Go State

A performance at the Walker Art Center physically engaging with and intervening in Carey Young’s piece Declared Void II and its commanding invitation: BY STANDING IN THE ZONE CREATED BY THIS DRAWING, AND FOR THE PERIOD YOU REMAIN THERE, YOU DECLARE AND AGREE THAT YOU ARE A CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 

Using Young’s sharply bound empty space as a literal representation of the United States, this poetic mock lecture re-spatialized an absurdly boxed map of the US into it. With official naturalization prep test audio and an autobiographical narrative about immigration and otherness, the presentation sped through all 50 states, their big cities, and new art-based mottos for them that expanded what could define such popular collective identities while also suggesting that even art is a state full of authority, insiders and outsiders, epitomized by the likes of the Walker itself. 

Go State sought to dwell in these and other tensions as it imagined the parameters of citizenship and belonging: the arbitrariness of geo-political borders and their relationship to identity; the extreme zeal of state pride in states’ iconographic shapes, teams, slogans, etc. as a microcosm of hyper-nationalism; and the infectious/terminal desire to win over and hang with mainstream America.

Part of Citizenship Series: Filling the Void with Xochi de la Luna, Maryam Houshyar, and Essma Imady.