Performance Church started with the simple exchange of ideas.
In 2006
Monstah Black and Gabriel began calling each other regularly to chat about
work, life and artmaking. By the fall of 2007 these periodic “chats” had grown
into weekly 2-3 hour discussions about theories and practices of performance studies. Gabriel had just
started teaching in university art education departments and found it difficult
to express his enthusiasm for performance. On the other end of the phone,
Monstah was moving in the direction of more music-related work. He was turning
down straight dance teaching and performance gigs in favor of opportunities to
combine dance, art, performance and design into unique, mixed media, funk-music
explosions. They soon realized that
Gabriel’s research and writing about engaging in life-like art could have
radical implications for Monstah’s art-based search for new expressions of
gender and spirituality.
From there, these fiery discussion
“seminars” focused on the ways Monstah could draw-on stories from the past and
combine these with observations of everyday life in order to shift the
delivery, subject matter and expectations of his funk-rock musical creations.
Monstah and Gabriel were learning that personal experience, social commentary,
and site-specific examinations could be harnessed to cultivate a new focus on
actions, interactions and relationships in their teaching, artmaking and
research work. These deeply theoretical critiques usually occurred on Sunday
mornings. The two began calling these charged weekly exchanges Church.
By spring 2010 Gabriel was teaching
and publishing more research articles on performance, and Monstah was
incorporating radical critiques of performance and everyday life into music gigs
all over the New York City. In the spring of 2011, Gabriel met performance
artist, Yozmit Smith. An exchange of creative applications for performance
started again, this time between Yozmit and Gabriel.
In
the summer of 2012 Jessica Harris, a west coast friend and collaborator of
Yozmit, introduced Performance Church members to flash mob marketing techniques
and intersections of digital technologies and avant-garde art. Most recently,
two of Gabriel’s former performance and installation art students, Lauren Carnali and Chris Beers, have joined the
dialogue and are helping to shape the think tank’s current vision.
Performance Church
is an out-growth of long hours of dialogue on the possibilities and
consequences of performance. Our concerns remain focused on the blending of
performance into everyday experience.
Today, however, the goals of these discussions are more pragmatic than
theoretical and seek concrete solutions that lead to action. Performance Church
strives to foster profitable collaboration between corporate, educational, or
community organizations and avant-garde artists.
