Chewing Up the Scenery artwork by Alejandro Cardenas

Jeffrey was not a constant visitor to the Excellent Workshop salon series that Casey organized in the Fischerspooner rehearsal warehouse in Williamsburg, but he was there for the Citizens Band premiere and expressed interest in presenting the group in the gallery. In the meantime, I presented Chaos & Candy one more time with Jeffrey at the Williamsburg space in Brooklyn, the third annual entitled The Royal Court of Christmas. (Photos below by Lucien Samaha.)

The Citizens Band: Je T'Aime, Scumbag. April, 2005. Photo by Keith Widyolar.

In April, 2005, The Citizens Band premiered the show Je T’Aime, Scumbag, which was performed on a brothel set built in the Wooster Street gallery space as part of the David Lachapelle exhibition “Artists &Prostitutes 1985-2005.” The wild success of that performance led to the gallery officially representing the project and plans began for the group to be presented during Jeffrey’s annual  opening event at Art Basel Miami Beach.

The energy around the project was crazy and built to a frenzy with tons of press coverage. We presented one project outside of the gallery under the Deitch auspices, No New Thing Under the Sun, a biblical epic, at Hiro Ballroom, but returned to Wooster Street in September for what I believe was our greatest work, The Trepanning Opera. Trepanning was a riff on health care, medicine, illness, war and death, and it was the beginning of our attempts to add original songs and sculpt a stronger narrative around what was basically a Weimar-inspired cabaret variety show. The masterful Mathu Andersen worked magic with the sickly make-up, and the black-and-white wardrobe palette fit perfectly with Jim Isermann’s all-white op-art wall panel installation in the gallery.

The Trepanning Opera. Photo by Mathu Andersen.

This was the show that we brought to Art Basel Miami Beach, inaugurating Deitch’s new tradition of presenting concerts in the courtyard of the Raleigh Hotel. It was challenging to adapt the performance to an open-air setting with a raised and much smaller stage, but it came off beautifully and played to huge audience of glittering folk that MAC Cosmetics and Deitch invited.

Sadly, it was not long after this show that my relationship with the project began to turn sour. I barely made it through our last presentation at the gallery, Chewing Up the Scenery, which was performed amidst a group show, “The Garden Party,”  that included a giant grassy hill. It was unfortunate but ultimately necessary for me to move on from working with The Citizens Band.

Photo by Kristy Leibowitz.

I continued to work with the gallery, however, adding musical touches to the Jason Schmidt opening that featured a sculptural performance by Gelitin. For that I curated a group of performers to create ambient music including Theremin player Armen Ra, digital artist Tristan Perich, operatic countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and an experimental trio led by harpist Mia Theodoratus (I jumped in on vocals). That night was especially wild as Gelitin built an enormous scaffold sculpture throughout the night that straddled a dinner party resting partly on the stage and the gallery wall. Once it was in place, the members (many working without pants, their testicles tied off, some with items stuffed up their asses) created a tiered pyramid and peed into cupped helmets on each other’s heads in a mad version of a fountain.

I also produced a music video for Fischerspooner’s song “Get Confused” shot in the Wooster Street gallery in and on the pyschedelic installation “Hypnogoogia” by Jim Drain and Ara Peterson.

The Art Parade, an annual event that Deitch put up with Paper Magazine for a few years, was also fun. The first year, 2005, featured the Citizens Band in a horse-drawn carriage followed by one of our best shows in the wildly mobbed gallery. It was more rock show than precious cabaret, and the energy was electric. The next year, Deitch sponsored my project Black Rabbit, helping to create the iconic headpiece that Desi Santiago designed for me. I also wore the head in my Easter show Vernal Hoodoo at the Box, which inspired Jeffrey to request a show featuring the trio of ladies Angela DiCarlo, Yana Chupenko and Lizzy Yoder. We created Lady Lady Lady and presented it at the Zipper Theater in November, 2007.

These are highlights of my own experience working with the enormously supportive Deitch Projects. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the support I received from his executive director, Suzanne Geiss, and the gallery staff who were always available to help make something happen, no matter how outlandish or insane the request. In fact, sometimes the crazier the request was, the more excited the staff seemed to be. Now THAT is a vibe that will be missed!