By Jenn Snider
The artist pushes and pulls. He threatens to crack.
Please… just touch, just break, just reach, hope…just try.
It might be enough this time to make this tension subside.
“Is there anyone who is willing to hug?” he asks.
Later, “Does anyone want to kiss?”
Christian Bujold’s performance constructs intimacy in ways that strategically conflate it with pain. His confusions, his In betweens, are spontaneously determined yet contextually deliberate, and they lend themselves to a willingness to disappear inside. Not forever. Just long enough so that there is a sense of delay.
To push boundaries of accepted behaviours, Bujold evokes and troubles outcomes through the performance of tasks. To test capacities, he forces an environment of sonic disturbance. Conveying a psychological sensory receptivity as much as building into a maelstrom of high frequency dissonance—cacophonic mania rising from just the slightest vibration—the anxiety is incarnate. The execution is affecting and involves holding the tension for as long as possible.
Questioning relationships methodically is like a stress test. The outcomes will always lead you to know the weakest points. You’ll learn when your efforts will likely cause a rupture.
Bujold’s performance as method seems to be asking: how long until, how much can I, how soon will I make it/you/myself… snap?
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Christian Bujold will perform again on Saturday, November 1, 3:00pm, Artscape Youngplace