Comments on: Universes: Calling us out in 4-part harmony

By: Faith

Faith — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 16:27:55 +0000

Hm… it’s taken me a while to formulate a response here. I’ve been talking about this piece with a lot of people. A good friend of mine has an opinion similar to yours, Lisa, and we talked about this for a long time the other night. On one level I can say that part of my strong response to their work is due to the fact that, yes, I am a bit more emotion-based than head-based (though I find the best performances appeal to both), and yes, my knowledge of what is going on within the medium of performance poetry (not to mention hip hop) is sadly limited. But even allowing for this, I have some questions that remain unanswered.
1. What is the criteria that makes a piece ‘experimental’?
2. What could Universes have done that would have been more experimental, more challenging within its medium?
3. Are there other groups working in this medium, in more exciting and challenging ways? If so, I’d love to know about them.
4. Does a piece have to be consciously experimental in order to be relevant at TBA?
To go further with this last question: one thing I loved about Universes was how they referenced and directly responded to what is going on politically and socially in our country right now. Other artists did this as well, but Universes alone (out of the work I saw) delved into the quagmire of Katrina, not to mention spending time in prison and growing up poor. Someone said to me, “Well, that stuff is good, but not the right fit for TBA.” This kind of bothers me, because are we saying there isn’t room for someone who comes from a different class, a different neighborhood, a different background than ‘us’ the patrons of PICA? Is the category of ‘experimental’ work narrow to the point of excluding those who don’t have a certain education, exposure to ‘high’ art and access to privilege?
Now, again, performance poetry isn’t really my area of expertise, so maybe there are other artists working in this style, addressing the events of our time in a more interesting or challenging way. I remember being in Poland a couple years ago, where there is a strong tradition of open air/visual theatre, and excitedly proposing to the company I was working with that we incorporate stiltwalking ladders into our piece. They rolled their eyes and said, oh come on, EVERYONE’S done stiltwalking ladders by now, which was news to me. My point being, one person’s mind-blowing experiment can be someone else’s old hat, and yes, if I see more performance poetry, perhaps I will roll my eyes at Universes. But I’m still not sure that’s true. You don’t have to be an expert in a field in order to be deeply moved by an artist and I believe in my response to the honesty, guts, and skill on display in the work of Universes. I heard what they were saying. I responded to what they were saying, and how they were saying it. It would be one thing if they were obviously untalented or unpracticed, or if they were expressing mindless tripe or hallmark sentiments, but since they were none of these things, I don’t understand why they don’t fit in with other TBA events.

By: Jim Withington

Jim Withington — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 23:32:09 +0000

Absolutely! Dude, they used TOM WAITS.
TOM FUCKING WAITS.
who DOES THAT in their hip hop performancey thing?
universes, that’s who.

By: Lisa Radon

Lisa Radon — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:31:27 +0000

Faith, what I’m saying is that Universes’ work is not an experiment (nor is it or my critique of it, “academic”). I agree with you that it’s pulling on wells that have existed prior to the early 90s, but these guys aren’t synthesizing anything new here. And I refer to the early 90s because that’s when this style of performing poem became commonplace. This is populist work performed in a populist, entertaining way. Bully.
But it is not in the same league as the stage experiments being conducted by Vivarium or Yubiwa or dance pieces like Linyekula’s. (Interestingly, I was thrilled by Vivarium’s work, and slightly less so by Yubiwa’s…this is a side issue, but I suspect you respond to emotion-based work while I respond to head-based work.) We have released theater and dance from the requirement that they adhere to narration, to telling, to entertaining. There are poets who are writing poems (and creating performance work) that move into this territory (and have been for a very long time), poems that are truly experimental, moving away not only from narration, but from accepted syntax, blurring and/or conflating meaning and/or connotation.
I’m not saying Universes wasn’t entertaining, “or wailing, or stomping,” and I love a compelling voice as much as the next guy, but the work was not experimental, nor have any of the other poem-based entries into TBA ever been.
You use language in your work in the theater. You also use language to order a pizza. Poem in performance is the place where language can do more than tell, where it can be unmoored from its traditional uses to function in unexpected ways.
I look forward to having you see work of this nature. It won’t make you clap along, but it may change the way you think about poem and language.