My Adventure in the world of New York City Performance Art

Mehdi-Georges Lahlou's performance was an intellectual feast of challenging our own preconceptions of gender, nationality, sexuality.  

One of the performances I was able to check out on my recent sojourn to NYC was  Preach R. Sun's Chrysalis (Cry + Solace)  , a performance I will write about in more depth later.  Through him, I met Jill McDermid Hokanson& Erik Hokanson of Grace Space and Gray Zone and given a crash-course on the world of performance art.

Some of the artists I had the distinction of seeing include, MEHDI-GEORGES LAHLOU [MOROCCO/BELGIUM/FRANCE] whose performance in red pumps, running on a treadmill while singing "Run, run, baby, baby, run run," among other ditties, and pouring a variety of seasonings on himself, well was, let's just say deliciously thought-provoking on subjects such as gender, religion, nationality. 

As China conquers the world, artists challenge
what they cannot in their ancestral homeland. 

Chun Hua Catherine Dong (China/Canada) Just Another Mouth to Feed was a harrowing peformance and commentary on the still-prevalent devaluation of the female political.  Her performance included hacking off the noses of stuffed-animals, preparing a dish from the innards of a commercial diaper (it does look cool when it's wet and you add some color to it) and many military references that brought close to the viewer the intimate relationship between what is considered personal and/or public space. 

Esther Neff with the proverbial ball and chain.
 The chain this time, is of course, gaffa tape. 

I also had the benefit of meeting up with Panoply Performance Laboratory's Esther Neff and Brian McCorkle and see them in action at Gray Zone in Kingston, New York. It was inspiring to be around so many committed, passionate folks and in the end I must say that this niche of  NYC/Brooklyn Performance artists are a pretty committed, critically-thinking group of people and I had an amazing
experience. If you want to keep abreast of what's going on the NYC/Brooklyn Performance Arts scene, check out Incident Magazine.

Preach R. Sun's Chrysalis was a certainly a stand-out and one I have written more extensively about and will post soon. As an artist, he challenges us to think about our own notions of art and manages to serve ideas, particularly of Black liberation, on a silver platter to the elite but most importantly, he takes his work and roots it in the street. Check out his website his Street Speaker, and if you haven't heard about the homeless guy sleeping in the MOMA, well, now you did and ask yourself what are the social, political and economic implications of that action?  Again, making us question the idea of 'Art', ownership of it, and the commodification of it - Preach R. Sun's work is worth checking out for all of you who are bored with the clumsy attempts at radicalism behind the institutional walls of the elite. 




Every time I see a piece of performance art (thus far) I'm usually blown away by the immediacy of it (it's sooo much better than tv!) and the political potential of it.  I'll be certain to keep my eyes on this genre and keep my fingers crossed that perhaps, just perhaps we'll all truly get what Shakespeare meant when he wrote those famous words, All the world's a stage...