“Nostalgia is life-threatening.” Thus begins the description of “Trauma Salon: Disorder & Detachment”, taking place tonight at Panoply Performance Laboratory in East Williamsburg. If nostalgia doesn’t traumatize you, perhaps you can freak yourself out with another of the evening’s topics: “Mercury in retrograde is a real thing,” or “How much more can you tolerate?”
Tonight’s performative adventure was curated by Valerie Kuehne/The Super Coda and is part of the Trauma Salon series. As the name suggests (see? performance art isn’t so obscure), the events “exist as a platform for artists to collectively and individually process trauma or, if necessary, create it.” The lineup includes Jon Konkol, who has been known to cover his face with pizza dough and throw punches into a tub of Imperial margarine; Jeanann Dara, enchanting experimental violinist and composer; “street style” dancer Karl Cooney, who is “flying my whole company in from Ireland at great personal expense to truly honor the work”; bassist Thomas Bell and his longtime improvisational Oxygen Music Collective; and the aforementioned, deep-voiced Valerie Kuehne with her spoken word-spiked band the Wasps Nests.
Kuehne explains it all this way: “Darkness is often channeled through creation. However, if we do not radicalize the experience of living it by sharing the effect/affect, creation hides. In personally connecting to other artists and audiences we have found that discomfort yields growth. … We have many lives to tell.” Sounds pretty accessible to me.
Trauma Salon: Disorder & Detachment is tonight at 8:00 at Panoply Performance Laboratory, 104 Meserole Street between Leonard and Manhattan. Suggested donation $5-$20.