Saint Genet

Mission, Mandates Pains, and Provience

Being nothing Saint Genet posses nothing, while secretly pursuing the the emanate possession of everything.Saint Genet is the truth of the blood- marriage between our patriarchal, existential mind, and our maternal, essential ever breaking heart. Both Satan and pestilence. Preferring nothingness to being, tension to enjoyment, substance and will, soul and consciousness, magic and freedom, concept and judgment collide, gnash, beat upon, and scream out again and again our cursed black history. We steal everywhere, against everyone, no one is spared.

Our work is directed with a war like fury and aimed, one may say, against an audience. With a mechanical violence our audience has died, over and over again they have died, and still we keep hacking away at the bloated waxy corpse. In the end, exhaustion and suffering lay our murdering hands beside our victim; the murder is a suicide. Quietly me, you, all of us our hearts pounding, know that no one has the right to forgive, no one has the right to forgive, and tomorrow dawn will break, no one has the right to forgive, tomorrow dawn will break, and nothing is beautiful save that which is not.

We must believe that. Must we not?

Process:

Tieton:

These aesthetics and ideas and models for performance were developed while in residence at Mighty Tieton in the small township of Tieton WA. Director Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell, by the skin of his teeth, pulled together the most exciting and prolific artists from Seattle, San Francisco, and New York, brought them (perhaps against their better judgement) to the isolated town of Tieton WA. Hidden away on beautiful vista in a remote region of Central Washington Tieton has been transformed by visionary book publisher Ed Marquand where there were once apple storage warehouses there are now epic and inspirational artist studios, abandoned storefronts are now printing presses, and community events flourish.

With reckless abandon Saint Genet moved into one of these empty spaces, slept, ate, and worked together for seven days and nights creating the new and experimental vocabulary that would eventually be termed Dramaturgial Diagnostic Dialogues (Conceptual Evidence of Dramaturgical Investigation of Poetic Form) allowing the Poetic and Imagistic truth to contract and expand new visual narratives. Each artist committing to manifest a scared space our empty warehouse was transformed by discourse investigating Ritual, Environment, Installation, Costume and Mask, Modes of Being, Movement and Dance, Sound and Music, Hysteria, Altered States, Impossible Poetic Actions, Blood, Booze and Betrayal. At Tieton our new foundations and methods of modern performance practice were created forcing us to boldly present our collective Aesthetic Declarations Transports of Delirium: Aesthetic Acesis in 4 Acts.

The Lawrimore Project:

Home to one of the most important gallerys in Seattle's history Director Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell with the support of gallerist Scott Lawrimore re-appropriated the woe-gone and empty 5,000 sq ft warehouse that was once home to the Lawrimore Project. We entered this abandoned and forgotten space thinking the unthinkable, maintaining the unmaintainable, and knowing all along that once engaged we could never stop, never faultier, and never look back. For if we stopped; even for a moment, we may have been overwhelmed by the enormity of our task, we may have remembered that we were exhausted, that we have been struck and were bleeding in a lonely and unmarked grave that had been long forgotten by the rest of the city. We may have allowed ourselves to be broken by our own whirling history; not yet made tangible.

Performance XXMI

Photos

Act I: First Conversion

Saint Genet began the ritual within the shell of what was once Lawrimore Project, creating ephemeral images, inciting impossible poetic actions from exhausted and drug induced performers, slowly creating and re-creating a sacred space, revealing beautiful and disturbing images of sexual power and abjection stretched to the breaking point of sustainability.

This was the act of deflowering, presented symbolically through the performer's own initiative.

Act II: Defiance of All

Defiance of All meticulously utilized the body as an instrument to reveal pivotal images. In a field of over 12,000 hand placed stalks of grass gently placed in the now identified sacred performance space, each stalk became a sacrificial lamb to the heightened forms of "The Ballet." This brutal and terrifying form created a collective unconsciousness leading to the final image of Olivier Wevers quietly and gently shooting a loaded gun over the ballerina Chalness Eames and into the back of a patiently waiting Derrick Ryan Claude Mitchell.

This act of willing was the first Poetic Attitude governed by pride.

Act III: Triumph and Ruin

After a beautiful, ritual preparation with honey, wine and flour, a whirling, nauseating and terrifying rendition of Black Baby, one of Jim Jones' and The People's Temple's most beautiful and hypnotic hymns, was sung by company member Kate Ryan. Lit by 66 candles and supported by 10 cassette players running independent audio tracks, this piece led the company into a collective abyss.

This was a manifestation of the recognition of evil, and created the psychological condition of the original crisis.

Act IV: Sacred History

As the final Declaration of Aesthetic, Saint Genet expanded the final moments of The People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. A chilling, glacial narrative was presented through a 70 lb. pile of flowers, a hidden and beautiful voice, a circle of blood, a circle of honey, mounds of gold-leafed performers, the dead and buried, the resurrected, and piles and piles of falling ash.

This symbolic Poetic Gesture was the final act of willing, forcing the ascendancy of the Saint.

Support

Saint Genet has partnered with Shunpike, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, as our fiscal sponsor. This means your donation to Saint Genet and Shunpike will be tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. Donations can be made via check - please make payment to Shunpike and include Saint Genet in the memo line - or just click the link below to make a secure online donation.