Photos courtesy of Jason Edward Tucker.
Katie Magician as featured on Randall Packer's Post Reality Show season 1, episode 3, "Alien Worlds" https://vimeo.com/784636979
Drag story time for Seaton Elementary’s “Share the Love Share the Pride” week. February, 2022.
Drag story time for DC Public Library, 2020.
This is the true story of one humanoid... faced with themselves... picked to live in a glass house... to heal together and have their lives changed...to find out what happens when people stop living an illusion, and start being real.
M(vs+ic)TV Beach House is an interdimensional interactive “TV special” by Katie Macyshyn (Magician). Transformer’s gallery window becomes a fish bowl featuring a technicolor beach scene from a galaxy not so far from here. Audience members are invited to engage with the performance by passing notes through a slot that will be used as content for the improvisational variety hour. This work is part of Macyshyn’s multimedia performance series M(vs+ic)TV, which follows an extraterrestrial star-child’s coming of age journey as they attempt to make contact with Earth and navigate the egoic waters of 20th century media transmissions obscuring the way.
Photos courtesy of Farrah Skeiky and Emre Yagci.
The veils between worlds are thin and we can easily slip through. Performance clip from In Plain Sight (Site) at Le Mondo in Baltimore 5-22-21.
Part installation, part time-based media, part cultural phenomenon, M(vs+ic)TV is not just a television channel, but a way of life. The ongoing performance work M(vs+ic)TV is an alien adolescent’s response to jumbled and fragmented television transmissions she receives of American pop culture. Her society, quite different from Western civilization, filters her view of the programming to imbue it with transpersonal significance. Not one to solely consume, she creates her own fan content by way of drawings, paintings, writings, vlog entries, and performance.
In the performance Sweet Green Katie Magician performs a musical number to the tune of MacArthur Park by Jimmy Webb in the style of Donna Summer. The piece references the French Revolution as an analogy for the bourgeoisie’s blissful ignorance towards the daily lived experience of the working class. As the ballad builds in intensity, pieces of cake with green icing, as references in the lyrics, fall from the performer’s costume.
Seedling is a mixed media performance that creates a cartoonish vignette of a conscious birth. The performer satirizes the common adage that giving birth is like pushing out a watermelon by hiding a watermelon in a swimsuit and using burlesque style shimmying and self-adoration to give birth. Fear of a painful birth causes women to not consider natural birth an option, however, radical birthing retreats and the use of doulas can make the act of natural birth one of ecstatic joy. In the gallery, a watermelon themed kiddie pool is used as the set for the “water birth”. Afterwards, visitors are invited to eat the “placenta” made of watermelon gelatin.
We Didn't Make Love is an experiential performance piece about unintentional abstinence and intentional renascence. A psychological portrait of loss of sexual self-esteem, We Didn’t Make Love begins by building a wall of insecurities. The wall is burst through as the mood shifts from repression to acceptance. The piece ends with the support of the audience who offer a gentle touch and the synchronized rhythm of their hearts.
Sugar is a gateway drug. In addition to being a highly addictive substance with no nutritional value, sugar represents decadence fueled by oppression and continues to be manufactured through unsustainable processes. Products with similar socio-political and environmental implications include liquor, coffee, tea, and chocolate. In the performance Toothless and Ruthless, addictive products mentioned above are an analogy for hard drugs synthesized in a lab.
Budge Dance is a mixed media movement piece working through concepts of bodily plasticity. Improvised movement, figurative video accompaniment, and live demonstration of Bernoni’s Principle explore various aspects of swelling. The work features music by SWOLL.
These Dreams is a participatory installation In homage to and in collaboration with local music celebrity TV John Langworthy, Macyshyn recreates TV John’s “dream song” videos in her interactive installation, These Dreams. Lyrics and background content for the videos will inform a related workshop based on tapping into the subconscious symbolism in dreams. Performers make songs their own with dance moves, vocal flourishes, and costume karaoke.
In the performance XXX Stacy (pronounced triple ex Stacy), multimedia techniques are used to tell the story of a celestial being breaching Earth. The installation aspect features an illuminated dome and a backdrop of video, droning sound, and fragmented poetry. The performance ends with a satirical burlesque routine to Boyfriend’s song “Like My Hand Did”. Through love, music, dance, and satire, Stacy exercises divine intervention to tap into ancient wisdom and retrieve lost parts of the soul.
The true history of civilization as we know it hinged on the mercy of extraterrestrial overlords. In the interactive performance Nut, participants are guided through an exercise in harmonic overtones, the sound of which powers the Egyptian goddess Nut in her mission to reunite with her love, Geb.
A performance art piece about best intentions and interplanetary infatuation. Some time in the future, in a galaxy not so far from here.....
The multi-media performance, “Bobbie” is a 3 part reality intervention. Part one is a mockumentary on the life and legacy of fictional blues singer, Bobbie, and includes a satirical burlesque reenactment of her most famous scene. Part two points a faerie projection on various surfaces including mirrors, the ceiling, and a spinning spiral umbrella. Part three is a surrealist spoken word piece. Bobbie is wherever she’s needed. She passes from one person to the next in the form of a radiant green ball of love-light, headlining the lounge acts of their dreams.
Cheri is a projection from an alternate universe, residing in your television at the end of the basic cable channels around 3AM, when the wall between our realm and the spirit realm is weakest.
As the wall between worlds is compromised, the television displays in flashes subliminal messages about the American government and consumerism.
These brainwashing techniques are being fought by energetic entities which are tethered to the earth of the FireWater Casino, including Cheri, the featured lounge act.
Cheri the video is used as an intro accompanying a live Cheri performance, which includes corny jokes, singing, and channeling the spirits tied to the land at the FireWater Casino.
Salomiley combines Miley Cyrus, the mysterious biblical character Salome, and the artist herself to create a modern interpretation of the dance of the seven veils. This performance combines sex with naiveté to tell a political coming of age story. Is Salomiley or someone else in control of her seductive power?
Duo Armando Lopez-Bircann and Katie Macyshyn meld their gender-centric, fantasy based performance practice. Mixing influences of seapunk, dance music, folklore, video games, and American Indian mysticism, an original mythology is created. In their whimsical performances, the artists transcend states of being and show, in rapid succession, the journey of a thousand lives, or simply one that is lived with awareness.
Just Deserts is a study of the performer’s relationship to family in the wake of a tragedy. Set to the tune of Yusef Cat Stevens Tea for the Tillerman, the protagonist attempts to fix violence, illness, and loss, in the hopes that time will heal the family unit. Through repetitive “antiquing” she rearranges a wall of symbolic heirlooms, but while working alone and living in the past, never seems to make progress.
Armando Lopez-Bircann and Katie Macyshyn's pOpera brings together two worlds in a volatile union of performance art and performing arts. Dub step beats push on the perpetual action, which is wrought with symbols and contradictions. Extravagant art objects turned costume, high energy sound and performance, and unconventional set pieces and objects create an oft-incomprehensible world in which a blow-up doll turned cyborg must find her way home. It is with this format that we question Frankensteinian themes such as the threatening power of women, unwanted children, the nature of social transformations, and the danger of knowledge.
The constant human performance of day to day life contains great moments of vulnerability, heartache, and discovery. This drama of the human experience can be called an opera. The viewer’s acceptance of this is intrinsic to the meaning of my performative body of work, The Grand Hippo Drama, An Op’ry For The Ages . By creating ties to the opera I am then free to play on its tropes and language of binaries as a tool to discuss real-world issues of class.The constant human performance of day to day life contains great moments of vulnerability, heartache, and discovery. This drama of the human experience can be called an opera. The viewer’s acceptance of this is intrinsic to the meaning of my performative body of work, The Grand Hippo Drama, An Op’ry For The Ages . By creating ties to the opera I am then free to play on its tropes and language of binaries as a tool to discuss real-world issues of class.
Genderfuck Potluck investigates the nature of social constructs and their dictation of gender and sexuality as it pertains to identity. The metamorphosis evolves from reality to a fantasized conglomeration of gender and sexuality as facilitated through food.
by Rachel Hrbek, Katie Macyshyn, René Medrano
Performed to the Little Richard song of the same title, Baby Face, is an improvised dance routine, where the performer, dressed in a pumpkin-like furry costume, spins around a pole and wiggles for tips. This performance explores girl's sexualization in a humorous way, as the dance is meant to attract and repel the viewer.
Fortune Teller is an interactive sculpture/performance where participants offer a coin in exchange for a fortune card. The fortunes are in reference to the "Save The Corcoran" student movement of 2012 at the Corcoran College of Art + Design. The installation consisted of a wooden structure that was carried in on the performer's back. The performer is dressed as a turn-of-the-century southern charlatan. Once inside the fabric cover of the box, the performer puts on a costume, including a turban and crystal ball. The combination of smoke and mirrors, exploitation, and impermanence represented the actions of the Corcoran board of trustees which led to the Corcoran's downfall as an independent institution.
