Artist Lecture: Danny Volk

It gets Weird

Danny Volk got his BA in Theater Studies at Kent State University in 2006 and his MFA from the University of Chicago in 2014. His work focuses on the truth of objects and actions by using his theatrical semiotics to explore the social world.

            In his lecture, he was first talking about his experience as a theater major and how he worked in shows, directed them, and did some playwright.  Then he went on to talk about when he was in a play in high school he played a major role in the play, then in college, he was a minor character, a professor. This professor had a monologue and when he was doing the monologue he looked out and saw the audience, “They’re faces weren’t silhouettes anymore.” As he was explaining he says, “I could see faces and no longer hold on to that character. Both me and the character were happening simultaneously and in theatre that’s not good.” In theatre, everyone is hidden from the actors and actresses. The point of seeing a show is to transport you into that type of setting whether it be fantasy or within reality. The actors/actresses are trying to entertain us and can’t really hold the character by distraction. Those who he knew distracted Volk, such as his mother and friends, therefore pulled back into reality a little bit.  Both him and the character were happening at the same time and it felt awkward. This is true in a theatre because to be you in a play is wrong. Acting is an art form, like painting and sculpting; it’s a projection of person with a unique twist. To be projecting through you is good but being both you and character is not a good thing as he says.

            As he was talking about the work a couple of things came to mind. First thing came to mind was his artwork. His artwork pushes to our limitation of awkwardness puts the member of the audience into a “character” in a “play,” for example, his GAP project. As he was explaining what this was, I was thinking about a game of pushing boundaries when I was a freshman and I was as a stagehand for a play. The last showing of the play, whichever play was playing at the moment in time; the actors/actresses would play a game called slap butt. As the title of the game explains it all there was a twist to it. They would play it during the play. Trying to sneak a slap on another actors butt without any of the audience members noticing. It is almost exactly what he was doing but to a different degree. He is doing to an “audience member.” He was pushing the limitation of someone’s comfort zone and was waiting until someone reacted to see how he or she would react to what he was doing. The second thing that came to mind was the art movement, Dada. What he is doing is similar to what Dadaist did in the early 20^th century. The Gas Heart by Tristan Tzara has a similar effect on the audience member. The Gas Heart affected the audience by pushing boundaries with its characters and when those boundaries were pushed passed the line they left. Volk’s work in the GAP is similar; he used the element of touch to push those boundaries and was thinking about the reactions of the customers. As he was doing this project he documented how the customer reacted and added into the space in which he was presenting this project.