on the clock

“On the Clock” is a multi-piece project system that included a street performance, costumes, food installation and gallery installation, and video remix.

"On the Clock" was a 12 minute guerrilla street performance on February 12th, 2020 at 12:12 p.m. in front of the Trump Tower Hotel in Chicago. It was a carnivalesque processional, migratory feast in spite of, and to spite, the previous US Administration, ICE and our general state of emergency.

On The Clock was a part of the “What Remains” performance art festival curated by ieke Trinks at the Defibrillator Gallery in Chicago.

The project was a part of my State of Emergency series, a project that links joy, activism and art. It addresses queer futurity, the refugee crisis, capitalism and the fiction of borders.

In a strange sweep of timing, the pandemic hit, 1 month later.

Materials: Remix of drone and street footage, 1 UHaul truck, 1 table, 9 costumed performers, 120 Chicago style Vienna hotdogs, 1 tablecloth as graphic score, 1 clock + Fiverr commissioned actor, surveillance footage, gifs, Hot Dog AR gif, stock footage of dancing tube guy, etc.

THE video REMIX

[add exhibition documentation]

the proposal

“Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.”

Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia

This is a rehearsal for the revolution.
You need:
1 UHaul truck
1 table
1 drone
9 costumed performers
120 Chicago style Vienna hotdogs
1 Joseph Ravens

Set your analog clock to begin at 12:12.
This is relational aesthetics.

Print 1 tablecloth with an image of distorted reversed scaled up huge large blue bitmapped image of that same clock.

This will be your graphic score, your meme, for the procession.

Add bottom text: “Fascism is What Happens When Fear Takes Over.”

The surveillance cams are watching you.
[ HOT DOGS! HOT DOGS! GET YER HOT DOGS!! STATE OF EMERGENCY. ON THE CLOCK. YOU’RE ON THE CLOCK. NO. YOU’RE ON THE CLOCK ]
[BREAKING NEWS. BREAKING THE NEWS. THIS IS A DISRUPTION. AN INTERRUPTION. AN INTERRUPTION. A DISRUPTION. THIS IS A PORTAL INTO A BRAVE NEW WORLD. ]

the costumes

As “emergency couture,” the costumes were composed as a degendered system of parts. Performers mixed and matched choosing which pieces they wanted to include as their costume.

Performers included: Angeliki Chaido Tsoli, John Thomure, Madison Juliana Alexander, Kaylie Engel, Karley Marx, Anthony Joel Quezada, Esther Neff, Kaia Gilje

materials

emergency blankets, emoji tablecloths, high visibility garments, duct tape, string.

assemblage

The project entailed the video remix and highlighted an obsession with assemblage as both method and theory. As theory, assemblage is an embodied means through which to subvert normative power structures and a model through which to queer time and space. As semiotic method, the video recombines and distorts time into an uneasy mashup of the street spectacle, along with internet ephemera (gifs, surveillance footage, clips from House hearings.) I center dance as a site for resistance. The video also includes stills of each performer’s costumes I designed. The costumes were composed as a system of parts that the performers chose from, a queered notion of fashion. Materials included remnants of emergency blankets, fluorescent duct tape, diy orange fringe, strips of emoji laden birthday tablecloths, and high visibility fabric pieces. It is fast fashion in fascist times.

theory of joy [05/2020]

I would like to articulate a theory of joy. A theory of joy not because I easily get up in the morning. A theory of joy because I am enraged that at 8am this past Monday in NYC, a White Woman Calls the Cops On A Black Man. At 8pm, 12 Hours later in Minneapolis, a White Cop Murders a Black Man. “I can’t breathe.” Again. I want to articulate a theory of joy because this country is so cavalier about human life, that it allowed 100,000 people to die needlessly in a matter of weeks, and shrugged as Covid disproportionately impacted black and brown people. A Death Cult, after 4 years, after 383 years, is seeing its cruel harvest.

I want to articulate a theory of joy because this Empire is killing us. And without joy, we will not make it through. Joy is not the same as happiness. Joy is embodied action. Joy is the absurd. Joy is the carnivalesque disruption of normative time and fictive pasts. Joy is about futurity and the belief in the possibility of another world. Joy reterritorializes our bodies, decolonizing the word human.
Joy is about life.