Cadaverous Cabaret

by Mike Shanley

From Pulp, Jan 16, 2004

The Property Project, the international artist community based in Pittsburgh, has kept busy over the last several months, staging provocative dance performances that embarked on a small national tour and putting the finishing touches on a book that compiles works by the artists involved with them.

This weekend, they'll present the Cadaverous Cabaret, another evening of music and performance art that includes local and national acts. Ego Likeness -- an industrial trip-hop band from Baltimore -- and Voltaire -- a singer-songwriter with a flair for the theatrical -- share the stage with Phat Man Dee and Thou Shalt Not, as well as local artist Gene Fenton and burlesque performer Foxy Moxy.

The Property Project also premieres a new piece that night entitled Menagerie. It combines themes of deadly sins with representations of women throughout history who embody them: Marilyn Monroe, Salome, Cleopatra and Medusa, with a geisha girl representing grace and purity. After all the women pay for their sins with their lives, a political slant works its way into the piece, expressing a distaste for the country's leadership, which results in "a war of blacklight paint from grenade balloons, water guns and squirt canteens."

It might sound like a surreal combination of ideas, but the Property Project believes that taboos, which include subject matter, should not exist in art.

Previous Page