Acts of Rebellion: Experimental Action Centers Queer Performance Artists

By Aubrey F. Burghardt

If you truly know Houston, you know there’s no denying our ranking as a national contender in the competitive visual arts dominion. The city is continuously abuzz with new and up-and-coming gallery openings, exhibitions, and alternative art collectives. What often gets left out of the picture, however, is the avant-garde, activist-inspired, trailblazing, and authentic performance art scene. This repertoire is the city’s best-kept secret—one that deserves to be exposed and given some long-overdue recognition.

At the heart of this scene is the queer-inclusive, gut-wrenching, erotic, sensual, explorative, and performative firestorm that is Experimental Action. The second coming of this three-day revolutionary international performance art festival hits Houston February 21–23. The Experimental Action stage serves as a space for conceptual leaders to work through themes of controversy, discomfort, and the expression of needs through physical demonstrations; and the festival, which is artist-led, is intentional in leaving room for reactionary open dialogue and in creating a safe space to make art that doesn’t always have a “right answer.”

Julia Wallace, creative director of Experimental Action, is also a current graduate student in the Arts Leadership program at the University of Houston. A die-hard performer herself, Wallace acts similarly to Miracle Grow in the garden of performance art in Houston. She’s contributed such projects as Performance Art Lab, Houston’s Performance Art Night, Continuum, and the inaugural Experimental Action in 2017. For this year’s festival, Wallace divulged three not-to-be-missed queer artists who, although antithetical in their processes, all yield phenomenal, impactful-to-the-core queer art.

First up is the lovely Antonius Bui, a Bronx native, Houston transplant, interdisciplinary artist, and one of the most genuine people I’ve met. I had the opportunity to talk with Bui in their beautiful, natural-lit studio at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, where they conveniently and justly have a residency—as well as an exhibition on display across the street at Lawndale. Exploring the expanding themes of racial division, reclaiming identity post-diaspora, culture reconnection, and unboxing the effects of imperialism, Bui centers many of their notable performances around their Vietnamese identity within national spaces and monuments. Their Repatriation performance at the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building dealt with harrowing topics of Vietnamese refugee deportation, while their ongoing collaboration Missing Piece Project Pilot is a collective intervention devoted to creating space for memory work and continuing the dialogue to remember the forgotten and purposely unlisted Vietnamese veterans at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

During this year’s Experimental Action, Bui will gift us with a solo performance that they describe as a spiritual return and a mecca for the refugee experience, as well as a commentary on the imperialism that Vietnam faced.

Next is Cassie Mira, a Houston-based interdisciplinary and trans artist whose artwork observes heavy stimuli surrounding the human condition through a transitory lens. While originally trained in computer science, Mira dabbled in ceramics before finding her true calling with performance art. Her first performance was a durational piece which took place at notsuoH during Performance Art Night in September 2018. Mira figure modeled and asked the audience to sketch her—sketches which she kept to use in later work. Her most recent work focuses on the lack of access and competent care for trans people within the medical field.

Mira welcomed me into her and her partner’s home to discuss her upcoming Experimental Action performance. “What do you think trans women are trying to do when they go to the bathroom?,” she probed. My response was immediate: “Use the bathroom.” But like any social issue, it’s more complicated than that. Mira’s “Radical Visibility Project,” which is confirmed for Experimental Action, is based on a ceramic sculpture she crafted. She intends to utilize the heavy bathroom sink, tiled in blue and white, to act as a setting for the performance. The sink fixture was first installed at Sam Houston University, near the bathroom, as a statement on the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) conflict; and its tiling features an XOXO pattern, shapes representing scissors and procedural tools, contemplations of body modifications for trans folks. During the performance, Mira anticipates that she will put on makeup using a tiny mirror, inject her hormone therapy in real time, and will perform a self-breast examination. Generated by her experiences with apathetic medical practitioners and the lack of awareness when it comes to trans healthcare needs, Mira disclosed that, in the trans community, group sharing of medical information is very common. Mira’s performance, therefore, is less about generating an audience shock factor, and more about making herself available as a resource. Mira also plans to pass out a zine pamphlet with peer-to-peer resources and safe–sex information.

Bringing things full circle is Jose Villalobos. Currently based out of San Antonio, Villalobos was raised in the border town of El Paso. His upbringing greatly influences his work, which is deep-seated in the continual confrontations between his dual identities, American expectations, and customary Mexican cultural norms. I spoke with Villalobos over the phone about his heritage and religious upbringing that often conflicted with his identity as a gay man. His performance art, he says, is a cathartic approach to unboxing the commonalities between Mexican machismo and queerness.

Villalobos reiterates that, within queer Mexican artist groups, there is “work to be done on self-image and self-identity and how it can be further exacerbated through manipulation and presentation of ‘masculine’ objects and idols that are glorified by Mexican and Hispanic men.”

“I started working with the subject of personal life—it’s this chapter that was kind of never seen by my family or anybody else because I grew up closeted and [struggled to meet] traditions and cultural expectations,” Villalobos adds in reference to his own work.

Using performance art as a method to embrace and accept dual traditions and dual cultures, and to find the softness and femininity that lies within masculinity has been a vehicle for Villalobos. By deconstructing the masculinity and the machismo culture of these objects, he says, each performance releases a flood of toxic masculinity. For Experimental Action, Villalobos Will present a never-before-seen performance that furthers the discussion of male sexual assault and rape through a masculine lens.

Experimental Action is not for the passive audience—but if you’re ready to witness history in the making, to stake your claim, and to say that you’ve experienced the cutting-edge evolution of Houston’s performing arts scene, then attend and seek answers through the artists’ movements. There’s plenty of learning to be done.

What: Experimental Action
When: February 21–23, 2019
Where: Various Houston venues
Details: experimentalaction.com