im a pause im a pervert im a fiction im a dream / 5 MIN (rough) at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023 – FESCH.TV

im a pause im a pervert im a fiction im a dream / 5 MIN (rough) at Canal Projects as part of Performa 2023 & FESCH.TV:

“im a pause im a fiction im a pervert im a dream is a hour-long performance involving two performers—Deja Bowen and Ray (Tsung-Jui) Tsou—styled in looks by CFDA award-winning fashion designer APOTTS and presented to an audience in the round. In lighting by Bessie-nominated designer Sarai Frazier that evokes the bright white lights of transitional spaces (i.e. airports, bus depots, hospital waiting rooms, and refrigerators), the performers offer an text-based score to an audience in the round, delivering the writing through a combination of monologues, asides, and soliloquies. The score, which originates out of my writing practice, documents and synthesizes the persistence of anxious forces, neurotic tendencies, and unremitting violence inherent within dominant ideologies. A range of urgencies–climate grief, state-sanctioned force, reparative justice, reproductive rights, systems of surveillance, transphobic legislation–appear and reappear within the writing. While the voices of the performers are initially clear and comprehensible, over the course of the performance, they disintegrate into static, echoes, and distortion as artist Victoria Keddie processes and warps their voices into pure acoustic presence. Their words literally disintegrate as they attempt to make meaning within the overlapping existential and perpetual crises we face. Their movements are glitchy, samples, and loops. Double-takes, small abrupt head turns, maximal use of fingers and thumbs, swipes of hands sample a range of contemporary and daily movement. The performance ends abruptly and in darkness. As the audience exits the space, they receive a zine-style copy of the text, designed by LA-based graphic designer and longtime collaborator Tanya Rubbak. The zine functions both as a program for the piece and as an opportunity for the audience to further engage with text in their own time.”