“Just Another Shadie Bitch” (Epilogue): Plenty of Nothing

“Just Another Shadie Bitch” (Epilogue): Plenty of Nothing is a live installation based on the repetition of a 20-minute score through the length of a workday in the service industry. This piece evokes George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess to think of the relationship between dispossession and performative practices.

Plenty of Nothing appropriates the lyrics and the melody from the homonymous song in the aforementioned opera as the main theme of a vocal performance for an exhibition space almost empty. The score combines multiple textual references to create a monologue marked by tropes of spoken poetry, public addresses, and readings. This, to ask for the possibility of sharing what in essence is not owned, that is, nothingness.

***This project is funded in part by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.***