What is What

ABOVE: Artist and Dancer, "Cricket" performing in front of the capture rig at Dance New Amsterdam for a new untitled video installation work in progress

ABOVE: Classic "Wall Stall "  executed in a Falling Style   Shannon Technique 2010 photo : BC

The basic trick sequence involved in the "Wall Stall" from Shannon Technique is to plant the vertical 
oriented crutch ahead of your body and lift into it as you are also dropping the horizontal crutch down. 
Holding onto the horizontal crutch with your armpit tightly is essential because it will be bearing weight 

ABOVE: Still from BENCH, intersection of GRAND and WOOSTER, MANHATTAN NYC JULY 2008. I chose this as a still because it shares in one frame the public gaze ( as embodied in the driver ) and a reflection on the surface of the car of my video capture and mobility apparatus.

While I was editing a new version of my 2008 video and performance work "Bench" today I realized I might want to share more what is happening in my creative work even if it is a small thing.  This BENCH piece I have featured here previously and have installed as an "in-the-round" work. Now I am recreating an HD single screen composite of the video. I want this edit to be seen especially as it includes a new landscape arrangement of the six channels that pulls all the screens in one continuous line. I enjoy this aspect of the video because it ties together front and rear more intuitively. This work may be included in a museum group show which I will not disclose yet until confirmed. Its deadline time.

ABOVE: Streets of Manhattan Winter

The crisp light and air of a dry northeastern winter's day beckons me to don all manner of warm clothing and partake of all manner of painkillers and break out into the streets for a deep session of the dancing and skating hybrid I have dubbed Steppin' Roll.  I truly appreciate the onset of winter because it frees the streets of laggard indecisive pedestrians, recreational skaters or bicyclist and gawkers. In the gift that is winter most pedestrians in the street are trudging in a straight line hurriedly often running to just get back to their warmth and cover. The bikers on the street at say, 15 degrees Fahrenheit, are almost all very experienced and there are veritably no street skaters out. The frigid days of winter also keeps people in their vehicles behind glass eliminating the habit of spewing some unintelligible crap from the open window that would, during summer, sneak into my flow just under my headphone volume level to inform me of their presence.

blackbook cellphone grabs

ABOVE: My first draft illustration of a useful seated position for a pedestrian crutch user. This depiction of the elbow lo-mid holding position leaves the individual hands free while the nested crutches function as a casual arm rest. This position is especially useful at crowded events such as parties and concerts. It has been my experience that not only will drunk or high people find a way to trip on a crutch tucked into a corner but they are also likely to pick up the crutches and "have a go" at them without asking first. This seated while holding position makes both of those regretable scenarios far less likely. .. more drawings after the jump...

This is Stepping Roll. I created the root of this form to simply walk long distances while living in Chicago. The skating depicted in this video is me pushing the boundaries of what I am capable of and not an everyday type of activity for me. I do want to get this style on tape and uploaded for the world to enjoy and hopefully adopt. So clik thru for the background info.

When I create what I would consider "Performance Art" it is a far cry from my dancing that is known all over the world. While the dancing is artistic and performance based, for my purposes its many manifestations loosely fall into overlapping categories of dance, drama, action sports and clowning. I realize when having to write about this latest performance/video installation project that for some gut based reason it is only the really hard to process performance work, the type of performance that leans on the audience, that I would describe without hesitation as "Performance Art." When it comes to real down and dirty "Performance Art", the ART and my life are intertwined so closely that it would be nearly impossible for me to write about or consider them independently.

ABOVE: Invisible Series #4  NEW ANGLES AND FOOTAGE

and WITH ALL THE PAIN I AM DEALING WITH .. IT IS STARTING TO LOOK VERY APPEALING.. too bad it typically does not last more than ten years..this is a less bloody example.

ABOVE: total hip replacement how to video.. dont try this at home and dont try this without good medical insurance and dont try this when you can bear the pain and or limitation of what you were born with.

Took a very quick run into the streets today to do a promotional photo with a very important photographer to my career. Brian Cummings. it was a rush but we got something in the can. Here are some pics.

ABOVE: Top Rocking old school hand style utilizing Shannon Technique for Dance on Crutches in a saddle to wrist-hi-mid split. photo: Brian Cummings

ive done more writing on this than i can publish yet.. still cutting away at it. suffice it to say my work is not always uplifiting nor is it always celebratory or funky, sometimes, as in the case of this piece the work is meditiative and almost still. but no matter what the work is i promise you, dear audience, it is always coming from a real place and is an authentic document .

ABOVE: the ringing of the bell  ( composited stills )

ABOVE: "Invisible Series #4"  9' x 10' x 10'  7 channels sd video synchronous projections, color / stereo

ABOVE: technical assistant and all around great guy Will locking down some rigging and looking as if he is immersed in the work..

well i thought i would do better buti have not posted in ages. been working on a new video sculpture. this work can be used in both live and prerecorded ways. this version is a gallery project so the work will be recorded and compressed for motion triggered looping playback..holoscreens, micro-projectors, lighting, spatial balancing, performance, compression.. etc etc etc.. click through for pics and a blink of a video test. back soon with more writings and work.

ABOVE: "DOGLEG FREEZE",  Shannon Technique 2007, Serbia

I have been writing about this aerial work recently because it is the signature of pace and form in my dancing that I have contributed to the history of aerial choreography via the Cirque Du Soleil mothership of all things aerial.  I feel I must write about my contribution here, in this public way, to preserve for the future the significance and importance of what i have given to Cirque Du Soleil as a "creative."  I fear that if I dont tell my end of the story as the choreographer of the Aerial Strap Act in Varekai performed by The Atherton Twins, Kevin and Andrew Atherton, noone will.

A significant portion of my work is about phenomenological events i bear witness to and am also highly sensitive to. The use of performance art as a real-time anthropological sociological tool to investigate define and categorize phenomena is at the core of this healing practice.  My interactions with pedestrians and random individuals in public space is constantly evolving and changing over the course of time and my increased level of experience.  This reality of being in public is a balancing act between getting on with my life and exploring new territories of my art. They serve each other and are therefore one and the same in many instances.

ABOVE: Shannon Technique, Hi-Mid Lo-Mid Split   Photo: Dawn Blackman

ABOVE: The "Crossed Lean" freeze position from THE SHANNON TECHNIQUE photo by DAEMON, ATLANTA 1994

The "Crossed Lean" is one of those moves that I have had around for a long time that exemplifies the complex angular shapes my dancing explores in a very "aerial" way. I posted this image because I was thinking more about my past work with the Atherton Twins and how my dance is aerial by necessity.

I knew this alternate take was out there somewhere. This is the version that was aired on MTV2. This version is also a single take and has a few more "tricks" in it but I feel my performance is stylistically way weaker and too rushed. I think this was like take 6 or 7. The one that has the pole freeze and a million+ hits that has recieved all the critical acclaim is take 16. Also checkout this FACEBOOK FAN CLUB out of the UK. I had no idea it was there till yesterday.

ABOVE: Street Performance Pittsburgh 2006 ( i think ) noone from the crowd is helping me off the ground because they just saw the big dance move before the collapse.

Following the "more" is an account of my experience I have written to share publicly a real world example of how the phenomena “Weight of Empathy” plays itself out in my real life. This story will also share how my act of labeling and defining the phenomena “Weight of Empathy” is empowering to me and helps me frame past experiences of it. Finally this story will also provide a context for my practice of sociological anthropology as a performance and language based conceptual art in which the defined and labeled phenomena is explored in realtime and space with the intention of discovering new territories of interaction with the public that subvert or circumvent the standard parameters of a given phenomena.

today i saw my son trying to eat the contents of a cherry chapstick tube. i grabbed it from him and looked at its impossible to comprehend list of ingredients.. Then i looked up cherry chapstick by name on cosmeticsdatabase.com. I was suprised and a bit angry to find out that according to cosmetics database "skin deep" section 99 percent of products have lower concerns for toxicity.

My blackbooks are where my ideas are born and take shape.. both as a conceptual process and as a design process. i have been uploading drawings and graphical work based on those drawings to my 2D section which got me thinking as to artmaking as a product versus a process. i am not producing drawings as an end product but rather use drawings and scribblings as a process of discovery. My end product as an artist is the successful closure of a line of inquiry into how i might best express an idea or a philosophy.

ABOVE: Street performer permit as a hedge to my street performance art. Chicago 1994

I scrawled "THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW" on my skateboard with a paint marker while living in Chicago in 1994. I put down these letters on my board as I realized, after being in the middle of a wind storm downtown on my board and being pushed around like a piece of scrap paper, that the most hauntingly beautiful or perfectly balanced moments of my street performances were simply impossible to share or recreate. I wrote these words on a day where I had become a human tumbleweed witnessed by 100's of train passengers marching to their morning destinations. I was up late, two days late, and they were up early in the morning. These moments of...