Viscera II
Performance: Saturday, April 5, 7:30pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, April 6, 2:00 pm
Open Space is pleased to present an evening of intensive performance with Ron Athey (Los Angeles), Samantha Sweeting (UK) and the gyrl grip a.k.a. Llewyn Máire and Lisa Newman (Portland, Oregon).
Viscera II is a performative investigation of the body’s physical response to external phenomenon or cultural hegemony. Curator John G. Boehme observes, “Whether it is found in the teaming machinations of the office workplace, or in the glut of body conscious media surrounding us, the base and abject response to cultural terrorism is from the gut.”
Viscera II extends and reinvents the limits of our bodily knowledge, invoking the history of bodily representations in euro-christian iconography, how the body can be expressed as social, biotic, political and invented. Featuring performances by the four artists, Viscera II brings a contentious enactment of embodies action. An event expressly organized for the intellectually un-squeamish. Viscera II features three performances:
Ron Athey transforms his body to an object of spectacle, sandwiching it in an unhinged and weighted display unit.
gyrl grip will perform Honey is Home: Part 2, which explores the nature of intimacy, longing and loss. In this performance, gyrl grip challenges gender roles – who is male, who is female – have either of us become a new gender?
Samantha Sweeting’s La Nourrice is an interactive performance that invites the audience members to suckle, a quintessential mammalian activity.
Viscera II opens at 7:30pm on Saturday, April 5.
On Sunday, April 6 at 2pm, the four artists will talk about their performances and will be available to answer questions.