Portland Mercury | Blogs | TBA | Mike Daisey is Awesome!!!!:
The night's turning point was a scathing, hilarious monologue from Mike Daisey. "Art can't save you," he began. "If it could, it would have been commodified already." And with that, he launched into a refreshingly direct rant about artists stuck in the closed feedback loop of self-reflection ("the elaborate deception*, levels on levels, is to pretend you actually have the right to be onstage"), and audience members who uncritically embrace a performance ("it was awesome!!") simply because it's happening at this Important Art Festival and so must be Important and Meaningful. "If you don't like something, leave," he said at one point. "Do something!" Like for example, put your dick on the table, make a little cut, and see what comes out. It might be blood. It might be ghosts!
It was a really fantastic performance, with an immediacy that surpassed anything else onstage that night. Anyone who caught the show will understand why I feel a little shamefaced blogging about it: He had a lot to say about blogging, the compulsion to document an experience as you are having it--something about people liveblogging the show on rectally operated cellphones shoved up... well, you get it. (Knowing that Daisey has a blog does take some of the sting out of it).
12:18 AM
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