The limitations that lives have through the ages, with or without tales, the ecstatic days of gangs splashing through oceans & the pain, isolation & torture of captured creatures, sometimes consumed by starving sailors. The mermaid show is the mermaid myths through time, collected reports of sightings, not of the silly pin up transferred to water, but it is a mermaid that has peeling, webbed skin, you know, it is not easy living in water.
https://vimeo.com/38373237
Ann Liv Young at Kampnagel in Hamburg: MERMAID washes up on the Elbe River
By Imran Shafique
Published: March 11, 2012
Fabulate sailors for centuries over whether YOU really are: mermaids. Wonderful nature, longed for on lonely nights on board.
THIS mermaid is washable!
Washed up on the south bank of Elbe River. Splish splash, her gray-blue tail dries there at seven degrees Celsius in the first timid spring sunshine – but as soon as it disappears behind the clouds, it would be warmer in the water …
WHO IS THE MERMAID?
In the marine costume puts US artist Ann Liv Young, appearing this weekend at Kampnagel. The New Yorker is known for her radical performances. The “Mermaid Show” (“Mermaid Show”).
What’s it about? “I’m caught by sailors. I ripped out of my element. Cannot talk, do not move me. Still am not a helpless girl,” she says – and bites on the stage in raw fish.
For her performance slipped in the Young-made especially for her tail. Outer silicone, latex inside, to foot parts as in a diving suit, to be flexible. A mermaid, the art is.
In Copenhagen, there is a bronze in the harbor, which became the symbol of the city. The Hamburg mermaid is not forever – she’s flesh and blood.
Dance Review
You Will Get Wet; You May Get Soaked. And Skip the Sushi.
Ann Liv Young’s ‘Mermaid Show’ at La MaMa
Ian Douglas for The New York Times
From left, Kevin Wratten, Marissa Mickelberg, Michael A. Guerrero and Ann Liv Young.
By GIA KOURLAS
Published: May 18, 2012
Beyond nudity and yelling — common ingredients in performance art — the reputation of Ann Liv Young
is that she is ruthless, shameless and takes no prisoners. She may wear
disguises, yet she never masks her impatience with the person running
the sound or a fellow cast member, who often turns out to be her
real-life partner, Michael A. Guerrero.
Breaking news about the arts, coverage of live events, critical r
In a recent Twitter post
about her “Mermaid Show,” Ms. Young, who is pregnant with her second
child, did offer a warning: “i will be uncomfortable. you may be too.”
Opening on Thursday night as part of the La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
in the East Village, “Mermaid Show” is Ms. Young at her most ferocious.
Naked from the waist up, Ms. Young — wearing a scaly mermaid tail,
contact lenses that turn her irises black, under-eye slashes for gill
slits and peeling pancake makeup — was more “Orca” than “Splash.” You don’t want to swim with her; you want to bolt for dry land.
In “Mermaid,” her sailor minions made that difficult. Wielding buckets
of water, they operated like an indoor sprinkler system. Ms. Young’s
works are never about passive viewing, but in her popular Sherry shows,
she riles people up with words, goading audience members into confessing
their secrets through improvisational dialogue.
“Mermaid,” a set piece that isn’t conventionally participatory, provokes audience reaction through movement.
As Ms. Young reclined on her back in a mint green pool filled with
water, webbed fingers and strands of her long reddish wig hung over its
sides. Mr. Guerrero read a text explaining that if a sailor refuses a
mermaid’s seduction, he perishes. Nearby was a heaving mound of dirt —
all signs pointed to a person trapped inside — with miniature dolls
stuck on its mountainous top.
A thread throughout all of Ms. Young’s performance pieces is popular
songs. More than just a tool for setting the scene, music is what
transforms her into her characters; it fuels her performance energy.
Starting with Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice,” the piece turned more intimate
with Sam Cooke’s “You Were Made for Me” and, later, a mash-up of Jewel
and Joan Baez. Such gentle moments also contrasted with the main event,
in which Ms. Young, now an enraged sea lion, tore from the stage to
thrash her way into the risers, where there were no chairs.
At close range, Ms. Young’s ravaged mermaid looked diseased. She
serenaded an impressively stoic man in the audience (“Come swim with me,
and be my sailor,” she sang, while staring into his eyes and touching
his face) and then went rabid on a raw fish, ripping out chunks with her
teeth and spitting them at us. It smelled worse than unrefrigerated
bodega sushi.
The fish-dodging scene lasted probably two minutes, but it seemed like
two hours. Beyond the obvious — it was gross — the act resonated in
terms of character development. Isn’t this, after all, exactly how a
mermaid would ravage a fish? The way the terrified audience fled from
Ms. Young as she hoisted her 40-pound tail and her pregnant belly up the
risers was priceless. Still, I must defend the group: She was a
monster.
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