Review
ONE MONTH
Don Simmons
Runs until March 19
Truck Gallery
A clown trapped inside a box. It’s a strange occurrence that has gone on for nearly 30 days at Truck Gallery, where the performance-event-exhibition One Month is taking place for just a few more days.
Conceived by Alberta College of Art and Design instructor and conceptual artist Don Simmons, One Month is his most recent foray into Calgary’s performance-art scene. Inspired in part by writer-thinker Judith Butler, a professor of comparative literature and rhetoric at the University of Southern California, Berkeley, Simmons describes himself as a provocateur. And One Month, which is part theatre, part installation, part sociological investigation, could be viewed as an absurdist’s daydream.
Elevated off the floor and sealed inside a box large enough to sit up in, but not to stand in, is a living, breathing, doe-eyed drag clown with a pink boa around its neck. The genderless clown – impersonated by a team of nine volunteers who spend up to six hours at a time in the bed/box – has no real duty other than to be on display.
In the darkened gallery, sombre music remixed from film soundtracks plays while the seemingly depressed clown attempts in vain to find a way to keep interested in a place that offers virtually no stimulation.
The box, constructed from two-way mirrors, allows gallery visitors to view the clown without being observed themselves. What the clown sees from inside the dimly lit box is its own image reflected ad infinitum. This leaves viewers with the distinct advantage of being able to take a close-up look at the specimen and not feel uncomfortable about it.
The power imbalance is rectified on most days by the presence of another clown. This one is let loose to roam the room and to observe the viewers. When that happens, the entire gallery becomes a "stage" where clowns and audience alike are put on display.
Does the provocation work? On the day I visited the gallery I was the only one in this theatre of drag clowns. And peering into the eyes of a person trapped in a box, even one dressed as a clown, I could not help but experience feelings of sadness. Or was it a feeling of anger for understanding all too well that we are all clowns trapped in boxes of our own making? Or was I just feeling pissed off for being manipulated?
Others, according to the director of the gallery, make repeat trips here to visit the clown in the box. One, she said, wept and spoke of a childhood memory. Another in a suit and tie recalled a dream about a clown from the night before. What does it all mean? Does it mean anything at all?
For answers, I looked over to the box. The clown lay down and went to sleep. |
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