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Subway Etiquette: Clean Up Dead Flowers, Smeared Red Paint From Your Messy Performance Piece
By
Lauren Evans
Published Jan 9, 2014
Modified Jan 10, 2014
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Andrew Tess
By
Lauren Evans
Published Jan 9, 2014
Modified Jan 10, 2014
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You might remember Bettrina Banayan from her innovative, shocking, subversive subway onion chopping stunt that went somewhat viral in April. (A piece created with the intention of "gaining public reactions to a well-dressed female disregarding social-norms." Total reactions: 0.) Eight months later, Banayan is back, this time eschewing her onions and cutting board for red body paint, a smoldering countenance and the beheaded corpses of several purple daisies.
(Andrew Tess)
What do you feel when you look at Banayan, her gaze plaintive and her mouth stuffed with flowers? Do you feel melancholy at the passage of time and the loss of youth? Do you feel conflicted at the sight of a woman in such fashionable boots—are those Docs?!—covered in paint like some hellion mime? Do you feel rage that you must now stand to listen to your Slate podcast because the last seat on the train is spattered with this crap?
We reached out to the Banayan camp inquiring whether the performance concluded with a nice, thorough clean-up of the epic mess created. Succinctly, no.
"The train was pretty filled up since it was rush hour. We didn't clean anything up. We actually ran out of the train lol," writes Andrew Tess, who worked with Banayan on this... project. He goes on:
What we were trying to express in the piece is the extent art can exist in society. If we made a mess, would it simply be a mess or would it be something for people to look at and enjoy their day and be a little more inspired. Why does performance art have to exist in museums? It should be on the streets where people can enjoy it and feel inspired to be whoever they want to be. Also the images are in a different color from the actual event because if you weren't there on that train, your experience will be forever different.
Now that our minds are sufficiently open, awakened to the possibilities of Life as Art, we can't help but look back with with fondness on some of our other cherished subway performance pieces: Why buy tickets to Sleep No More when truly innovative theater is right here beside us, quietly defecating upon itself? Why watch Jay Z rap one song for six hours when can rest our tired, overburdened eyes on the gentle, hair-flecked contours of a liberated scrotum, resting serenely atop Old Navy sweatpants as the child Jesus once rested in his own manger?
Tired straphangers thank you, Bettrina Banayan, for daring to rouse us from our comfort zones. We look forward to watching your creativity flourish once you receive your summons.
Update: While Bettrina Banayan was in fact behind the onion-chopping stunt, she has pointed out that she was not the "artist" responsible for this piece, as all prior correspondence seemed to indicate, but merely the model. We received the following from Andrew Tess last night:
The article is inaccurate. It wrongly comes across that this was Bettina's piece when it is in fact mine. I splattered the paint and tore up the flower petals. Bettina was just a model for this piece. I executed the whole concept and idea. The photo and art direction (including flowers and paint) were my own forms of expression to exemplify the notion of mess and art in the city that Bettina just modeled for me. I'm the artist for this piece and I can't wait to receive my summons!
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Lauren Evans
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