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on drawing for slideshow Impossible Tea Party was performed at the 2003 DUMBO Arts Festival as part of the Water Art section. It was an experiment in sophisticated not-drowning. Four floating platforms, designed by Fluxer Brian Matthews, were created as well as a floating tea table. Everything and everybody was dressed up real nice, like a Victorian tea party. Directions and semaphore flags were placed at the shore. The audience was encouraged to order a cup of tea by using semaphore signals while we floated out in the East River. It was our job to make a cup of tea by getting ourselves over to the table with ropes and small paddles. We looked fairly ridiculous. Duapo Gassaway painted watercolors from the shore. It was a blustery weekend, but bright and beautiful. Morgan was flipped over and into the water by the waves of a water taxi on Saturday. The audience was generous in trying to get him dried off and warm as he emerged, rat-like, from the less than pristine waters of the East River. Aya Kakeda, Yunmee Kyong, Patty O’Furniture, Stefany Anne Golberg, Sebastien Santamaria, Funky Brown, Nick Jones, Dana Gramp, Huggies Tyree, Andy Epstein, and perhaps a few I have forgotten helped out or ‘performed’ for the show. It felt amazing to paddle around on the East River beneath the great bridges of New York serving tea to our fellow human beings and occasionally to the fishes and watery creatures who were the beneficiaries of our imperfect balance. Flux Factory does manage, sometimes, to achieve beauty through stupidity. |