Morning After Thoughts

It is too soon to make narrative, so I'll just make a couple observations.

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Ursula Rucker practices a form of improvisational disobediance. The term is Jayna Brown's, and was invoked by Erica Edwards in her dialogue with Rucker - while it has specific resonance in the history of Black women's performance, the term works for all of the artists who shared their work with us this weekend.

I was really moved by the conversations on Saturday - by the wisdom of each artist, and by our collective movement towards the ideas and feelings they described.

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Michelle Raheja, speaking of the challenge of James Luna's performances here in Riverside and in Palm Desert, suggested that performacne about who we are may in some cases be a lot more difficult that performance about who we are not. Much of Luna's more satirical work is driven by the latter. This work is centered on the former.

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This is the work of the "sub sub" - Ursula invoked this image to describe working from a space below the basement - like, not even the basement.

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Last night - curated by Ron Athey and Julie Tolentino, with the latter also doing a lot of the wrangling required in establishing how the night would flow - was really special. Ron & Julie brought in a crew of tireless "helpers" - set builders, lighting designers, gathered from their friend circle. Last night would not have worked without them - Steak, Pig Pen, Tania. Michelle was a rock.

None of this could have been pulled off without Shane Shukis from The Sweeney Gallery. He was working through what I suspect was almost unbearable exhaustion and has been too gracious to let any of us see that. (And we still have stuff to do today.) He's had a hand in everything - from securing the venue, to publicity, to getting chairs and building the platforms.

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Ron, Julie, Heather Cassils and Zackary Drucker moved us through a tight series of tableux - it's the not the kind of night you can sum up in a snappy sentence - but it was both intimate & fierce. The crowd was unbelievable - really supportive, interested, and there.

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The time after such a performance is strange. Ursula said that the moment you finish, when you are still on stage but the performance is over, is when you are most naked. I am sure that it is when the artist can also feel most alone.