TYRANNY OF TIME, 2012

LIVE PERFORMANCE, New York Live Arts

This work is centered around a poem I wrote about Time. Time is the structure and authority we are rejecting in this work.

At the helm, is the idea of video mediation, in the absence of the apparatus. Five performers either: fast forward, reverse in normal speed or in slow motion, and sometimes exist in the present. The urgency for the work came from a tragic death of a friend and music collaborator. We began with each of the performers/collaborators returning to a moment they wanted to revisit or correct. I was particularly interested in compulsive memories.

Instead of thinking about our stories as narratives arranged by linearity or time, we approach it like music. We worked off of a classical arrangement, which initiated the spatial organization of the performers. The poem was recited by an invisible voice, who is the authority that reinforces time. He appears every minute, on the minute. The performers do not subscribe to his order, but instead each of them has their own time—forward, reverse, or in the present.