Tonight, the Kitchen hosted Emergency INDEX, a new yearly journal that publishes artists’ writings on their performative work. As Yelena Gluzman put it, the book is compiled “democratically, without curation,”* or in other words, anyone can submit.
The first half hour was an open house of sorts in which viewers could mingle, watch video documentations of performances, or enjoy the live installations (read: drink a lot of free red wine). The bulk of the event, however, was a series of five performances that artists based off of another work documented in the book.
Some performances were lackluster. Ariel Goldberg’s imagined correspondence with Ohad Ben Shimon was a self-indulgent snoozefest. Lindsey Drury dismantled a copy of the 400+ page INDEX, passed out the sheets to the audience, and had us (predictably) read simultaneously while she (unpredictably, but not in a good way) interpretive danced around the masses.
But one performance was totally worth it.
Allie Avital Tsypin and Gabrielle Herbst, with performers Laura Murphy and Lily Wahrman and sound designer Gisela Fulla-Silvestre, interpreted Todd Leers’ “Telephone Music.” A quick glance at INDEX revealed that “Telephone Music” was exactly what you’d imagined: one person records a song, the next person listens to it once and only once before recording what they remember, lather rinse repeat. Tsypin and Herbst’s creation was far from it: two parts trashy music video, one part Ryan Trecartin frenzy, and a dash of robot/Tourette’s-inspired choreography. I have no documentation of this performance, so I’m instead sharing HYPERFABLE, a project in which all five participated in one way or another.
*Gasp!
