I suffered from COVID-19 for several months—I caught it at my day job early into the pandemic and started feeling the symptoms exactly two weeks into my furlough period. “Human/Sacrifice” was created in the window of time where I was not yet fully recovered but was being asked to return to work. The performance was a response to the helplessness I experienced during this time: if I don’t return, my unemployment benefits may be cut, but am I physically and emotionally ready to be back?

“Human/Sacrifice” is one of only four performances I created in 2020, the fewest since I began my practice in 2012. It was presented via Zoom during a night of performances presented by Lena Deutsch as part of Ventiko’s “Performance Anxiety” series. Zoom-based performances feel like a totally different creature than those made for a live audience. It’s tougher to engage an audience that isn’t physically present, but the online nature of Zoom gives you more control than you’d have inside an art space (assuming you avoid any technical issues).

I began the performance by playing a series of cryptic messages on my tape player, adding an analog touch to a digital space. Among these messages was the phrase “close your eyes and sink into oblivion,” something I felt I was moments away from doing while at the height of my sickness. I wore a button-up shirt and a mask of one of the aliens from “They Live,” a masterful anti-capitalist film by John Carpenter. While the messages played on my tape player, I used a paint marker to write the phrase “Human Sacrifice” on two pieces of cardstock nailed to my drafting table. I was responding to the notion being floated around online that quarantine needed to end so that the economy could be reopened, essentially that working people needed to be sacrificed so the ruling class could resume making money. I then removed the mask and wrote the message “2 months later and I still can’t breAthe,” emphasizing how dangerous COVID-19 actually is. Then, I used hair clippers to cut my hair and glued the trimmings to a piece of cardstock with the phrase “cut your own hair” written on it, an action directed at anti-quarantine right-wing protesters who used “I need a haircut” as a rallying cry to force society to “return to normal.”