The first Installation of Transnaturism was performed on February 7, 2018 at Blackbird Ordinary. I performed social research on the costuming and intention by integrating into the crowd at a busy club in Miami's financial district called Blackbird Ordinary. Due to the emotional and drunken needs of the crowd the costumes that were delicately built out of organic material were destroyed in the process of responding to the crowd.
Monica Lopez De Victoria invited me to perform and arranged for the evenings photographer to document the performance. I used these photo's to further conduct research.
It was the natural response of the performers to engage with the alcohol fueled party crowd.
Being a spectacle while trying to convey the message that we are disconnected from Earth felt a bit pained. However a warm part of my heart opened to having a good humor toward the situation.
People's reactions were varied, even within the same group, as you can see here exhibited in the red circle. Overall, people were having fun. However some people reacted to the costumes in skeptical ways.
Some people were pleased and seemed to vibe with the actions.
The score that was planned pre-performance completely transformed into a more wild interaction with the crowd. They wanted to be entertained and did not seem to mind the plants. In fact it seemed to make people happy.
On a subconscious level, people love the earth. Even if they spend their lives working at jobs that kill it. It is an undeniable often un-noticeable and incommunicable resonance with our shared planet.
People, generally want to have fun. People that are different than me have fun in ways that are different than me. Performing in this place that was not "my scene" reminded how much I love to admonish the "elite aspect" of the art world. I want to be with and love people. I also am different, but feel I have universal messages. Where can everything sync?
Does my friend here vouch for us? As We wave our palm fronds in the air, does she even know we are there? Does that matter? I bet, she could smell the crushed leaves... at least a little.
The costumes were largely destroyed in the end. I felt inspired to try new ways of bringing people closer to Nature.
photo by: German Caceres
1.2 of this performance took place at the INC (International Noise Conference) festival at Churchills Pub in Miami Fl, on February 8, 2018. In this performance I created a narrative of the Transnaturist experience using music, dance and props.
I opened with a song I wrote on a keyboard that represented my dystopian feelings about structures. Then Dennis Fuller looped this and started to play beats on top of it while I started the story. I began by pulling a microphone out of a pot of dirt and started to read/sing an excerpt from the book "A Wrinkle in Time". For me this represented the sort of death release and infinite possibilities of life that are part of the Transnaturist purview.
I then performed a dance choreography that moved through, death, fertility, technology, capitalism and dirt.
I smeared the dirt all over my face and planted a machine.
First segment done.