PERFORMA 09

Liz and I went to the city on wednesday for Performa, the show we attended was DOMINIQUE GONZALEZ-FOERSTER AND ARI BENJAMIN MEYERS’S K.62. We took the train to the city and ended up being late for the 11:40 one so we finally got on at about 12 ish and went to the city. When we arrived in the city we started walking, we just kept feeling like we were going in circles until randomly we walked into Lee Quirk and she told us we were walking the wrong way! So we turned around and headed down the city. On our walk we took pictures of so many random things and I kind of feel like people were looking at us a lot because we were these two little black haired girls with big sunglasses and backpacks on and I know to them we definitely looked like we were on a mission! We walked all the way to where the show was, we started at Grand Central Station and walked all the way to China Town/ Grand Street and by the time we got there we were exhausted and starving. We couldn't really find a place that looked good to go and eat so we finally walked up to a police car and asked the officers if they knew any place with good food and beer! The officer told us to go down Delancey St and there would be a bunch of places there. So we did and we walked for a bit until we spotted at the same time this place called Lucky Jacks. We went in sat down ordered food and some drink and we started talking to the bartender about art. The bartender was in love with Liz and I kept egging it on cause it was funny. Then some "creep show" came into the bar asking the bartender if he could buy me a drink even after I respectfully refused and told him I was going to an art show and couldn't stay, so in the end he gave me his "business" card which had a number written on it for SOHO LEATHER. hahaha.

Finally we went back to where the performance was and we walked in to get our tickets they gave me a red one and Liz a blue one and as we walked down the ramp to where we thought the show was they separated us by the colors of our tickets and we moved into two separate rooms. I walked into a gray basement room with yellow pipes to an audience watching a man play the violin. We sat there for about 20 minutes just watching the man play violin, which I enjoyed a little because throughout my life up until college I played in the orchestra. Then all the sudden a girl dressed in all black with a microphone thing on her head came in and told us that they had put us all in the wrong room and that we had to get up and move. At this point I was so confused and all I wanted to do was find Liz cause I hated that I was alone. Finally we got into a room where there was a stage and so forth and I sat down, lucky found Liz and got up and moved to the second row right in front of the stage. There was only two people sitting right in front of us and as we waited for the performance to begin. We started to notice that the two people in front of us had to have something to do with the show because the man was holding a clipboard with a seating chart of some sort on it so Liz and I tried to listen to what they were saying to see who they were. Finally the girl who came and moved my group from the first room sat down and was talking to the two people in front of us and said into her microphone thing that "Dominique and Ari ...." Liz and I seriously became star struck when we realized they were the artists of the performance and that we were sitting right behind them. We were trying to take pictures of them the whole time but it was really dark. There were two dry erase boards on each side of the stage that had K 1- K19 on them and there were 4 girls including the one that came to my room to move us who were talking and walking back and fourth calling each other Jenny, marking circles with arrows in them on the boards. Every second you would hear "Jenny to Jenny 2, come in Jenny 2" and so on and so forth. Then the Jenny's started calling in the "K" people and they one by one they started coming into this door on the stage, they were just random people picked from the audience before hand I'm guessing. They didn't come in order, in fact at some point I think K16 and k 1 and k19 were lost in translation but finally made it. Then Dominique got up on stage and played the guitar under a red light and an orchestra got on stage after and played music and sang at one point. They were amazing and I really enjoyed the bass player because there was only one of him and I played the bass and there was always just one of me! Then Ari got on stage and held up four books, read off the titles and then proceeded to pick audience to help him with his trick by throwing a balled up piece of paper into the audience and it landed near this little asian lady and she proceeded to pick two books then Ari told her to throw the paper again to pick another person in the audience and she did. He skimmed through the book and told the second person picked in the audience to tell him when to stop. Finally he told the little asian woman to read the first line on what I think was page 153 or 156 and she read it out loud. Then he got an envelope that was sitting on a stand the whole time on stage and opened it up and in the envelope it had read the same exact line the little asian woman had read out loud. The orchestra played more, the Jenny's communicated back and fourth and then 5 small girls dressed in night gowns came screatching into the room, up on stage and back out.

The whole time I was really confused, I think Liz and I looked at each other a million times not sure what to think but we concluded that it was suppose to show us the "behind the scenes" of a play or something of that sort.

Here are some pictures I took....

the Jennys

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

I really enjoyed it even though I found it very strange and confusing. I have never been to an art performance before and the fact we were sitting right behind the artists was amazing.

We finally left the show and went around the city some more, got a ride from some random person who told us how he loved singing karaoke and finally around 12 got on the train and went home....when we got back I was completely exhausted.

I had a lot of fun and would love to go back to the city again with a little more money and for more art things.