Performance Art Night returns and the [performance] is political!!!

November’s edition coincides with Election Night 2019 - a.k.a. the official beginning of the 2020 Election – and it will be a suffrage soirée to delight and enrage.

This month’s featured artist is Courtney Frances Fallon.

CFF is a writer, director, artist, and performer from Buffalo living in Brooklyn. Her work frequently employs a surreal, cartoon-like absurdity to discuss and dissect tragedies and devastations from the seemingly benign to the existential. Ridiculousness allows the work to be aggressive and/or didactic without alienating, boring, or condescending to the viewer.

CFF is honored to be a guest in Houston’s arts community and will be arriving ten days in advance of Performance Art Night to design, fabricate, and install site-specific social sculptures at 314 Main Street inspired by recent political developments and promoting voter turnout.

Stay tuned for photos of the works-in-progress and finished products. Or come out to see the installations in person plus political performances unlike anything airing on the news at Performance Art Night on Tuesday November 5th!

This evening of creative action and political activism will be curated by Jonatan Lopez and facilitated by Experimental Action, Houston’s International Performance Art Festival (www.experimentalaction.com).

If you would like to perform this night, send an email to our host (jonatanlopez@hotmail.com), with a brief description of your performance. Politically themed pieces preferred. Durational pieces welcome and encouraged.

There is a 5$ cover, but you are welcome to give more. All proceeds will support Experimental Action, Houston’s International Performance Art Festival.

Artist Statement - In Antecessum
“Cheap Credit”,
“[Untitled Voter Turnout Installation]”, &
“Election Exercises”

I was delighted by the invitation to be featured in Houston’s monthly Performance Art Night - a showcase facilitated by Experimental Action, Houston’s International Performance Art Festival. It’s an opportunity to simultaneously share my work with a new, diverse, and dynamic population while exploring the literal and cultural landscapes of one of America’s largest cities. The timing of Performance Art Night – on Election Day during a particularly divisive period – drove me toward a political theme for my performance. I soon began to daydream about a variety of different indoor and outdoor social sculptures as a mean to engage in a largescale conversation with Houstonians.

As luck would (miraculously) have it, the venue hosting Performance Art Night is supportive of creatives and open to giving me a week of access to install thereby granting me a three-story building to use as a canvas. Between September 26th and November 5th I will design, fabricate, and install two politically themed social sculptures on Main Street in Downtown Houston. I’m acutely aware that I am an outsider in Houston and so, I must be prudent about my audacity. That said, Americans are intertwined. I love America. I do not live here by default but because I choose to. Therefore, these works seek to provoke thoughtful discourse about two topics of national relevance -government corruption and voter turnout.

“Cheap Credit”, an installation bespoke for the facade of 314 Main Street, is a playful yet assertive confrontation of the cozy relationships Donald Trump has had with various tyrannical leaders throughout his administration.

“[Untitled Voter Turnout Installation]” is a yet-to-be-designed, site-specific piece which will celebrate voting and encourage people to go to the polls. Voting is the cornerstone of democracy, but voter turnout is low through the country. Meanwhile, voter disenfranchisement of all forms compounds this problem. My hope is that this installation will help fight voter apathy immediately before this off-year election and ahead of the upcoming 2020 Presidential primaries and contest.

Artist Bio

Courtney Frances Fallon is a writer, director, artist, and performer. She was born in Buffalo in 1984. CFF completed her first major written work “You Know This Girl” in 2009. It is a one woman play which combines performance and video to examine gender, contemporary sexual mores, and consumerism. Research for the play inspired a tangential conceptual photo series, “Vagina Postcards” (2009), with photographer Katharine T. Jacobs. Although one begat the other, the two projects are not dependent on one another. Planning and creating independent “spinoff projects” in different forms continues to be an aspect of her art practice. Yet, it took time for her to add “artist” to her list of titles.

She launched the political art protest “Draw the Blue Line” during the 2017 UN General Assembly in response to US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The project, a major departure from her previous text-centered projects - included guerilla installations and performance vandalism. A love of fabrication blossomed during the project and has led to further building.

The creative path toward sculpture and installation from writing has been circuitous. Writing remains deeply intertwined in her visual art practice - from development to documentation – but the drive to create visual work is in tandem (or conspiracy) with the same force calling her to write. The form she chooses for a creation is dictated by the concept itself – whether the idea will best be communicated visually, verbally/audibly, in writing, combined, etc. CFF is self-taught. Fifteen years of cooking and time spent working in the manufacturing industry have helped to guide her art practice.

CFF lives in Brooklyn and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild of America.

www.courtneyfrancesfallon.com

ABOUT PERFORMANCE ART NIGHT:

Performance Art Night was created by Julia Claire Wallace as a place where performance artists can share freely and often— without the weighty restrictions that curated or themed shows often bring along with them. It aspires to be a place where experimentation is welcome and boundaries are pushed! It was also created to strengthen and ground the performance art scene in Houston— by inspiring more artists to experiment with performance as well as by giving Houston audiences more diverse performance art experience. So far it has birthed new artists, a collective, countless new works, lots of fun, and a ton of good stories.