![\"Performance](\"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/rojas.jpg\")
<\/a>Performance artist Jorge Rojas reads Romantic poetry on the elevator at the SLC Main Library as part of Kristina Lenzi’s Performance Art Festival.<\/p><\/div>\n
For curator and artist Kristina Lenzi, performance art is the antithesis of artifice. It is, she says, \u00a0about \u201creal people doing real things in real time.\u201d She eschews work that smells rehearsed, presenting the kind of \u201cperformance art\u201d that makes the presence of the word \u201cperformance\u201d feel suspect. As hard as some of her rhetoric\u2013\u2013 including claiming that \u201cperformance art\u201d is not rehearsed\u2013\u2013 is for me to swallow as someone who comes out of dance, perhaps her view is a grounding force in the era of performance celebs like Marina Abramovic. Performance art is a nebulous space\u2013 and that\u2019s what makes it a generative one.<\/p>\n
The opening work in Lenzi\u2019s Salt Lake Performance Art Festival, which took place Friday and Saturday at the Salt Lake City Main Library, was Gretchen and Zoey Reynolds\u2019 \u201cWatching Ourselves Always for the Return of the Italian Puffies.\u201d Ensconced behind the glass doors of the Library\u2019s SHARE Space, an empty storefront within a row of shops, the mother and daughter enjoyed a two hour game of gin. Their objective throughout, was to cheat against each other, and this is what drew and kept an audience. It was a pleasure to see the two eyeing each other with the strange intimacy particular to a mother and daughter. Gretchen\u2019s work is diverse, brave and never takes itself too seriously. I can\u2019t wait to see more of it.<\/p>\n
Shasta Lawton\u2019s \u201c<\/i>Magic Circles,\u201d <\/i>which followed, also made use of the SHARE Space. I found this long mediation, which consisted of drawing ever larger circles on the glass, playing with nesting dolls and rifling through papers, completely impenetrable. That said, I enjoyed it as an opportunity to watch how the audience assembled searched the room and Lawton for meaning. Would that other audiences were so dedicated.<\/p>\n
Next, in \u201cGifts,\u201d Macie Hamblin, harvested her rainbow-dyed hair into color coded objets d\u2019art<\/i> which she rationed out to the audience like party favors. In contrast to earlier works, \u201cGifts\u201d took place in the middle of the pedestrian traffic that fills the Library\u2019s atrium. It was a pleasure to see another possibility offered by the strangers who traipse through this iconic space. Though Hamblin and her collaborator\/head-shaver ignored the confused strangers, their fragmentary commentary of glance and shrugs lent the piece much needed playfulness.<\/p>\n
Day two brought some works which spanned the Library\u2019s entire operational day. The first time I got on the glass elevator with Jorge Rojas (who was dressed as some kind of bird), he was reading Rumi; four hours later, I was treated to Byron and another Romantic whose lines I didn\u2019t recognize. It\u2019s a pleasure to be read to. It\u2019s even more fun when the intimate act is shared with strangers, who come and go like fellow travelers on a vertical subway. Here was something that really didn\u2019t need much rehearsal, just a few well-chosen texts and a lot of patient work from the artist.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Marilyn Arsem performs “Lost Words” as part of the Performance Art Festival in Salt Lake City.<\/p><\/div>\n