From Issue 107 — Bait and Switch
As a kid, who’s favorite holiday wasn’t Halloween? The concept to a young mind is unfathomable. Wait, everyone we know is giving out sugary delights on one random day? Inconceivable! What must I achieve to get this candy? Wear a clown costume Grandma made decades ago… I can do that. Wear the winter coat on top of it, because it’s raining/snowing again in Chicago, well that’s a bit much.
As we get older though candy turns into other sweet accesses, haunted houses, excuses to show off that bangin’ bod, spooky date nights, college drinking and debauchery etc. For many of us as aspiring artists or wanna be theater kids, Halloween became a haven for performance. It was if the world got together and collectively said, hey it’s performance time and it’s not Spring Carnival or Mardi Gras but also another spiritual landmark and this time pertaining to the lost souls of the underworld. Everyone gets to pretend and play on this one day. For many of us this was the door opening to an art fantasy world, and for that same many, we’ve likely never left.
With the kids back in school and Summer activities having wrapped, early Fall for the performing arts world is typically the start of a new calendar season. New musicals, concerts and theatrical shows being mounted, new art gallery showings and events all leading into the end of year Holiday season and so on. While many are relaxing and traveling during the Summer, like those little kids waiting for Halloween, the artists of the world get together in August collectively and get excited/panic for the performances that await through the close of the year, KARJAKA included.
But here’s the rub, you don’t have to be wearing fake blood and face paint to be a performer. The News Flash…we’re all performers, and I’m the one capturing those moments of authenticity between exhales and scene changes. Maybe not in crazy wigs, capes, pointy fangs, or a superhero mask to hide behind, no, but instead you’ve traded it in for that for new outfit, Stuart Weitzman shoes, Hermes briefcase, the trips to whatever exciting place that I can’t name that will go on instagram, or that computer monitor where you’re still in sweat pants and crocs but wearing Armani everything up top. Performative marketing.
No, there are no more sugary treats, diabetes is real, just candy in the form of whatever your soup du jour is. The smile from the DMV processing attendant that has more power than a priest on Sunday that says I’ll make this quick, the raise from your boss of whom you secretly despise 364 days out of the year until bonus/raise time. (I’m still unsure what a bonus is.) That soft look from your date as she says, “Do you wanna come up for some coffee?” The gnashing of teeth as you pass the gravy boat at Thanksgiving dinner to avoid upsetting Nana and her unique views on the world.
It’s all performance, and I love every minute of it. The Shakespearean drama of our lives is Amazing, and if you don’t see it that way, look deeper. The love, the hate, ecstasy and betrayal. Hamlet new it. Take Act Scene 2, lines 280-291:
“I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone
all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my
disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation
of vapors. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in
reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a
god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust?
Hamlet is over it. The Danish prince performs no more. Once the personal performance is over, facade has been shed, a new scene begins.
Enter KARJAKA
KARJAKA was born out of performance. Capturing performances for 20 years on AND off stage, performative art knows no venue and the lines are blurred between stage and real life. We all are just actors in face paint and fantastical childlike outfits. Whether you’re one of the lucky ones I’ve gotten to photograph on stage, that concert venue, or in my studio and on the street, the news is very simple, every day is Halloween and you can be whomever you want, with KARJAKA here to entertain you with the clapping of my shutter, and the dulcet tones of my imagery as we feed you sugary self expression via iconic photographs.
Get ready, we’re about to run the performative gauntlet till January 2nd. Happy Halloween and may your performances be worthy of All Souls.
