Tic toc, it don’t stop

Handmade puppets commenting on the seven deadly sins and the commemoration of an on-campus arrest is enough to make anyone want to run to the nearest confessional. Then again, that just might be the point.

The Tic Toc Performance Artist Festival, held on May 27 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., promises to be a day of eclectic performances including a bikini wearing violin player, the dangers of giving away your social security number, a little reminiscing of an arrest on campus and, well, some religious lessons from puppets.

The festival has grown to include Columbia graduate and undergraduate students and will include various types of performances from art to social dance, according to Julie Caffey, coordinator of the Hokin Center of the Wabash Campus Building, 623. S. Wabash Ave.

“It’s from the more emotionally and intellectually challenging to just plain fun,” Caffey said. “I’m excited about how the students have responded across the board to the call for this type of work. It makes me happy that Columbia is growing in this particular area of making artwork.”

Held at various locations on Columbia’s campus, the Tic Toc Performance Artist Festival is a one-day event that features a multitude of talent in the Columbia community.

Jeanne Walker Ehrich, a graduate student in interdisciplinary arts, will be performing the “Seven Deadly Sins” along with three other students. The show will feature 12 puppets discussing the sins of “blame, betrayal, denial, manipulation, complacency, guilt and fear,” with several short pieces accompanied by songs for each sin, according to Ehrich.

“Part of what I’m trying to deal with is the personal, the political, the social and the religious in life and how all these sins are sanctioned and practiced by all of the above,” Ehrich said. “I just want to raise some awareness about it.”

Ehrich said she took behaviors she’d experienced in the past and incorporated them into her performance by using those sins she felt were slippery, unacknowledged, hard to talk about and destructive.

Anni Holm, a senior photography major and Nyok-Mei Wong, a senior dance major, will perform a piece titled “900 Charcoal Silhouettes” draws parallels to the war in Iraq and the fallen soldiers to others who have died around the world. Holms said the piece begins with herself and Wong outlining each other, and with the help of volunteers, draw up to 900 silhouettes on the street—representing the number of American soldiers that have died in the war.

“This is a very heavy loaded subject matter that we’re bringing up, but it also ties into how kids play on the driveway and make outlines of each other with chalk, and I think that it brings a less deep interpretation to it,” Holms said. “But it also leaves you in somewhat confusion because I think it’s what a lot of people feel.”
Holms also said that the piece ties into how newspapers, television and the Internet are constantly filled with coverage about the war, yet, “we still sit and eat our dinner while we’re watching it,” she said. “It kinda goes with if we’re even taking it seriously. Or do we feel like we’re left somewhere in between where we don’t really know exactly?”

Holms and Wong will perform “900 Charcoal Silhouettes” from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. between the South Campus Building, 624 S. Michigan Ave., and the Spertus Museum, 618 S. Michigan Ave.
Ehrich performs from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Wabash Campus Building, 623 S. Wabash Ave.
Anni Holm, Jeanne Walker Ehrich and other Tic Toc artists will perform at various locations on campus throughout the day at Manifest. For more information, visit www.manifest.colum.edu, or call (312) 344-6789.