We Ain't Got No Money, Honey, But We've Got Rain

Performance, City Intervention, Habeas Corpus Exhibition of Performance Art, Montreal, 2016

Reciting 100 poems by iconic poets from Sylvia Plath and Marina Tsvetaeva to Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac most of whom died young and who lived an explicitly self-destructive life-style, I aim to commemorate them and to deconstruct the stereotype of an artist as a carefree rebel. In the performance, I honor each poem in a type of remembrance ritual, reminiscent of folk rituals of honoring the dead. Each time I recite a poem, I create a little shrine for it, offer it some water and some bread. I make prostrations in front of each “shrine.” I proceed till all the poems are read. Performed at Saint-Laurent street in Montreal, QC, as a part of Habeas Corpus Exhibition of Performance Art.

Photo credit: Miles Groenberg