(Food Sex Sleep Money Health) A Response to WANT

Samantha Johns

Want
May 10-13, 2018
ArtBox, Minneapolis MN
Created: Charles Campbell
Featuring: Megan Mayer, Erika Hansen, and a gold trophy

[Want (verb): 1. have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for. “I want an apple”]

Canned applause. Lights up on a gold trophy, tall and skyscraper-shaped, tilted slightly. More applause. A pre-recorded beep. Two people sit in two chairs. A person, a trophy, a person. A beep.

I see you. I see you see me.

I see you see me, seeing you. I turn to you. I turn away. I turn back. A beep.

[Want (verb): 2. lack or be short of something desirable or essential. “you shall want for nothing while you are with me”]

With Charles Campbell’s work, you shall want for nothing, it is always lucid and loaded. A series of actions performers enact without over showing, and the smallest head shift tells us everything. Succinct with intense richness. There are formal structures but not ones we can see the edges of. The audience, not ignored yet not fully asked to have close ties, is carefully invited to observe this unfolding. A pre-recorded beep every few minutes reminds us we are on a ride, on a track that will eventually find its path to rest. In a way, we can relax and watch. There is an order to it, the performers know it, and everything will go as planned.

The Beckettian chair game starts again, and 108 Desires by Yasuaki Shimizu begins to play, and I wonder where does our want, for the things we want to watch, come from? I could watch this all day long.

I lean my head on your shoulder. I sit on your lap. You sit in my chair, so I sit in yours. You observe my having fallen, and crouch over me. You get up easily and walk away. You turn back. A beep. We reset.

[Want (noun): 3. a lack or deficiency of something. “Victorian houses which are in want of repair”]

Symbols. Large brimmed floppy black hats. Placing the thumb and middle finger together, rubbing ever so slowly. A head angled up, exposing the neck. Black slacks, a white button down; server’s attire. The hand held, fingers split, smoking a fake cigarette. A gold trophy, tilted. Symbols.

I see you jump from high to low class. I see you do it in just one gesture. A beep.

[Want (noun): 4. the state of being poor and in need of essentials; poverty. “freedom from want”]

Recordings play overhead; a discussion on inherited wealth, the housing crisis, status inequality. The performers are not listening, they are too busy with their tasks, their jobs. Their labor does not allow for infiltration and they don’t hear the music, just the beeps. They squabble over the chairs for so long we forget about the trophy. The interviewer is asking, how do we make homes for everyone? Is this about money, is this about not having enough space? The performers flank the crooked trophy, and ever so slowly, angle their bodies parallel to its tilt. Point made, they go back to the chairs. Sit on a person sitting on a chair. A person on a person on a chair. A beep.

If you move your chair there.

I will move my chair… here. You win if your hand tops the butt of the bat.

[Want (noun): 5. a desire for something. “the expression of our wants and desires”]

A white sheet is carefully draped over the chairs, then instantly held up as a projection screen. A jet soars through blue skies, leaving a stream of cloud-white smoke behind to slowly fade across the sheet. Repeat image. Once again elevation and upward motion. Innovation and forward movement. I think about how you can only see a jet if you are looking up. You can see a jet in the sky because you have time to spare, you are outside, you are lying on your back, and you are not working. When I Google Jet Symbolism, I get: “Freeing yourself from the pull of gravity, you have the strength and means to do absolutely anything you want. Aim high and do not compromise.” The sheet drops, the image is lost.

[Want (a performance)]

“A piece that follows trajectories of cycling desire, fulfillment, dissatisfaction, and resentment through performance.”

I see you see me. I turn to you. I turn away. I turn back. A beep.

Charles Campbell is an interdisciplinary artist with glasses and patched pants. Interested in work that thinks for itself, he has created multiple pieces including APPETITE, an exploration of feedback as metaphor and performance material created with sound artist and composer Ted Moore. skewedvisions.org

Samantha Johns is a Minneapolis based director and designer working in contemporary performance. Currently, she is writing a letter to every person she has ever known, 2,613 people and counting. These letters will culminate in a interactive visual installation. She is looking for an institution to fund and premier this work. samanthajohns.carbonmade.com