Michel Melamed attaches electric nodes to his wrists and ankles. He proceeds to go on a monologish trip covering politics, love, and food. However, every cough, laugh, murmur, or outburst from the audience is transmitted into shocks that shoot through Melamed's body.
And just when you think he's faking it, he hooks up an innocent audience member and gently shocks them. Much to their surprise.
It is a visceral piece, to say the least. Contested and contentious, one wonders if Melamed is in a battle with the audience. He wants your response and yet pays a price for it.
While it is shocking, it is not the shocking I would expect. And in the end, is it merely a trick? To what end does the shock of electricity take us?
I leave you with Walt Whitman to ponder it further:
I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?
And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?
Whitman's "charge" takes on a whole new meaning with Melamed's enterprise.
Posted by Brian Costello
PICA
UTR Press Corps
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