David Blaine, ELECTRIFIED, Pier 54, Oct. 5-8, 2012, NYC
Violent sparks of electric light brighten Pier 54 against the Jersey skyline on a cold October saturday night. Wrapped in the sounds of the Hudson River's steady lapping waters against old pier stonework, a bizarre figure stands suspended high up on a platform-shrouded in lightening. A human form moves slowly in a Faraday suit, surrounded by relentless bolts of electric shock. Sonic rhythms played live
on electronic keyboards trigger a synchronous lightening dance of electricity around the spaceman. It is wild, hypnotic, trance like. David Blaine's notorious extreme performance defying mortality, gravity and human bodily rhythms, finds its most ambitious mise en scene yet, a theater of million volts bombarding his body for 72 hours. While the mere sight of something so visually disconcerting is in itself a destination performance, what Blaine is investigating is the outer limits of human endurance. The sound and light show is impressive, though for my taste, not in itself a reason to remember ELECTRIFIED. What makes this a remarkable performance of endurance is the extraordinary stretch of physicality and kinetic minimalism that Blaine subjects himself to - involving sleep deprivation, restricted mobility, and total denial of bodily needs for a period of 3 days. Surrounded by the utterly modern experience of electric immersion, Blaine asks his audiences at the edge of the Hudson River on a cold Fall night to consider the limits of human potential, the outer boundaries of kinetic performativity. The piece is at once block buster entertainment and zen meditation, high octane performance and magical journey into technological wizardry.
