1000 Days Of:

Of course, there have been count- -less attempts by The Artist to create an authentic connection with an audience—all of them failures—but none more spectacularly than one: The performer who turned them- -selves inside out, mid-performance, so that the audience were not only treated to a sensory experience, but a somatic one. The Process was completely visible. All of the phenomenological functions of the body were on display. Twinging muscles. A buzzing nervous system. Moaning organs. The illustrious brain, with every creative crevice and neural pathway shimmering under spotlight. Even the digestive tract had collapsed and folded outward. The remnants of breakfast, disease, childhood trauma, years-old swall- -owed gum; all exposed and factored into an immense calculation that culminated in a performance which was, of course, a spectacular failure. Not because it had result- -ed in death, but because the language of the soma—the stringy fibers, hard wet bone, indinstin- -guishable sacks of pulsating pink flesh—were not decipherable to an audience of outside-in observers processing stimuli with their organs inside. Perhaps if they were inside-out they may have, at least moment- -arily before death, experienced an authentic connection with The Artist