Happeningistime

at Spare Room, Baltimore, 1/7/2006

Ginger Wagg presented a multi-media performance / installation piece. I can't really write about her work as an outsider, since I've had the good fortune of working with her over the past few years, and also helped her make some recordings for this event.

Anyway, I can try to describe some of what I saw: For the last few months, Ginger has been traveling around the country and sending packages to the Spare Room. She made an installation of all the mailed materials, and did a two-hour performance.

A room in performance artist Cindy Rehm's house was the venue. The floor was covered with long pieces of white paper (like from a roll of butcher paper or something). Envelopes and packages were arranged in pathways on the floor. Ginger was wearing a costume - a crochet bodysuit by Agata Olek featuring a crocheted balloon person attached. During the performance, she opened packages and envelopes, arranging the contents, and writing on them, writing on the floor, etc.

At first, I was unsure how this was working. When I arrived, the audience was standing outside the room, peeking in from the living room through closed french doors, or peeking through the doorway from the kitchen. Eventually, a few brave spectators ventured into the performance space to view the installation more carefully. At one point, Ginger handed me an envelope to open. It had a few receipts in it: snacks from a grocery store, a purchase from a liquor store, an ATM receipt for a cash withdrawal, etc. Being the bookkeeper that I am, I put them in alphabetical order by vendor and put them back on the floor. Later I thought I should have arranged them by date - or maybe "coded" them like I would a reimbursement request at work? The piece was about the trail we leave behind as moments slip into the past. Not sure what it meant that this person-sculpture was attached to Ginger? Maybe a reference to baggage from the past we carry with us? Maybe a representation of the person we used to be in the past?

I was trying to get to three different events that night - the other two in DC - so I only stayed for about twenty minutes. During that time, I saw Ginger open a small padded envelope that contained a pair of black pants, a package full of maps, and envelopes with letters, receipts, notes, airplane boarding passes. I didn't see enough to really speak to the big ideas in the piece, or the success or failure of the work... but it was certainly an interesting investigation of time passing and the associated detritus that we leave behind.