HEAT:05

Performance Documentation: April 2005


	Saturday, April 30 8:00pm, Links Hall, Glass Layers Performance Festival. Glass Layers is an annual performance festival of work by graduates of Columbia College Chicago's Interdisciplinary Arts master's program, produced by Nana Shineflug. I performed 739 Chances, work in progress toward the adaptation of Eric Klinenberg's book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago.

	Friday, April 29 7:00pm, Kristoffer's cafe and bakery, 1733 S. Halsted. Kristoffer's is the home of the East Pilsen Open Mike, hosted by Vittorio Carli. I was a featured performer. The first thing I should point out is that Kristoffer's has incredible baked goods, including several flavors of tres leches cake. Those who know me understand that a wet cake is a priority in my life. After I finished my tres leches cake, I read a poem called Bodystory and a prose work with singing called Stitched & Stapled. The spoken word performances were bookended by the vocal stylings of Golden Elvis singing songs about his divorce.

	Thursday, April 28 fulfillment of monthly performance assignment from Karen Christopher involving loving letters to a faraway object. I located Karen and her cell phone on the island of Maui and read her an edited version of a rant on the question of queer vs. lesbian identity.

		Wednesday, April 27 9:00 pm, Links Hall, tech rehearsal of 739 Chances, in preparation for the Glass Layers Festival this weekend. Tech rehearsal is interesting because as a performer, you focus on actively imagining what will be the audience experience of your piece. Do I want them to look at me in this light or that? Do I care if they can't see my face through these fans? Do the audience members on stage right have a different experience than those on stage left? I take the place of the spectator and create my own performance in my head.

	Tuesday, April 26 9:00 pm, Pratt Beach. 739 Footsteps in the Sand. The tide was high, covering the soft sand closest to the water, so my feet got acquainted instead with the cold pebbles.

		Monday, April 25 6:00 pm, Pratt Beach. Body stencil collaboration with Indi. Materials used: bodies, sand, spray bottle of lake water. I tried to create something of a reproduction of the tree shadow from February 17.
Sunday, April 24 10:00 am, Hamlin Park field house, home of Chicago Moving Company. In preparation for the Glass Layers weekend of performance at the end of April at Links Hall, all of the artists presented works in progress to each other for feedback. I am making a movement and sound piece with a body-size galvanized steel tub, rings, and fans.

	Saturday, April 23 Indi and Nicole warmed Katherine & Erica's new home with our voices and Sarah & Eric's guitar. Indi sang Iron & Wine and her hit single, Nicole sang Moscow Nights, we both sang Michelle Shocked's When I grow up I want to be an Old Woman and we all sang There's a little snowstorm on the Road.

			Friday, April 22 DANK Haus 4740 N. Western (near Lawrence) , the last Apartment Burlesque Orchestra show. They called it a naughty revival, and billed it "Revival!" because that's obnoxious. I did The Belted Lady.


			Thursday, April 21 DANK Haus 4740 N. Western (near Lawrence), dress rehearsal of The Belted Lady in preparation for Death to Apartment. We all fell in love with the crazy little 6th floor ballroom and bar of the DANK Haus (German-American National Congress.)

	Wednesday, April 20 6:00 pm, DanceAfrica office at Columbia College Chicago. Peacemaker Productions had invited me to come to their meeting and talk about HEAT:05 as a possible documentary film project for them. So I did a performance of Prove Your Poverty for them and then had a lively conversation about the daily performances and the ideas of the heat wave. Left: Three of the four members of Peacemaker Productions: Chris, Dimitri, & Spence.

				Tuesday, April 19 5:30 pm, 739 Tulips on Congress Parkway between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive. Earlier in the day, as the OCAP yoga crew strolled back to the office from our lunchtime practice in Grant Park, I quizzed my friends about how many tulips they thought were in the lovely beds by in the parkway. Later on I came back to count 739 of them. They're not planted in orderly rows. They started to swim before my eyes, and it was hard to keep track of which ones I had counted.

	Monday, April 18 6:00 pm, the schoolyard near my house. My audience was five kids who talked among themselves first: "what the f&k is she doing?" and then finally worked up the nerve to ask me. My answer: I'm just trying to figure out what can happen with this tub and me. In preparation for the Glass Layers* weekend of performance at the end of April at Links Hall, I am making a movement and sound piece with a body-size galvanized steel tub, rings, and fans.

				Sunday, April 17 6:00 pm, Pratt Beach. I thought I was going to make a piece called 739 Blades of Grass. But then Joel (left) walked up and asked politely what I was doing. I explained about the grass and he convinced me that the grass was going to blow away, and suggested that I try sticks instead. And he offered to help. So Joel and I made 739 Sticks. We collected and counted sticks, and talked about the heat wave and internet romance. I really appreciated Joel's aesthetic choice to break the sticks into uniform sizes. Handling them reminded me of bones.

	Saturday, April 16 6:00 pm, Redbird Arena, performance of the Gamma Phi Circus, Bloomington, IL. The circus performers generously invite participants down to the floor for dancing, including the Limbo, YMCA, and the chicken dance. At 19 months, Natalie (left) can ROCK the hokey pokey.

	Friday, April 15 11:00pm, Bingo barkering to raise money for Morrison's art. The guests at the party tried hard to be too cool to play bingo, but after the first round people were buying 4 cards at a time, and the party was silent save the sounds of me calling out letters and numbers, and pencils furiously marking boxes. The same person managed to win every game, but upon further exploration of this phenomenon it was revealed that not all bingo players knew that they could count the FREE space. But isn't that just like life? I wish I had a nickel for every time I've ignored the universe's generous freebies, convinced that everything has to be hard.

	Thursday, April 14 6:00 pm, Pratt Beach. Find a way to commemorate all 739 heat wave victims. On the subway ride home I still hadn't figured out what the night's performance would be. But when I got off the train I noticed that the woman I see every day inside the train station was grasping a plastic food container bursting with ice. So I counted out 739 ice cubes on Pratt Beach while the dogs kicked sand on my pile and licked my freezing hands.

	Wednesday, April 13 10:30 pm, Weeds Bar. The sequence of events was something like this: 1. open door to the kind of bar that has no windows, so you never know what you're going to find inside. 2. Katherine announces to Sergio the bartender and his 3 customers that it's my birthday. 3. Sergio pours shots of tequila for us and himself, and recites his "hole" poem as a toast for the occasion. 4. open presents at the bar, notice the stone theme emerging. 5. Katherine solves my problem of not having made a performance yet by cajoling the bar patrons into listening to me sing in Russian. (boredom makes for a pliable audience). 6. Explain and sing Oy, da ne Vecher. 7. Confirm to bar patrons that I am single. 8. Explore with them the merits of owning a hotdog stand. 9. Exit.

	Tuesday, April 12 12:00 noon, City Hall, downtown Chicago. Find a way to commemorate all 739 heat wave victims. I'm trying to understand this number, 739, in my body. So I walked 739 steps around the perimeter of City Hall. I began at 12noon, and what I had not expected was church bells that played from the Chicago Temple of the First United Methodist Church downtown, accompanying my walk. When I finished 739 steps I stood still until the song that was playing was done.

				Monday, April 11 7:00 pm, Pratt Beach. Indi's performance assignment includes a directive that I have not yet addressed, but which has stuck in my head: Find a way to commemorate all 739 heat wave victims. So today I felt the weight of 739 beach stones and then divided them into death counts by day.

	Sunday, April 10 10:00 am, Hamlin Park field house, home of Chicago Moving Company. PERFORMANCE #100! In preparation for the Glass Layers weekend of performance at the end of April at Links Hall, all of the artists presented works in progress to each other for feedback. I am making a movement and sound piece with a body-size galvanized steel tub, rings, and fans.
	Saturday, April 9 3:00, Insight Arts. Continued work with Eric Klinenberg's book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. I performed the story of Paula Jankowitz from the chapter, "Dying Alone." The image of Paula struggling out of and back into her apartment for a bag of cherries is very resonant to me. After the reading the other members of Sassbox performance ensemble and I wrote our own responses to Eric's text.

	Friday, April 8 9:00 pm. Finally! A way to plug Nomy Lamm on my web site. Tonight I stumbled accidentally into a cabaret performance of hers during which she led her audience in an ensemble performance of AC/DC's "You Shook me All Night Long." It's refreshing to have someone tell me what to do, especially while she plays the accordian.

	Thursday, April 7 Maybe some members of my artist community would like to join me in establishing performances as a kind of currency. So if my tub and chalkboards are still waiting to be collected from Columbia College, and I need a friend with a station wagon, I can make a performance for her. In an effort to keep the web documentation PG-13 (how am I doing?) Let's just say Susan requested a performance about breasts. I worked with Emily Dickinson's poem, Her Breast was Fit for Pearls: Her breast is fit for pearls, But I was not a `Diver' - Her brow is fit for thrones But I have not a crest. Her heart is fit for home - I - a Sparrow - build there Sweet twigs and twine My perennial nest.

	Wednesday, April 6 I have started trying to work more seriously with Eric Klinenberg's book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Someone from a local theater is interested in an adaptation for the stage. This project simultaneoulsy thrills and frightens me. Where to begin? So I began by performing the prologue of the book for Katherine and asking her to record any information or images that stood out for her. It's so great to revisit this book, the language is really rich and direct. This was the first time I had read it aloud.

				Tuesday, April 5 I memorized and performed a Marina Tsvetaeva poem in Russian for Alla Dekhtyar in the basement cafe of the Ruth Page School of Ballet. This poem is tragic, but after weeks of work I still haven't figured out why.

				Monday, April 4 Heat Wave Elements #1: electricity and water. One of the reasons that the heat wave of 1995 caused an emergency was that it was accompanied by a major power outage that interfered with peoples' ability to cope and also with emergency services. Mayor Daley made a big deal of deflecting attention away from the failure of city services by blaming the disaster on Commonwealth Edison. I dragged an orange extension cord tied to my leg out the pier and across Pratt beach to the water. Something visceral in me was disturbed by the image of a power cord in water.

	Sunday, April 3 Day #3, Secret Performance in Providence, RI. I was attending the Performance Studies International Conference on the campus of Brown University. At a conference during which everyone is either performing or talking about performance, the most subversive thing to do may be a secret performance. So I asked Steve Bailey of Jump-Start Performance Company, San Antonio, TX to help me with the structure. I told him that I wanted it to utilize the number 27 and its numerological calculation, 9. See Friday April 1 for the assignment. 1. I engaged 9 people in conversation on the topics Steve suggested, for a total of 27 people. 2. I decided to omit this task since I felt it would interfere with my participation in the conference and also I didn't bring that many clothes. 3. I wrote a text. It was a list of 27 images or story fragments culled from the conversations I had had over the 3 days of the performance, many of which involved me asking someone where they live or come from, and what summers are like there. 4. I gave a copy of the text to a man in the tea shop. I asked him to pass it on. He read the text and sat with the paper for a while, and then returned it to me, saying he did not wish to participate in an action whose purpose he did not understand. I thanked him. 5. Steve suggested I wrap my object in a copy of the text. I decided to roll up the text and put it inside the 3rd water bottle. Then I watched the blue ink dissolve off the paper until the text disappeared. 6. I put the water bottle in my mouth and did not talk for 27 minutes. 3. I placed the water on the surface of a sculpture on Brown's quad.
1. real magic. 2. beautiful day, rain tomorrow. 3. afraid of growing old alone. 4. the weather. 5. heat wave. 6. isolation. 7. participation. 8. last message to me. 9. are you hot? 10. providence is hot some into july. 11. lincoln park: no a/c. 12. dayton, OH: central air. 13. south carolina: blazing hot, go swimming. 14. NYC: i moved into my car with a 6-month-old baby during the heat wave. 15. are you cold? 16. cox. 17. I hang out in the dairy fridge at the Shell station. 18. the houses in london are built to retain heat. 19. london had a bit of a heat wave in february. 20. it's cold on the steps. 21. london was chilly last summer. 22. northern CA: mild, never into the 90s. 23. western MA has a sultry july. 24. I leave NYC in the summer. 25. in Rio we go to the beach where they sell beer and cheese. 26. in DC there was no electricity-I laid very still. 27. rhode island has a lot of coast.
	Saturday, April 2 Providence, RI. Lying-in: 27th birthday site-specific performance collaboration with Indi McCasey (left). Indi kicked off this performance earlier in the week when she borrowed a gesture from It Hurts Worse to Break a Leg and placed some phone calls to her mother and grandmother, gathering birthstories. She then performed those stories over the phone to me on Friday April 1. My part of the performance also started on Friday April 1, the day Indi's mother went into labor: at 12 noon I removed my shoes and socks, stored them in one of the buildings at Brown, and went barefoot for 24 hours. I was trying to create a bodily sensation of alternating pain/discomfort and pleasure/ecstacy that I would be able to sustain over a long period of time while also still participating in the conference. Indi's mother Jo-Anne was born at Providence Lying-in Hospital. She remembers kissing a boy in the marching band and ice skating on frozen ponds during her childhood. At 12 noon on April 2 I put my shoes back on. Then I kissed a man who had been a boy in marching band. Then I went to the place where Indi's mother was born. This is not the current location of that maternity hospital, rather the place it was located when Jo-Anne was born. At the hospital I read a text into Indi's voice mail, tore the text in strips, spread the strips over the surface of a large puddle, removed my shoes, and gathered the soggy text back together with my feet. Then I carried the text over to a garden near the hospital, dug a hole, and buried it under the branches of a tree decorated with dried cranberries. Special thanks to Trevor Martin for the kiss, Julie Caffey for driving and finding the cranberry tree, and to Kristen Cox for documentation and moral support.

Steve Bailey's Secret Performance Assignment I have thought a little bit about a personal performance piece. I would recommend it last for three of the four days because that fits better with your numerical theme of 27. Here are some elements I would recommend. You can add to or subtract from the list to make it more specific and interesting for yourself: Create a personal performance that involves public interaction where participants may or may not know they are involved in a performance and includes the following elements: 1. Over three days, discuss topics from the Chicago heat wave with nine people (total of 27 interactions). Possible topics - How hot it is today (whether it is hot or not), the fragile state of the elderly, Chicago's lack of a social service net during a crisis, etc. You may think of sharper or more subtle topics. 2. Change your clothes nine times over the course of three days. 3. Bring a small object/relic/artifact that signifies the Chicago heat wave and place it on three surfaces for three days with no explanation unless there is enquiry. 4. Document any responses from the your interactions. Condense them into some form of writing and give them to someone you do not know and ask them to pass it along. 5. At the end of the three days wrap the object you brought in another copy of the writings, place it in your mouth for 27 minutes and go out in public. You cannot talk for those 27 minutes no matter what happens. This seems a bit complicated but the way to use the "assignment" is to add your creativity to it and adapt it to your needs. Hope this helps. Love, Steve				Friday, April 1 Day #2, Secret Performance in Providence, RI. I was attending the Performance Studies International Conference on the campus of Brown University. At a conference during which everyone is either performing or talking about performance, the most subversive thing to do may be a secret performance. So I asked Steve Bailey of Jump-Start Performance Company, San Antonio, TX to help me with the structure. I told him that I wanted it to utilize the number 27 and its numerological calculation, 9. At left is what he sent me. 1. I engaged 9 people in conversation on the topics Steve suggested. 2. I decided to omit this task since I felt it would interfere with my participation in the conference and also I didn't bring that many clothes. 3. I placed a bottle of water on the surface of a sculpture on Brown's quad.