B!RDBRA!N (Epilogue), 2012, exhibition & performance, 2 hours
With: Aramazd Stepanian, Beau Ray, Beck Bat, Davie-Blue, Lisa Reynolds, Robert Ingraham & Talyan Wright
Sound: Jake Viator
Production: Public Fiction
Following the Black Box and REDCAT shows, a showdown was finally proposed to mark the end of the exhibition: the deconstruction and the unravelling of B!RDBRA!N in the form of a game that involved cards, color, feathers, and a live auction. A new series of works on paper was also on view. B!RDBRA!N is a series of vignettes that form a “live collage”. In it, seven performers explore language as a prop onto which we project meaning. Informed by the work of Guy De Cointet and very loosely based on the true story of Alex the parrot, each actor was carefully chosen for his real and performed relationship to language. The B!RDBRA!N set and rehearsals were on view through the windows and closed doors of Public Fiction for one month, and changed on a nightly basis. To mark the end of the exhibition, viewers were invited to come inside and join in. In the Epilogue, the viewer transitioned from being an outsider to being an active participant in an effort to clear up and perhaps create, miscommunications.