A D R I A N   W O O D

This is a text-based performance in response to my audio installation, "There Will Be No Emergencies." This was created and produced with the Institute for Improvisational Infrastructures (Conrad Cheung) for the show The Threat The _____ at Ruffin Gallery, University of Virginia in September 2024.

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The text is composed of fragments from found audio and video recorded on site at events marked by police violence in the US. These events include: "Bloody Monday," Danville, VA, 1963; Democratic National Convention, Chicago, 1968; ACT UP March on City Hall, NYC, 1989; "Battle of Seattle," 1999; Occupy Wall Street, NYC, 2011; burning of the 3rd Precinct, Minneapolis, 2020. The printed text was distributed to audience members via the gallery guide.

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The performance consisted of 4 individuals reading aloud from the printed text repeatedly for the duration of the exhibition opening (2 hours). Performers were costumed in all black street clothes and face masks as "outside agitators." They slowly walked through the exhibition space, lingering around the conversation circles of event attendees. 

 

The text and performance respond to "There Will Be No Emergencies," a looping speech collage past authoritarian responses to police violence in the US since 1965. Both works were part of the same show, "The Threat The____," and sometimes overlapped. "Cut With The Kitchen Knife" responded by voicing the words of attendees of the events from which "There Will Be No Emergencies" draws its text. Rather than booming inescapably over loudspeaker from a fixed location like the installation, the performance is a shifting but persistent presence that follows the audience through the exhibition space. 

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All sculptural and architectural design and construction by Conrad Cheung/Institute for Improvisational Infrastructures. 

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Materials: inkjet on newsprint, 8.5 x 11," 2 hour durational performance for 4 "outside agitators."

Performers: Strings Applewood, Chul August, Alma Rayan, Jess Robbins.