Ginger Krebs, Ian Hatcher and Coppice share a bill in “3-for-1 Psychic Special.”
Ginger Krebs makes dance-based performances that point out the absurd and discomfiting wallpaper of everyday contemporary life with humor and, as she notes, a charming undercurrent of awkwardness. This weekend, Krebs premieres a solo piece entitled “Standing By,” alongside two other short works by writer/artist/coder Ian Hatcher and sound art duo Coppice—comprising Noe Cuellar and Joseph Kramer—as part of Steppenwolf’s LookOut Series. Krebs says that while distinct, the three pieces are united by “a tinge of retrofuturism with a nineties vibe.” And that hint of overselling in the title? An intentional kiss of desperation befitting the holiday.
How did the three of you connect on this shared bill?
Coppice is really smart and Ian is really smart and it’s fun to make work in their proximity. Our interests are in synch. We keep in touch and when this opportunity to do a show at Steppenwolf came up, this was my dream-team lineup because of through lines I see in each project.
Coppice is first on the bill. They’re makers of abstract soundscapes. I think of them like scientists on the moon. It appears they’re doing something straightforward in front of you, but it’s like one plus one equals nine. When I see their work, I’m filled with wonder. This project will use spherical speakers and spatialization of the audio is part of the instrumentation. It feels like an evocation of another plane of existence.
And your performance?
Mine is next on the program. At a broad level, it’s about my desire to connect with other people and all the mental garbage I go through to do that. But more specifically the performance addresses the internet as a seductive space of glittering possibility. It addresses the expectation of the “user,” or in this case the viewer, that the performance is shaping itself to meet them. Much the way today’s toddlers experience everything as a touch screen.
Is that happening? Of course that’s happening.
Yeah, they’re swiping on surfaces. But this is an existential thing for live performance. If people are spending a larger part of their time in these spaces that are designed for first-person interactivity, what about live performance and the age-old “third-person” thing where you see a human performer in front of you and you can access something of your own story, but through them?
I got interested in these YouTube personalities that fashion themselves as guides. Maybe this is the only role left for a performer now that everyone is starring in their own show. I did a deep dive into cult fitness gurus and spiritual guides, “hashtag how to manifest, hashtag law of attraction,” etcetera. There’s this guy online who teaches gestures that convey empathy—literally things you can do with your head and face and hands—to “amplify your influence and take your career to the next level.” As someone socialized to be female, I always understood that I was supposed to fold myself in half to be a good listener. That someone would have to be taught this is anathema to me. It’s funny-sad. One hopes empathy is an innate human quality. But here, not only is it constructed from the outside in, but it’s supposed to make you more influential and help you in your career.
I confess I haven’t seen any of these videos. But what you’re talking about is not someone learning to be empathetic, but learning to perform empathy to get something they want.
I’m so interested in this near space just between self and other. An emotion is something that’s understood to come from the inside out. But in so many places, especially social media, people learn to perform an emotion—like outrage—because they want to brand themselves as someone outraged by x. I’m horrified, but fascinated about that.
In the performance these helper-guides, all played by me, are doing their job enthusiastically, but the burden and boredom of being trapped into service for the user grows unbearable and eventually sparks a mutiny.
Sounds like fun. Tell me a little about Ian’s piece.
It’s an employment seminar. It’s based on this nineties corporate-workplace HR-advice cassette he found. He’s there live, but he has a co-host HR consultant that’s housed inside a glass head. It lights up when it talks and the language is warm and folksy but totally inhuman at the same time. The audience is invited to participate, but encouraged to ask questions from a card. The audience is made generic even though they’ll sometimes be invited on stage to speak in their own voice. It’s set up to be awkward—that’s something that Ian and my performance have in common: there’s some charm and some serious awkwardness.
Ian likes to be an unreliable narrator. He likes to lie to his audience, but in a way that I think is really funny. There’s a lot of fake stuff—fake plants, fake wood paneling, fake voices, fake questions—but it’s all pasted on top of a situation that’s ostensibly supposed to be about the real concerns of people living in these precarious economic times.
What a great Valentine’s Day show.
Yeah, I didn’t get to pick the timing, but I thought with it coming so soon into the new administration, people are going to need to laugh.
“3-for-1 Psychic Special” at Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, 1650 North Halsted. Friday and Saturday, February 14 and 15 at 8pm. Tickets are $20. More info at steppenwolf.org.
