The Black Factory (or the BF as we like to call it) is a touring performance installation on wheels. I have been working on this project for seven years. Our next and final tour begins this spring June 15, 2006. Four weeks ago, we launched the 2006 Miss Black Factory contest to recruit the third member of our three person crew. Please note: any sex may apply. See www.theblackfactory.com for details.
The entire installation travels in a 22ft. GM panel truck. Onsite, its footprint is approximately 54' and contains: an inflatable archive of donated black objects, a gift shop and a performance table. Our typical stay at each stop is a day and a half but can be as short as 15 minutes. What you experience when you visit the BF is determined by when you show up and what you bring with you. The BF evolves on site and interacts with the changing conditions of the site. The idiosyncrasies of both the physical environment and the audience determine what the BF can be. The installation is in place for 6 hrs. but the crew is in performance mode throughout their stay. The more conventional performance takes place during the 6 hr. installation.
During this period, the performers do a rotation of nodes. A node is a chunk of time defined by an activity or an event. An installation can also be a node. All nodes are designed. Some are scripted. Some not. Improvisation is key in playing a node. The number of nodes in a rotation can vary. The most recent 2005 rotation involved between twenty and twenty five nodes. Once a rotation is completed, it is begun again from the top. The function of a node is to engage the audience-participant in an inward-outward journey. Most nodes are built around a theme, for example, stereotypical views of migrant workers in the U.S. Some are built around a gesture, such as giving away free watermelon. Most have a turning point where the meaning of what was first proposed is shifted to create a conflict or contradiction or enigma or silliness. All nodes have three parts: 1. the come-on, which is the invitation to engage, 2. the shift, which is the raising of the stakes of the invitation. It can also be the introduction of a problem that has to be solved. An audience-participant can also raise the stakes. On the streets of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, whenever the crew talked about the World Trade Organization, folks in the crowd responded: "That's fine but can you get me a job?" to which the crew person replied: "I'll get you a job," "What job?," "But you gotta do something for me," "What?" "Suddenly you're picky." "Damn straight." "Your job is to work with me and do exactly what I'm doing." "How much?" "But you got to do exactly what I'm doing." "Sure. How much?" "Exactly." "Exactly?" "Yeah, exactly —," "You mean —," "That's right." "I got to pay the next guy half of what you pay me?" "Exactly." 3. the leave, what the performer and audience-participant glean from the interaction.
The Black Factory is a touring performance installation on wheels. The goal of the BF is to actively enter the world and step off the plank of comfort into the sea of the what-will-happen-next.
Why? Several reasons:
- to create an imaginative, social object that participates and engages with the world with fear, trembling, ignorance and joy.
- to give back to the world where it is needed.
- to take from the world where it chooses to give.
- to change the world because doing nothing is impossible.
- to play with the world and conquer with imagination.
- to conquer the world and play as if life depended on it.
- to be humbled by the world.
- to know the world with a shovel in your hand.
- to be surprised, delighted and disappointed by the world.
- to accept the world.
- to criticize the world.
- to be with the world.
But once again why do it in this particular way? Why an art object that loses money? Why a truck that gets 4 miles to a gallon of gas? Why a CEO, yours truly, who during every two week rehearsal period develops medical problems? Why do it? Why do it this way?
The level of commitment this project requires is an important part of doing it. I wanted to make a work that required me to think about someone and something beside myself. I wanted to make a work whose boundaries extended beyond the limits of my control and understanding. I am not trying to free myself from the work. That would be too easy. I am trying to have a relationship with it, where I have to spend time with it and see it change before my eyes whether I like the change or not.
Yes, I get something out it, even if I do lose money. But, as Dr. Phil says, "You wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't a payoff." I get to make a work I will never understand. I get to share it with people. People who set me straight, get on my nerves and warm the cockles of my heart. I give myself the chance to take a risk out in public where anyone can see it. It's all a rehearsal anyway. It's not like anybody really knows anything. And so much of the time we pretend. And we are tragically mistaken in our masquerade. We are ashamed that we are full of shit. We believe that our goal should be to convince others of the real. What if it was totally the opposite?
But again, why do it? And why do it this way? Why? To fear a little less. To be encouraged a little more. To take a risk that I could share with others. And why share anything with others? Let's ask Nadine Gordimer: "I believe we only have what we are as moral human beings, and it comes from our sense that we all belong together and that what happens to one happens to all, even if it happens on the other side of the world."
Even with all the media-based, socio-pop-inflected art being made today, the artist is still required, in order to be successful, to separate him or herself from the world and the self. Our output is designed as personalized boutique experiences displayed in rarified venues whose targeted market tends to be the oxymoronic private collector. We, artists, are taught to aspire to a self-made agoraphobia. We are told this is a way to make a living; an odd choice of words since this form of employment is more about forgetting.