Panther City Arts


fort worth





Reaction/reflections to Inta(llation)gram…

The class liked it, Tom was very critical. Par for the course.

The idea of how the project is curated was a hot topic of discussion. Obviously, with the installation taking place through an app, anyone can post anything to it (provided I ever got it to work the way I wanted it to). The notion that people would inevitable abuse the platform was brought up. After all, trolls will be trolls. 

On the one hand, this is an intriguing proposition. Sure, people are supposed to post pictures of artwork from other galleries/museums, but posting something else can reveal just as much about the audience and the notion of art itself. It could be exciting. But, Tom also pointed out that if it go out of control, it could end up devaluing the installation. Good point.

My goal was to be as hands off as a curator as possible. But, to maintain the integrity of the piece, I’d have to exercise some measure of control as a moderator of the page. We’re still co-curators but I, as the artist, retain ultimate censorial control. This is a little troubling to me as part of the idea is to take the creation of the piece as much out of the artist’s hands as possible, but I recognize the concerns. 

So, how do I do that?

Additionally, before this could ever hang in a gallery, it’d have to be scaled up to how I originally imagined it. So, it’d have to be a bigger screen and I’d have to figure out a way to get the screen layout how I want it. Clearly I can’t work within the actual Instagram app. So, what do I do? Develop a website for it? Or, an idea I like, develop my own app for it.

But, with an app, how do I distinguish between installations? How is the time bracketed? If it exists as an app that anyone can access at any time, what is the point of putting it in a gallery? Yes, the notion that people always have an art gallery in their pocket is interesting. But, as I’ve written before, that’s what Google images does too. I wouldn’t be breaking any new ground except to maybe get people to look at the process in a different way. 

But, the whole concept of the performance was that the piece has to exist in a gallery, as it’s partly a commentary on the gallery space. So, how to do this?

I had an idea after discussion of my piece was over. Basically, develop the basic architecture of an app, and then create different versions of the app for different installations.

I drew a small version in my notepad…


See it there, in the middle?

Each app version can be for a specific installation. Users would submit their pictures to me, and I would control which ones get posted. These posts would appear in the app, but they’d also appear in the gallery installation. And at the end of the installation, I’d simply stop updating an app. So, there’d be an archive of the installation within the app, but it would cease to exist in the realms of a gallery. Eventually, users would have a full archive of this work within their smart phones (and archived online). A work they co-curated. But, the problem of the time limits of an installation would be solved…somewhat.

This still gives me, the artist, a little too much control, in my opinion. So, I’m still working on how best to pursue this project. One idea is that different installations can have different themes, and some could allow for the free flow of posting. I specifically thought of calling one Troll and seeing what happens when internet ‘trolls’ take over a public art space. It could be interesting. And it’d certainly reveal something about humanity. 


Anyway, finishing up…

This class was outstanding. It’s the exact kind of class I came to UT Dallas to take. It’s the exact kind of training and work I’ve wanted. And now I look forward to further developing this aspect of my art. 

And moving forward, now that I’ve finally posted stuff in the blog, I’ll start using it regularly. I’ll use it to share random musings, write actual articles, and document my work moving forward. That work comprises theater/performance, writing, filmmaking, and installation work, for now. I’m excited about where things are moving with my art right now. And this blog is a good way to keep that going and create an archive.

The performance (cyber)space (reflections on part 2 of etude #3)…

Now, here’s some notes…


Notes from journal…

Luckily, a woman from class, who has her own private studio at the Art Barn with a couch and coffee table setup, allowed me to use it for my installation.

I had the phone on a side table, but ti didn’t play a part in the installation, really.

The laptop was on the coffee table and had a Facebook page that I’d created for the space (Installation Room) open. I also brought my portable Bose speaker, but the lack of an outlet made it practically useless. 

I had a volunteer sit at the couch. From my iPad, I Facebook messaged him from my iPad under the character name I’d created for the installation (Annie Anderson). We had a brief conversation as I explained the piece. 

It went over okay. As usually happens with my work, my fellow students seemed more enthused than my instructor. I swear I’m destined to be a popular artist that the academy looks at with a quiet disdain as a pseudo-intellectual. Anyway…

Class discussion, however, was again very constructive. And the concept changed even further.

Now, the installation is completely online and completely run through social media. 

Here’s my concept:

There is a website that serves as the “box office” of sorts for the performance. Given that it’s moved online, the performance can now accommodate more than one person at once. What happens is the audience member buys a ticket for the performance. Then, they’re given a list of the characters and all their social media profiles. From there, they can go friend/follow/etc. the characters. Once the performance starts, which will play out over the course of something like a couple of weeks or a month, it takes place on the audience members social media feeds. There is a general narrative between the characters in the performance, but again, the audience can interact with these characters and effect the course of events. 

This still plays with the same themes I’ve previously written about. What has changed is the space. 

I’ve written about the question of what comes next for art after people like Kaprow essentially blew the box up. And this seems to be an interesting answer. The internet as a performance space. 

I’m sure I’m not the first person to think of it or even do it, but my interest is certainly piqued. 

Hopefully a performance like this can help the audience look at their carefully curated online social lives in a way that examines context and how exactly we craft and define the roles we play online versus who we are in the real world. 

The scripting process will be kind of crazy. I’ll have to develop full social media pages for my characters, going into great detail crafting them and who they are. Second, I’ll have to script a general storyline, even if specific lines aren’t written down. I think of it like a commedia del’arte situation. I’ll have a carefully constructed schedule in which different characters will post different things. From there, they’ll react to the comments from audience members and other characters. And these situations will have to be fluid based on where the audience, the spect-actors, take it. I imagine a gargantuan, annotated, and organized scripting system that has dossiers for each character, a collection of situations, and a schedule of postings. It’s a huge project, but one people seem excited about it. And it’s something that genuinely interests me.

The idea of taking performance/art to the online space is intriguing, despite my relative lack of social media experience. I’ll have to do a lot of work and studying. Especially when it comes to making a website to serve as a mission control for all of this. I’ve never seen anything like it. 


The Spect-actor (reflections on part 1 of etude #3)…

Class was great!









Context (Etude #3)

I’m posting a scan of the actual assignment, as I made notes on it…



So, we have to decide on a story that’s not our own, and then make decisions/observations about its visuals, sound, space, and perspective/concept.

This is definitely a site specific project, especially considering our reading of Kaprow.

I read a conversation in a comment thread online about a couple who, in the course of a normal conversation via text messaging, got into an argument because of something being taken out of context. 

This story interested me for a few reasons. First, I’ve been there before. Despite my generally jovial nature in person, I’ve had people read me in text/email over the years in a much different tone than I intended. The reason for this is a loss of context. Especially in text, it’s difficult to put any intonation into the words. Outside of emoticons, tone and intent can be difficult to decipher in a textual context.

Also, it made me thing of the social scripts I’ve already written about. Our reading of a situation (like in art) is informed by our own subjectivity. Despite the intent of what we’re perceiving, the way we read it can be completely different. 

So, this notion interested me. 

My concept is an installation in which the audience is placed in the role of the person having the text conversation. The setting is a living room. The living room os full of stuff, the decorations of an identity. They sit at a couch with a smart phone on a pedestal in front of them, a laptop on the table in front of them and a television playing a movie or speaker playing music. All of these electronic devices will be active. On the phone, the conversation plays out. On the computer is social media feeds. The TV or music provides a cultural noise that can, perhaps, influence the mindset of the audience. From here, the audience watches the conversation play out on the small screen.

This is like a happening, though I’m not sure how much further the audience could participate. Maybe be able to respond to the texts from someone else so they could experience the loss of context? How they respond to the texts reveals something about the piece and about themselves. 

This is a two part assignment, so this is my concept. I’ll present it in class and then perhaps develop it further…

Performance Installation: Week 4

Our reading for the week was the book Essay on the Blurring of Art and Life, a book of Allan Kaprow’s writings about his work edited by Jeff Kelley.


My original reflection on the reading…

I’ve had experience studying Kaprow before, in Performance Art and Performance Theory classes during my masters.

Kaprow’s signature contribution to art is the Happening. 

Happenings are tough to define, partly because Kaprow’s own definition shifted over time. Basically, they’re a art performance or installation that happens outside the bounds of the traditional art sphere (i.e. galleries, theaters, etc.) 

That’s really broad. Winnowing down, Kaprow was concerned with the question, “What is art?” His solution partly involved taking the elements of what makes art, consciously, art, and instead using everyday locations, objects, and actions to challenge the perception of art itself. Starting with more scripted events, Kaprow eventually got to a point where events only happened once, they weren’t promoted, and there was a chance the people participating in them weren’t even aware of their intentions, meanings, etc. To Kaprow, art was the actual creation and execution of art. Not necessarily the creations themselves or the spaces they’re contained in. 

I’ve been a part of happenings before, typically of the more scripted variety where the audience was aware of their participation. 

And what this reading does for me is raise the topic of the conscious versus the subconscious. 

Once we’re conscious of something, we automatically assign culturally curated symbolism, meaning, and definition to it. As such, people in a gallery will behave the way people in a gallery are “supposed” to behave, and they’ll automatically register the gallery’s contents as “art”, because that’s what’s in a gallery. 

By leaving the safe confines of the curated, controlled space, Kaprow was able to get a more honest, perhaps visceral reaction from his audience, which in a way, is art. 

I remember taking a class on Dada and Surrealist art at the Nasher Sculpture Center. One time in class, I made the, tired, statement that art is subjective. My professor, a curator at the center, corrected me. She said, our reaction to art is subjective. 

Such a small change in the statement makes a big difference. It acknowledges that something is art if we call it art, taking the power away from the art academy and placing it squarely on the spectator. And there’s something to that. Think of things we interact with everyday. A chair, a table, a toilet (Hello, Duchamp!). All of these things had to be designed. They are, in their own way, art. But, because they exist in our everyday lives, and perhaps because they serve very practical purposes, we don’t immediately identify them as being artistic. The Dadas and Surrealists plead their own part in challenging these notions. Duchamp’s readymades specifically did this. Especially his work Fountain, a urinal turned on its back and signed, as a work of art would be. 



Collage and some of the Dada sculpture would also fall into this category.

But, Kaprow took that a step further. After all, a lot of these Dada and Surrealist works were still displayed in galleries and exhibitions where they were defined as art. Kaprow took his art outside of the gallery, noting in the book that in order to get to the heart of what is art, you had to un-art the art, or basically strip it of the signifiers that identified it as art. So, take it out of the gallery, don’t sign it, don’t advertise it as art. Just let it happen, as it were. 

This, in turn, will elicit a spontaneous, unconscious reaction from the audience, which can then reveal the true definition and nature of art. 

I totally dig what Kaprow is saying, to an extent. We live in a socially constructed world and follow script throughout our everyday lives. So, when someone walks into a theater or a gallery, they’re playing the role of audience member, art patron, etc. Due to these roles that we take on, we behave in certain ways, and look at the contents in a certain way. We perceive the art as art simply because we’re in a place that houses art. Not necessarily because it actually is art. Confused yet?

I like the idea of getting your audience into an unconscious space. Getting them to react spontaneously and authentically to art really is, perhaps, one of the most interesting aspects of art.

However, what the Dadas and Surrealists played a big role in starting, and what Kaprow furthered, is this postmodern notion of deconstruction. And while there is a way in which deconstruction can be a very good thing, what happens at the end when we’ve torn the entire academy down?

By deconstructing the notion of “What is art?”, we tear it down to its parts to such an extent that we invite a total relativistic outlook on the form as a whole that in the search for meaning can dilute it to the point that it has no meaning.

As Hakim Bey suggested in TAZ: Go into the lobby of a Citibank, drop your pants, take a shit on the floor, and walk out.

Sure, you can identify that as an artistic expression. Especially in today’s world where there is such distrust of the large banks. But, if no one else knows about it, is it art? Is it enough that the 20 people in the bank perceived the action and questioned in their own heads what it meant?

I agree that we should find ways to break down the social scripts that can, arguably, sometimes limit art. But, how far can we break them down before there is no script left? Are we truly living in an age that’s so subjective that it’s enough if just one person unconsciously perceives it as art? 

And think of it on a practical level. It’s fine when you’re the one leading the charge on these movements, but what happens to artists who come after? I feel it’s safe to say that the world needs art and artists. But, we let those who came before us tear down the academy to a point that we’ve entered into a time of cynicism where everything is considered trite or derivative. Everything is been there, done that. 

Kaprow was great, but he got to work in a time when the art world was still somewhat strong, so his abstraction meant something. But, his development of the Happening, in a way, can play as him pulling the pin on a grenade on his way out the door and making it more difficult for everyone who comes after him. The grand narrative (or meta narrative) of art has been broken down to a point that to participate in the traditional art world these days is considered tired. As Tom Riccio said to me during a meeting, “Theater is dead.” (For this example, consider that theater can mean art in general). Now, Tom didn’t mean that theater itself is dead. That’s obviously not true. Broadway posted record ticket sales last year. What he meant is the “box” is dead. The traditional theater, with its proscenium seating and coherent, self-contained narratives, is dead. To participate in this old form is to be living in the past, to an extent. 

I, in all my amateurism, disagree. I think it’s still possible to work within the box (whether that be a theater, a gallery, or whatever else) and create great, progressive art. The key, as Kaprow’s work gets at, is getting the audience to truly unconsciously react to the art within. How to do that? I’m not totally sure. But, I’ll keep working on it.

I know going into this class, that Tom is a fan of site specific artistic work. His group, Dead White Zombies specializes in site specific performance. And, I think it’s really cool and results in really visceral, honest performances. I like the notion. And it’s something I want to do with my work. Which leads me to the assignment (etude) for the week…


This is the short film Joe and I made in 2009. It was our first foray into film. We were amateurs. We still, technically, are. But, we’ve come so far. This was a valuable learning experience, and a fun footnote in our path…

There’s another scene, also on vimeo. It was the opening scene. Eventually, I split it form the rest of the film because, through no fault of the actors, it just never quite worked.

Of course, the film doesn’t quite work. But, it was fun and educational nevertheless…

Etude #2: Everything ends up in a box…

Our second assignment in Performance Installation class was called “High Points of Your Life”

The basic premise was, choose seven high points from our life (good, bad, or otherwise). These high points had to, essentially, manifest in an object (found or created), a sound, a video, a text, has to be performed, and consider spatial relationships. Shape all of these to a perspective and take a point of view (implied that it’s other than our own).

So, here are my notes on the assignment. Again, you’ll notice they’re somewhat brief. Sometimes the things that happen in my head go too fast to write down…


And, here is the finished product…




As you can see from the notes, I began with very practical life events, but soon moved to more abstract concepts. 

But, at one point I realized that I had a major dividing line in my life. It was in 2009 amid the depression. I’d recently moved, and it had been before I had another place to go. So, I put all my stuff in a storage unit. However, even after I found a new house, I was so busy and I knew the move was only for a year, so I left most of the stuff in the storage unit. Int the meantime I had started a business (an art gallery I co-owned with an artist friend), and the recession had hit – closing said gallery eventually. And here’s where I ran into a problem.

The recession was hard. I wasn’t making very much money at the gallery as most of my labor was essentially sweat equity. Also, I ended up getting screwed over by departing roommates and stiffed on rent. Because of this paying bills became a sporadic event. That said, I knew my storage unit was most important, and I tried to pay the bill as often as possible. 

At one point, I’d sent a check that would cover two months and any late fees I’d accumulated. However, a couple of weeks later I got a phone call from them. My storage unit was about to be auctioned off unless I paid in the next couple of hours. I asked about the check I’d sent, almost certain that I’d seen it clear the bank. They said it was $14 short of what I’d owed and weren’t sure if I wanted it applied to my balance or wanted to send another check for the right amount. Mind you, they waited until right before they were going to auction it to tell me about this issue, which is real flimsy in the first place. Of course apply it to the balance. Then, call me and tell me to send you $14 more dollars. But, this was a setup. I got the money together and called them back, but no one answered. I called a dozen times over the next few hours. Never an answer. 

About a month later I got a check in the mail for $175. My cut after the balance owed was paid off of what they auctioned it for. 

Doing the math, that means most of what I owned, most of my life, was worth less than $600. 

Furniture, clothes, hundreds of DVD’s, hundreds of books, a lot of my masters notes, papers, etc. Keepsakes, gifts, mementos. All gone. Stolen, essentially.

But, I was so low at that point there was no fight left in me.

The gallery closed soon after. I had a falling out at grad school. Got screwed over by friends. Had the absolute worst breakup of my life. And then got most of my stuff stolen by a shady storage place. I’d lost everything. I was at rock bottom.

I moved back into my parents’ house and went back to work in the family business. The very thing I thought I’d escaped from just three years earlier was once again my resting place. 

I realized of the big events in my life, losing that storage unit might have been the biggest. Because I essentially had to reboot everything. 

And I did. 

Though I had to work a day job to pay down bills, I decided to fully devote myself to the pursuit of art. The thing I’d always let others convince me could never be anything more than a hobby would be my life, come hell or high water. 

To that end, I’d met and started writing with my, now, closest collaborator Joe, and we soon had a script for a short film completed and a production company in Austin that wanted to produce it. 

Since then, it’s still been an up and down, sometimes rocky road on the path to being a working artist. But, it’s getting there. I eventually went back and finished grad school. After living at home for three years, I was able to move into a dream apartment (a converted warehouse loft space catered to artists), and I wrote and co-directed promotional videos that aired on national television. And I eventually went back to school to work on a PhD in the arts, which eventually led me to this class. 

Now things are happening faster than ever. I have a lot of irons in the firs that are ready to strike. It’s taken six years, but I’m getting close. 

So, I built my installation around a box. The point of view is that of the auctioneer, auctioning off all my belongings to the highest bidder. The perspective, theme, or whatever you want to call it is simple. Everything (and everyone) ends up in a box. No matter what we accumulate it life, it’s all temporary. And the ability to let go is a experience that can transformative. 

For the performance aspect of the piece, I prepared a manifest on my yellow notepad (to give it the look of a ledger) and read this prepared script…


An accounting of the contents:

1. The American League Championship trophy replica is from the Texas Rangers 2011 season. Despite being an “artist”, I love sports. Hey, I grew up in Texas, after all. And above everything else, I love baseball and the Texas Rangers. And during the 2011 playoffs I was at Game 6 against the Detroit Tigers when Nelson Cruz hit the walk off grand slam to send the Rangers to the World Series. In fact, the ball even landed near us. Even remembering it now, it was an emotional moment. I’ve never in my life experienced that much shared jubilation and euphoria. It may be the most positive feeling I’ve ever had in one single moment. And I shared it simultaneously with 50,000 other people. It was amazing. To me, it represents happiness.

2. My masters hood from the University of North Texas. I experienced the highest of highs (being named Outstanding Graduate Scholar, the top non thesis award in the department), and the lowest of lows (being passed over for a job I felt I deserved and my advisor being hit by a car on her bike). I took nearly two years off at one point. But, Tom Riccio (of all people!), played a big role in convincing me to finish. I gutted up, took one more class in which I made a complete fool of myself, took my comprehensive exams, and graduated. It was a big moment for me, in the end. I’ll never be the academic that some of my classmates were, but I feel like I had a great overall experience and it made me a better person. It represents hard work and accomplishment. And a book end to the rough patch of my life (graduated in Fall 2011).

3. Two burned DVD’s from two plays I was in at Duncanville Community Theatre. They were The Diary of Anne Frank and The Curious Savage, in which I played Hannibal (a role once also played by Spalding Gray!). As a theater critic, I don’t get to do much theater. But, DCT doesn’t get reviewed and I have a lot of close friends there. So, I sneak down occasionally and do a show. My best role in the last few years was as the title character in The Nerd! This represents my continued pursuit of art stemming from that reboot.

4. Two Criterion Collection Luis Buñuel films, “The Exterminating Angel” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”. I included these because of my love of film and desire to make films, but also because, due to my earlier compromises in life, I’d never actually studied filmmaking. So, part of my reboot was essentially trying to teach myself. I bought books, watched and studied films, listened to interviews, etc. But, a major tool of my education has been the Criterion Collection, which is known for being, essentially, film school on a disc. And through that exploration/education, I feel in love with the films of Luis Buñuel. This represents my drive and desire to make films.

5. Film wasn’t the only thing I took up study of. I also became a (renewed) student of theater. I’ve done theater pretty much my entire life. From the moment I could get on a stage, I did. Yet, I rarely studied it. I took 1 1/2 years in junior high and two years in high school before switching to choir/show choir/musical theater because of schedule considerations. I stayed in choir in college, but got back into theater late. Over my last three semesters of undergrad I did about a dozen plays. That said, it was too late to take any classes. My graduate work (in performance studies) had gotten be back into that world at least tangentially. And coming off of that, and getting a job as a theater critic for Theater Jones (, I decided to enhance my studies and learn more. To that end, I included the books Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic edited by John Willett and Martin Esslin’s The Theatre of the Absurd. These show both my continued education and specific interests, and represent how big a part of my life theater is.

6. During my reboot, like I mentioned, Joe and I got our first film made. It’s called Grip, and it’s not great. We were novices. Didn’t know what we were doing. And then we had issues with the production company and the edit, and ended up finishing it on our own, without all the footage. However, it was a major milestone and started my forays into making films. It’s important and will, hopefully be an amusing footnote moving forward in life. It’s playing on the iPad in the box. 

7. Finally, I included my Canon 7D, DSLR camera. It represents the evolution of my film/art making. I’ve shot several little projects on it and have several more planned. It represents the future. 

The box is labeled as “Random Stuff”, because in the end, that’s all it is to anyone else. It means something to me, but it’s temporary. And that knowledge has a dual effect on me. First, it actually makes these moments mean more to me. Because they are so unique and special to me. They’re rare and personal. That makes them mean more within the context of myself and my identity. However, it also helps me to not get to tied down to anything. Always be moving forward. Don’t fall back on sentimentality and certainly don’t ever get contented with the the easy path. 


The project went over well. I liked it. It’s the kind of thing, I feel, if I had more of a portfolio and display history, would be taken seriously as an installation piece. 

Performance Installation: Week 3

Our reading for the week was the Joseph Beuys: The Reader, edited by Claudia Mesch and Viola C. Danto.


The book is a collection of essays on hugely influential, and often controversial artist/performer Joseph Beuys. A lot of the symbolism and, really, absurdity that we associate with performance art today can be largely credited to him. His installations, too, might seem absurd to the casual viewer. But, Beuys always had a purpose. Every material used, and how it was used had a meaning. 

Here’s a brief YouTube video:


Modern, postmodern, or whatever, Beuys did the kind of things in performance and art that we might role our eyes at today because it seems cliched. But, it’s cliched because he did it, essentially, first. It’s the old art adage, the first person to do it is a genius. Everyone after that is an unimaginative copycat. 

Beuys was definitely an original voice for 20th century art. Interesting, to say the least…

On to our assignment for the week…

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