THE MONSTER SHOW
Last November Owens made something of a splash in Chicago’s performance-art world with his Traumarama. Every Wednesday that month his self-proclaimed “celebration of wounds of everyday life” began with a gruesome slide show of gunshot wounds, hand and head injuries, and other bloody physical injuries. This was followed by a series of original performances by Chicago artists (among them Steve Jones, Alan Tollefson, Karen Johnson, and John Spear) on the same theme. Owens even opened up the microphone for those who wanted to share their past pain with the audience.
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So happy was he with this show that Owens has curated a follow-up, The Monster Show, using macabre sculptures–mummified corpses, decapitated heads, a crucified Garfield cat–created by Owens and his collaborator Nancy Bardawil. Like Traumarama, this show is an anthology of performance artists and features an ever-changing bill.
Sadly, none of the performers seemed as capable of creating a monster show as Owens. His introduction of Medosh was far more entertaining than Medosh’s tedious and trite take on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” the high point of which consisted of a recording of an actor reading the poem with all of the pomposity–the rolled Rs, the pregnant pauses, the great booming voice–we associate with “great actors” of three generations ago.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/S. Antonini.
