Last month, I went to a reading where there was a clown. MX gallery right off Canal Street in Chinatown, up five grueling flights of stairs. I stumbled into the dimly lit art space out of breath and sweating. I didn’t have a whole lot of information about what I was attending; just that a friend of a friend of a friend was self-publishing something or another.
Every reading I’ve ever been to is boring. Or maybe just outright pretentious. There’s a certain brand of formality to them that has always felt other-ing to me. Just a bunch of literary people sitting around drinking wine from plastic cups jerking each other off.
I recently attended a reading where there was no rosé. A crafty attendee decided to DIY their own. They mixed the boxed pinot noir and chardonnay. As the rest of the line side-eyed this endeavor, I exhaled a fuck yeah.
As people arrived, filled their cups and took their seats I glanced around the space. The walls were filled with Corey Presha’s Jim Crow-era cartoons. Most striking was the one that hung behind the makeshift stage—eight feet of cartoon sex. I slinked out onto the lively fire escape to grab a smoke before things got rocking. Some very hip people chatted. One painted a little iridescent blue glitter on another.
As the lights dimmed, I stubbed out my cigarette and climbed back into the gallery. The room was packed. Introductions were made. Abby Lloyd, a visual artist and clown. Vanessa Place, writer and lawyer. Most notably, Stacy Skolnik, a performance artist and poet. Her first self-published collection of poetry was the main attraction of the night. She had also curated the other acts for her launch, which turned out to be a dizzying mash-up of comedy, performance, and some weird and uncomfortable feelings.
Abby Lloyd jumped about the stage in a yellow bodybuilding suit to classic rock, engaging the audience with some arm wrestling and dumbbell lifting. Her face was painted a meticulous white, with blue eyeshadow and little pink nose, cheeks, and lips to complete her clown persona. I have a pretty dry sense of humor, but I couldn’t contain my laughter at this absurd display of physical comedy. A single tear leaked from my left eye as I laughed. Her performance concluded when she pulled someone from the first row onto the stage and dragged them about and had an arm wrestle duel. The audience member was hesitant, but a good sport. You never want to sit in the first row at these sorts of things. That might have been the first time I’ve seen a modern-day clown, aside from binge-watching three seasons of Baskets on Hulu. Clowns are cool.
People wiped their eyes as Vanessa Place emerged from “backstage”. She read poems from her book: Had to Be There: Rape Jokes. She’s a criminal defense attorney. Her readings were the most baffling for me. They seemed to be provocative for the sake of provocation. They satirized a sort of locker room talk, frat boy-esque tone, and language around rape. Pushing the audience right up to, and then past the boundaries of what is allowed be considered funny or laughed at. Hyper-aware of the public nature of the reading. But that was the point: to challenge what is acceptable to laugh at or consider funny, with an emphasis on public humor or collective humor.
Feeling the tension in the room and watching the audience grapple with jokes and stifle laughs was jarring. All of this along with the occasional roast of rape culture thrown into the mix made for a really off-putting but also exciting and palpable electricity in the room. All to an end to see how it makes people feel/react/act. I didn’t love it but I also didn’t hate it. I think I felt ambivalent towards her work because it felt lazy and a bit of a cop-out from a more critical discourse. But making people uncomfortable is something. At the very least it made me think a bit. maybe i just didn’t get it…art? performance? i guess it’s okay to make rape jokes if it’s in the name of art?
People clapped. (Not snapped…thank god.) Stacy Skolnik approached the stage in a nude pink see-through dress. She looked stunning. I could fully see her nipples and ass. She was celebrating her first collection of poetry mrsblueeyes123.com, previously @mrsblueeyes123 (IG). The project was born from an Instagram account that she ran. @mrsblueeyes123 posted content of nearly nude photos (emojis covering nipples and other parts) captioned with her poetry. The account was taken down by Instagram after six months for obscenities.
On a projector screenshots of Instagram posts from the account faded in and out. She read a series of poems published in the collection.
“Did you know
There’s one dimension
That’s nothingness?
I strip in it”
mrsblueeyes123.com deals with ideas of sexuality, desire, and identity on platforms that have community guidelines and bans. Sites that supposedly champion expression and individuality and, ultimately, capitalize on it. Her work pushed me to consider which types of images and content are acceptable to profit from in these spaces and on these sites, and which are not.
Running through all three of the artist’s performances was this seamlessly curated confrontation and interrogation of censorship and expression in public spaces, including the virtual public. Asking the audience to constantly evaluate how and with what we engage. It all made for a wildly entertaining reading. Maybe the best reading I’ve been to yet.