PERFORMX DOCUMENTS NO. 4:
HOURS OF THE DAY
EDITOR: DA Denckla ASSISTANT EDITOR: Matthew Bussa
6 Run of Show
11 How To Use This Book
| ESSAY |
BY DA Denckla
17 ONE OF THE DOZENS no caps_no cow_no days_no time
| SOUND + VIDEO |
BY Cato Gilmour + Francesca Levi
75 TWO OF THE DOZENS Corcorvado
| LOVE SONG | BY Latiniti Infiniti (David Holguin + Christian Bhagwani)
27 THREE OF THE DOZENS
Dreaming in Another Language
| FILM + POETRY |
BY Seokyoung Yang
20 FOUR OF THE DOZENS For all Intents and Purposes or Bare witness//Bottoms up
| PERFORMANCE | BY Rayne
43 FIVE OF THE DOZENS mime piece iii
| PERFORMANCE ART |
BY Dylan Marx + Zak
Kenefick
45 SIX OF THE DOZENS pas de deux sur le feu | POETRY | BY Sabrina
O’Reilly
53 SEVEN OF THE DOZENS speckled red piano orgy
| PERFORMANCE ART | BY Jeremy Kennedy + John Dawson
57 EIGHT OF THE DOZENS
TH3 B4LD 50PR4NO; Or, English Made Easy | VIDEO | BY Sophia Le Fraga
71 NINE OF THE DOZENS
The Raven’s Visit
| PERFORMANCE ART | BY DA Denckla with Brenda
Vaca
87 TEN OF THE DOZENS
What were you like after; what will you be like before
| PERFORMANCE ART + VIDEO |
BY Emji St. Spero + Sammie Veeler
87 ELEVEN OF THE DOZENS
Thoughts on Improvisation
| SOUND PERFORMANCE | BY Mystic Elevator (Abigail Whitman + Jack Herscowitz)
91 TWELVE OF THE DOZENS (M) Other Body
| PERFORMANCE ART +
VIDEO | BY Jessica Dillon + Karolina Lavergne
PERFORMANCE INSTRUCTIONS
| PAGES 18, 26 ,34 46, 62, 74, 86, 102, 120, 140, 164, 176 | BY DA
Denckla
INTERVENTIONS
| PAGES 42, 82, 116, 136, 190 |
BY Matthew Bussa
PERFORMX DOCUMENTS: ONE OF THE DOZENS 5
How to Use This Book
BY DA Denckla
OK, you say, I've read books before. Many, actually. Why do I need help "using" this book?
Fair question. We don't think you're unversed -- the opposite. We give you this book as a tool, as a weapon to harness your brilliance, tapped or untapped.
This book is a hybrid text -- a sort of three-way clusterfuck of passive reviewing, active reading and calls for IRL action.
This book combines Performance Documentation with Performance Instructions with Performance Projects. This soup is worth stirring.
We want this book to more than perused, pawed over, or thumbed through.
We want you to do more than read and review this book, Dear User, though we are duly honored that you would do so.
We want to give you a way to interact with this book in the same way that an audience interacts with a performance.
And, we want to take that a step further and give you the means of production to enter the work of these artists through somatic Instructions and create your own work in response.
We feel sad that you missed the exhibition on December 8, 2022.
And, we have felt your sadness before ourselves too. We've missed more performances than we've seen. A conflicting event. Couldn't get off work. Slept through your alarm. Booked it on the wrong day. Totally forgot. An
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Ex seems to be going whom we don't want to see. Too depressed to leave the house. We get it. We've been there. All of those places.
We too have had FOHMO -- past tense, evil twin, and irritating homophone (Damn you, silent "H"!) of FOMO -- Fear of Having Missing Out.
Because we understand your suffering, having suffered like you have suffered, we have designed this book with you (and us) in mind -- because we don't believe that you should SUFFER. When you suffer, we suffer. So enough!
In fact, we don't believe in the nobility of suffering at all. Nope.
We believe in following the Pleasure Principle (Freud) right downn the street to Pleasure Activism (A.M. Brown).
And so we give you this User Manual so you may manifest your Pleasure and banish your Suffering, through particular and carefully-structured actions that may help restore you to a place of sensation and creative fulfillment, that may equal or exceed the experience of attending our (nowlegendary) December performance.
We've made this book an embroidered pillow with your name on it, so you can fall back on it in times of struggle against yourself, against time (lost and found) and against circumstances out of your control (or which you let get out of control, which hurts more).
We want you to use us, lean on us, bend our pages back until we scream for more!
By "us" we mean "this book"-- personified in the first person plural. Like "We, the People..." we write of "Us, the Book.". We, the Book, in order to perform a more perfect union between artist and audience, we offer you a shift in your role as a "participant" (Poof!) required to make the
PERFORMX DOCUMENTS: ONE OF THE DOZENS 9
live work live and breathe. If a performer falls alone in the forest, is that a performance? Hell, no, they need an audience, or, in our updated jargon, a "participant".
And we wish for you, Dear User, to be a "full and active participant"-- by giving you this Book as a source of guidance, action and reaction.
Even those who attended our event may not have given us their full attention, although we did our best the threaten them with existential dread that they would miss something important if they so much as sneaked a look at their phones. Those attendees too may derive extra benefits from using this book as we instruct.
Again, we ask: How to Use this Book?
And, now, after that preambling Intro to the User Manual, will tell you:
The book has three parts for your to use.
(1) Performance Instructions
Before the documentation of each of the twelve artworks, we have designed Performance Instructions with the following limitations or criteria:
(a) Five lines of simple, easy-to-follow, step-by-step Instructions.
(b) Capable of being undertaken by a single person by themselves
(c) No need for special tools or equipment, only humble everyday materials
(d) Describes a somatic practice or ritual observance
(e) Mimics and embodies the core sensation
(i) Created by the artwork that follows, or
(ii) Recreates the circumstances of the artwork's creation, or
(iiI) Enters into the imaginary liminal space of the artwork itself.
(f) Substitutes for a standard introductory summary. I would like to note that these Performance Instructions owe a debt of gratitude to Julio Cortazar, Kurt
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Johannesson, Yoko Ono, and William Kentridge. The instructions are words collaged over fuzzed-out, cropped stills from “Second-hand Reading” (William Kentridge, South Africa 2013, 7 min., HD video).
(2) Performance Documentation
Performance Documentation is work about the work, supplied by the Artist, which may be any or all of the following:
(a) the words spoken or sung during the performance
(b) documents made in preparation for or in reaction to the performance;
(c) images taken during rehearsal, performance or captured as stills
(d) diagrams, ephemera, or objects related to the creative process before, during or after the performance
(e) the space in which the artwork was made or conceived
(f) the tools, equipment, or media with which the artwork was made
(g) correspondence between the artist and others before, during, or after the performance related to creative process or the performance experience.
(3) (Performance) Interventions by Matthew Bussa
After the artist's documentation of their artwork, we have provided you with some interventions for creating your own art projects with the following motivations in mind:
(a) We want you to enable you take any inspiration (or any disgust) that welled up inside of you while reviewing the artwork and its documentation and turn that emotional energy into creative energy. To liberally paraphrse Julia Cameron, author of the The Artists’ Way, "Love as well as anger tells us what we want."
(b) If you don't feel moved to use our Project suggestions, then we hope that you will consider formulating your own. “You can go your own way,” as Stevie Nicks sings. Or was that Lindsey Buckingham? Or both?
(c) We believe that the value in accessing art is to invoke your creativity.
PERFORMX DOCUMENTS: ONE OF THE DOZENS 11
(d) We assert the assumption that anyone who can understand art is an artist or sometimes an artist-in-waiting.
(e) We don't support the idea that there is (or should be) a distance or a difference between artist and audience.
(f) We believe that artist and audience are one in the same whole ecosystem of culture-making.
(g) We decry, condemn, and seek to undermine the establishment of profitcentered promotion of the singular artist or entertainer (rock star) and a separate adoring consumer horde.
(h) We reject, deplore and seek to tear down this sort of hierarchy derived from gods and mortals, kings and subjects, celebrities and fans, whereby the one powerful rules over the many powerless.
(i) We proudly and openly declare our origins in a punk rock, DIY, let's-put-ona-show ethos where everyone is in band or could be in a band and does not need expertise or skill or experience, but only an avid (and sometimes angry) desire to create.
(j) We also state our grounding in the skate punk approach to documenting every creative move you make, every risk you take, every trick you try to master, believing that your scrapes, pratfalls and wipe outs are every bit as impressive as when you land the combination.
(k) Plus, we note that if you don't document all the time, you might miss capturing that one godlike moment when grace entered you.
(l) We set forth that difference between an artist and an amateur is not output or accolades but documentation.
(m) We are motivated by the Marxian notion of Worker Utopia in which surplus production leads to a sharing of surplus time that permits every individual to pursue a life in the Arts -- not just those deemed to be "talented" or whose talent has been recognized so that it can be monetized by mass market sales.
(n) We seek to create an Economy of the Heart in which creators connect with readers and audiences at a small scale and with sufficient intimacy that readers and audiences feel invited to become participants and creators in their own right.
With all that, we hope you use this book wisely. And return to it often to
PRAXINOSCOPE 12
ponder, create, and rip out pages. Tear it apart, it’s your Heart.
We hope you take us seriously that we take you seriously. We sincerely want you to participate in this book —not just read it— but perform its instructions and undertake its projects.
We know it is a lot to ask. But only those who love you believe in you enough to challenge your ass.
So, it's time to get off your couch or up from subway seat or out of that bookstore or wherever you are reading this book and make some shit happen.
Do it now. Do it today. The due date is your life. Tomorrow.
And, whatever you do (or don't do) document what you've done and then share it with us. Please! Send us your stuff and we will post it on our Instagram and such.
If you are harmed (or your feelings are hurt) in your attempts to follow our Instructions or undertake our Projects, please accept our apology in advance.
But please also know in advance that being an artist comes with risks. A lot of risks (as well as rewards)-- emotional, spiritual, and financial. And, by reading this book, we assume that you assume the risk that your Inner Artist will, at times, fuck you up. And, sometimes embrace you warmly. And the reward for those fuckups make you who you are.
Every success looks a lot alike. But every failure is unique. No two accidents look alike.
So get ready to fail like an artist. As G.K. Chesteron wrote, “Everything worth doing is worth doing badly.” And say goodbye to fear, who always sucked anyways, and wasted all those years... before you read this book. Peace. Or, maybe not...
PERFORMX DOCUMENTS: ONE OF THE DOZENS 13
PRAXINOSCOPE 14
PERFORMX DOCUMENTS: ONE OF THE DOZENS 15
act i
| BY Cato Gilmour + Francesca Levi
