A History of My Experience With Performance Art
Alice Scarlet Death
I’ve been making music for the last 17 years of of my life, but it wasn’t until 2006 that I ended up trying to play live music or do anything that’d be considered performance art. I’ve been thinking back on old times, and felt like the journey to where I am today perhaps could use a bit of context.
I started making music in 2001. I made goofy little audio tracks of me pretending to sing using Microsoft sound recorder on Windows 98. Halfway through my freshman year of high school that same year, someone gave me a copy of Orion, Rebirth, Sony Sound Forge, and Fruityloops 3.3. I would make beats in fruityloops and sing over them. I was listening to a lot of post-hardcore and post-punk revival back then and my “singing” reflected that. Eventually, I started to realize my efforts would be better spent just focusing on making cool sounds. I felt like me talking over it soured some beats that were actually pretty solid.
The project was called Say No More Tongues. I decided not to talk anymore and just focus on the music. It was around 2005 that I was introduced to John Cage, Dada, noise music, and post-modern classical acts in my music history class in college. Back then, people were really mean to me for using fruityloops. But, I was familiar with it. So I began to apply some of the anti-music philosophies I had studied. I would tear shit up on that program, but I had wanted more.
Given my preference towards anime and hanging out in Japanese music circles, most of my influences were 90s Japanese noise bands. Boredoms, CCCC, Hantarash, Incapacitants, Masonna, Violent Onsen Geisha, Ruins, Zeni Geva, and Merzbow. I saw videos of groups like CCCC doing ritual wax play as part of their noise set. I had learned about Masonna putting contact mics in a jar full of pennies and throwing it around, jumping around on tables and such. Yamataka Eye plowing through a condemned building and then playing guitar as part of a noise set.
Throw in a healthy noise community on soulseek and last.fm suffice it to say I was beginning to become inspired. I no longer wanted to make music. I didn’t want to deconstruct rules and rebuild. I wanted to destroy convention and make my own rules. Except my rules was basically just to endeavor to create certain moods. My ex-wife at the time told me my music sounded like I had studied music theory. I did a bunch of key changes, mode changes, and was obsessed with bizarre sounding fast-paced arpeggios. It wasn’t really anything fancy. I just knew what certain buttons and plugins did on my programs. The moods I wanted to create weren’t hard and fast. I never wanted to try too hard because that was some normie BS. I had to be pretentious or something. You know, as you tend to do when you’re in college and think you’re the wokest alive.
Eventually, I splurged my college money on instruments. My partner had a viola and a music theory degree. I picked up a Korg Kaoss pad, a guitar, and a bunch of pickup mics.
We had played a few shows, but it wasn’t until I played at the iconic Nashville venue, The End, for a new music night that I explored with incorporating any performance art.
My ex-wife was on viola. I had the kaoss pad, a Planter’s nuts jar full of pennies with a pickup mic inside, and an old TV next to a boom mic. It was the first time I ever experimented wearing female clothes, and my traditional outfit was a nurse scrub and a crushed velvet skirt. I would change the channel on the TV while creating haunting sounds on the Kaoss pad. Then I picked up the jar full of pennies and started smashing it against the floor as hard as I could. My hand was covered in blood and I was invoking Masonna’s frenetic energy.
This was a relatively normal night, full of a middle-aged blues-rock type bands on the bill. Except for us. Everyone looked terrified or confused. I’m pretty sure they had never seen anything like that before. And, in fact, there was an old war vet in the back with one arm. He was the only person that night that bought one of our CDs. He said it was the craziest shit he’d ever seen.
I never really found the confidence to do very much dramatic stuff after that night. But I think I was feeding off all the awkward energy and new I had to do something special to cut the tension.
We would record at home mostly, playing an odd gig here and there. Our sound evolved into a mixture of post-modern classical and no wave. Mixing the darker guitar and synth sounds with the atonal melodies of a flute and a viola. It was during this time I decided to have my friend publish some of our work on Rock Band Network for Rock Band 3 on Xbox 360. I loved reading all the comments about how terrible we were and how far Rock Band has sunk because they published us. This was also around the same time we shortened our name to SNMT.
After our divorce, my life fell apart and I never really felt comfortable making loud sounds in my residences after that. Eventually, I ended up getting very sick. I sold all of my music equipment in a futile attempt to pay rent. I ended up becoming homeless for two years and moved to Seattle to better my health.
Suddenly we’re in early 2017 and I’m living in Washington and I’m in a power electronics band, Queen Antifa. Two members would play synths behind me and I was put on vocals. I had no instruments, and I’m willing to do almost anything so it just kind of happened that way. I would just scream a lot. Eventually it boiled down to me just having panic attacks on stage and seeing if I could throw my voice out.
Then the Texas floods happened in September 2017. I made a post asking if anyone wanted to throw a benefit. I was hoping some of my musician friends would want to help me throw something together. But instead, someone wanted me to help them do a burlesque show.
I had absolutely no experience with burlesque. At that point I had literally only seen one show in my entire life. Our first show was successful enough and almost all of our performers asked if we were going to do more shows. So we did. That person became my co-producer and now we run Scarlet Wonderland Productions together focusing on POC, queer, and trans performers and benefits for transgender people.
It wasn’t really until December of 2017 that I finally got to fully craft the entire theme for our show. We threw a birthday party for 2018 and called it “Barely Legal” because pornography jokes are in. I’ve slowly started to learn ways where I can pick a certain theme and even though I don’t have to perform I can still have a show that I would want to watch.
Once in a while, I do perform at my own shows, but it’s still very absurd and nonsensical. I find it much more therapeutic to just create a perfect theme and cross my fingers that it “clicks” with people enough to get some unique performances.
Traditionally, my creative output has tried to push boundaries or at least defy expectations and I’ve been trying to come up with creative ways to have these burlesque/drag/variety shows also do something a little different. So far I’ve been satisfied with the quality of our shows. Our performers are some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and I’m so grateful to have worked with them. But most of the work I do is at home in bed between 3am and 5am trying to come up with like a paragraph that will succinctly convey what kind of show I want to have. The theme is the prompt, generally, and I want to give people space to be creative on their own. I’m not going to micromanage every set, I don’t have the patience for that. But, I do want to make sure the theme is good enough to inspire people to be more creative.
And sometimes, if the theme is right, I’ll throw my hat in the ring and try to make my own statement personally.
I still have music projects going on. I’ve been working my way towards getting new gear. To that end, I’m still much more interested in producing a show than I am playing one. I feel like I can say a lot more by being seen less. And there’s definitely things I want to say. I want to use my art to make a statement. To rebel against injustice. To give marginalized people a chance to explore themselves because I rarely got opportunities growing up. Seattle is a bit more conducive to me stretching my creative muscle.
As much as I love actually performing and doing things, I feel like my true performance art lies in putting my public relations degree to good use. Acting in a production role and doing creative director style duties makes me feel content and happy. I feel more useful creating healthy environments for artists to flourish.
I want people to know that no matter how bad you think you are or how shitty you think your act is. I want that. I’ve always wanted a place to feel comfortable expressing myself. I don’t have a lot of stuff I can do in life due to my disability, but I would feel remiss if I didn’t put what skills to good use.
In a perfect world, we’d be one big community and we all would support each other. I try to support people in what ways I can. I do my best. Hopefully people are at least having some fun.
