by Barry Hoggard
MR Festival Spring 2008: Somewhere Out There
As someone who likes to see the latest in dance (and dance / theater), I love events like “catch 30” (www.catchseries.org) that let me see an evening composed of many different artists. Last night’s performances, curated by Jeff Larson and Andrew Dinwiddie and described as “rough and ready performance and video” featured 10 performances by artists from the Brooklyn and Minneapolis dance scenes.
Without a doubt, the highlight for me was Elliot Durko Lynch’s (http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=19186) performance of an excerpt of an evening-length work in progress titled “The New York Historic Artists Lofts and Residencies + Hotel.” When it started he invoked the name of Spalding Gray, and as he was sitting at a desk with a projection behind him and a copy of his book, I thought it might be a low-key homage, but I was happily quite wrong. We were treated to a seemingly spontaneous and brilliant riff of drawings, cutouts, models, and miscellaneous objects (projected behind him from a camera on a swing arm desk lamp) about Minneapolis, gentrification, and chain stores. As things got more and more mad, he added another camera and projected still shots taken of the audience and stage, plus incorporated a modified audio “transcript” of an encounter with a clerk at a Target store. We also saw moving images of Google maps of the New York area, specifically a kind of “handing off the tradition” route map. It showed a line from PS122, home to many earlier innovative dance experiments, to our location in Bushwick at Starr Space. It’s true that the dance community which would have once been located in lower Manhattan seems to all live in Brooklyn now.
Closer to the end, he made a “showing the pink” gesture with a real McDonald’s hamburger (opening the top bun to display the pickles and sauce), stuffed it into his mouth, then danced and ran around the stage ranting about everything being for sale as he slapped $100K signs around the walls, plus projected similar signs he had pasted onto buildings and institutions in lower Manhattan including PS122 and Theater for the New City.
Kristin Van Loon of the duo Hijack! (who performed at the beginning of the show) spent much of the performance standing at the side of the stage with large headphones covering her ears. He finally gave her a portable mike and she attempted to recite (I assume) what she could hear on her headphones, a confused jumble of words about real estate development, parking requirements, and gentrification.
The program handout said “Elliott may never perform in New York City again” but I certainly hope that isn’t true. Someone needs to bring him back soon.
