Marcus performed his new piece, Crank, at Francois Ghebaly Gallery last night in Chinatown.  It’s incredible to witness a performance maturate from concept to actual physical movements.  I think I know what something might look like and find that the end result is vaguely knowable but also completely unexpected and exciting.  Marcus envisioned Crank as a manually looped set of actions that can be viewed for small increments of time–the audience can peek in and then wander and then come back.  Unexpectedly, I think for both him and me, I found the repetitive motion hypnotizing in a way and it felt important to absorb the drone of predictable movement.  The piece is about airport security, among many other things, and the numbness of repetition came through as a product of constant surveillance.  The effect was perfectly chilling. Oh, what my faithful former postmodernism students would say about that one…

Also after watching the same set of movements for an hour, I started to notice all the little nuances between each looped round–the frequency of the large frame hitting the walls, the shedding wax on the suitcase.  Jon Wagner once used the term “the radiance of ordinary things” which has stuck with me ever since and again the phrase comes to mind when I think about how repetition also gives way to a certain kind of radiance.

Then on a basic level, I’m astounded at the way Marcus pushes his body.  Watching him rotate a wooden frame for that long period of time punctuated only by small breaks to lift a pail of orgone matter high into the air was hard in a way because i could see the fatigue in his face and indeed he was near passing out when his hour was up.  And I don’t think I was the only person who felt concerned for his fatigue.  There was a collective anxiety among the viewers about the whole thing, which again, was appropriate for the subject matter.  I love that Marcus’ performances do this, that they induce a non-verbal communication between the audience and the performer, that he isn’t telling you to feel a certain thing but rather cultivates a sort of tension through cumulative action.

…oh and I made red velvet sandwich cookies as a good luck present! I adapted a recipe for red velvet black & white cookies from Joy The Baker who I think adapted the recipe from a Rachael Ray recipe (eww).  I find black and white cookies to be quite sloppy looking but I liked the idea of a red velvet cookie and because it makes sense and because Marcus’ favorite thing ever is cream cheese, a cream cheese filling felt appropriate.

Ingredients:

for cookies:

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

5 tablespoons of unsalted butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg, room temp

1 tablespoon red food coloring

1 teaspoon vanilla

filling:

6 oz cream cheese

6 tablespoons of butter

2 cups confectioners sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 cup buttermilk

* i doubled the recipe to make about 30 sandwich cookie (60 individual sides)

1. preheat oven to 350

2. sift together flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda

3. in a separate bowl beat together sugar and butter until fluffy

4. add egg and beat until well combined

5. add vanilla extract and food coloring

6. add the flour and buttermilk in 3 separate alternating additions

7. on a parchment lined cookie sheet drop 1 tablespoon sized balls of dough about 2 inches apart

8. with a knife or spatula slightly flatten the dough until they are disc shaped

9. bake for 10-12 minutes

10. in the meantime make the filling by combining the room temperature cream cheese and roomtemperature butter and then the vanilla and then the sugar last

11. wait for the cookies to cool before fillin