collab fest 34 - 12.02.09

collab fest 34 - 12.02.09
Originally uploaded by jim leftwich

rough notes on crank sturgeon's performance
12.02.09, the water heater, roanoke

- performance artist as shamanic trickster
conjuring such social (not egoic) powers as liberty and compassion

- the strap-on prosthetic penis is an ancient ritual symbol
particularly when very large and colorful - evoking the spirit of
affirmation, generative interaction - to pass the spirit/power
from artist/shaman to audience - framed within the performance
space artist and audience are transformed into something other,
neither artist nor audience, more like participants in a ludic festival
(festival as rite of initiation and passage, not as catharsis)

- an anarchic transformative energy passed as a catalyzing agent
from artist (as much pre-modern as post-modern) to audience
and back - participatory, collaborative - a feedback-loop of psychic
and somatic energy - a temporary alchemical zone, actualizing
the human potential for group interaction as festival

- conjuring from the generative body a chaotic chthonic music
and a kind of glossolalia (vocables and vocalizations as
described by patricia cox miller in her essay "in praise of nonsense")

jl