Pure voodoo at its best, performance art traffics in psychic violence, provoking questions that viewers, by virtue of their emotional disturbance, feel compelled to answer. Defibrillator Gallery’s Rapid Pulse, now in its second year, is designed to make the genre more talkative: the festival, which includes window shows, public spectacle, and video screenings, coordinates performances with discussions, spread over ten days and four venues (Defibrillator, 1136 N. Milwaukee; Electrodes, the gallery’s front windows; Hub, 1535 N. Milwaukee; Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee). Come for the bad vibes, stay for the nauseating hypersonic jolt.
In Fair & Lost, Francesca Fini evokes old Italian struggles for freedom as she grieves for a system teetering toward collapse (Thu 7 PM, Defibrillator). Jefferson Pinder investigates contemporary tropes of blackness in The Magical Negro (Fri 7 PM, Defibrillator). Donning veils of charred toast for At the Edge of Longing, Zierle & Carter progress through three phases: “bare,” “free,” and “stripped free” (Sat 6/8, Electrodes). Anna Berndtson makes butter in a blue ball gown during Churned (Sun 2:30-7:30 PM, Defibrillator). To close the fest, Boris Nieslony plumbs his primordial depths to find out how humans came to sing and dance in Naturstudy: Debility-Decibel (Mon 7 PM, Defibrillator).
6/1-6/10
various times and locations
rapidpulse.org
