An Act Of Direct Engagement
By Frank Moore, October 18, 2009
Frank Moore in
An Act Of Direct Engagement
POW! POW! Action Art Festival
at the Climate Theater, San Francisco, California
Friday, October 16, 2009
The audience Friday night was about the most uptight fragile audience I have played to. This is seemingly absurd because it was a festival of edgy performance art… Of course edgy art often stays within the edges! But the festival was advertised like this:
“Among many outrageous artists, POW! POW! 2009 will feature daring and controversial performers such as Frank Moore, Keith Hennessey, Michael Namkung, and many others.” -- POW! POW! Action Art festival 2009 at The Climate Theater.
But most of the audience sat like they were in glass coffins even before the show started.
The title of my piece was AN ACT OF DIRECT ENGAGEMENT. All of this should have been a warning of what to expect. And seeing just a nude guy in a wheelchair sitting on stage, slides projected upon his body, moaning/shouting/coaxing, gesturing or whatever the fuck he was doing, and this is all that is happening for several minutes that felt like hours!... Jesus Christ, it is obvious this piece isn’t playing in normal time, but is stretching time, moving outside of the normal boxes of comfortable zones!
I wrote these top secret directions the night before the show:
“I am being on stage alone for the first five to ten minutes. If nobody comes up, I will motion to Linda. Then Linda, Jen and Erika take off their clothes fast in the audience and start bringing people up onto the stage to me to touch me, rub me. (The musicians will start playing ten minutes into the piece.) For the last ten minutes you three will start rubbing me dirty!“
And, with one exception, it went off as planned and timed as if I had planned and timed it… That never happens. The exception was that the house lights didn’t come on at first so that I could establish eye contact with the audience at the beginning. But I got the timing back on track (I watched my big clock all through the piece!). I came in three minutes under my allotted half-hour! I packed a lot in within that time! When Linda, Jen and Erika took their clothes off in the audience and started going up to audience members to get them to go up to me to touch explore my body physically, they got very violent reactions about violating the audience’s personal space … as if this was theater, not performance art! But there was a group that developed around me … including people who at first said NO WAY! There was an innocent intimacy, mainly holding hands, pulling my body hair, including arm pit hair! But shtick cut this section artificially short. So Linda, Jen, Erika and I started our erotic play dance. Apparently this started the exit of a number of audience members, stopping at the door to give pieces of their minds … just like in the Dada days. I was glad we have not lost our touch! But I don’t think I should read too much into it because a similar mass exit was caused later just by removing chairs so that people could dance to the high energy raucous hip hop group. So it didn’t take much to piss those people off! But I will take the credit! Also after the show (while we were trying to get to the bathroom) we got surrounded by people (well, two) who loved the piece. They were able to describe why it inspired and turned them on. I am taking credit for those reactions too!
Watch the performance here: https://archive.org/details/powpow-101609
More photos at: https://www.eroplay.com/Cave/powpow2009/
This piece, including much more written documentation about this performance, is included in the book, The Uncomfortable Zones of Fun: The Temescal Period 2009-2013.
It amazes me that people in these "edgy art" communities aren't willing to step off the edge.