Cultural Drifts’ Reimagining of Allan Kaprow’s “18 Happenings in Six Parts”
Cultural Drifts’ “Move Me” dives into the visceral solitude of modern life with an unsettling clarity. The central image—a woman on a bed with wheels, scrolling through her phone under a red-lit glow—invites an audience of a hundred into her private isolation. Surrounded by onlookers, she embodies the paradox of digital-era connection: surrounded yet profoundly alone, laughing at unsolicited, objectifying messages that only deepen her disconnect. Her call to the crowd—“Move me”—transforms from a physical plea to a layered demand for authentic engagement, for intimacy beyond the screen.
This performance echoes the haunting introspection of Sophie Calle’s Sleepers (1979), in which Calle invited strangers to sleep in her bed, observing them in vulnerable, intimate moments that highlight the tension between presence and absence. It also brings to mind Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972), where Acconci’s unseen presence beneath the floorboards created a disconcerting intimacy, implicating the audience in an uncomfortable, voyeuristic relationship. Similarly, Move Me places the viewer in a position of both witness and participant, evoking a desire to connect while remaining distanced.
Finally, Laurel Nakadate’s 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears (2011), a project in which Nakadate photographed herself crying daily, offers a powerful parallel. Like Nakadate, Cultural Drifts’ performer exposes the painful, performative aspects of loneliness in an era when self-exposure is constant but rarely satisfying. Move Me stands as a meditation on the contradictions of public intimacy, capturing the yearning for connection in a world saturated with shallow interactions. It confronts the audience with the uncomfortable truth of a culture that commodifies loneliness yet leaves its ache unfulfilled.
In Cultural Drifts’ “Surrogate Activism,” performance art finds new terrain in the realm of emotional labor. Set against a gallery backdrop, the piece centers on an interaction between Tetiana Kalivoshko, the interviewer, and Fan-Pei Ko, the emotional surrogate, who appears on a video screen asserting that her work with Ukrainian soldiers qualifies as art activism. Tetiana, in a bold red ensemble, attempts to manage the conversation with a restrained formality, a striking contrast to the emotionally charged nature of the dialogue. Her measured approach hints at a struggle to reconcile traditional interview formats with the raw intimacy Fan insists upon—an intimacy that defies standard media conventions.
Fan’s presence on screen is captivating in its effortless delivery. She radiates a quiet confidence, even smiling as she explains her work, possibly amused by the audience’s surprise at her assertion. To her, the notion that emotional surrogacy could be radical is self-evident, and her calm demeanor subtly challenges viewers to confront their own assumptions about art and activism. This dynamic evokes echoes of Marina Abramović’s explorations of vulnerability, yet Cultural Drifts reinterprets such ideas, situating them in an era where emotional labor is both undervalued and misunderstood.
Audience participation added a powerful dimension, as those gathered around Tetiana and Fan were invited to probe further, dissolving boundaries between spectator and participant. In framing emotional connection as activism, “Surrogate Activism” emerges as a bold statement on the politics of empathy—an innovative step in the evolution of relational art that situates emotional labor as both art and activism.
The Art Basel Dinner Party – Cultural Drifts’ Reimagining of Allan Kaprow’s “18 Happenings in Six Parts”
In a candlelit haze of midnight reds and dim ambers, Cultural Drifts staged an encounter at the intersection of commerce, ethics, and the relentless commodification of suffering. This wasn’t a typical Art Basel dinner party, though it unfolded under the guise of one, complete with wine-soaked conversation and an atmosphere of privilege teetering on the surreal. Reinterpreting Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in Six Parts, The Art Basel Dinner Party by Cultural Drifts distilled the essence of Kaprow’s experimental “happenings” into a single, visceral moment—a tableau of conflict that asks if art can ever be free of ethical entanglement.
The scene: A man, mid-thirties to early forties, affluent yet vaguely discontented, begins speaking of his latest acquisition—a portfolio of war photographs. His voice fills the room with a mix of pride and oblivion, as he touts the significance of owning images born of trauma. Across the table, a woman’s face tightens. She is incredulous, both at his brazenness and the absence of awareness in his celebration. Her voice cuts through the night, questioning, “Why would you pay for other people’s suffering?” Their exchange turns sharp, a tug-of-war over the boundaries of art and ethics, wealth and human experience.
In this charged moment, Cultural Drifts invokes the spirit of Yasmina Reza’s Art, where friendships fracture over the purchase of an all-white painting, challenging perceptions of value and meaning. Here, however, the stakes feel steeper, grounded in 21st-century anxieties over ownership, morality, and empathy. The guests around the table and members of the audience hover on the periphery, spectators to a kind of moral theater that invites participation yet resists resolution. Every comment, every interruption adds layers to the debate, blurring the line between performer and viewer. It is a fractured, collective reflection of our time—a world where, for better or worse, art’s boundaries are as fluid as its audiences.
The setting amplifies this tension. With dim lighting casting elongated shadows and floral arrangements draped like still-life paintings on a Dutch master’s canvas, the space feels suspended in an eternal now—an unsettling marriage of the opulent and the discomfiting. The audience finds itself implicated, pulled into the ethical minefield alongside the performers. In the eerie glow of candlelight, faces are partially obscured, reinforcing the sense that this performance is less about individuals and more about a societal condition—a moment in which art and suffering collide within the gilded walls of exclusivity. What Cultural Drifts achieves here is more than a revival of Kaprow’s framework; it is a bold interrogation of how meaning and value shift in a culture oversaturated with spectacle.
By staging this “happening” during Art Basel, in a city vibrating with the pulse of commerce and desire, they underline the question Kaprow left unanswered: How do we navigate a world where art is both a commodity and a vehicle for empathy? The Art Basel Dinner Party doesn’t pretend to resolve this. Instead, it leaves the tension raw and unresolved, an experience that clings to the psyche like the smoke trailing from a dying candle. As the scene reaches its simmering close, the woman stands, her shadow elongated and cast across the table, looking at the collector with a mix of pity and disdain. It is a quiet, defiant moment that reverberates across the room. The question of ownership, of art and trauma, lingers—a reminder that in the 21st century, art’s true challenge may be not only in what it asks of us but in what it allows us to bear witness to.
As part of Cultural Drifts’ ambitious restaging of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in Six Parts, Emotional Bypass stands out as a searing examination of the unspoken biases and cultural disconnects woven into the fabric of modern therapy culture. The scene unfolds with a white therapist, played by Maria Ponomarchuk embodying the polished detachment and performative empathy of her profession, interacting with a Middle Eastern woman seeking help—a character portrayed with palpable vulnerability by Soueissa. This stark racial and cultural juxtaposition adds a critical layer to the performance, underscoring the structural barriers that often complicate access to genuine emotional and sexual health for non-white individuals.
The therapist, with her calm but impersonal demeanor, communicates in platitudes that echo the language of “self-care” and “mental health days” popularized on social media. Her words are polished, yet they lack depth, offering no true entry point into the unique struggles faced by her client. At times, the therapist’s responses feel like thinly veiled gaslighting, dismissing the client’s pain with phrases that sanitize and oversimplify complex realities. For the Middle Eastern woman, whose experiences have likely included systemic biases and cultural pressures, this rhetoric feels hollow, highlighting the disconnect between her lived reality and the therapist’s superficial empathy.
The audience, invited to encircle the scene and participate in the conversation, becomes witness to this emotional tension, a fly on the wall in an interaction that feels both intimate and alienating. By positioning a white therapist as the gatekeeper of “mental health” and a Middle Eastern woman as the vulnerable seeker of help, Emotional Bypass points to the ways intersectional identities influence our access to care and empathy. The therapist’s words carry the unexamined weight of privilege, suggesting an idealized, one-size-fits-all approach to wellness that disregards the nuanced challenges faced by individuals from marginalized backgrounds.
The setting, with its minimal lighting and almost clinical atmosphere, amplifies this sense of disconnection, transforming the space into a kind of sterile emotional battleground. Shows like In Treatment and Couples Therapy have explored similar themes in recent years, examining the therapeutic dynamic and its inherent power imbalances, but Emotional Bypass pushes further, asking if a culture built on “self-care” rhetoric can truly understand or meet the needs of those outside its assumed norm. This performance reveals the dangers of a mental health culture that, while increasingly visible, still centers white, middle-class narratives.
In the spirit of Kaprow’s original happenings, Cultural Drifts doesn’t shy away from discomfort. The interaction between therapist and client grows increasingly charged, with the client’s frustrations echoing through the space. Each utterance, each pause, feels like a layer peeled back, revealing the emotional dissonance and unspoken biases underpinning their exchange. The audience, often implicitly aligned with the therapist’s perspective, is subtly nudged to question its own assumptions and biases, to confront the limits of empathy shaped by privilege.
In Emotional Bypass, one of six performances in Cultural Drifts’ restaging, the question is not simply about therapy but about whether therapy culture itself can be inclusive or intersectional. Can an industry rooted in individualized self-improvement truly cater to those whose identities are fragmented by histories of displacement, discrimination, and cultural alienation? The performance suggests that without addressing these structural issues, the rhetoric of “healing” remains a hollow promise, a mask that obscures deeper wounds.
As the scene reaches its climax, the client’s final gaze is not directed at her therapist but at the audience—a piercing reminder that her struggle for understanding extends beyond this singular interaction. Her gaze implores: Do you see the barriers I face? In this moment, Emotional Bypass transcends performance, becoming a call to action, a demand for an emotional landscape that values diversity not just as a buzzword but as a foundation for true empathy. Cultural Drifts leaves us with an unsettling question: Can we ever heal as individuals when the systems designed to support us remain blind to our differences?