floor herself. This led to wonderful dancingwhich showed them to be perfect partners, touching and responding to oneanother almost magically. They tried to clean the sand with the towels andthings went wrong. The idea of separation was introduced.
3) Visual artist A.Bill Miller: I watched the projected image on the wall as he repeatedly drewthe number 9 in different colored chalk on black paper. I noticed the chalkdrawings from his first two performances on the wall behind him, very differentfrom the one he was doing. This one was big and straight-backed. Then I watchedhim. His rhythm was ferocious. When a chalk stick broke, he’d leave it lying onthe drawing rather than break rhythm and speed. The performance was dreamilyobsessive. I didn’t know that he was making a time-lapse animation until heshowed it in the final segment.
4) Visual artist MarieMellott and composer-conductor-media artist Yahuda Yannay: The walls werecovered with numbers, geometry, charts and information about the Sigma Code:“Every number has a secret number hidden within it, buried beneath thesurface.” The floor was divided into numbered squares. A metronome kepttime (I learned that it was set faster for each of the 9 performances) and theperformers followed its beat. They gave one another multiplicationproblems to solve involving 9. Correct answers allowed them to change squares. Wrong answers brought instructions to “recalculate,” requests to speaklouder or softer, even to turn in circles. There was choreography to it. Yahudawas both counting with his fingers and playing the piano on his arms, marking therelationship between music and math. There was humor and tenderness. Maybe itwas just about the magic and mystery of numbers, but for me it was aboutendless love and the fragility of the body and mind.
5) Marc Tasman does manythings; in this case, photographer and performance artist: For 10 years, hetook at least one Polaroid photograph of himself every day. As if that weren’tenough, for this performance he placed on the wall, one by one, the photos(mostly close-ups in many, many poses, settings and costumes) taken every dayduring every September from 1999 through 2008. He and an assistant wore awhite glove on the hand that touched the photos. The action wasceremonial. Marc carried his camera. The assistant wore blackglitter 9’s along one eye. The date of the photo was announced, and Marc addedit to the horizontal line of photos of himself that traced the walls of theroom. I started from the beginning and studied the photos to the 2005 date hewas installing and to the man himself at work. The mind reels.
6) Performance artist Heather Warren-Crow: Blindfolded, wearing black highheels, white fish nets, pink men’s briefs with a knotted cloth sticking throughthe fly (a hermaphrodite?), and a loose gray t-shirt, crawling on hands andknees down a crowed aisle and across a small room following lines of brightpink tape on the floor, she carried a wireless microphone. To the accompanimentof a taped beat, in an almost embarrassingly emotional and childish voice, shestood up and delivered a half-spoken, fractured rendition of the greatArlen-Mercer standard Come Rain or ComeShine. (Hearing it from a distance earlier, I had thought it was arecording by Bjork.) Her song gradually changed into a fractured versionof the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” interspersed with thumb-sucking, salutesand marching. Finally, she announced, as to the world, that she was apantywaist, that she was “just pretty enough to be true,” and that she was“true.” After canned applause, she thanked Milwaukee. “Pain is weakness and I haveweakness for you!” she cried. Then she crawled out on her knees. I willremember this performance for a long time.
7) Performance and video artist Kim Miller: this was equally unforgettableand more mysterious. Beside a video camera, using elements from a Richard Pryorroutine, looking glamorous and vaguely lost, she began a eulogy for someonewho’d committed suicide. Before finishing a sentence, she interrupted herselffor a drink of water. She needed to relax, she said. She was anactress hired to do this and had no feeling for the dead man. She drylyexplained that “My greed doesn’t exceed my self-respect, but it’s a closesecond.” Soon, she climbed onto a tall pedestal, tied an orange extensioncord around her neck, and presented the image of a suicide by hanging. Afterawhile, she came back down and continued to speak until exactly 9 minuteshad passed. It was very fine acting.
8) Visual and ritual artists Cristian Munoz and Ximena Soza: the Mapuchepeople live on both sides of the border of Chileand Argentina.These Chilean artists created a ritual inspired by their cosmology. In amix of English and Spanish, Soza half-sang out the names and meanings of 9stages of a spiritual journey to “the highest sky,” while Munoz presentedcreated “offerings” on white woven mats which seemed to symbolize the stages inhighly poetic ways, made from shoes, flower petals, red string, a bowl, a smallpainted drum, sticks of wood, a yarn doll, paper… The Mapuche have onlysesven stages but these artists added Time and Purpose, to Heart, Soil, Pain,War, Light, Moon, and Sky. I felt blessed.
9) DJ Joe Riepenhoff’s performance took place during the 4 minute cross-oversegments. He played music, and spoke a bit about the various performances.Since I was always trying to find my way to the next event, I didn’t get muchof it. I thought of a carnival barker (“Behind this wall, ladies andgentlemen…”), or Tim Gunn on Project Runway (“Performers! You have 9seconds to get ready!”) The songs he chose were surprisingly varied: Love Potion #9 and Beethoven’s 9th, of course; but also Jay Z’s 99 Problems, Dolly Parton’s 9to 5, Sun Ra’s Rocket Number Nine,99 Luftballoons, 96 Tears, 1999, Pista 9 by Bersuit, and tunes involving9 from Sesame Street. The inevitable Revolution Number 9 became a warningsignal that the next performance was about to start.
Inthe talk-back that followed, Marc Tasman described performance art as a form ofresistance. If the world were structured differently, he said, he wouldgrow food and eat it. As it is, he makes art.
