The glass is hot enough to sear steak, which Burnt Asphalt co-founder Erica Rosenfeld later served to the audience as part of the participatory performance. photo: charles eckert
With the holiday season upon us, it’s only fitting that the performance art troupe Burnt Asphalt Family would reunite at their Brooklyn, New York, “homestead” Urban Glass (where several cast members regularly rent time to work), to cook up a big communal meal. This family get-together took the form of a Saturday-evening performance entitled “TV Dinner,” just the most recent evolution of the troupe’s series of 1950s-era glass cooking performances that have included “Turkey Dinner,” “Garden Barbecue,” “Cocktail Party,” and an earlier version of “TV Dinner” performed at the Glass Art Society conference in Corning, New York, in June 2009.
The Burnt Asphalt Family has been exploiting the novelty of cooking in the hot shop to stage increasingly elaborate theatrical events, and at every event the party (and the menu) has improved. As their performances become more tightly structured, with individual cooking “stunts” better choreographed, they become more effective in transforming the glass studio from a place where objects are made to a place where the material is used to cook, and create an experience for performers and audience members alike.
Leo Tecosky pours Kool Aid heated from a newly made pitcher onto a cool white punch bowl, cracking it in the process. photo: charles eckert
Performance art and craft (including cooking) have already been closely linked, most obviously in a work such as Martha Rosler‘s seminal video piece, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1974/75), and this thread has continued with the work of contemporary artists such as Ann Hamilton and Janine Antoni, both of whom use the performance of craft (cooking, baking, weaving, sewing) as a way to elevate their activities (rather than their object-making) into the realm of art. “TV Dinner” takes this approach not only with cooking, but also with glassblowing, using the studio as a venue for recontextualizing the meaning of these activities. While cooking has acquired increasing respect in contemporary culture, glass is still in the midst of a mid-life crisis and ripe for reexamination. “TV Dinner” uses hot glass as a means of cooking foodstuffs through its intense heat by heating foods within a various forms that function as hot glass “ovens” on the end of a blowpipe.
The performance highlights the common link between the kitchen and the studio, both of which are “family spaces” where collective labor is performed. From the costumes and a campy clip from the 1963 television series The Outer Limits, the audience understands that it is specifically the family dynamics from mid-20th century America that will be dissected during the performance. While the characters on stage were distinct and obviously skilled glassblowers, I wanted to see more of their personalities and the dynamics of the relationships between the family members.
The Burnt Asphalt Family at work during a November 21st performance at UrbanGlass. photo: chris welch
The Burnt Asphalt Family’s 15 characters, decked out like the cast of the kitschy television sit-com Happy Days, work together using hot glass to create spectacular temporary sculptures that are often destroyed through thermal shock by dousing it with hot or cold liquid. Compared to previous performances, not only is the glass getting better but the food is, too. The smell of searing steak and caramelized apples indicated to the audience that things have evolved from a spectacle to edible. Even the blown glass “beef scoop,” and the “chicken dome” were believable as semi-effective techniques for cooking. A fizzing soda bottle fountain went off without a hitch, as giant spraying hot glass bottle topped a pyramid of soda bottles to the viewers delight (the geyser of boiling water not strong enough to reach the audience). The performance was staged with a loud soundtrack of vintage songs that spanned the later half of the 20th century, not confining itself to the 1950s era.
The pace of the performance, and visual diversity of the goings-on, kept the audience on their toes, but, as the stunts went on, each completed piece seemed anti-climactic with the exception of the spraying fizz bottle. Partly the result of poor lighting, partly because there was simply so much going on at the same time, a consistent problem was the lack of a focal point. A live video feed from one bench was projected onto a screen helped the audience see the actions more clearly, but failed to offer any clues to the audience of what to anticipate. This might be a moment when narration from a “hostess,” would have been helpful.
Backstage, preparations of food and glassblowing set-ups allow the action in front of the audience to proceed more quickly. photo: chris welch
The apron-clad waitress characters distributing the food (some of it cooked beforehand, other dishes prepared right there during the performance) also had the potential to transform the space into a social one, and make the audience an actual part of the event, but they behaved more like waiters catering a cocktail party than actual performers. Though it was hard to catch their eye, once I got a plate of mashed potatoes into my hands, the chance to consume some of the food being made minutes before during the performance had an undeniable impact. I felt like a part of the event, rather than just a spectator. Other elements such as the cafeteria tray, Lazee-Boy bench, the rolling-pin jacks, and ketchup/mustard water bottles were some of the most satisfying moments, and left me wishing that the kitchen tool/glass tool theme had extended to every tool and piece of furniture in the space. Still, a lot of thought had clearly been given to the overall aesthetics, with lanterns, windows, golden spray-painted televisions, music, and costumes all adding to the atmosphere.
Adam Holtzinger prepares to cap off a newly made soda bottle, getting it to erupt. photo: charles eckert
For Burnt Asphalt, “working,” is not only the process of creating art, but also the creation of bonds between other artists and the community at large. The key to their performance seems to be that it is not theater, but rather the people on stage are acting out their roles that they inhabit every time they come to work in the glass studio. Likewise, the soul of this performance is rooted in the fact that onstage and off, this group of artists truly is a family. The sold-out event was also a successful fundraiser for UrbanGlass.
Still, the scope of the Burnt Asphalt Family performances obviously aspires to something more than just audience enjoyment. Will they generate the attention of interactive projects such as Rirkrit Tiravanija’s gallery meals, delve more deeply into history on a level closer to Alison Smith’s Muster, or become as provocative as Lee Mingwei’s s sleeping project? The potential is certainly there, as the group finds a balance between order and chaos, theater and reality, art and life.
—Kim Harty
AUTHOR BIO: A frequent contributor to the GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet, Kim Harty is a co-founder of Cirque de Verre, a glass performance art troupe.