I ( ) Just Go - Aurora Tabar

About

I ( ) Just Go brings together the form of a lecture with its content ' starting this performance with the works of Tehching Hsieh and Jack Smith. Inspired by Smith's persona, and his almost completely unrehearsed performances with nebulous beginnings and endings, this piece takes on the semantic and logistic complications of performing to and with others.

Gleaning from Smith's approach, Tabar creates an atmosphere that asks the audience to question what is rehearsed and improvised, and the comforts of thinking in terms of fact and fiction.

Tabar sets up the performance as a lecture, implying that her goal is to share knowledge, when she actually presents very little 'factual' information. Rather than setting up a performance and an audience, the basis for edification is the collective environment prompted by the performer but created with the audience. I ( ) Just Go, attempts to create a space for dialogue and active witnesses as possible modes for 'knowledge sharing'.

The title comes from a prompting statement by Tehching Hsieh for his fifth one-year performance in which he vowed not to make art, read about art or see art for one year. Rather than sectioning off 'art' from life, I ( ) Just Go draws attention to—not a re-making of this paradox for theater or performance, but—how these terms function as structuring mechanisms, or methodologies for approaching a plethora of subjects.

Tabar (b. 1985, San Diego, California, US) lives and works in Chicago, and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has presented work in an array of traditional settings including the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 400 (Chicago), the Ruth Page Dance Center, and in the fall at Movement Research (New York), and has made site-specific performances in her home, in the mountains, and in the alleyways of Chicago.