Y was a stream of research that began in 2002 and had its last distinguishable emanation at a performance in 2011, before submerging into my general practice. In 2002, I was reading an article by Arturo Schwarz on Marcel Duchamp and alchemy (“The Alchemist Stripped Bare in the Bachelor, Even”). Through this, I got a glimpse of the potential and depth of Y, and went further.
Later that summer, Angelina Baldoz and I performed in Seattle at SFADI (now SFDI). The score was simple, and based on the shape and trajectory of the letter Y: Begin together embodying Y, at some point branch, then end simultaneously. The initial performance experience raised questions that led to another work, being scene, and also crossed into other research streams. The Y score laid latent as performance material until it revived in 2009 – 2011 in California and MPLS, through performances at Highways Performance Space, Continuum Studio as part of SOMAFest (Santa Monica), Subterranean Arthouse, Moment’s Notice (Berkeley), 9x22 Minneapolis, Pieter PASD (Los Angeles), and milkbar Oakland.
More about Y:
Y signifies a splitting. Y is a symbol for the Word. Son of Hermes and Aphrodite. 3. It is an image of the androgyne, shared base-body and bifurcating above, into 2 – m + f heads. Or is that M, F, M/F, neither? They (the androgyne) quicken through burning in the element fire, lying on wood, and through this, ferment. Arms upright to heaven form the Y in the Hyperborean and cosmic traditions. Kha, Rebis. The tree, both branching down and through and up and out. Eve from the rib.
For me, there is something in Y that instantiates the beginning of language, the richness of polyglotism, and multiplicity. Look at its form: Y. A center with branches extending from – what? Imagine that as the seed, in time, in space, in action. Y-form is the cell splitting and becoming-human from potentiality, is the moment in cell differentiation when the gender is determined (at first, potentiality), is markedly queer. Y as a sign abolishes reductionist conflict with a creative cross-pollination, inviting a range by opening up. It’s conjoining/ disjoining, carving the Stone. The fault lines and fissures. This is very sexy to me, where language makes the cut, those indeterminate spaces that come from an opening. So elegant is the polarity of yin/yang M/F receptive/protective and on and on, yet as we know from 3, once there is 1, then 2 then 3, and so on… So, on….."
The work evolved into an elegant practice inside a paper crescent, an expression of human measurement and the seed from which utterance and inscriptions split into dance and language itself.
Y XYZ* LA ~ Zine for Pieter Performance Residency
