mayfield brooks: Viewing Hours
Monday, January 20, 2020
6 to 8pm
Participation was free and by appointment,
in 20-minute sessions.
mayfield brooks, Viewing Hours, performance at The Kitchen, April 6, 2019. Photograph by Paula Court. [Image Description: Artist mayfield brooks wears a gray jumpsuit and looks as though they are falling backwards with arms raised in the air. There is one spotlight on them and a hanging bouquet of flowers directly above them. They are barefoot and the floor is a black cement.]
In their durational performance Viewing Hours, choreographer and urban farmer mayfield brooks buried their body under compost and decaying flowers. The piece was inspired by brooks’ three-year epistolary correspondence with legendary Black, queer, trans activist ancestor, Marsha ‘Pay it No Mind’ Johnson. Viewing Hours posed the question, "Can I get a witness?" as a call to action, summoning human and nonhuman ancestors to begin confronting the difficult history of slavery and anti-black violence in this country. Taking the form of a wake, brooks’ artwork examined perceptions of death and decay—specifically the spectacle of Black bodies dying, decomposing, and grieving in plain sight—and challenges the currency that makes Black death profitable. brooks invited us as viewers—on the date that Martin Luther King’s birthday is observed as a national holiday—to witness their durational act with all of our senses and great attention.
brooks conceived of Viewing Hours as an intimate performance, to be witnessed by a limited number of audience members in small groups. Participation was free and by appointment, in 20-minute sessions.
This performance of Viewing Hours was organized by The 8th Floor’s Events Manager William Furio. The full expression of Viewing Hours will be performed as part of Letters to Marsha, which is an experimental dance performance premiering at JACK from January 30 to February 1, 2020.
For more information on Viewing Hours, please click here.
For more information on Letters to Marsha, please click here.
Bio
mayfield brooks improvises while black, and is currently based in brooklyn, new york working as a movement-based performance artist, vocalist, urban farmer, writer, and wanderer. they studied contemporary dance at the school for new dance (sndo) in amsterdam and moving on center in oakland, ca, and holds a mfa in interdisciplinary performance from uc davis and a masters in performance studies from northwestern university. mayfield was a 2017 artist in residence at movement research new york, a 2019 dance and process (dap) artist at the kitchen nyc, and is currently an artist in residence at the center for performance research (cpr) in brooklyn, ny. mayfield teaches urban farming courses for farm school new york (fsny), and teaches & performs dance and vocal improvisation nationally and internationally.