From the recent archives vault #2 - Second Front at PERFORMA 07 (NYC)...

Photo by Tran Spire. SECOND FRONT from left-right: Tran Spire, Man Michinaga, AliseIborg Zhaoying, Fau Ferdinand, Gazira Babeli (King Kong), Wirxli Flimflam (me), Tea Chenille, Lizsolo Mathilde and Great Escape. Here is Second Front's official group photo for the Wrath of Kong (original title was "Konkey Bong") performance created for the PERFORMA 07Festival in New York. This performance was curated by Defne Ayas and Esa Nickle and took place on November 03, 2007.

Hey there PERFORMA pariahs, Big Apple belchers and donkey-eared King Ding-Dongs,

Phew! Finally, I have had enough spare time to post my basic reflections about Second Front's epic performance for the PERFORMA festival in New York!!!

My colleague in Second Front, AliseIborg Zhaoying (Penny Leong Browne) has already written an official posting on our group blog here.

In addition to this blog posting, Second Front co-member Great Escape also has posted some hi-rez pictures from this performance.

I also know that Tran Spire (another Second Front co-member) recorded some video of our performance so I cannot wait to see it on our group blog!

In the meantime, please check out the only pictures I personally took of this performance session. Well, the first pic is not mine but the rest are...

Before we formally commenced our performance, we spent some quality time ensuring that Sircus Tilling (the in-world correspondent for Art in America magazine) could keep us posed in group-formation long enough to take some decent photos for publication. Second Front is very excited at the prospect of appearing in Art in America in RL. If you look at the bottom of this pic, you will see Esther Decuir in a brown biplane. She has become our embedded journalist for the news network, SLNN. She has been embedded into many of our performances lately which has helped her cover the Breaking News more accurately.

It took us awhile to leave the photo-shoot and progress towards our roles as performers. I mean, what is a successful performance without ample documentation? Sigh!

Here I am posing next to an (even more) two-dimensional simulacrum of the famous NYC sculptor, Richard Serra. For those who are generally attuned to more than one dimension in the artworld, the appearance of Serra at this level of the building (and the game, for that matter) might give you a case of deja vu as Serra makes a similar appearance in a parallel side of the metaverse.

Here is the first snapshot of me reaching the top of the Empire State Building. I am so high up, I am even slightly above the Super Mario Clouds region.

Here are most of Second Front at the very top of the Empire State Building. We managed to ascend several stories above the aforementioned archangelic clouds.

In this pic you can see that Kong's gravity was severely being tested. I managed to hammer Kong's foot while Tran's and Great Escape's biplanes had managed to disorient the mutated monkey and throw him/her (Kong's gender was never pre-determined) off balance.

Here is a good pic of King (Gaz) Kong barely hanging onto the top of the Empire State Building. This was perhaps the foreshadowing moment during the performance where the audience may have figured out that the end is nigh for the ape standing his/her ground in the sky. It was immediately after this point, that I rezzed my own biplane and took to the skies for the final battle!

After some reckless yet coldly calculating attack sorties, I eventually realized my biplane was running out of gas so I knew I had to crash land somewhere so what better place to go out with a ceremonial bang than crashing directly into members of the in-world audience? Heheheheheheh....

GAME OVER! Here is a scene from our Gameover Victory Dance! Lizsolo Mathilde had officially announced the completion of all the levels, King (Gaz) Kong has been defeated, the flying team under the leadership of Fau Ferdinand had completed all the necessary sorties, all the Princess Peaches (Man, Tea and Alise) have been rescued and so this was the perfect opportunity for the rest of us to climb onto Kong's lifeless avatar body and beat him/her while he/she was down. I knew my mallet would come in handy after awhile...I did not just want it to be a performance prop! STOP! HAMMER TIME! It's Clobberin' time!!!


SNAPSHOTS FROM SECOND FRONT's DRESS REHEARSAL:

Here are some Second Front members congregating at the performance space in Gazira's Locusolus property just in time to begin preparations for our dress rehearsal.

As you can see, accidents can happen during the rehearsal. Here is a pic of me and my bi-plane designed by Cubey Terra. It looks like I (un)successfully ran out of gas and therefore crash-landed my plane right into the Empire State Building... Oh wait, maybe that was actually an intentional strategy! ;-) I knew that when it came to performance time, I would target the in-world audience instead rather than the heart of the Empire...

Here I am in full Mario and Wario mode posing for the camera...At the point this pic was taken, I was practicing my gradual ascending and descending routines up and down the ramp system of the Empire State Building. I believe this pic was taken before I finally got ahold of a barrel launcher :-)

SNAPSHOT OF THE OFFICIAL PERFORMA INVITATION:

Here is photo-documentation from our very first meeting with the PERFORMA curator(s) known as Performa Kamachi. At this time, Esa Nickle was behind the avatar in RL but her co-curator Defne Ayas has also been known to possess the avatar from time to time. This meeting occurred sometime in the late summer and it was at that time that we had just found out that PERFORMA had spent the a few weeks prior trying to locate us in-world so they could formally invite us to perform for the festival on November 03, 2007.