Untitled (wheelchair)

On June 10th 2007, Noelle Mason, Jayve Montgomery, Jacob Goudreault, Billy Kang, Ross Moreno, and myself converged on the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago for the opening of Interiorities, a group show curated by Stuart Keeler.
        

I had asked all involved to create loose, “characters” of their choice complete with subsequent costumes, mannerisms, and identities.  The performers then slowly roamed the HPAC during the opening as if in a trance, not speaking to or acknowledging the crowd in any way.  Then, at a specified time, we all gathered around the installation consisting of a weather balloon, multiple cacti, and a photograph.  There I asked them to introduce themselves as their characters and to reveal something about their character’s past.  Then, I asked them all to re-introduce themselves as them-selves, that is, their actual selves and to again reveal to the audience something about themselves that was true.
After these short introductions each performer attached various cacti to their heads using clear packing tape while Jayve Montgomery bowed various gongs, bells, and cymbals and I played a small keyboard with my forehead. 
After all of the cacti had been attached to the performer’s heads the performance was over. 
Or so it seemed.

After the crowd had dispersed, believing the piece to be through, Ross Moreno entered the gallery.  Ross had been in the stairwell dressed as a cactus during the performance making balloon animals for show-goers, which popped on the spines of his costume, causing him to cry.  The overtly distraught Moreno roamed the gallery crying hysterically until he eventually converged upon the weather balloon and awkwardly destroyed it.

Note: I asked Ross to create the cactus costume but to not show it to me so that my first glimpse of it would be when he entered the gallery weeping.  The purpose of this was an attempt to make me laugh upon seeing it for the first time.  I did laugh, though many of the gallery goers that day thought Ross was actually dressed as a pickle.