Category: Performance Art

“Code Blue, The Dolly and Kenny Variation”, Latitude 53 Gallery

I attempted to create a variation of a previous work that would involve elements of my mother’s life and my deep memories of her that were associated with a classed culture: Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers “Christmas to Remember” cassette, 66 pounds of potatoes to peel, 66 Players Light cigarettes to smoke. People would be invited to smoke, listen to music, or help me peel potatoes under the Christmas Lights with me.

I hoped to channel my mother’s life memory this time. I planned to set up a table in a park. Finding a location in a strange city was a challenge, and I choose a busy street outside a bookstore where I had seen children asking for spare change beside a place where bikers meet up. The bikers reminded my of my estranged brothers: they might respond to what I was doing and would definitely provide some safety from inebriated college kids or anyone having an angry night.

I wanted to explore the stigma and fetish of experiences of poverty and “poor” culture. When walking through urban spaces, it is necessary to insulate ourselves, and we cannot dwell on harder times all the time. However, I feel like my experience is somehow a hidden threat. As we walk consciously or unconsciously sorting our haves and have-nots, I feel confused about which category is mine.

I bring my mother everywhere, don’t I? Am I hiding?

How it went:

When I arrived on site, I choose to create a cardboard sign with black marker identifying myself as “another sob story” and saying this was about my mom. I planned to take four hours for the piece and did so.

A Critical Self / Self-critique:

A crowd from the gallery stood watch the entire time, in support, which is heartfelt by me. At times the work became about the contrast between the gallery crowd and the variously reactive passersby. Perhaps I had a too rigid idea of what I was going to do with the objects and when, and poor or careless composition of the elements in the space. I do not know if this could be called intentional. It was blurry.

Some passersby talked to me and related to the piece. The bikers helped me with my lights, some of the conversations I had with them were friendly, some failed – I was bringing up death, and unlike my earlier piece, I was not silent. I tried to achieve silence with my cardboard sign, but felt I could not keep silence. I had a couple good conversations, such as with a man who stopped with his infant daughter. Smoking so many cigarettes at once (I do not usually smoke) left me in a deeply altered state after the official end of the work. There were some moments of deeply working.

A private part of the piece occurred when I walked the bucket of peeled potatoes down to the river to throw them in. Is this still “art”? Is this part “furtive”?