I was excited to visit the Kitchen in New York, as its place in Art history as a venue that pushes multimedia and avant garde practices, So many performance artists and dancers from New Yorks past have presented work there including, Vito Acconci, Charles Atlas, Lucinda Childs, and many more.
The first visit to the Kitchen was for a performance by Ieva Miseviciutè called Tongue PHD, using the format/structure of a PHD paper and presentation as the starting point Miseviciutè proceeded to present a performance lecture using sculptures/props, text and movement to explore the tongues relationship to perception, being and functionality.
The stage is a tongue. Ieva is a tongue. There is a clothes rail with sort of tongues. As you sit down there is a print-out the programme notes/ Phd cover and contents page. Then you look at the print out again and the sizing is irregular, elongated…tongue-like. When the performance began the opening scenes were reminiscent of the dancing sequences of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks, fading in and out to find Ieva in a different position and movement – this became a signature transition between sections of the performance – then the lecture/Phd began, then dissipated into strange scenes of movement and text using the Tongue as an analogous form, as much as it is a flexible malleable organ also. After the opening scene, Ieva pointed to the Phd contents page and explained how the page could be referred to throughout and you may see the topics presented in order, at different times or all at once! The following performance shifted through different ways of being and thinking about the tongue in relation to our own experience of the world. Ieva merged herself into sculptures and extended herself through this into a more empathetic study of ‘tongue-ness’ giving more weight to a muscles abilities and its evolution/history presented the a body part as more than its base use. Looking back on the performance I can relate this form of research as performance to something akin to the movement practice of ‘Mind, Body, Centering’ and one of the principles; Isolate to integrate. I really loved this performance, It fused a large mix of approaches and each complimented the other seamlessly, the balance of theory to practice was excellent and never felt the performance becoming a dry lecture this is owed to her humour and performance quality, Staging, music and lighting were never simple but worked incredibly.
For a trailer of the performance here >>>
