User:Kurt Fulton/Watchface A Performance Collective 1983 - 1991

Watchface: A Performance Collective 1983 - 1991

Watchface was a seven-member performance collective, based in New York City, who performed together in various combinations from February 1983 to July 1991, eventually creating forty different works. During those years, the East Village art scene provided a wealth of welcoming venues and adventurous audiences as well as a diverse and inspirational community of fellow performers.

The tightly knit group included a brother and sister, a husband and wife, and multiple sets of close friends and roommates. At one time, six of the seven members lived within a five-block radius in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They generally rehearsed in their small, sparsely-furnished living rooms. Though they occasionally worked with guest artists, the actual members of the group remained constant throughout their existence.

The name Watchface referred both to the act of seeing and to the measurement of time. Their shows always displayed an awareness of time as an organizing principle of structure, and the content of their strong visual presentation of dense, rhythmic choreography sprang from observation of human behavior in all levels of society. Catherine Bush in the East Village Eye dubbed them “The New Anthropologists.”

Their distinctive gestural style, generally rhythmic whether accompanied by music or not, was choreographed, most often collectively, from many, many, small bits of physical and/or vocal information. The work tended to be “low tech.” That is, the performer was the primary visual element with little emphasis on the theatrical devices of lighting, setting, or costume. This made the pieces easily adaptable to many different spaces and audiences.

Watchface functioned as a collective, composed of diverse personalities with strengths in a wide range of disciplines: dance, theater, two- and three-dimensional art, graphics, music and writing. In spite of the diversity in form, content, and media in their work, the Watchface identity was clearly evident throughout: an irreverent sense of humor combined with a sincere investigation for the kernel of truth, applied to subjects as varied as madness, family violence, undesirable personal habits, and shopping at Woolworth’s.

Although they had been working together in various combinations since 1983, the name Watchface first appeared in June 1986 when they performed Watchface’s Greatest Hits – a collection of the best scenes from the work they had done up to that point – at the opening of Gates of Dawn, Kestutis Nakas’ short- lived, but legendary, club in a Knights of Columbus hall near the Holland Tunnel entrance.

Watchface disbanded in the fall of 1990 but was revived by three of its members for one more show the following summer – 2000 Questions at ''Serious Fun! at Lincoln Center'', a prestigious annual festival of downtown performers.

All seven members of Watchface have remained in communication in the years since their breakup though their lives have taken divergent paths. The entire group reunited for an evening of performance at Dixon Place on April 1, 2016, to celebrate Dixon Place’s 30th anniversary and the completion and launch of an archival website. www.watchface.nyc

Watchface was Chazz Dean, Kurt Fulton, Kim X Knowlton, Melanie Monios, Iris Rose, James Siena, and Maggie Siena.

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