Narcissister: Voyage Into Infinity

Pioneer Works is pleased to present the world premiere of Voyage Into Infinity by Narcissister, a New York-based performance artist whose multidisciplinary practice blends humor, fetish, and social commentary. Centered on a roving kinetic installation that unravels across the organization’s Main Hall space, the newly commissioned work features a cast of live performers who trigger, participate in, and bear witness to an assortment of physical feats, lo-fi magic tricks and indoor pyrotechnics. This project marks Narcissister’s first large-scale performance commission since 2012.

Rooted in a fascination with states of impending collapse, both literal and metaphoric, Voyage Into Infinity captivates viewers through an inventive collision of reclaimed, everyday items with the spectacle that has defined much of Narcissister’s two-decade practice. The performance pays homage to Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s canonical video The Way Things Go (1987), in which the duo created and documented an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine. In contrast to the inspirational work’s unseen male creators, Narcissister’s rendition will foreground the artist and other female-appearing performers as both drivers of the action and subjects of the crowd’s fascination.

Borrowing its title from a song by the hardcore band Bad Brains and featuring a live score performed by musician Holland Andrews, Voyage Into Infinity channels raw energy and a punk aesthetic. Through this work, which will also be filmed and made into a video of its own right, the artist offers a contemporary, feminist revisioning of The Way Things Go. As in all of her projects, the emblematic Narcissister mask—originally repurposed from a 1960s-era wig display form-provides eerie commentary on entrenched beauty standards, the objectification of women, and the malleability of race.

About the Artist

Narcissister is a New York-based artist and performer working at the intersection of contemporary dance, visual art, and activism. She has presented work worldwide at festivals, nightclubs, museums, and galleries. She also received a Bessie Award nomination in 2013, Creative Capital and United States Artists Awards in 2015, and her first feature film Narcissister Organ Player premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2018. Her activist short art film Narcissister Breast Work premiered at Sundance 2020, and won Best Documentary Short at Outfest 2021. She was nominated for the ANTI Festival Live Art Prize in 2021, and is currently in development of a theatrical piece for Playwrights Horizons’ New Works Lab in Fall 2024.

Time:
Doors: 6PM
Start: 7PM

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