Performance Art – Twinkle: Traveler Beneath the Stars
“TWINKLE: Traveler Beneath the Stars” was a site-specific performance art collaboration between Jason Jenn and Vojislav Radovanović, based on Radovanović’s exhibition “Prayer for Travelers: Dairy of an Immgrant” at MuzeuMM art gallery on November 24, 2018.
Jason replaced a drawing on cardboard by Radovanovic “Unidentified Immigrant in Paris, 2016” that lay on the floor as a centerpiece of the exhibition. After a stretch of time, in which the audience temporarily became the performers interacting with each other awkwardly as the adjusted to the slumbering figure of Jason on the floor.
Jason pops to life, with a recitation of an original poem by Radovanović in which the homeless man is taken back in time to a childhood memory of making a playhouse out of cardboard. The audience is then taken on a very human journey, relating the housing crisis in Los Angeles to the political climate surrounding immigration and fact that all humans are truly refugees – ever since Adam and Eve were exiled from Eden.
Using stars as the central theme, Jason links the celestial objects to the cultural obsession with celebrity, weaving a story that reminded people that they possessed the ability to be their own gods and saviors, and exposing the hypocrisy in which religion, nationalism, and capitalism were and are still used as excuses for various atrocities and crimes against humanity throughout history.
