“How to Awaken Your Feet” is a performance comic, part of a collection of Fluxus scores for performance titled “How to How.” Their own focus is on performability and equality of access. I make comics because they are inherently legible and approachable, and because the medium readily allows for the breaking of conventional constraints.

The comics contain instructions with visual and textual aids intended to serve as complete guides to a performance. Each of the scripts is a zine that is meant to be held in one’s hand or placed on the floor during performance. The scripts demand interpretation, so that no one performance of the script is definitive.

Accessibility is a challenge for performance and the fine arts. Reading a poem or watching contemporary dance, a new spectator can feel intimidated or unwelcome. My works are meant to allow readers agency by making them performers. Readers and performers report connection to these works and a resulting sense of joy, pleasure that arises in part from the fact that when they perform the scores, they are the owners of the performance.

I print and distribute these scores for free and document readers’ executions of the work. In this particular piece, the reader of the comic is asked to turn their hands into feet by first dipping their feet into the water, and then dipping their feet into a pile of sand. They then use their feet to remove each grain of sand until their feet have magically turned into hands.

The idea is somewhat satirical, but at the same time asks the reader to push the dexterity of their feet, and imagine the possibility that repeating this performance would result in their feet having the dexterity of their hands. Hopefully through the simple comic one can experience performance art and thus have a personal experiential lens with which to understand the art form.