Public Programs
YTJ: Complain The Explanation
June 5 2009
In Complain The Explanation, Mariechen Danz activates her life-sized diorama, Fossilizing the Body Border Disorder (2008), through performance and song. Accompanied by Jackson Fledermaus, Danz’s vocal performance bridges indecipherable sounds with pop melodies in order to create tension between audience reception and rejection. The performance draws on epochs throughout history, harkening back to images of early man. As the embodiment of “Bully,” a fictional character based on images of tyrannical dictators, Danz demands space with brutish gestures slipping between the ultra masculine and feminine, as the character’s interior psychological state is extruded into action. Both the figurative sculptures and the elaborate costumes of the performers depict what Danz describes as a “folk extroverting the inner in both their expression and their physical states, their bodies of armor consisting of the structure and entrails of the human body.”