Gutter performance: to be in strange and perverse spaces

In 1975, outside of places like Tiffany’s or Saks Fifth Avenue, Stephen Varble would squat down in the gutter—between the street and the sidewalk—in a couture garment made completely of garbage. Down in the gutter, he would start polishing silverware and washing dishes doused in black ink. This spectacle is just one example of the performances explored within this project which asks what it means to be—to exist, to play, and to perform—in strange and perverse spaces. Well, if Varble is any indication, it often means getting dirty. There are many people in American cities who are systematically rendered dirty and then, they are pushed to the margins where they undergo mistreatment and harsh regulation by authorities who gain from keeping them out of sight and, thus, out of the mind of the general public. These people become part of the urban economy of waste. They become disposable. The performances collected in this project—Lynn Hershman’s The Dante Hotel (1973-74), Stephen Varble’s “Gutter Art” (1975), and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical Cats (1981)—bring audiences into these neglected and degraded spaces to expose such systems. As such, they create opportunities and invite their audience to recognize and share space with populations they might not otherwise encounter such as the unhoused, people of color, sex workers, and queer people. Such encounters are crucial because it is easy to ignore (and accept) dehumanization if you never witness it. The performances in this project create sites for collective engagement. By embracing the waste and excess of the gutter, these artists can both bring visibility to such spaces but also offer strategies for enacting change and reimagining the present.