(Disclaimer: Rebecca Patek rents shared apartment space with AFC’s Paddy Johnson).
Art can repackage experiences in any number of ways; this can either shed light on a problem, or it can lend a coat of bullshit gloss. In the case of rape trauma, choreographer Rebecca Patek’s vision is clear.
Her current show ineter(a)nal f/ear (now on view as part of the Abrons Art Center’s “American Realness” Festival), takes a blisteringly satirical look through the various lenses that art can use to frame pain. First, the soul-searching Brooklyn artist: the piece opens with a satirical confessional video (subtitled in French) of Patek, traipsing blithely under Brooklyn bridges and on rooftop gardens, until one evening a man in a hoodie follows her into her home and rapes her on the bathroom floor.
But no experience, good or bad, goes unexplored for this version of Patek’s character, who’s resolved to turn any pain into social good, through art. She smells the flowers, walks the parks, and forms a support group “WPP: When Past Is Present.” As she explains her new project, catchwords like thought and process pop up around her head.
Lest you think this is another neutering exercise for the warm nest of art liberalism, think again. Patek and collaborator Sam Roeck proceed to tear it all down, as they workshop each of their own retellings of trauma, shame, and victimhood through the critical lens of performance art. “Why are we doing this?” they ask themselves and then fumble with motives like “Well, rape victims, it’s like one out of four people…two out of three…or…nine out of ten…” and then shakily lay a set of note-cards out on the floor. When Patek asked the audience if we all knew the Liz Lerman method, the audience burst out laughing– to apply the four-step Lerman Critical Response Process to rape trauma seems totally absurd. We’re handed little slips of paper with the typed memo: “A. Thank you for your feedback. B. I will take this into consideration in my future work.”
The method turns against the artist herself when Roeck raises his hand to offer his own feedback. He pulls out a typed letter to Patek, who, he says, has left him with a lot of residual feelings which were never addressed during rehearsals: “As a performer, I feel like this is a mild version of rape.” If Roeck’s own gruesome rape story was true, then it does call into question how far a choreographer can or should be allowed to mine the feelings of their actors.
I won’t reveal the ending, but needless to say, Patek manages to turn all of this once more on its head (a final sequence involves uncensored hand job footage and both actors on their knees, reciting “Thank you for your feedback. I will take this into consideration in my future work.”) Just when you think it can’t get any more painful, she tops it all off with one final punch– feel-good music, rehearsal bloopers, performance festival logos, and big, big smiles. It’s a nice feel-good sheen to let you know that all that unpleasantness was just art. But after all the painful stories and reenactments of cold sex, there’s no amount of spit shine that can dress up the truth, that trauma is just trauma.
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Patek’s use of language was just so good. For me, the whole performance hinged on the phrase “Everything happens for a reason”. It’s one of the first things you hear her say while explaining that’s she’s been raped and she’s forming a support group. It’s the most cliche of chiche idioms, and it seems to apply not just to her experience (as parody), but her practice as well. After all, by the end of the play, [SPOILER ALERT], after we’ve watched her get fucked in a consensual reenactment of rape, against a backdrop of film footage of consensual sex, she asks her dance partner, “What was that about?”. Half the time we don’t know why we do the things we do.
Really, the pleasure of watching a piece like this (if that’s really what it is), is the careful calibration of pitch. You know she’s parodying the struggling artist identity immediately not just her awkward delivery but the ridiculous clips of her, as a struggling Brooklyn artist practicing the most artsy lunges, kicks and arm swinging. She’s a perfect stereotype of a Brooklyn artist, in a place that only occasionally looks like Brooklyn.
That, contrasted with the kind of body flailing that takes place as her dance partner describes his own rape is pretty incredible. Suddenly, you’ve stopped thinking about cliche and you’re just watching a body does in a violent situation like that. It’s bits like these that remind me of an abstract painter’s decision to paint a hand or an object realistically. It’s a flourish meant to remind you their skill is actually very developed.
In any event, I loved this show. I wish more people could see it.
So do I. It’s brilliant.
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