Impossible to work

I went to see the WIP performance of Rock and Roll: Impatience at Lucky Pierre’s space at Damen and Fulton this weekend. I took tsk”^a1a” with me. I brought him along because he’s not into performance art and I wanted to know what he thought. I thought he’d like LP because of their silliness. I was right on that one. He had a good time but was grossed out by the end of the piece (sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself).

The work itself is not complete. They appear to believe that what we saw this weekend will ultimately make up the first half of the final work (though pieces will be removed, rewritten, reversed and reordered I’m sure). That makes for a very halfway done show. But a very good half of a show indeed.

The show calls itself a powerpoint presentation (and includes the group singing the MS Office clipart categories in five-part harmony). It seems to be reflecting on the very bizarre aesethetics that have come out of rock and roll (or at least the rock and roll aesthetic of bands like AC/DC) and the popularity of Powerpoint (and this is a sticky issue for me. I think powerpoint presentations are stupid, even in the context of art. I forgive Lucky Pierre for doing something that I think is stupid, as it generally works out ok).

The character of Bon Scott (the lead singer of AC/DC who died by choking on his own vomit in the backseat of a car) is all over the piece. At times he is represented by Peter, more often, Tyler is Scott, but most often Bon Scott is present as an idea sitting in the room with you. Bon Scott and AC/DC appear to be the central topics of the piece, but of course are not. Rock and Roll as an aesthetic (an impatient one at that) is explored in an interesting manner here and allows for a lot of funny bits along the way. Who wouldn’t laugh seeing the members of Lucky Pierre holding wooden cutouts shaped like guitars, humming the chorus of “You Shook Me All Night Long” after having just ripped their pants off?

The use of that particular song was interesting not just because it made me laugh but because it also explored the idea of time. We are reminded throughout the piece that existence is transitory in nature, that things change, and that we are going to be travelling into the future (to see Tyler die). The song chosen was recorded after Bon Scott’s death, which itself is in the future as far as Scott is concerned (and an impossible one at that, as he never heard the song). All of the links here are tenuous as they aren’t fully developed yet, but they do offer glimpses of places the piece might go. But hey, how often is AC/DC implicated when thinking about performance art? Isn’t that pretty fun?
There are other interesting tidbits just waiting to be fully developed but the two most interesting are the piece’s beginning that is not a beginning and the future death of Tyler (who is identified at various points as himself, Bon Scott, and God (or perhaps Bon Scott as God or MS Office as God…my memory is a bit fuzzy on this point. God is definitely mentioned. I’m sure of that)).

The piece began (or I believe it began) by asking the audience to be patient while we wait for some students of the group to arrive. They are stuck on a bus elsewhere. Somewhere around here we learn that the group devotes an entire channel on their sound board to outside influences. We are told to leave our cellphones on and use them during the performance. At this point, tsk asked me “The performance hasn’t started yet has it?” and I most certainly thought it had. The audience was still chattering but it looked to me like what was happening in front of us (and around us) was a performance. I like it when it’s hard to identify where something begins or ends. The ambiguous beginning of this piece is not so distant from the missing beginning of Goat Island’s “When will the September roses bloom…” which I personally thought was one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever experienced. This sort of tactic forces the audience to ask themselves where the performance is situated and what its boundaries are. This opens interpretation up a great deal and forces the audience to think about performance in general, which is good.

The work, such as it was on Saturday, ends with the foretold death of Tyler. At this particular point, we are watching something that is happening four minutes in the future after having spent a fair amount of time in the past as well as the present (This is all quite complicated and may be based in a rather wrong-headed interpretation of the performance. It has to do with the fact that each member of Lucky Pierre plays him- or herself at intervals throughout the work while some are also playing other parts simultaneously).

Tsk was grossed out, I was really intrigued. I also found it disgusting as the action continued but thought it was interesting to see how the repetition of an action went from being comic to disturbing over the course of a minute or two. I look forward to getting to see a more complete version of the work, if for no other reason than to see where LP takes this particular sequence and the very bizarre effect that it has.

1. ” Someday his site will be back up, I think. “ aaa