ONGOING PRAISE & PRESS FOR WIKSWO’s PROJECT “NONAGON FOR THE DEAD” in EMERGENCY INDEX 6 / Ugly Duckling Presse

“a rousing cacophony that feels like a global conversation minus the pretensions of conferences or festivals.”  — SYLVAN OSWALD  “A bible of performance art activity” – MARTHA WILSON  A profoundly important publication. It guides us to a new place.—ROBERT ASHLEY  “Quintan Ana Wikswo’s project NONAGON FOR THE DEAD WHO ARE RISING is an improvised prose poem, performance, and polaroids in nine parts – with music by Arthur Kell. A spiral of abstract conceptual compositions surrounding colonialism, genocide, and resistance, the Black Panthers, the Black Snake Dakota Access Pipeline, Nazi anthropologists, femicide, protection, connection, intersection, anger, Nambe Pueblo peyote, the dead who are living, the living who are dead, and the strings that weave us all together.

My text, music, photography and performance work A NONAGON FOR THE DEAD WHO ARE RISING is included in the iconic performance anthology EMERGENCY INDEX (Vol 6). This is my second inclusion in the anthology series from Ugly Duckling Presse edited by Yelena Gluzman, Sophia Cleary, and Katie Gaydos. NONAGON was created as a tribute to my mentor, former Black Panther and academic Dr. Robin Kilson – it was performed at Santa Fe’s Radical Abicus with original music by Arthur Kell, and published in video, text, and photographs by Numero Cinq. The original polaroid photographs created during the first site-specific performance of the piece – a ritual walk for Thanksgiving Day, along the Jornado del Muerto (Journey of the Dead Man) desert of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro: the genocidal road of the Spanish conquistadors, the site of the explosion of Trinity (the plutonium infusion fission nuclear bomb), and the American Indian Wars against the Apache and other Native Nations. The bones depicted in these photographs are of the skulls of cows left chained to fence posts. 

EMERGENCY INDEX VOL 6  can be ordered here. 

 

NONAGON FOR THE DEAD WHO ARE RISING can be read, watched, and heard at my website and at Numero Cinq. The project includes a video recording, performance stills, audio recording, performance script, and original photographs. 

 

“Quintan Ana Wikswo’s performance script for NONAGON FOR THE DEAD WHO ARE RISING (from OUT HERE DEATH IS NO BIG DEAL) is an improvised prose poem in nine parts – with music by Arthur Kell. A spiral of abstract conceptual compositions surrounding colonialism, genocide, and resistance, the Black Panthers, the Black Snake Dakota Access Pipeline, Nazi anthropologists, femicide, protection, connection, intersection, anger, Nambe Pueblo peyote, the dead who are living, the living who are dead, and the strings that weave us all together.

A nonagon is a nine-sided polygon. NONAGON FOR THE DEAD WHO ARE RISING is dedicated to all our ancestors, relations, and connections, our friends and enemies, our allies and adversaries who present us with opportunities to question and resist the loss of agency in our lives, psyches, minds, and bodies, and evolve and transform into beings of blessing and liberation. May we all find healing and inspiring connections for change even amidst the most challenging people and situations.”

This is a bible of performance art activity. And if you are, like I am, a believer in performance art and the value of this ephemeral art activity to change the hearts and minds and consciousness of people, then you need to have this bible in your life. The end.—MARTHA WILSON

We’ve been seeing performance art materialize around us, but without feeling that there was a context for such ideas. Artists have been doing such pieces for a long time without much recognition that in fact their ideas are related. Now, with Emergency INDEX, we get the sense of a magical secret shared among many artists. Emergency INDEX is a profoundly important publication. It guides us to a new place.—ROBERT ASHLEY

 

“You might be staring at a blank page. You might be tasked with an empty space. Or maybe it’s a bustling street corner that confounds you — a gallery, a schoolyard, a Great Lake. If you have in your hands Ugly Duckling Presse’s Emergency INDEX, an annual anthology of performance documentation, you won’t be stumped for long. Editors Sophia Cleary and Yelena Gluzman have conceived this pleasingly chunky tome as a democratic “snapshot” of the wildly proliferating field of performance and its documentation. The three volumes published so far feature about 250 entries each. Open to any page and discover artists from around the world, creating performances of every caliber on every imaginable topic and in every conceivable space (like, yes, a lake). Each performance is represented by a photograph and a description by the artist/s of the project and its intentions. Thankfully, there is an index at the end of INDEX, allowing you to “sort” by subject (from abjection to Zucotti), contributor, or location (Argentina to Vietnam). The result is a rousing cacophony that feels like a global conversation minus the pretensions of conferences or festivals.”   — SYLVAN OSWALD, from “An Index to Index” OSMOS Magazine

 

Yelena Gluzman is a founding member of Ugly Duckling Presse where she is the editor of the Paperless Book Department, curates the Emergency Playscript series, and co-edits Emergency INDEX. Initially studying and working in neuroscience, Yelena began making theater works in 1997 as a continuation of her interest in the mechanisms underlying human behavior. Since 1999, under the initiative called Science Project, Yelena conducts research, makes theater works, performance art works, and site-specific social experiments. In New York, she has shown her works at The Performing Garage, Theater for a New City, the Old American Can Factory, The Collapsable Hole, the Prelude Festival, etc