A performance piece at Maryland Institute College of Art where I wore a thorn stuffed full length leather jacket and played the organ while pressing it into the front of my body, while pressing my back against the wall. I recited a quote from Joseph Beuys about the power of showing ones physical and emotional wounds. Thorns entered my body in all directions, and resurfaced months later.

From the Tate:

‘And when I say “Show it! Show the wound that we have inflicted upon ourselves during the course of our development”, it is because the only way to progress and become aware of it is to show it.’ (Quoted in Borer, p.25.) This statement reflects Beuys’s concept of art as therapy, not only as a means for personal healing but in its ability to communicate ideas to a wide audience in order for social, moral, political and ecological remedies to be found.

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/beuys-show-your-wound-t07976

A performance piece at Charm City Artspace in Baltimore, MD where I recited Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956) while an upside-down cross was carved into my back, as I read facing the audience. This was the first performance piece I did outside of an academic artistic institution, and meant to me my freedom outside of Catholicism and Islam, having gone to Catholic schools since I was in pre-school and growing up Muslim. This piece was a sign of my autonomy as an artist, but most importantly as a human being.

Performed at SDF America in West Baltimore on March 12, 2011. A celebration with live bands and performance art commenced all day in the ex-auto-body garage where we lived in at the time. Zoe Burke and I got married in a ceremony complete with a flower girl (Kory Shoja-Chaghorvand) throwing dead street rats, where our bond was sealed with blood by the the cutting of of our palms by master of ceremonies Door.

A collaborative performance piece with Kory Shojae-Chaghorvand, with the assitance of Isa Gonzalez in the Annex building warehouse in Station North, Baltimore in October. Twenty boxes of wine flowed into a claw foot bathtub onto Isa, wrapped in cellophane. The audience was invited to drink from the flowing mic-ed bathtub, while Kory and I drank from it with ceramic white bowls, maintaining our distance in the corner of the room behind a projection of a scene from the movie The Titanic (1998) of the boat sinking in reverse. In front of us, in the corner of the room was a shower with dried ice on contact mic-ed sheet metal vibrating and spewing fog. We worn thermals with our faces painted white.

A collaborative performance piece with Kory Shojae-Chaghorvand in the Annex building warehouse in Station North, Baltimore in November. We choreographed and rehearsed the non-verbal communication from our childhood, and then performed it in a pit of used motor-oil from a local auto-body shop. The piece was about our relationship as brother/sister and our experiences together. The piece was in tribute to our family dog, Spike, who was drenched in used-motor oil, tied to a split rail fence, and left in the sun for a day. This was because of a miscommunication of language, and the dog had actually had mange. This was one of many obscure experiences Kory and I both share.

If I had to say that there was one singualr thing in my life I am proud of doing, and would let it speak for all efforts in my life, it would be R.I.Peat. I would have it written as my tombstone.

Performed in collaboration with Kory Shojae-Chaghorvand and Nicki Apostolow Weaver at Terrault Gallery in Station North, Baltimore in January 4th. Kory made a wooden box that he filled with wet cement, while jumping rope in an intimate performance at SDF America in West Baltimore. The day after this performance, Nicki and I worked out in front of the projection of the performance of Kory the night before, covered in tanning oil, we worked out until physical exhaustion and ended around the end of Kory’s 14 minute cement performance projection.

A collaborative performance piece with Trevor Blauthe and Kory Shojae-Chaghorvand at the Crown in Baltimore. The performance consisted of us wearing headphones listening to three separate songs on stage with microphones and blankets covering us: Deftones “Change in the House of Flies”, Alice In Chains “Would”, and Dolly Parton “Johnny Appleseed”. We each sang along with our three separate songs, unable to hear the backing tracks of each others’ singing or the composition of the children laughing, and then crying at the finale.

A digital video about womanhood and mensuration.

Photo by Scout Pare Phillips.

We turned my room in the Annex into a performance art venue called Ghost Beach. This is the only documentation of the first piece I did there.

A short lived collaboration between myself and Door at SDF America.

Street Business (2012)

A power electronics project with Zoe Burke and Jason Crumer in Baltimore, MD.

https://www.discogs.com/Reverse-Baptism-Street-Business/release/3688322