Upgrade
Dance with Yourself
Texts:
For this piece the performer was to construct multiple texts that were developed using public transportation as a structure for constraint. Dance with Yourself is inspired from the temporal, physical, and social constraints of Chicago's Red-line train.
A live performance based roughly off my recalled experience while reading Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, Upgrade is a piece that deals with the theme of overcoming loss. In the children's novel, the main character, James, overcomes the loss of his parents by way of a fantastical journey across the Pacific Ocean in massive peach inhabited by talking spider and insects. In my performance, I overcome the failing health of my Hewlett Packard laptop by way of an Apple- as I make a my long put-off transition to a Macbook.
In typing out letters on each of the two laptops (first the Mac and, then, the HP) I am communicating with them. To the Mac, I am upbeat and flirtatious- excited for our budding relationship. To the HP, I am restless and annoyed- trying to end a relationship that has been deteriorating for a long time. After typing to my new Mac, I start interacting with a Granny Smith before laboriously plugging in my old HP and writing a letter that it seems I've been putting off for a long time. At times, as I write this 'break-up' letter, I can help my indulge in the luscious sitting before me.
To view the performance, click on the below link:
Dance with Yourself
Texts:
Thelonius Monk
Tired man sitting legs apart, slouched down, hands in his lap with a bemused look.
O the sweet sound o Jazz
‘s what gets me through the doldrums o the ‘L’
Bunch o folk, bunch o fools,
Fools like myself
Movin forward and back
Back and forward
With swings n stops
Turns n twists
In this big ‘ol box
Actin like n we’re goin somewhere - doin somethin
Home ta work
Work ta home
Place to place
Space to space
Spot to spot
Just standin o sittin
While lookin while listenin
At and to
Sistas,
Brothas,
Dorks,
Dweebs,
Beauty queens
Who’s in we can’t resist
To judge n drag o’er the tracks and chains
Of the red line
The crimson line
The blood line
Of chi-town
But, if I’n just shut my eyes
And open my drums
I exit this race.
TEPR
British kid standing, leaning, with his hand on a bar for balance. Affected air. Lots of anguish and expression in his face.
Thank God for techno music
Because I bloody hate ridin the train
I bloody hate the people ridin the train
I bloody hate meself when I’m ridin the train
When I first came to the US
I thought the train would sorta act
As a kinda inspirational vehicle.
I thought I’d be meetin birds,
Exchangin words, gettin acquainted
With me brothas n sistas
In the windy city, right?
But the trains bloody dead,
Bloody depressin, really.
Everybody looks miserable,
Like their dad and mum
Just passed or something’
Public transport
Piss off,
I feel like I’m steppin’ into
Public fuckin prison
When I put me foot in here.
Honestly,
Thank god
I got me MP3
Me beats
To help me escape.
Brandenburg Concerto
Older fellow sitting in the direction of trajectory, very poised and stiff with a disdainful countenance.
What a dismal commute this would be
If not for the sea of symphonies poured in the past
By our world’s most magnificent composers.
Insufferable is the word that comes to mind
When I begin to consider the cramped quarters
Of public transportation in the
City of big shoulders.
You’ve got all these young folk
With their thingy-midgigies
And their go-go-gadgets
Connected and connecting
But to who?
Are the people around you insufficient?
Can we not converse with the man sitting
Beside us?
Across from us?
I met my wife on the “L”
She was returning from the grocery store
With two big brown bags of eggs, apples, and cabbage.
As the train turned the corner
After Sheridan,
She lost her balance and dropped them.
I helped pick up the contents and
We helped each other understand love.
Mallery loved the symphony.
Andes Fusion
Middle-aged ,animated man standing, without support for balance. He gesticulates often and is, overall, active
The Latin Beat moves me
Moves my hips
My lips
Mi Corazon.
It, how do you say,
Transforms, transports me
From the second city
to the Montañas Andes
Where the crisp air once
Invigorated my young soul.
But we act,
We act like, like alpaca
Like a herd
ready to be sheered
Into a product
Ready to be weighed,
Surveyed,
And used.
One alpaca wears a fine coat
And the other alpaca think,
Oh, how I wish I had that coat
Another alpaca has a filthy coat
And the other alpaca think,
Oh, thank god I do not have that coat.
But like the alpaca,
With no coat,
We are naked
One alpaca no better than
Another.
One man…
well, you see.
This young woman here,
I want to sheer her pretty coat,
And show-
See! You alone, you are beautiful!
Forget about your coat.
Focus on what cannot be sold.
You see, the music,
It helps remind me that my coat,
My coat is not me.
Marketplace
Me, after not being able to find a seat, settle on standing. I appear judgmental, annoyed, preoccupied, and in a hurry.
God, if it weren’t for pod casts
I don’t think I could ride the train.
Like if I can find a seat, great-
I can read,
But, during times, like,
Right now,
Since I can’t read when I’m standing up
At least, I can still listen to pod casts.
Learn something during my commute, ya know?
Hold on a second,
God this guy next to me, I can hear the damn salsa music
Coming out of his headphones,
And check out that coat he’s wearing
No, but the train, it’s not bad
As long as I can stay productive.
I can get over the odors coming off from, say,
This guy right here (nods at the man sitting down)
Or these old men who burn holes with their eyes
Through my blackberry whenever I bring it out.
(brings out his cell phone and observes him as he apparently
Glances over in dismay)
Then, there are these Euro-looking guys
Who are always eyeing out the next girl they’re
Going to go up and mack on.
When I first came to Chicago,
Sometimes I’d forget my iPod and book
And just try to, I don’t know,
Experience the train.
But, there’s really nothing to experience.
Better just to keep to oneself and
Move forward.
Explanation:
For this piece the performer was to construct multiple texts that were developed using public transportation as a structure for constraint. Dance with Yourself is inspired from the temporal, physical, and social constraints of Chicago's Red-line train.
Five individuals wait for the train. They each, in turn, board the train, express their distaste for public transportation and then gets off. Each individual has a different rhythm to their life (jazz, techno, classical, Latin, public radio) and the spirits of all but one dance on, free from the obsession of progress that inflicts us all.
Spotting Crime
In what served as one half of Richard and Matthew's collaborative project exploring the art of mapping, Richard used information gathered from http://www.spotcrime.com/ in order to tag his neighborhood's street signs/poles with translucent decals representative of all crimes (assaults, thefts, and shootings) that had taken place througout the community from 3/11/11 (the date of Japan's recent catastrophic earthquake) through the end of March.
The following information was written in permanent ink in the surface of each tag:
a) type of crime committed at that location (assault/theft/shooting)
b) the date the crime was reported to the police
c) the time the crime was reported to the police
d) "spotcrime.com"
Each adhesive tag was cut and shaped according to the type of crime it represented. These shapes were in accordance to the logos chosen on http://www.spotcrime.com/ and were as follow:
a) Assault (outline of a fist)
B) Shooting 
C) Theft
A map of all the crimes tagged in this project can be found at:
In total, there were 22 assault tags, 12 theft tags, and 1 shooting tag. Before setting the tags, a route was created by laying out each tags as they were were seen in the map from the spotcrime website. The backside of each tag was then given a number corresponding to numbers written on a printed out map of the targeted neighborhood. This allowed Richard (the tagger) to easily retrieve the correct tag for each location during his route.
The tags were all placed on non-black poles (steel, yellow, green) so that the black, stencilled text on the tags could easily be read once posted. Because spotcrime fails to disclose precise street addresses (only the block in which the crime occurred) the tags were placed on poles in the general location of the crime they represented. All tags were placed at approximately 6 feet from the base of the pole on which they were placed.
Five days following the placing of the tags, all of those that were revisited were still in place and remained as legible as when they were first set.
Required English Instruction for Employees of Love me Long Time Go Go Bar
 |
| 'b', 'b', 'b' - khong khi! |
 |
| class in session |
1) bull
2) bill
3) ball
4) pill
5) pole
Inspired from the two years spent as an English teacher abroad, this performance was meant to transform the audience into the role of non-English speaking students in a beginner/intermediate English class. By conducting the 'class' in a stern, authoritarian manner and by using a foreign language (Vietnamese) as the primary mode of written and verbal communication, the 'students' were meant to feel tense and trapped due to their imagined occupational inferiority and their massive reduction of expression and comprehension. After the performer demanded from the audience simple vowel and consonant sounds to be replicated, he then introduced the five 'vocubalary words' (the objects previously listed) with accompanying photographs via powerpoint and tangible objects.
 |
| "note!" |
 |
| "Is it OK if I touch your balls?" |
 |
| dancing around a very small pole |
 |
| class dismissed - remember your homework |
The performance evolved as the 'teacher' began embedding sexual references into the instruction: demanding that the 'students' complete indecent phrases using the 'vocabulary words', gesturing to his own genitalia to supplement his verbal explanations. At this point the audience was meant to realize there was more to the instruction than learning basic English words, that they were, in fact, embodying the role of prostitutes who were being taught pronunciation and relevant phrases to better serve their customers. The performance ended with a powerpoint slide instructing the 'students', for homework, to try and use the words and phrases learned in the 'class' on their clientele.
Video of Performance by Richard Schreiber from Colin Winnette on Vimeo.
While standing on the second tier a three-tiered apparatus, the performer arranges two cups to each side of him facing the observers. The first cup is labeled: Topics that I spend atleast 9 minutes each day considering. Within this cup are 9 shuffled slips of paper which read:
cigarette?
youporn?
talk to them?
$3 ATM fee?
write?
velcro boots?
plain yogurt?
flush?
run?
The second cup is labeled: Questions that I could answer in less than 9 combined seconds. Inside this cup are another 9 slips of shuffled paper which read:
does Obama still sneak in a drag every now and then?
does Pope Benedict masturbate?
do bankers take too much profit?
did 'The Fonz' keep a journal?
did a woman invent the bodice?
are those tea stains on that 102 year-old man's moustache?
have you ever been painfully thirsty?
is there such thing as a 'runner's high'?
After hitting the 'snooze' button (9 min.) on a portable alarm clock, the performer begins by selecting (at random) a slip of paper from the first cup before reading it out loud to the audience below. He then selects (at random) and slip of paper from the second cup and directs the question on it to one observer. Depending on the positive or negative implications of the question first posed (from cup #1) and depending on whether that observer answers 'yes' or 'no' to the proceeding question (from cup #2), the performer either ascends to the third tier of the apparatus or descends to the first tier. After noting, with an imaginary notch on the apparatus' post, his direction of travel, the performer returns to the second tier to select one more question from each of the two cups and repeat the process again. The performance concludes when either a) the questions run out and, according to how many times he ascended and descended, the performer announces how content he is with the outcome b) the snooze alarm sounds and the performer surrenders the project by exiting the apparatus looking discouraged.
