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SIMILARITY #3: The Pyramids of North America

Meanings of Actions / Actions of Meaning

Performativity is where my interests begin.  The consistent presentation and re-presentation of self from day to day produces the constantly fluid, unstable, expansive task of navigating one’s identity and the social context within which it exists. 

A performer since the age of five, I am no stranger to the complicated nature of such conditions. 

Restrain, contain, define, refine.  These are the seemingly necessary actions one must take to participate within the social structures of identification and its accompanying hierarchies. 

Imagine a great golden pyramid shining in the sun.  Feel free to alternate between Giza and Las Vegas.

The intrinsic logic of these hierarchies favors the few that stand atop the shoulders of the many.  These conditions allows for the production of false value systems and illusionary power structures.  We know through historical observation the consequential side effects can be exploitative and oppressive.

Value makes me think about gold.  Gold shines with light from the sun.  The sun is like a spotlight.  Spotlights are for performers.  Performers wear costumes. Costumes are made of glitter.  Glitter is fleeting.  Gold is rare.  Performance is all around.  Gold lasts in materiality.  Icons last in memory.

Through performative gestures (events, objects, images, and writings) I carve out temporal experiences to challenge the mesh of existing social control.  In a Brechtian tradition, I employ (collapse, merge, juxtapose, reconsider) representations of reality (popular narratives/forms/sites) to shed light on the complexities between kindness and cruelty—states of being that fuel confusion, prejudice, and injustice.

I often locate this slippery, contradictory relationship within the phenomenal zone of glamour. 

By definition glamour is fascinating, alluring, exciting and enchanting. 

Therefore glamour is active: immaterial and transitory.  It is manifested in temporal actions that generate unusual experiences for those who create, witness, or participate.  This cultural phenomenon is materialized and realized through combinations of objects, images, and sounds.  We know these well.  They are Theatre, Fashion, Film, Media... 

The spell of glamour has been exploited, perverted, and commodified by Capitalism.  Capitalism is like that great golden pyramid.  It is simultaneously enticing in its image and discouragingly difficult to ascend.  It always points upward- the monumental manifestation of the transcendence seekers (?).

Liveness is a place where a collective, seemingly parallel reality can generate commentary, criticism, contradictions, and hopeful alternatives to the multifaceted, complicated conditions of our contemporary society.  In acts of play, as Victor Turner observes, there is an opportunity to enact and interact with the undetermined.  This provides the potential of producing new relationships to existing elements and conditions of society.

But how?

As Kracauer states in 1930, the DIVA becomes a key figure of identification between popular performance and broader culture.  To engage mass appeal I have objectified myself as a performer, reducing my name to its initials and transforming my identity into the transparent construction of a brand: TMO [sometimes TMO LIVE, or TMO STUDIO].

The DIVA is the embodied icon that, much like the gold or the pyramid, becomes the valuable center of attention within mass entertainment.  No matter in Opera, Pop, Hollywood, or Theatre, she (can also be a man) is the combined image, object, and sound.  This embodiment publicly elevates/positions and allows for immense communication. 

Through scripted events and improvised interactions, my cabaret style performances- composed of anywhere between one to ten performers and rarely tethered to a proper theatre- attempt to build, over time, a complex mythology that is seemingly solidified while constantly changing.  This is a political tactic of deviant dislocation or even deconstructionism.  The episodic methodology builds anticipation and allows reflection on the complexities of social issues and situations presented.  In a moment when entertainment has a reduced political power due to the economic ideologies that shape and protect its consumption, I find exigencies in restoring a critical position within entertaining, live events.

Tyler Matthew Oyer, 5/2012