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Bonfire Funeral 2009
This event informally named “Bonfire Funeral” at Guild & Greyshkul Gallery in February 2009 represents peak overlap of those 2 periods.
The beloved and respected artist run gallery was closing and this was one of the final evenings.
It was billed as a poetry reading and lecture. The artist Jibade-Khalil Huffman read some of his poetry work.
There was a jazz drummer seated at his drum and high hat for another reader who never showed up. I can’t remember if that was part of the plan.
Then I gave a talk entitled “Neuroplasticity and the Perception of Time,” intertwining physics, brain science and the lived, experience that we perceive.
This was hopefully interesting and did generate laughs at the right moments.
The artist Tyler Coburn was then graciously employed as a heckler in the crowd who actually took over my microphone to go on a highly articulate rant against my presentation.
This gave me a moment to slip on my clam costume.
I believe I sang a song and 2 tap dancers joined and then did a competitive dance between the two of them.
At this point, a panel in the floor with led to a staircase to the basement was lifted and 10 men wearing only bull masks, or “minotaurs” came up from the nether realm and chased the dancers and the flame through the space and back downstairs.
At this point I should mention that the gallery was very crowded.
The “clam” had to turnside ways like a crab to get through the crowd, but the 10 masked naked men parted the crowd like a hot knife through butter.
NEUROPLASTICITY AND THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE & TIME 2006-2010
In September of 2006, I participated in Pecha Kucha in New York City at St Marks Church. Pecha Kucha is a structured event of presentations of a specific length of time. I did a version of the Neuroplasticity lecture which was punctuated by sound effects to keep me on schedule as per the strict time limit. Additionally, I used the ceiling of the church as a projection surface.
Different versions of this performance happened at other venues and as part of the Greater New York show at MoMA PS1 in 2010.
2002-2003 I did several versions of a 35mm slide lecture with a microphone which was composed of various photography based chapters and scripted text. These performances were in and around the San Francisco Bay Area and most of the imagery was obviously local or from suburban California.
These photos are from a specifically San Francisco series entitled “Outfits I’ve been wearing when I was asked if I was a prostitute.” I received a lot of feedback after these lectures from people who had similar experiences in San Francisco. I wrote a little about this particular group of photos on Instagram years later.
