Arto Lindsay "SOMEWHERE I READ"

Arto Lindsay opened PERFORMA 09 in Times Square last night with “Somewhere I Read.” The “multi-disciplinary arts parade” featured dancers and volunteer performers robed in tan trench coats parading to music from their cell phones composed by Lindsay himself. From overhead the string of performers resembled a khaki worm wiggling through a sea of Times Square crowds. The parade, from this view, appeared to be an animated line gracefully maneuvering through its contrasting audience. On the ground, the creature transformed into many individuals focused on the task of maintaining their patterns, solidarity and an element of distinction from onlookers. The parade was decidedly not viral, there was little or no encouragement for the audience to join in. At the very end, when the performers created a heap of abandoned phones, still sadly singing out for their dancers, the audience crowded around and stared down at the remains of the performance. It occurred to no one to grab a phone and lead their own parade.

The cell phone is the perfect instrument of paradox. It is at once social and anti-social, a tool for solidarity and solitude. We use it to speak to someone in public while ignoring everyone else. Lindsay’s parade was equally paradoxical. By parading in public the dancers attracted the attention of an audience, they then ignored. The cell phone is a great tool for drawing a line, as Lindsay did, between “we” and “them.” We use our phones to make public statements of inclusion and exclusion.

The writer Albert Camus gave his artist and rebel characters in Exile and the Kingdom the dilemma of sorting out solidarity and solitude. Camus links “we” and “them” by interest. When we become interested we are inclusive. Our disinterest produces exclusion. The actions or non-actions that follow our interest or disinterest, of course, have all kinds of moral ramifications. Camus suggests being interested in another’s suffering will draw us into solidarity with them. Camus gives the artist and the rebel the thankless task of increasing the self-awareness of our isolation.

So what of “Somewhere I Read”? From a distance it is a beautiful line in contrast and tension, a perfect design. Up close, the tension and difference is more problematic. It is the artist’s job to remind us of both.