Chapter 2. ​The DUM-DUM Boy my first performance.

 

Chapter 2.

​The DUM-DUM Boy my first performance.

​Back to the beginning and my very first performance.  It was unrecorded as most things were back then because we were too young and just didn't know any better. This was well-before we all carried cameras and we just had no clue about recording things for the future—I don't even think any of us thought of the future—not in any concrete sort of way. Because of this, my very first performances at UNR are completely gone and undocumented—something I would never allow today!  We just didn't know, didn't understand the importance of documenting anything. Hey! We were just a bunch of artistic punk kids!

At the time of the first performance, I’d been making small box sculptures with dioramas—a mixture of painted text and object, often with toys unceremoniously nailed outside of hastily put together frames or found boxes, standing in front of each artwork like tiny emcees presenting the art, instead of some product like burgers or cereal.  In some installations I would place customized "action figures" on small metal stands that were screwed to the wall. At this same time, I also created a metal mouse with a familiar shape that became a kind of hero for a series of sculptures, again standing against the wall—everything, at this time was a mixture of painting and sculpture and all the pieces stood against gallery walls like paintings, which is where I started, so it makes perfect sense.

​As part of the pre-planning for my first performance, I drew many preliminary sketches, and began to fill sketchbooks with notes and ideas that would later become either sculptures or future performances—something that I do to this very day!

​The "Dum Dum Boy" performance (as it has come to be known), was based on many things including a conversation between myself and another sculptor named Heidi—who told me about a character that she was creating, she called it the "Burning Girl" or something like that. That was the last bit of inspiration that I needed and the "Dum Dum Boy" was born.

​At the time, I was quite worried that I was dyslexic, mostly because I just couldn't understand any of my math classes—something which actually jeopardized my entrance into graduate school. I felt very much like a dumb, dumb boy, even though I was also reading voraciously all things about art, philosophy and history and spent evenings at the library poring over anything I could get my hands on.

​The performance, itself was very simple, influenced by the work of Gilbert and George, my wall pieces and, well, everything that was going on at the time. I remember it clearly, as it was the very first time I ever did a performance art piece. Not performance, like singing or dancing, but performance art, like Chris Burden, Joseph Beuys, Yoko Ono or Paul McCarthy.

​I was dressed in a clown mask, yellow Doc Martens, black shorts and Minnie Mouse ears, and I could barely see anything.  In the background a loop tape played the “Bag of Laughs” audio from the death of the Joker in the first Batman movie.

​I was propped up against a wall, as Robert Morrison’s sculpture class walked in, all of them watching me as I stood there, loop after loop playing endlessly, until my shaking legs gave way and I dropped to the ground from sheer exhaustion from standing there for what seemed like years, but was actually a very short time.  As I stood clinging to the wall, however, I felt myself getting heavier and heavier and my legs began to shake and then gave way, surprising the other students in the class as I came crashing down.

​Looming above my classmates, I remembered another inspiration for the piece. I was walking through "Toys R Us" in Reno one day, when I passed a wall of laughing bags and, just as I did so, Reno had its largest earthquake up to that date.

​Bag after bag began to laugh loudly, maniacally—the moment was terrifying—it sliced deep into the heart of me. It meant so much, it meant so many things all at once—eviscerating the seriousness of life and opening death up to the ironic, sarcastic meaninglessness that only a mechanical, mindless wall full of novelty gags or a rampaging virus could ever even begin to approach.

​A memory within a memory. A dream within a dream. I snapped back into reality.

​That was it—the performance itself lasted less than fifteen minutes, scared the hell out of me, but ended in enthusiastic applause and heaps of missed opportunities—but it was mine and it left me completely changed. I was never the same and I could not wait to do it again. I could not wait until I had the opportunity to do another performance and investigate this form of art and type of communication once more!