Marval A Rex becomes Marilyn Monroe (or does she become him?) in “Marilyn Mon Rex,” a timed performative meditation drenched in the violence of “fame,” exploring the psycho-spatial ramifications of Hollywood on urban working populations in Los Angeles. Mon Rex asks this question, “How much longer can we afford to have someone be cooler than somebody else?”

Marilyn Mon Rex aspires to be a fifteen-minute timed performance (as in the idiom “15 minutes of fame”) whereby the artist begins as a man in a tuxedo suit, performing for the crowd with a smile upon his face, while dancing to the tune “Hollywood” by Chaka Khan. He quickly devolves into a “man of the street,” utilizing soundscapes from Los Angeles’ Chinatown (where the original performance took place). After a series of nonsensical but mesmerizing “rituals,” the “man of the street” becomes an LA Dodger player, with pig’s blood from a butcher in Chinatown on the tip of his bat. He swings over and over again, to the tune of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Finally, the LA Dodger player becomes Marilyn Monroe, white dress and all, and she does a bloody number to her song “I Wanna Be Loved by You,” getting more pigs blood on the white dress. The performance ends as the music wanes.