I finished watching the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival (PAF) feeling like I had fallen into a special tunnel in the virtual space. A kind of tunnel that carries stragglers through time in spiraling swoops, where eggs grow from the walls sideways and sometimes burst into clouds of feathers unexpectedly. What I mean to say is that there were moments of surprise, moments where I forgot that I was watching a screen in my home, alone.
So much of the Zoom world feels transactional, like a flatter version of real life. And yet, the PAF artists seemed to warp the expectations of the digital sphere. They offered a slice of life that was more casual, more intimate, and more rooted in the present. I was struck by the way each performer played and exaggerated time within their unique performance.
The Eighth Annual PAF in Salt Lake was curated by performance artist Kristina Lenzi and featured both local and international artists. The weekend included nearly ten hours of performances with sixteen unique artists. For the intent of diving deeper, I will focus on six of these performances though each work deserves its own conversation and reflection.
In Paola Paz Yee’s piece the camera settles on a little egg suspended off the ground in black netting which is resting on a bed of grass. It is a beautiful, quaint egg. The frame only captures Yee's lips, the edges of her nose, and the occasional glimpse of her eyes. For fifteen minutes, Yee blows gently on the egg and the grass slowly glides past the screen exposing a square mirror below. With each breath I gain a greater view of the performer through an upside-down reflection. In this meditative passing of time, I am reminded of the soft power that resides in human breath — the strength and tenderness that a single exhale can offer the world.
In a surprising shift of intention, Yee removes the egg from the cage and uses a nail to whittle away at the shell. There is a gentleness to her movements, as if she is caressing the egg. Yet, it is in this tenderness that fragments of the shell fall and scatter across the mirror. There is wonder and surprise as the egg, which appears soft-boiled, nearly maintains its form. Exclamations fill the chat. We as an audience are delighted by this strength and composure. But slowly the egg begins to sink and ooze from its original oblong form. What began in gentle breath has reached a darker progression. The egg slumps and collapses in an oozing mess. I can’t help but feel the significance of this destruction; the weight of the subtle violence that slowly destroyed the figure.
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Eugene Tachinni sits at a table; his left hand lies under a layer of lightly translucent white fabric. With his right hand, he uses small yellow-headed pins to tuck and attach the fabric around his hand. It is almost as if a cast has been created for the fingers — connected purposefully and made permanent in space. The folds of the fabric become veins that run up and down his fingers. The pins appear like little blossoms on the fabric; their yellow tips sprout like daisies poking through the fabric. After his hand has been fully attached, he begins to trap a variety of other objects beneath the fabric. This includes scissors, a container of lip-gloss, and other trinkets — it’s a process of embroidery that embraces physicality.
Tachinni offers a quiet patience and persistence. His fingers move with ease and focus that reveal a deeply-trained dexterity and familiarity with tactile craft. The pins create a decorative pattern and swirling designs of yellow. The performance presents a palpable tension between the meditative, gentle dance of his fingers and the stifling anxiety provoked by being trapped in space and time. His right hand moves with grace and gentle agility, while the left hand remains stuck, surrounded, and stagnant.
Tachinni reflects, “In 2020…my home of eighteen plus years was taken from me. Well, it felt that way anyway. With two weeks’ notice our landlord sold his apartment complex which meant that our rent was going to skyrocket, which it did. While this performance doesn’t show the trauma of my experience, it’s about movement, how we get from one place to the next.” This movement is not showcased in large sweeping gestures or in the act of relocating objects across a room. Instead, Tachinni embodies the subtle horror of becoming trapped, bound in space, while the right hand never stops moving, never stops pinning.
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In The Shower we watch the outside of a plastic curtain sway with the trickling water of a shower. For ten minutes, Gretchen Reynolds shares a simple, intimate ritual. It is short. It is clear. It feels like a shared cleansing.
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An alarm clock rings with muffled bells. Cynthia Post Hunt runs up the stairs with great urgency. She resets the alarm, picks up a pillow and bangs it against the ground. The piece has begun in media res — we are thrown into the action of a critical situation. Things feels earnest and desperate. There are two cameras set up in the space. One faces down the stairs and captures Cynthia straight on as she charges up the steps. The second camera faces perpendicular to the second landing and captures Hunt when she arrives. The first camera bears witness to rushed physicality. By contrast, the second camera shows a resetting. In this shot, we see a different tenderness as the white curtains draped around the windows billow in grand arcs.
The cycle repeats in small bursts. Hunt leans against the staircase, waiting. When the alarm rings suddenly, Hunt runs in rapid, striking steps around the stairs, returns to the landing, stops the alarm, picks up the pillow and pounds it against the floor in grand bursts. Hunt indicated that this piece was created in the wake of her grandfather’s passing as a reimagining of his last breath. I was ruminating on the cyclical nature of breath and Hunt’s rapid, heavy movements, when the pillow burst and a flood of feathers swarmed the hallway swallowing the camera. In a moment of distress, Hunt began to stuff the feathers back into the white bag in anxious, quick movements. Then the alarm sounded and Hunt was running again.
I was struck by the spaces of waiting — these moments of stillness suspended in time. This piece captures the progression to death in such an honest, vulnerable way. There are repetitive cycles that combine long periods of stillness, followed by urgency which leads into shocking violence. As time passes, Hunt strikes the pillow against the floor with greater gusts of force. An absurd number of feathers overflow into the space. There is an unfolding level of chaos. My heart beat pounds alongside Hunt’s footsteps.
Often death is characterized as a slow and silent process, yet Hunt acknowledges the presence of violence and volatility that often exists in the dying body (and in the emotions of loved ones.) As the last several feathers burst out of the pillow case, the chat erupts in exclamations. Hunt picks up the empty fabric and smooths it with her arms over and over again. It was 9am on Saturday morning and I felt so connected to this community of attendees in the chat. We seemed to all breathe together in an unexpected, virtual kinship as the last feathers drifted down the stairs.
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In Tell Me Something Good! Alex Barbier takes a moment to celebrate individuals in their achievements, self-proclaimed successes, and general existence. Prior to the afternoon performance, Barbier had circulated an online form asking people to submit their good news, everything from graduations, to new pets, to surviving another day in this world. As the performance began, Barbier was wearing a full-length red jumpsuit with matching, red silk gloves and red lipstick. The room was decorated floor to ceiling with rose gold streamers, creating the aesthetic of a DIY awards ceremony.
The performance involved a cyclical process; Barbier opens an envelope, reads a piece of good news, spins a colorful wheel with puffy paint instructions, and then initiates a celebratory ritual. This structure offered a little chance, a little bit of unpredictability, and a great deal of playfulness. As an audience member on the other side of Vimeo, I felt invited to participate and celebrate. The chat was filled with bursts of exclamation as we collectively recognized and applauded the good news of strangers.
Through the course of the performance, we celebrated a person who had “intentionally prioritized their needs” with a two-minute round of applause, recognized a fully vaccinated family with a champagne toast, and uplifted someone who had continued to be a creative moving body when they just wanted to cry in bed. I was struck by how comforting it was to celebrate individuals for the smallest moments of existing within the pandemic. In a time that has felt disconnected and remarkably difficult, it felt like a radical act to uplift moments of light in a shared corner of virtual community.
Barbier, alongside her assistant Samuel Hanson, heightened these celebratory rituals to exuberant absurdity. They made an absolute mess with confetti, they had a “celebratory toast” by eating actual toast, and they draped tinsel on their bodies and rolled around in lethargic liberation. It felt significant to be fully present in community celebration; to pause and center good news and small moments of joy. This sort of ritualistic practice is fun and quirky, but also has the capacity to spark resilience and center relationships.
Barbier promised that more celebrations would be hosted soon. I am still holding out hope that I will get to see a dove release — one of the festivities that the wheel never chose. To submit your own piece of good news or learn about upcoming performances, visit Barbier’s website.
Thank you to the many PAF performers for obscuring the digital space, for manipulating time, and for giving Salt Lake a moment to celebrate.
Rachel Luebbert is a Utah-based dance artist. She also teaches and works in arts administration and programming, and has previously worked in Colorado, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.