Cyborgs in Mutation: osseus labyrint's Alien Body Art

"The subjects are cyborg, nature is Coyote, and the geography is Elsewhere."

--Donna Haraway (in Stone 1995:xi)

Habitat Performance: A Reviewer's Diary

2 October 1999: A crew with heavy-duty cables, electric generators, sound and lighting equipment, and video cameras gather on the Los Angeles River's concrete-filled riverbed for a location shoot. This rather frequent sight in L.A. is the cover for an impending live performance doubled as the filming of a documentary by osseus labyrint, a loose constellation of multidisciplinary artists led by Hannah Sim and Mark Steger. Sim and Steger had been trying without success to obtain a permit for an on-site live performance here underneath the First Street Bridge. They changed their strategy to apply for a film permit and secured an official approval within a week. The duo pushed this subterfuge to its logical end by inviting audience members to witness their performance for free, on the condition that they appear as unpaid extras in their video documentary. ¹

22 September 1999: An air of L.A.-confidentiality begins to generate itself 10 days before the planned live event at the Los Angeles River. osseus labyrint announces the coming of THEM with a postcard, which displays what looks like a classical perspectival painting of the performance site: a concrete bridge astride a post-industrial river environment, flanked by railroad tracks on both banks. At the center of the postcard is a pale spectral figure walking on all fours; on the postcard's lower edge runs a series of cryptic lines and dots that look like a cross between a barcode and telegraphic signals (plate 1).

A case of cybernetic mutation is concealed within this oddly classical composition: the image was made from a Polaroid of the Sixth (not the First) Street Bridge and then manipulated by Sim with the Photoshop software program to simulate a painting. The spectral figure in the foreground is an image of herself in reversed negative. Yet, how the picture was made seems irrelevant at this moment, when the amazement of "what is this?" takes over all sensory preoccupation. "A Scout from Mars Snooping in L.A.!" flashes the picture's tabloid-flavored subtext, an almost compulsive "reader's response" in this sci-fi-fed metropolis. Our next action is already prescribed by the slogan from the popular Fox TV series, The X-Files: "The truth is out there." And we must go find it! So prods the cryptic postcard from osseus labyrint, which omits most details but lists an information line. The line leads to a three-minute voicemail message, instructing the caller where to meet, what to wear, how to get down to the riverbed, and when to call again for contingencies. A hint of a semilegal clandestine affair has left its scent.

Late afternoon, 2 October 1999: osseus labyrint arrives at the side alley next to the First Street Bridge to find its planned entrance to the riverbed blocked by a mile-long train. The railroad police exacerbate the situation by forbidding any crossing of the track because of an accident that killed two people the day before. The company has to change the performance site to the opposite bank, while improvising a human map by stationing attendants at strategic spots to guide the audience through the urban labyrinth of downtown L.A.

Later that day: The audience, arriving in cars, is rerouted by guides in orange night-glo jackets, swinging flashlights. More than a hundred cars trail each other to circle around factory lots and downtown shops and dive through the storm drain that plummets into the riverbed. We spectators are instructed to drive close to the bank, cross the water that slightly hugs the tires, stay away from the central current, and to triple park on the riverbed. We then climb up the concrete bank and cautiously hold the barbwires that divide the river from the...