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ABOUT JOE SILOVSKY

I am an object-oriented performance artist. In the act of the live performance I am able to combine my passions for construction, history and theory. I love to build things. I build machines, contraptions, puppets and puppet stages out of everything from cardboard to hacked electronics. I use those machines and puppets to tell stories of obscure, historical figures and the minutiae surrounding them. On a theoretical level, my performances explore the nature of communication. The mechanics of the failure of communication are always present in my performances, as is the underlying belief that nothing is more important than to keep trying to communicate.

Here is what I mean. After researching a subject matter thoroughly (Sacco and Vanzetti, The Jester of Tonga, the Oklahoma City bombing), I start building props, usually designed to fit in suitcases in a portable assembly so that I can bring them onto an empty stage. In a vaudeville style similar to A. Robins, as unlikely objects emerge from suitcases, they become a series of jack-in-the-box surprises for the audience. Costumes can function as props too: a suit that explodes, a motorized hat that simulates seizures, a puppet stage that folds out of a jacket. With these props I try to communicate ideas in several different ways. The juxtaposition of low and high tech devices is one way: a paper puppet theater inside a suitcase is shot with a tiny wireless camera and projected onto a homemade collapsible screen. Using scale as a contrasting device is another way: the miniature set of the island of Tonga is followed by a 1:1 scale map; a spaceship begins as a tiny speck onstage, and is replaced by larger and larger models implying movement towards the audience. My performance style contrasts the vaudeville aesthetic that these props suggest. Distraction, self-interruption, irreverence and destruction are techniques that I use to contradict the presupposed elements of a whimsical one-man show.

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