Joshua William Gelb writhes nude and mute in a box for forty-five minutes. That’s “[Untitled Miniature]” in a nutshell. It’s my job to put this in context, so I’ll try. I’ll also explain how it turned out to be entertaining, which was, believe me, a surprise.
Gelb is the theater artist who won an Obie and other awards for Theater in Quarantine, which he launched exactly five years ago, at the start of the pandemic shutdown, by clearing out the tiny closet in his East Village apartment, and turning it into a stage for shows that he live-streamed on YouTube. At first the shows he did were what you can call experimental, but might more accurately be described as goofing around: Two minutes of tapping his knee to jazz music. Soon he was performing classics by Kafka and Beckett and eventually well-received original works of theater. As Gelb puts it, and it’s hard to disagree, TiQ became “a laboratory for exploring the ‘theatrical’ in the digital space.”
Unlike other digital theater enterprises, Gelb’s didn’t shut down when in-person theater opened back up. Theater in Quarantine continued with online shows, but also launched into hybrid works — both in person and online – which is what (“[Untitled Miniature]” is meant to be: One can watch it (him) in person in the downstairs theater at HERE Arts Center (no more than 30 people at a time; the performance I had attended had about ten.) Or one can watch it at home on your computer or smart phone using URHERE, HERE’s digital platform. Or you can do both: Watch Gelb writhe in the box at HERE, while simultaneously watching him do so on your smartphone.
Gelb would surely argue that he’s advancing the genre that he pioneered, but one could just as easily argue that “[Untitled Miniature]} is a return. A return to his early days of goofing around: What he’s doing is even smaller than those early days, literally: His closet measured 4 feet wide, 8 feet tall, and 2 feet deep, or about eight square feet. The box at HERE measures 34” wide by 19” tall, or slightly more than four square feet.
What he’s doing is arguably a return to something even earlier, to the deeply weird, meant-to-be thought-provoking, and often amusing activities of the Fluxus art movement of the 1960’s and 70s, exemplified by Yoko Ono’s “scores” (in Fluxus lingo), or perhaps more precisely early video art by such pioneers as Joan Jonas.
The webpage for the “[Untitled Miniature]” attempts to explain what it means, using the kind of self-serious babble that afflicts many art movements: “Pushing the boundaries of, and proximity to, a concept of self-exposure that’s becoming the default extension of our ever more codependent relationship with technology and life online.” Elsewhere, he has said more clearly that the piece is meant to illustrate “what happens to privacy when every moment is framed, broadcast, and consumed?”
There is some benefit to attending the show in person: There he is in the flesh,, but his image is also being projected on screens placed in the room, and the contrast, if not exactly instructive, is striking: His feet look bloody, and his eyes bloodshot on the screens, while his actual flesh and eyes are not.
But there is even more benefit to watching it online – whether at home or in the in-person theater – because of the chat function. Theatergoers are encouraged to chat during the show, which is projected on a screen in the theater, and also on the smartphone screen. It’s the chat that helped me find meaning in “[Untitled Miniature]” (albeit never why the title is in brackets..) Some of the chat is clearly planned – comments/prompts/pranks by “ADMIN,” e.g.
“ASMR, mukbang, and spectacle consumption. Nobody seems to have shared their thoughts on this topic yet.”
There were no takers. Instead, chatters provided their own thoughts, often responding to one another.
Some were simply reactions, although occasionally playful
“Hard to watch”
“Hard to turn away”
“Hard to say goodbye to yesterday 🎶”
Some comments were illuminating:
“Are the 45 minutes meant to represent a lifetime?”
“Or a gestation maybe?”
“Definitely makes me think of birth.”
“And death.”
Much of it was amusing:
“Don’t give up. You can find a way out. Just think outside the box.”
[Untitled Miniature]
HERE Arts and URArts through March 25
Running time: 45 minutes, you can take as many intermissions as you want
Tickets $25 in-person; $10 digital
Created and performed by Joshua William Gelb
Spatial Artist Krit Robinson, Sound Design by Nick Kourtides, Video Design by Joshua William Gelb
