Today from our friends at BmoreArt, we bring you Angela N. Carroll’s reflections on FlucT’s performance Culture Is Not Your Friend at Platform Gallery in Baltimore, MD. Carroll says of the performance, “Much of what I experienced was performative in the most mundane and expected ways: a critique of sexuality by embodying overtly sexed archetypes. But maybe that’s the point.” This article was originally published on February 12, 2016.

Photo: Kristen McWharter.

Platform Gallery, a small commercial gallery space in the Platform Arts Center on Mulberry Street, was filled to capacity with students and curious art patrons waiting to experience FlucT, the performance duo made up of Sigrid Lauren and Monica Mirabile. Culture Is Not Your Friend, an original piece performed by Lauren and Mirabile, employs repetition, movie scores, and choreography familiarized by popular culture to offer a generalized critique and analysis of the ways in which culture informs identity.

I was one of the masses squeezed against PAC’s walls in anticipation of the show. Before the hoards arrived, the sparse gallery space allowed voyeurs access to an installation of videos, photographs from past performances, and a framed image of two soiled pairs of underwear. FlucT experiments are jarring, sharp movements occasionally segued by narratives ripped from classic films and hyper-dub/futurist or hip-hop scores. FlucT works activate archetypes and formulas of popular culture, and their live and documented performances are becoming increasingly popular in performance art spaces.

Read the full article here.