Visual art has its genres and sub-genres. Same too of writing, music, film, theatre and dance. A theatre or performance genre (sub-genre?) I am interested in is a variant of the Makeover Reveal: the Surprise Military Homecoming (SMH).
Last week I spent a half hour looking for anything written on SMHs, but all I found were examples. The closest I came to a commentary was a 1997 Jan Peacock exhibition at the Western Front, an exhibition I remember seeing and, more recently, reading about in the centre's now defunct magazine.
The following text is taken from Front Magazine, vol. IX, no. 1, p. 13, September/October 1997:
An Authorization: Notes towards an installation project by Jan Peacock for the Western Front. Those who cry out and clasp at each other at the International Arrivals Gate mark their otherwise permanent separation with sudden, almost violent releases of energy.
As for us, separation is an actual place from which we need never depart. And as for our more temperate embrace, please imagine in its place what it took to get us even this far. For us, the embrace is only approximate and always inexplicable, the skin never entirely exposed to the casual eye. As for the causal eye and as for you, read in this that we simply require more definition, a clearer position — somewhere between international arrivals and domestic departures.
We authorize you, then, to submit these strong bodies to your frail, mesmerized looking. Debate their trajectories; consign this collective musculature to speculation.
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