IR8

Featuring young and emerging Los Angeles based artists, Irrational Exhibits #8 (also known as IR8) is the series’ eighth annual one night only performance art show curated by Deborah Oliver. Without a single stage, artists from diverse backgrounds simultaneously engaged and interacted with each other’s performances in Track 16 Gallery’s four-room space. Visitors walked around, stood, and engaged with the performances in such casualness that to some degree, the essence of each individual performance became lost within the dynamism of interaction. Instead of giving each performance the attention it deserved, pieces jumbled and clashed together in a frenzied space (I could probably even call it performance pastiche), so that the exhibit became about collectivity, and not about its individual performances. However, the show’s success was its ability to conjure a tremendous amount of flux and interaction (with the artists, visitors, and space) in such a short span of time. The one night only event successfully showcased performance art’s ephemeral, temporal, and spatial dimensions, where no documentation or writing can ever do it justice.