pecanne log

Performance art gets a pretty bad rap sometimes. The opening track on the latest Pig Destroyer album (don’t ask me why I know this) hit the nail on the head in terms of summing up everything that makes it difficult for me to get behind performance art: It seems like the majority of the time performance ends up as masturbation for the artist, allowing a select pretentious few the ability to pat themselves on the back for “getting it” and alienating the remaining audience.

Heading to Karen Tauches’ “Everything Disappears” ritual/performance Monday night in Cabbagetown I was skeptical. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, but my faith in Karen to successfully pull off an slightly off-kilter evening was high enough that I was willing to chance it. “Everything Disappears” was more of a happening than what I consider a contemporary version of performance art. Tauches invited the community to come to assist in a house clearing to rid a Cabbagetown bungalow at 221 Tye Street of malignant energy that had entered the house during March’s tornado. The performance aspect of the evening was intended more to help facilitate the clearing of the bad energy of the house than for a conceptual end. We were all instructed to move through the house counterclockwise to stir and remove the remaining energy and then exit out the back door and around the corner of the house back up to the front and repeat the cycle. Throughout the house there were several participants who were engaging the house in various ways, be it playing drums or tuning an amp connected to a video receiver or writing messages on the wall with chalk and spray paint.

I realize that this may sound more like a scene out of The Craft than anything, but the sincerity of the performance, and frankly the creepiness of it after the sun went down and the workings inside began to crescendo, saved it from becoming disingenuously theatrical.