DEEP STATE
first performed on September 15, 2017
Pirsig Projects, Minneapolis, MN
performed once in 2017
SEAN SMUDA
Hildegard Hauser
Minneapolis, MN
841706115s841706115e841706115a841706115n841706115@841706115s841706115e841706115a841706115n841706115s841706115m841706115u841706115d841706115a841706115.841706115c841706115o841706115m
seansmuda.com
DEEP STATE
SEAN SMUDA
Performer(s): two
Artwork(s): Deep State from the series Universal Capital
Costume(s): Performer #1: Ben Franklin $100 bill hoodie and pants, red sleep mask; performer #2 black shirt gold lettering “HUSTLE,” black pants, mask
Props: 8’ wooden armature for print with driftwood “X” and gold ribbon
Documentation: follow cam, cam on armature
Score: Blindfolded performer #1 dances inside project space and brings print out onto the sidewalk. #2 escorts #1 around intersection and back as #1 recalls stories of the area. Public is asked for more memories.
Audio Score read/improvised by performer #1:
“Can someone help me cross the street? I have never had a dream about this place, it’s like there is no place here, it is always moving. I was born 4 miles that way… I crossed under police tape from a drive by shooting there… I walked into a bar over there with a brown skin friend from Algeria, a patron said ‘F**k White People.’ It’s a Day Care now. My first girlfriend lived about a mile that way… There was blood on the sidewalk and door here in front of the gallery, I called Police and Fire three times, they never came. They had been at the crime scene, but didn’t get it all. Last night I called 911 because a child was screaming for 10 minutes at the bus shelter. She didn’t want anyone to come close to her; she wanted her parents. Hildegard’s father had an office in this building, she remembers crawling up its stairs. What’s happened to you here?”
Deep State, archival pigment print, 20” x 24”, 2017
Original photograph of Pro-Immigrant march, Mpls, MN, 2017; Chang W. Lee: photograph of Women’s March on Washington DC, 2017; engraving by Joseph Mulder “The Dock of the Dutch East Indies Company,” 1658; Iranian ban on American visas, 2017; map of Russian incursion into the Ukraine, 2017; graphic of American “Deep State”; Wilhelm Reich, symbol of schizophrenic blockage of Orgone flow; chart of cortisol levels in men and women in response to stress over six days; Harmonia Macrocosmica, plate 5: Scenograph of the Copernican World System, 1600.