MARCH READINGS (2020-2023)

Improvised Durational Performance, 4 hours.

was the first in-person version of a performance drawn from a series I had originally recorded for 

 during the first month of the pandemic in 2020. The performance is a free association exercise I adopted in order to respond to pictures that I cut from the Los Angeles Times newspaper (dated March 19 – March 26, 2020), taped together in long reels, and pulled in front of a camera.


At Human Resources in March of 2023, exactly three years after the date of the first performance, I reperformed the work with the original image reels for a live audience. I added a Foley station which allowed me to mix in live sound effects with my verbal responses.

MONSTER MOM | OCMA

Improvised Durational performance, 2 hours. 


Part of Monster A, an exhibition by Victoria Fu & Matt Rich. Activated artworks created by Victoria Fu and Matt Rich to explore their ambiguous function and versatility.

ANGELS | ICA PHILADELPHIA

Improvised Durational Performance, 2 hours. 

Tag: Proposals on Queer Play and the Ways Forward

Guest Collaborators: Chloe Marie, Amalia Wiatr Lewis, Jenson Lavallee

FINE LINE

In collaboration with Cary Cronenwett, 06:35 minutes, 2018

In this experimental documentary short, Cary asks himself: 'Should I go on PrEP?'. This question serves as a catalyst to interview his former lovers and uncovers an active landscape of fraught emotions obscured by post-AIDS prophylactics and AIDS survivor culture.

ANGELS | CLOACA PROJECTS

Figure/Support Study (with Sound), Durational Performance, 2 hours


Made in collaboration with Jake Rodriguez, bran(...)pos

RIGHT/LEFT DRAG

Part of Contemporary Drag, Curated by Gordon Robichaux, NADA New York, 2017

R/L Drag' is a chipper, cerebral TEDtalk-in-drag that overlays subject/object relationships in Greco-Roman sculptures onto gender expressions in the LGBT community. ​I cite gender and body ideals in both 'Classical' forms to muse on the construction of the self as part of an 'othering' fantasy. I also discuss the directional indications of the body to point to the limitations of formal public address (like TED talks) while asking what else is possible.

MID CITY ANGELS | Animations

Every performance was photo-documented by the performers via a remote shutter release and hundreds of pictures were produced. After initial photo selections were made from the batch, I compiled every photo taken into a video sequence. The resulting animations serve as more compressed and detailed form of documentation, showing the rapid evolution of the performance and sculpture.  

WRITING EXERCISES

Participatory Performance, Part of Meital Yaniv's, 

Audience members and LACA residents were asked to engage in blind, partnered automatic writing sessions. 

BREATHING EXERCISES

 is a collaborative durational performance. At the start of the performance I draw one breath from my guest collaborator's mouth. I then, circle around the audience, trading the breath mouth-to-mouth until it becomes too deoxygenated. The performance ends when I can no longer breathe the breath. 

GOODBYE WORLD!

CHRISTMAS STUDIES

 was a durational performance work featuring his collaborator, Angie Jennings. In three acts, the two staged interactive scenes with the audience across two rooms in Highways Performance Space (LA). Jennings peddled flower bouquets to guests as admission to visit me, submerged in a tub and on view in a closed dressing room. Next, I exited the tub, pinned newspaper clippings to himself while breathing through a garden hose that Jennings fed to guests in the main space. After, the two performed a before a large mirror in a holiday tableau vivant based on themes of giving and receiving.

THE MORNING PAGES

 was a durational performance were I inserted my body through a basement divider wall and read a years worth of journal entries aloud. 

A face muzzle muffled my voice in the room containing my top half, while the adjacent room was fitted with a funnel over my bottom half. 

TIME AND MATERIALS

LIFE UNDER GLASS

 is a short film I produced friend and pianist, Todd Moellenberg. Our fun of dressing up and performing together was adapted as a film subject. A crude stage set made in movable sections was used into the production of the video, shot entirely in a black box theatre. Opting to document our process rather than perform it live, I wished to evade narrative resolution and move the viewer up close to the surprising and banal moments our bodies exerted under the guise of theatricality.

Free from having to rehearse for the “real thing”, our performances take on a purpose closer to that of role play. Through games and simple task-based actions, we enacted shame, rejection, dependence and love. In this process, we try on various, rough personae that, at different times; pay tribute to their own campy existence; are dependent on stage and ambient lighting; and assert attitudes that reject obvious orientation. 

Donning a mask is not always tied to a conscious need to ward off danger, but can be a highly imaginative state that works to offset the imposition of convention with an irrefutable self-design. Assuming roles – masks, abstracted figures, personae - strikes at the root of appearances. This queer tradition raises questions around the formation of identity by complicating the normative routes by which we recognize authenticity. 

The non-narrative structure of the video in which uncertainties play out between the performers offers a metaphor to support the idea of conflicted presence. To transgress a tradition of inherited morals, the two stage humiliation games endorsed as routes to overcome inured behaviors and to, in fact, become closer friends.

Matt Savitsky

Film / Video / Performances