Sketch Book

“The Daedalus Effect and other dilemmas”
Arturo Vidich
Museum of Arts and Design
New York, NY
November 9, 2012

by Leigh Witchel
copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

Risk + Reward. The name itself sets up expectations. The risk is the experiment, the elusive reward a work of genius. But in this performance series, now in its second season at the Museum of Arts and Design, it’s more realistic to hope for a fascinating attempt or a noble failure – yet both can pay off later. Arturo Vidich’s “The Daedalus Effect,” by a comfortable margin, was a fascinating attempt. It’s not – and wasn’t meant to be – a finished product, but you knew it would lead to one. In fact, Vidich used the opportunity as a sketch pad for performances to come in January at the Invisible Dog Art Center.

The museum’s commission included a residency and open rehearsals; it culminated in a performance in a small auditorium downstairs. From the release:

Vidich offered micro-commissions to performers, writers, engineers, architects, and other artists to make or design objects to serve as improvisational scores  . . . He uses these objects like puzzle pieces, manipulating and combining them to generate physical dilemmas . . .

The auditorium was more lecture hall than theater; with a harsh fluorescence and no theatrical lighting. There was little barrier between Vidich and the audience; he sat in the house and chatted occasionally with people until he ducked behind the curtain to begin.

Vidich is a polymath, along with his skills as a performer he has a certificate in dog training and he’s studied welding. Makes sense: besides his story of flight and Icarus’ fatal pride, Daedalus was the architect of Minos’ labyrinth and archetype of the gifted artisan. (In Homeric Greek, daidila are finely crafted items.) In the auditorium, objects were strewn about, some of them were the micro-commissions, most were made by Vidich. All of them inanimate, yet hostile.

Vidich made what he said he would – a work about the complexity of physical effort. He entered through the side curtain, pushing the auditorium’s lectern. He was also loaded down with a luminous quiver (made by lighting designer Joe Levasseur) strapped to his back, and a stool with a single, unstable leg. Tall, thin and defined with a long face and floppy brown hair, Vidich wore a non-costume of a T-shirt and dirty work pants. When he paused in his labors with one hip displaced he looked like an artist’s model, David or St. Sebastian as much as Daedalus.

The only sounds at the outset were clicking and a low rumble one could have easily mistaken for the ambient noise of the building. (It turned out to be a recording of the theater’s own noises Vidich made to avoid the pitfalls of performing in “silence.”) He laboriously moved through the objects onstage. One looked like a lampshade with weighted ropes spread from it like the legs of a spider. Vidich put his arms and torso through the cylinder and walked, falling and clanking like Jacob Marley’s ghost.

To low but more intrusive noises, Vidich made his way around the auditorium, past the sculptures in the aisles. He climbed onto them with determination, yet fell noisily down. Almost everything he did was perilous; it was no surprise that he would fall, but it was a surprise how willing he was to fall, even to risk injury.
 
He shucked off the impediments and returned onstage for the second part of the piece. Collapsing to the floor he did pushups as if impelled by electroshock, whipping around wildly in distress and effort. Then the lights suddenly went on, and he smiled, threw his arms wide and burbled, “Hug me!”

He continued, moving like a suspended marionette, and then left the stage where he had entered. Returning quickly, he snuck out again behind the front curtain, now shirtless but wearing a mask with shut eyes and an impassive expression.

To music that recalled gamelan, Vidich launched into an Orientalist solo with delicate arms and legs cocked. He pulled off the mask, hung it on a lamp and a fan turned on as he left from the opposite wing. And then he came out smiling to take his applause.

This long solo would not have worked done by someone less physical than Vidich. Though it was only a sketch, it was a sketch he threw himself into with all his being.

“The Daedalus Effect” wasn’t meant to be seen by more people than the small audience that went. But the museum is providing a laboratory, incubator and a place to take risks – and Vidich is taking them.

copyright © 2012 by Leigh Witchel

Photo of Arturo Vidich by Michele Palazzo