VOYAGE INTO INFINITY, PIONEER WORKS, BROOKLYN, SEPTEMBER 14-15 2024

Voyage Into Infinity

Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, New York

September 14 - 15 2024

Centered on a roving kinetic installation that unravels across the organization’s Main Hall space, Voyage Into Infinity features a cast of live performers who trigger, participate in, and bear witness to an assortment of physical feats, lo-fi magic tricks and indoor pyrotechnics. This project marks Narcissister’s first large-scale performance commission since 2012.

Rooted in a fascination with states of impending collapse, both literal and metaphoric, Voyage Into Infinity captivates viewers through an inventive collision of reclaimed, everyday items with the spectacle that has defined much of Narcissister’s two-decade practice. The performance pays homage to Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s canonical video The Way Things Go (1987), in which the duo created and documented an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. In contrast to the inspirational work’s unseen male creators, Narcissister’s rendition will foreground the artist and other female-appearing performers as both drivers of the action and subjects of the crowd’s fascination.

Borrowing its title from a song by the hardcore band Bad Brains and featuring a live score performed by musician Holland Andrews, Voyage Into Infinity channels raw energy and a punk aesthetic. Through this work, which will also be filmed and made into a video of its own right, the artist offers a contemporary, feminist revisioning of The Way Things Go. As in all of her projects, the emblematic Narcissister mask—originally repurposed from a 1960s-era wig display form—provides eerie commentary on entrenched beauty standards, the objectification of women, and the malleability of race.

Performance Photos by Walter Wlodarczyk