FULL-TEXT - Provincetown Arts

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Curated by Bailey Bob Bailey
May 1 – June 21, 2015
Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Provincetown, Massachusetts
February 5 – April 2, 2016
University Galleries, Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
PROVINCETOWN ARTS PRESS
PROVINCETOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

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Jay Critchley, Incorporated
Special Thanks to:
Mike Syers, Donna Roll, Berta Walker, Zehra Khan, Heather Reed, Conwell Hardware and Lumber,
Provincetown Dump, Town of Provincetown Art Commission, Jerry Beck, Tim Norris, Kathy Chapman, Geri Critchley,
Kipp Bradford, Louis Falconi, Andrea Pluhar, Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown Community Compact, Jennifer
Liese, Breon Dunigan, Chris Racine, Matt Clark, Provincetown Public Library
Copyright © 2015 by Provincetown Arts Press
Copyright © 2015 by Jay Critchley
Copyright © 2015 Statement by the curator Bailey Bob Bailey
Copyright © 2015 Essay by W. Rod Faulds
Copyright © 2015 Essay by Christopher Busa
Copyright © 2015 Essay by Tim Norris
All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission,
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Provincetown Arts Press
650 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657
www.provincetownarts.org
Cover: Jay Critchley, Deep Bones Opening Ceremony, “O Breaker of Bones,” 2011, Freight + Volume Gallery, Nyc, photo by Adam Ryder
Backcover: Jay Critchley, NUKE SOUP, 1980s, image for anti-nuclear billboard for Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and 2014 postcard, photo by Kathy Chapman
Inside front and backcovers: Compilation of logos created by Critchley for his corporate identities and art projects
Pages 6, 7, 12: Jay Critchley, Sand Drawing (detail)
Catalogue design: Irene Lipton
Catalogue editor: Kirsten Andersen
Printed by RPI Printing in Fall River, MA.
A statement by the curator, Bailey Bob Bailey
in the summer of 1991, Nick Flynn invited me to
a dinner party at his place—a sparsely furnished,
and probably cheap, summer rental in the West
End of town—where I first met Jay Critchley, the
conceptual and performance artist I had heard
so much about in my first year living in Provincetown. Nick’s apartment was near the old
Moor’s restaurant, where Jay used to work as
a waiter, and that night we dined with a group
of young and talented poets. What I remember
most about that first meeting was Jay’s big laugh
and engaging banter.
At the time, Jay was the object of controversial
fanfare, after being chosen to represent contemporary artists in the documentary Provincetown:
U.S.A. He was also known as the longtime founder
and administrator of the community fundraiser
Swim for Life. The night of the dinner party, Jay was
wearing a baseball cap. Looking back, this seems
appropriate. He is a man of many hats, now a
longtime friend who I believe is the most inventive
Provincetown artist of his generation.
This Catalogue is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency that also receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
ISBN: 0-944854-58-3
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992.
PRINTED IN USA
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Jay’s artistic beginnings started in a parking lot
on the town’s wharf, with a sand-covered station
wagon complete with a facsimile family. The car,
the first in his Sand series, became a bit of a media
happening, and forged a public connection with
the town. Sand Car marks Jay’s foray into the
world of art and press: from his annual Christmas
tree pyre and purge to his backyard septic space
as opera and theater house, Jay’s engagement
with the world is explicitly linked to the masses.
His art reminds us of our collective and complete
culpability—his work on AIDS, America’s car culture, sewage dispersement, and nuclear energy
all point to the catastrophe inherent in being a
member of society.
Jay’s art looks at the planet from space. In his
projects Beige and Big Twig, he celebrates the
audacity of man’s inability to steward life on
earth. Jay’s subjects are love and death, and
the long trail of effluence joining the two. His
art commands us to stand up and take notice,
else we suffer the consequences. He is a societal
soothsayer, holding a mirror to our world, warts
and all, and through that process Jay has become
a starets of revelation.
His work is exciting because of how he brings the
energy of performance to his great facility with
the formal rigors of material object making. But
his sculptures and installations are not only performatively alive, they are brilliant compositional
presentations. The verbosity and chicanery of his
epic polemical performances, his silly hats and his
call and response oratories, may present viewers
with new ways of experiencing visual works, but
they are made things that insist on their materials, as do all commanding visual works. His
art can be listed as a clarion of material-based
descriptions.
Condom covered statuettes of Abraham Lincoln,
the Virgin Mary and the Pieta.
A “Jackie O” pillbox hat made of multiple fish skins
Twin Towers fabricated out of flashing disposable cameras
Canisters of sand from around the world
Miss Tampon Liberty’s robe, torch and crown made of beach-combed plastic tampon applicators
Jay’s scatology of democracy, capitalism and the
social contract are presented through corporate
logos, public sacrifice and contrived ritual. Few
artists rival the scope of his work, and fewer still
function in such a multiplicity of realms. Jay
Critchley the seer, gravedigger and jester in one,
is a man necessary for all of us in the theater
piece of contemporary life.
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Jay Critchley Our Spirited Guide
Jay Critchley art, ritual, and a new global yawning
by W. Rod Faulds
by Christopher Busa
“If you think about all the gains our society has made, from independence to now, it wasn’t government. It was activism. People
think,‘Oh, Teddy Roosevelt established Yosemite National Park,
what a great president.’ BS. It was John Muir who invited Roosevelt
out and then convinced him to ditch his security and go camping.
It was Muir, an activist, a single person.” —Yvon Chouinard
of first meeting and working with Jay
Critchley in 1989. Thanks to an article in Art New England
by Dana Friis Hansen, I was first exposed to Jay via a photograph: he wore a suit and tie, shovel in hand, standing
before New Hampshire’s Seabrook nuclear reactor. This
image and Jay’s idea to retrofit our aging and questionable nuclear power grid into a series of national monuments seemed pure genius. His evocation of John Muir
was both poignant and tongue in cheek; Jay tends to take
on big battles with very slim odds of victory. His related
real estate propositions to locate high-end condos with
unobstructed views of nuclear reactors were even more
far fetched, but amazingly, developers sought Jay out for
explanations of his vision of the good life in the glow of
gleaming nuclear plants.
I invited Jay to Williams College, where I was the
Associate Director of the Museum of Art, to participate in a symposium featuring predominantly art
world perspectives on environmental art and environmental activism. It seemed to me that Jay’s role should
be more than a typical auditorium presentation of
his work. There wasn’t much of a plan when he first visited campus, showing up in a full-size late model station
wagon. This vehicle was hardly fuel-efficient, but it fit Jay’s
i had the pleasure
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reuse and recycle aesthetic. Through Jay’s collaboration
with the museum, Williams students, and members of
the regional art community, we marked the day’s Endangered eARTh symposium and accompanying events by
“re-rooting” Williams’ sacred Purple-Cow, and by producing Lunch-Time at the Landfill, an outdoor art show
and performance. What better place for an outdoor art
show than the dump?
During this time, Jay also launched the Old Glory
Condom Corporation, in the wake of the AIDS crisis. Like
much of Jay’s work, this project still elicits amazement
when explained to those unaware of Jay’s multifarious
art practice. While perhaps in perfect step with the New
York-based Act-Up movement, the upbeat, patriotic and
corporate overtones of Jay’s Old Glory campaign posed
an ironic and iconic solution to a vast problem.
Presenting Jay Critchley, Incorporated at the Florida Atlantic University Galleries is such an honor. Following Jay’s
work over the years, I have never ceased to be amazed
and heartened by his untiring project. I truly hope our
efforts in presenting Jay’s retrospective exhibition go far
beyond gracefully installing the physical works comprising
the exhibition. With Jay’s spirit and guidance and a new
set of youthful collaborators, I hope we will turn some
heads, capture some minds and of course inspire some
crazy, knowing smiles.
W. Rod Faulds, Director
University Galleries
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
in a large Catholic family in Forestville, Connecticut. In the Eisenhower fifties, when he was
in sixth grade, he sang with his brothers and sisters on
Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour, television’s precursor
to American Idol. They were introduced as the “Critchley
Sextet,” and the youngest was asked what they would do
if they did not win. She said, “Mr. Mack, we have two
more at home younger than me, and if we don’t win, we’ll
be back next year with eight of us.”
Critchley was educated in the mysteries of the faith in
Catholic schools through college, majoring in English with
a minor in theology and philosophy at Fairfield University,
which then was all-male and rigorously Jesuit. There were
no electives. He never had a course in theater. Instead,
he’d been an altar boy and had experienced “the feeling
of being out on a stage,” especially during Lent and Holy
Week, when he would wash the priest’s feet, a task that
led him to the understanding that feet must be honored
because they walk the earth. He recalls why Saint Paul said
feet should be praised: “The eye is not jealous of the ear;
the head is not jealous of the feet; and God gave the place
of honor to the lowest feature of the body.” Critchley also
remembers a moment as an altar boy when he was on his
knees in the aisle of the church, with robes and vestments
rustling around him, the organ pipes pushing massive
columns of air into uplifting music, the smoke of incense
watering his eyes, and the dazzle of tiny votives and thin
tapers, towered over by altar candles with wicks blazing
like torches.
His story made real for me how much the power of
his engagement with religious ceremony is at the dynamic
jay critchley grew up
core of his art today. Always, there is an element of cleaning, purging, elimination, healing, forgiveness, and restoration of balance from a threat of disequilibrium. His
process is always communal, shared, and actively interacting with the audience. The process is also political,
challenging the coercion of corporate and government
power with gentle chidings so obvious they become
uniquely comical, mixing purpose and persona into a signature work by Critchley. The performance artist Karen
Finley, who was inspired as a teenager by speeches at the
Democratic National Convention in Chicago, saw political speech as a performance art. When she appeared on
the cover of Provincetown Arts in 1996, she said, “What I
do is ceremony. It would be theater if someone else could
do my performances.” This sharp distinction between
theater and performance art opens the wedge for Critchley to insert himself into mainstream issues and whisper
into the ear of the enemy with as little offense as possible.
“I don’t think you’re an artist,” he explained, “if you do
what other people tell you to do. Your parents, teachers,
mentors—they are the ones who give you all the fodder to
create. They give you the materials, the issues, the visceral
materiality to respond to.”
Several ludicrous legal quarrels between two modes of
thinking—Critchley’s and various authorities—have been
dismissed in court. In 2001, he was charged by the police
with “trespassing and defacing” a prominent eyesore that
yet had the dignity of a dowager. The abandoned Cape
home—decrepit and about to be torn down—was situated
in a high-traffic area, near the crowds that flooded Bubala’s outdoor café for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and
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the crowds in front of Spiritus that stopped traffic
with the overflow of the evening’s bars, gathering
around two in the morning for a slice of pizza and a
last chance at romance. Critchley tacked a large yellow-and-maroon linen heirloom flag to the front of
the building, proclaiming the sorry structure to be
an “alms museum,” symbolizing the loss of community in Provincetown. The judge, disgusted after six
months of hearings, said she was not an art critic,
and slammed down her gavel—“Dismissed!”—saying that the court had “real” cases to consider.
Critchley has created a corporate persona for
himself as “president” of the Nuclear Recycling
Consultants (NRC), advocating turning Three Mile
Island into a historic nuclear park. He is the impresario who founded the International Re-Rooters
Society (IRS), with the purpose of using a discarded
Christmas tree, every January 7, after twelve days
of “stockpiling,” as a sacrificial pyre for last year’s
bad behavior. Gathering on the beach in the East
End, a congregation, bundled in winter parkas,
watches Critchley set afloat a makeshift raft bearing a burning Christmas tree, along with ritual sacrifices deposited by those gathered. The four pagan
elements are present: an action on the edge of the
earth, in water, with fire, and in the actual air the participants are breathing. The late Reggie Cabral was
present at one ceremony I attended. The legendary
art collector and owner of the Atlantic House made
a speech—much like he used to do at midnight on
the dance floor, announcing the winner of a costume contest—and then heaved onto the flames
a stack of medical bills. Critchley, presiding over a
ceremony, always creates a unique costume, often
some sort of gown, along with extravagant headgear made from such materials as lobster claws.
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Perhaps Critchley’s most famous costume is Miss
Tampon Liberty. The artist picked up thousands of
pink plastic tampon applicators that had washed
up on Cape Cod beaches, following discharge from
Boston sewers into the shoal water of Stellwagen
Bank, the world’s richest feeding grounds for the
North Atlantic right whale. Sunbathers called them
“beach whistles.” They were hollow tubes about the
size of a small cigar; they were washed bone-clean,
with only a faint blush of color. Critchley strung
them from end to end with thread, assembling the
“gown” with about three thousand of these strange
objects, both intimate and public at once.
The artist modeled his fashion statement at an
environmental rally for the centennial of the statue
on the windy shore of Liberty State Park; in the
background, across the water on Liberty Island,
stood the real Statue of Liberty. The immediate reversal of scale between the real and the living representation offered a startling comparison: Critchley,
in the foreground, enhanced by his costume, was
statuesque, while the enormous Lady Liberty in
the background was diminutive. The issue of men
wearing women’s clothes provoked Critchley to
add, “Whenever men want to look important, they
wear a gown, like a judge or a priest. The vestments
are everything. There is nothing better than a gown
made out of tampon applicators, with that swishy
sound. When you walk in and those plastic chimes
are hitting each other, it’s magic.”
Critchley has been headquartered in Provincetown since 1975, when he moved here, before he
was an artist, to work at the Drop-In Center, a free
clinic offering counseling and medical referrals to
wounded survivors of the sixties. At that time, the
fishing fleet was vital; Critchley remembered, “The
big crisis was herpes.” The clinic closed after five
years because it went bankrupt trying to adjust to
state-mandated clinical guidelines. Critchley was
left without a job. He pondered this moment of
freedom. He and his wife were divorcing, agreeing
to care jointly for their son. Jay, at last, came out as
gay, deciding soon after to come out as a “bornagain artist.” He survived the early years by waiting on tables at the Moors Restaurant, an iconic
institution serving authentic Portuguese food and
offering a sing-along bar, with the popular Lenny
Grandchamp, that attracted the evolving gay community. A place-to-be, the Moors was legendary for
being resurrected after it burned down, upon which
the community gathered massive sections of beach
salvage from shipwrecks and rebuilt the place. Being
inside was like being below deck in a ship, with all
the structural ribs present in rows of ship’s knees
holding up the roof. Like serving as an altar boy or
performing as a waiter, Critchley could imagine he
was the servant that fed the stomach of the whale.
At the same time, he transitioned into becoming a
licensed masseur, a practice he continues on a limited basis to this day.
His first major work was “exhibited” in the waterfront parking lot spanning the acres between the
town’s two wharves. Among thousands of cars,
Critchley’s station wagon stood out as plainly dysfunctional and curiously thought-provoking. A coating of beige sand had been glued to the vehicle’s
body, but the windows were clear to reveal mannequins of a tourist family—Ron and Nancy Reagan,
daughter Patti, and son Ron smoking a joint—who
were identified as Just Visiting for the Weekend, the title
of the piece. Critchley paid for season parking tickets at the resident rate and kept versions of the car
Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, Super PAC Rats (repuS CAP star), 2012, photo by Ron Schloerb, Cape Cod Times
in the public gallery he had appropriated for four
seasons. Just Visiting provoked, as Critchley’s projects do, much discussion about the town’s growing
dependence on tourism, and a hearing before the
Board of Selectmen, who debated whether it was a
car or a sculpture.
Critchley began increasingly to assess what Provincetown had to offer tourists as a “cultural sanctuary” or a “nurturing incubator” for new ideas.
Provincetown’s resources included the beauty of
the natural environment; the presence of working
artists, performers, and writers; and the ghosts
of the great historical figures, who seemed to live
among their contemporaries. Certain ordinary
rules of behavior were suspended in a leap of faith
that an ethical breach might offer creative insight.
Critchley’s work manipulates the manner in which
values are expressed, twisting them into business
plans that mimic corporate logic, sometimes in
hilarious ways, disturbing for their eerie illumination of how complicit we are with any opposition
we declare an “enemy.” The earnest missions of
corporations are mocked in a deadpan, guilt-free,
and unself-conscious destabilizing reality by offering
a play on reality.
In dealing with nuclear power, oil consumption,
waste and overconsumption, destruction of rain
forests, corporate abuse, AIDS, and “the fear and
paranoia generated by the government,” Critchley
has redefined the relationship between art and politics, offering a new polarity between art and economics. The artist’s identification with corporations
is accomplished by assuming imaginary leadership
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Critchley’s living room, 2015, collaged photos, 8 by 37.5 feet, installation banner, digital print, design by Zehra Khan
and printing the fiction on a real letterhead. When
the government prints currency, they declare it
money, saying, “This is money. I made it.”
Old Glory Condom Corporation was installed in 1989
at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, with wall posters
and tables of testimonials and marketing materials
for boxes of packaged condoms bearing an American flag, furling and stretched into a colorful scarf,
which was the company logo. Critchley, as CEO,
was pictured in a tailored three-piece suit, his eyebrows thick with solemnity. His pitch was pure and
chaste as a pitcher of mother’s milk. His name was
embossed on company letterhead. But this persona
was no fiction, because the company actually produced an item for sale—Uncle Sam Condoms in the
Age of AIDS—which they advertised and marketed
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successfully. In doing so, Critchley exposed the nationwide corporate secret of embracing patriotism
to drive attention toward the AIDS crisis. He tried to
register for a trademark, which was initially denied
because it was “immoral and scandalous” to associate the flag with sex. Finally, it was granted after
three years of litigation pursued by lawyers from the
Center for Constitutional Rights.
Critchley incorporated another “concept”
called P-Town, Inc.: Formerly Provincetown, a proposed theme park—enacted in elaborate sketches,
drawings, and regulations—for the affluent. Like
guests of a gated community, tourists were only
“admitted” after inspection at a Visitor Processing
Center, which may remind one of immigrants seeking shelter at Ellis Island. Critchley also formed a
contemporary likeness in his project Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, with a marketing plan
that included an alliance with Cape Wind, and
submitted his proposal to the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers, who questioned his sincerity with a
threat. The project won a special award from the
Boston Society of Architects in 2006.
Critchley’s projects have earned him prestigious
visiting positions at Harvard University and Williams College, as well as residencies in New York,
Rhode Island, and Oregon. He simply asks, with
Duchamp, “What is art?” Consider his headquarters at 7 Carnes Lane, tucked away in the Portuguese enclave close by Saint Peter the Apostle
Catholic Church. The neighborhood is a maze of
puzzle-shaped side streets, which stop abruptly at
dead ends. The area is deep in the historic pocket
packed with the descendants of the Portuguese fishermen. When Critchley’s mother visited, she called
his backyard “Appalachia,” and there is truth in her
description. A neighbor had been using the area, for
years, as a dump to dispose of many metal items
from his workshop. However, in clearing the property, Critchley found under his home a rare circular
cellar that the early settlers used to store food and
forbidden whiskey. It was constructed with bricks
in a round, igloo-like form to withstand the pressure of loose sand. Critchley transformed another
circular space, a septic tank in his backyard, into a
performance center, Theater in the Ground, where
many events were held over the years.
I visited Critchley’s modest compound, with his
studio, massage studio, and communal kitchen
for several summer roommates who have flanking
bedrooms. In the backyard there is a small building
where Critchley conducts business as the director
of the nonprofit Provincetown Community Compact, which is the umbrella organization for his
dune shack residencies and the annual Swim for Life
town-wide benefit. Considering that he lives rather
communally, I was surprised that Critchley described
himself, with a straight face, as a “monk.” Perhaps
he is no more a monk than Keats, who said, “My
mind is a monastery and I am its monk.” Indeed,
Critchley says, “I spend a lot of time thinking, writing, meditating, and creating—just like other artists.
It’s a very private thing. Then I make a burst out into
the public with another project. I’m reclusive.”
A recent series of work, Global Yawning for a Small
Planet, focuses on global warming, featuring photographs of Critchley in costume yawning in New York,
Washington, and sites around the world. Pictured on
page 49 is Critchley-as-stockbroker, wearing a threepiece suit, his face buried in columns of numbers in
the Wall Street Journal, with a huge yawn expanding
the gape of his mouth. Critchley reminds us that the
biological function of yawning is to relax the muscles
in the jawbone, cool the brain, increase alertness,
and renew vigor. As the artist aptly expresses this, in
his words and art, “A new day is yawning!”
Christopher Busa
Publisher, Provincetown Arts magazine
Reprinted from Provincetown Arts 2011-12
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imaginary corporations
jay critchley’s art of social rituals
by Tim Norris
We are all engaged in social rituals in our daily activities and by remaining unaware of their artistic ritual propensity, we remain ‘in conformity.’
—Trinh T. Minh-Ha
critchley’s art avoids straightjacket definitions: “political artist,”
“gay activist,” “performance artist”—not simply because he
avoids these terms—but rather because he becomes an agent
of performativity itself.
In Critically Queer, Judith Butler reminds us that it would be a
mistake to confuse performance with performativity; that is, a
distinction between embodied performance and discursive performance. Critchley’s art asks us to attend to the discursive style of
the work. Just as we take in its embodied aspects, his work focuses
on the normative constraints that language imposes on us.
As the CEO of the Nuclear Recycling Consultants, CEO of
the Old Glory Condom Corporation, and many other corporations, for example, he not creating a performance piece, rather
he creates a specific performativity. In this way, Critchley gains
his own performative force by occupying a certain linguistic
life. By placing himself in its formula, he is not submitting to
its prior authority because he is now re-executing its speech.
Another part of Critchley’s work appears in a question that
art critic Olav Velthuis asks. What happens, asks Velthuis, in
Imaginary Economics: Contemporary Artists and the World of Big Money,
“when the dichotomy of criticism versus affirmation, which has
dominated and structured many interpretations of the relationship between art and economics for quite some time, no
longer functions?” 1 Can an artist propose an art affirmative
of econ-omy and pose this as critique?
Over the years, Critchley has challenged this distinction.
Thinking about art and economics, or economics as play, which
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Velthuis calls imaginary economics, seems to affirm economy as
art. In 1990, Critchley chose to sell his idea for a nuclear safe
condominium design to a group of investors in Seabrook, New
Hampshire. In doing so, the performativity of his ironic performances become parodic reiterations of the norms that he
wishes to destabilize; in the case of Seabrook, Critchley sought
to disrupt the norms of investment culture. Time and again, he
enacts normative performativity as art.
“Performativity,” writes Judith Butler, “is always a reiteration of a norm or set of norms, and to the extent that it
acquires an act like status in the present, it conceals or disseminates the conventions of which it is a repetition.” 3 Jon
McKenzie, in his Perform or Else, From Discipline to Performance,
refers to Butler’s perception that the performative is always a
normative force. He highlights how in Butler’s Critically Queer,
which borrows from J. L. Austin’s work on performative speech
acts, she notes how speech creates both an action and a
binding power: “The power of discourse to produce what it
names is linked to the question of performativity.” 3 Critchley’s corporations are embedded in and operate around this
paradox. McKenzie argues that we live in a new command
culture where, in fact, performance is already viewed as both
experimental and normative. He notes:
“Speculatively, we are entering the age of global performance,
an age in which the entire world is challenged forth to perform.
To explore the power of performance, our machine plays back
Bible reading at humpback whale, 1986, near Race Point Beach, Provincetown, MA
readings of the performative principle, performative
legitimation, and punitive performativity.” 4
Critchley’s art performs various social rituals
as what I’ll call imaginary corporations. They are
economically normative as well as experimental art
events. In this way, Critchley’s art becomes the norm
of economic processes as his own performativity.
His art concerns the way we name, perform the
name, and the way we become sites of visibility or
invisibility as we perform various power relations
within a given normative setting. Critchley’s imaginary spaces involve both a strategy of analysis and
a parody of economic processes.
We can think of a legacy that includes Marcel
Duchamp (the Tzanck Check, 1919), Yves Kline (work
such as the transfer zone of immaterial pictorial sensibility,
1962), and Joseph Bueys’ social sculptural projects
(such as Energy Plan for Western Man), as well as current artists like Jeff Koons, Etoy, and Nobumichi
Tosa, who with his brother Masamichi Tosa founded the Maywa Denki Store in 2004, an electronics
store in which the brothers dressed in company suits
and give performances that have the look of product demonstrations. The Tosa brothers also create
handmade products—Nonsense Machines—which are
offered for sale on their business website.
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Critchley recognized early on in his career the normative side of performativity. Power and knowledge
were not just questions of origin but also questions of
who performed power and knowledge—where it was
performed, and when. Performativity in the global
age, writes McKenzie, “generates a networked desire,
the simulated control of libidinal subjectivities whose
paths mingle, collide, and transform one another.”
He argues that during the 1990s there was a shift
in management and corporations in which performance—he cites the“Perform-Or Else” slogan that
appeared on the cover of Forbes— converged with
the arts, a coincidence McKenzie describes as the
theatrical management performance. 5 “Over the past
five decades...the presentational forms associated
with theatrical performance have been transformed
into analytical tools, generalized across disciplinary
fields, and reinstalled in diverse locations.” 6
There is a peculiar laughter in Critchley’s art. “If
one never laughs with them or at them, or, more
seriously still, never laughs at oneself, then one has
closed off an immense affective realm of experience
and learning,” writes McKenzie. As we enter the
age of global performance we are in a world where
everyone consummately performs their normative
performativity. Critchley’s corporations are quite
real. But as Judith Butler wrote, there is no “being”
behind doing and effecting. Critchley is a “fiction
added to a deed.” Critchley, therefore, is corporate
performativity, a central theme that will run through
his work over the next decade. By fracturing and
reinscribing the powers that act “as fiction added to
deed,” he performs his various corporations, (NRC,
Old Glory Condom Corporation, etc.) as living fictions.
By taking himself seriously, Critchley annunciates the
normative setting. “Performatives and performances
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are our system and our style, our ways of saying and
seeing.” 4 By appropriating corporate global communications, his art corporations proliferate, mingle
and transform. Critchley can sit among investors
because that is where he wants to be.
Standing in front of his new corporate logo—The
Old Glory Condom Corporation—like an early Bill Gates,
Critchley transmutes himself through citation and
self-displacement, actions that would tie in with
his own coming out as both an artist and as a gay
man. His pitch for investors, believers, consumers
and players entails displaying a citational network of
statements and practices that makes discerning the
artifice possible and impossible. As McKenzie writes,
“The very process of self-referentiality that generates
a system’s coherence also renders its systematically unstable, incomplete, sometimes disorientated.
The outside turned inside, can turn the inside out.” 8
Critchley, as a gay activist, enacts himself as both an
imaginary corporation and a real corporation so as
to avoid marginalization as an activist only.
Critchley does not distinguish between different
conceptions of performance—resistance or transgression—against the daily rituals of our Goffmanesque
performances. All normative performances are real
because they exist against a background of specific
normative behaviors. By blurring the borders, he plays
the trickster. His challenge to the political conception of resistance as the only political style appropriate is truly transgressive. Who was he and where
was he? Who is the imaginary character of the act?
Between the “as if” and the “it is,” Critchley plays on
that distinction itself by claiming his performances
as real. McKenzie mentions that our age is marked
more and more by global performance, that it is no
longer about a world picture but about performativity
itself. Critchley indeed embodies this reality, in a variety of ways, with his imaginary corporations: they
suggest performance itself, and nothing else but the
performance.
Are we living fictions? Does the believing we do
point to the real? Critchley’s identities are quite real.
His is the real of all performed identity. Critchley
pushes the conventions between the imaginary and
the real—the theatrical space and the social space—
that are so carefully demarcated by modernity.
With P-Town, Inc, Formerly Provincetown—“You’ll
swear you were really there,” 1997, and Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, 2006, Critchley markets
Provincetown as P-Town Inc. The town is now the
space of corporation as history is erased, community
dissolved, and empty space prevails. What happens
when various normative performatives meet across
their respective boundaries? The US Army Corps of
Engineers as we know are engaged in performing the
real. Will it perform well and do a good job? Generally, it does. Except when the group has to create
the performance of legal judgment on an artist’s
project. In other words, everything fits the picture
until their normative performance of the real can
no longer grasp the divergent challenges of actually
performing the real.
McKenzie writes: “Performativity, in contrast with
discipline, constructs and proliferates decentered
subjectivities and highly unstable object fields.”
Critchley’s work both de-centers and draws attention to the performative production of all power by
creating unstable object fields that look like the real
thing; it is the real that is unstable.
Why ask if Martucket Eyeland is real? How does the
real get made one way and not another? The US Army
Corps of Engineers meet themselves coming back in
the persona of a corporate proposal to establish a
theme park, Martucket Eyeland. Why would they not
support such a project? Critchley invites the ‘host’
to live off him. Or is it the other way around? We
cannot surely know, and to force the point would
be to reveal the underbelly of bad attitude, because
as we all know, Critchley is earnest. Each proposal
and all ideas function around the real and the virtual.
Even when we live in a culture where we feel we have
lost trust, we must trust. Society functions in accordance with the laws of simulation, invention, and the
market—especially the market. By selling ‘non-art’ in
selling people to each other, Critchley’s art is part of
the package, a package that he does not so much
make but reveals as performative.
Velthuis in Imaginary Economics describes how various artists have created imaginary economic actions,
including Duchamp and Yves Klein. When artists
and businessmen switch roles, the action “give[s]
rise to strategic alliances between artists and businessmen.” 9 The distinction between performances
are now blurred even more so, as McKenzie implies.
“During the nineties some artists and businessmen
also expected art to be helpful in bringing about an
innovative, reflective and change orientated business
culture,” he says. 10 But this is not what Critchley’s
art does. Critchley’s work shares with several other
artists the element of fictional economies. When
deciding to play with economy as fiction, Critchley
focuses on the idea of corporation as fiction. This is
in part motivated by his discussion of the problem
of the way corporations have gained legality as subjects. Specifically, they have gained the right to claim
the same judicial rights as individuals. His response
is to treat the corporate world to a magical transformation: his mock corporations blur any division
between real and virtual. In fact, Critchley has played
with this question throughout his career.
One example was the 2001 Outermost Alms Museum,
which led to a court summons.
A part of P-Town Inc., the Outermost Alms Museum
was an abandoned property redefined by Critchley
as a museum. The lawsuit brought against him was
part of the complex performativity that was at play.
The investor could not identify Critchley’s role in the
parallel performances between art and economy. The
lawsuit against the artist instead revealed that the
investor did not see the sameness of things. Both are
pure performativity: Power as performative.
On a moonlit night, we walk out on the sand
flats of Provincetown harbor as a small procession
of people. Slowly, tide slides over the beach. We have
gathered to listen to Critchley’s proclamations that
mimic both the politics of spectacle and rituals. We
may be cold, but we know that we are participating
in the staging of an event—a theatrical moment in
which the political will be performed and put on
display. The International Re-Rooter’s Society takes place
during the closing moments of each year, staged at
the end of day in cold lapping waters. Critchley’s
work is on a different level as we experience the loss
of the political in a micromanaged age of political
manipulation and the sameness of another self-appointed spokesperson, or ventriloquist; we discover that Critchley speaks not merely for the species,
nor of our social problems, but makes the practice
of performativity the space of hope. He does not
instruct us to do anything— politically speaking there
is no specific action to take—other than laugh. He is
neither cynical nor earnest.
Critchley’s corporations make us laugh affirmatively. He is performing the performative, drawing
attention to its normative force. When we abandon
the event and the name, we find ourselves present
in the performative. Critchley’s laughter is on the
other side of laughter. Each persona he conjures up
may be distinct, but at they are also all the same.
They are “him.” He reminds us of what we do, or are
required to do: a good performance, or a lesser performance. We can only make sense of these realities
when we observe the narratives at play. We discuss
not opposition but rather a creative innovation, in
which language is nudged out of its regular orbit.
Critchley’s real is always about which performance
you are willing to believe. It’s about about where
you put the yes.
Footnotes:
1. Velthuis, Olaf, Imaginary Economics Contemporary Artists
and the World of Big Money, NAi Publishers Rotterdam,
2005.
2. Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On Discursive Limits of Sex,
London, Routledge
3. McKenzie, Jon, p. 15.
4. McKenzie, Jon, Perform-Or Else, From Discipline to
Performance, Routledge, London and New York, 2001. p. 197.
5. Ibid., p. 6-7.
6. Ibid. p. 8.
7. Ibid. P. 8.
8. Ibid. P. 15.
9. Velthuis, p. 97.
10. Ibid. p. 97.
Sources:
Butler, Judith, Bodies That Matter: On The Discursive Limits of Sex,
London, Routledge, 1993.
Butler, Judith, Critically Queer, Gay and Lesbian Quarterly 1 (1993).
McKenzie, Jon, Perform or Else, From Discipline to Performance, Routledge, London and New York, 2001.
Olav, Velthuis’s Imaginary Economics, Contemporary Artists and the
World of Big Money, NAi Publishers, Rotterdam, 2005.
Minh-Ha, Trinh T, The Digital Film Event, Routledge, London and
New York, 2005.
13
Beige motel
In 2006, Jay Critchley converted what remained of the
iconic North Truro, Massachusetts Pilgrim Spring Motel—a
1950’s A-frame motel office with wings, already kitschy and
surreal—into “The World’s Largest Sand-Encrusted Motel,”
a completely beige-colored encounter for any motorist
traveling east on Route 6 en route to Provincetown.
Amidst the sandy beaches and sand dunes of the Outer
Cape, Critchley reimagined the beloved motel, soon to be
demolished, into a monumental, sand-embalmed sculpture reflecting on time, loss and decay, the environment,
and our perception of the universe. It was a deeply felt and
complex installation with a simple name: the Beige Motel.
The Beige Motel was inspired by the 2002 findings of physicists
Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry of Johns Hopkins University, whose exhaustive research of the light in over 200,000
galaxies determined that the average color of the universe
is a lackluster beige.
That lackluster beige is also the dominant color of dune
sand, one of Critchley’s preferred mediums. The physicists’
conclusive research, condensed into a color scheme called
the Cosmic Spectrum, validated the artist’s intuitive, longtime
use of dune sand, which he applied to the motel structure. The summer-long installation was lit at night with a
different color from the spectrum each week.
The original Pilgrim Spring Motel was an historic landmark for Outer Cape residents and visitors. A midcentury motor court, the motel was a symbol of middle
class America’s postwar prosperity: more and more, people
had cars, and they drove them to the Cape for summer
vacations. The structure was named after a nearby Nauset
Indian fresh water spring used by the Pilgrims in 1620, but
the motel and its origins diluted overtime to an imaginative
relic of a dying American Dream.
Encouraged by the community’s fervent connection to the
structure, the artist attempted to save the Beige Motel by
selling it on eBay, with no takers. Critchley then proposed
the building be shipped by barge and installed permanently
on the Big Dig’s Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. It
didn’t fly.
Critchley with 21 motel vacuum cleaners at the opening ceremony for Beige Motel performing “21 Gun Dilute,” 2007, North Truro, MA
15
(above) Beige Motel postcard, visionary proposal for the
Rose Kennedy Greenway, 2008, 4 by 6 inches
Beige Motel at nightfall, lit each week with alternating colors, 2007, North Truro, MA, Photos by Kevin Thomas
16
(right) original Pilgrim Spring Motel brochure
17
Sand & Fish Skins
People settle in Provincetown for many reasons. For Jay
Critchley, it starts with the sand. He always loved to collect
things and he loved to cover them up. When the artist
discovered slimy, discarded fish skins from filleted cod
and flounder, he would plunge his hands into the deep
tubs, gather them up and bring home buckets of the smelly
remains. The scent would last for months.
But his sand pieces proved more accessible, and Critchley
went on to cover cars and motels, fruits and vegetables, and
even his own body with Cape Cod sand. He’s used it to fill
watches and clocks; he sculpts with sand; he paints with it.
At age 33, self-described “born-again artist” Critchley
launched the Sand Car series in Provincetown’s MacMillan
Wharf Parking Lot, using it as a gallery. In Just Visiting for the
Weekend, he parked a sand-encrusted, 1956 Dodge Coronet 500 station wagon, which quickly attracted crowds
and the anger of the chief of police and town manager.
The car was declared “a threat to life and limb” and the
police chief demanded its removal.
At a public meeting regarding Just Visiting for the Weekend, a
Board of Selectmen member asked “Is it art or is it an automobile?” Critchley’s attorney, Roslyn Garfield, responded,
“I’m not here to discuss the philosophy of art . . . it’s an
automobile whether it’s purple, white or covered with sand
. . . it’s parked legally and inspected.”
From 1981–1984, the year-round community and the
visiting public welcomed a new summer configuration of
the Sand Car series: The Sand Family (with Ron and Nancy
Reagan); A Fulfilling Summer (a sand-filled 1970 Chrysler
sedan); and A Sand Blasted Summer (the sedan stripped of
paint, rusting over the summer).
Like so many of Critchley’s future projects, this early work
asked important questions. The Sand Car series merged the
transience of sand with seasonal communities. His inanimate cars sat fixed against the shifting sand dunes and
eroding beaches—ghosts of American icons and collective
dreams that were slipping away.
Just Visiting for the Weekend, Sand Car Series #1, 1981, 1968 Dodge Coronet 500 station wagon
encrusted with dune sand, MacMillan Wharf Parking Lot, Provincetown, MA
19
(clockwise from upper left) Tv Shoot with the Sand Family; The
Pieta, 1986, fish skin and mixed media, 11h by 10w by 5d inches;
Nancyann’s Shoes, 1987, fish skin (flounder) and mixed media; Sand
Car with the Sand Family (Ron & Nancy Reagan sculpture by Joan
Pereira), 1982, 4 by 6 inch postcard, photo by Rachel Brown
20
(clockwise from top) Teacup, Pistol, Postcard, Crucifix, Car Model (installation view), 1985, sand-encrusted
mixed media, various sizes; Model for a Fishermen’s Memorial, 1984, sand-encrusted dragger and Christmas
tree, 8.5h by 7w by 2.75d inches; Mummified Jeep, 1983, fabric, rhizome, mixed media, 74 by 4 inches
21
Tampon Applicator Creative Klubs International
tacki
“I have the world’s largest collection of used plastic tampon applicators, and if they are banned, it could theoretically
increase exponentially in value. They will never degrade and will pop up in archeological digs for centuries. And we may
finally have to resort to cardboard applicators when the petroleum runs out. Will anyone be around?”
—Jay Critchley, TACKI President, 1997
Tampon Applicator Creative Klubs International (TACKI) was established in 1985 to develop creative uses for discarded,
non-biodegradable, plastic feminine hygiene products, commonly referred to as “beach whistles.”
TACKI President Jay Critchley launched his corporation in order to develop a global folk art movement and cottage
industry, promote awareness of these elegant throwaway objects washed up on beaches worldwide from faulty sewage
systems, create the world’s largest collection of discarded plastic tampon applicators, and ban their manufacture and
sale through legislative action.
The mission’s global ambassador is Miss Tampon Liberty, aka Jay Critchley, who wears a gown of 3,000 beach whistles
when taking her message to: the Massachusetts State Legislature; Liberty State Park for the Centennial of the Statue of
Liberty; the No With The Flow protest of the Boston Sewage Outfall Pipe; and numerous site-specific performances and
installations.
Miss Tampon Liberty was also featured in the documentary Under Wraps, screened at the Margaret Mead Film Festival at the
American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Critchley as Miss Tampon Liberty, No with the Flow performance/protest of Boston’s 9.5-mile sewage outfall
pipe into Cape Cod Bay, Race Point Beach, Provincetown, MA, 2000, photo by Vincent Dewitt, Cape Cod Times
23
(above) Tamponument, 1985, mixed media, 38h by 7w by 7d inches
(left) Miss Tampon Liberty, 1986, installation view, mixed media
and audio, 12h by 4w by 4d feet, Provincetown Art Association
and Museum (Paam), photo by Dan Larkin
24
(clockwise from upper left) Critchley lobbying at the State House for his legislative
bill, Boston, ma, 1985; Critchley’s sponsored legislation; Critchley demonstrates
Tampon Gun at press conference, Plymouth, ma, 1988; Congresswoman Bella
Abzug wears Critchley’s commissioned plastic tampon applicator hat, Toronto,
Canada, 1992
25
(clockwise from above) TACKI poster, 1986, 8.5 by 11 inches; Critchley confronted at a Massachusetts State
House legislative appearance, 1987; Tampon Pie & Slice (installation view), 1986, plastic tampon applicators,
fish skin, and mixed media
(opposite page) Pilgrim Tamponument, 2010, historic postcard recreation for Monument Centennial,
Provincetown, MA
26
27
Nuclear Recycling Consultants
nrc
Jay Critchley formed the Nuclear Recycling Consultants (NRC) in 1983—the early part of a decade remembered for
its détente with the Soviet Union in the form of a nuclear proliferation treaty.
In response to the unleashing of the atom and the fantasy of nuclear energy “too cheap to meter,” the NRC was formed
to recycle and repurpose abandoned facilities of the nuclear fuel cycle. Critchley created alternative proposals and
legislative initiatives for a number of nuclear power plants, including: Three Mile Island Historic Nuclear Park & Planned
Community, the Seabrook National Nuclear Monument & Energy Research Institute, and the Nuclear Resort Community at Seabrook.
He proposed luxury seaside radiation cottages, a Meltdown Mall, a BTU Bar, and a Half Life Jogging Track. Yet Critchley’s
architectural proposals existed beyond the boardroom. He advertised them on billboards in Boston and New Hampshire, and sponsored anti-nuclear and alternative energy legislation in Boston.
In “Deadly Serious: Jay Critchley’s Nuclear Recycling Consultants,” Art New England observed that “No other artist,
except perhaps Christo or Warhol, can manipulate mainstream mass media with the panache of Critchley, whose
public presentations incorporate dazzling spectacle, a tight and logical argument, and a dash of charm.”
Additional NRC public proposals include: Atomic Pulpit at Boston Center for the Arts; the Future Earth Corporation
installation at Boston City Hall; a seismic radiation center at California’s Diablo Canyon; the Stop Pilgrim Nuclear Power
Plant campaign; the Whale & Human Evacuation Canal on Cape Cod; and the Nuclear Heritage Trail. At Penn State, he built
a twelve foot nuclear cooling tower from bales of hay and burned it in a ritual ceremony.
NUKE SOUP, 1980s, image for anti-nuclear billboard for Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and 2014 postcard, photo by Kathy Chapman
29
(clockwise from above) Public proposal for a Three Mile Island conversion, drawing by F. Ron Fowler, 1983; Critchley’s first performance piece, Atomic Equinox, 1983, PAAM, Mass College of Art;
Critchley at New Hampshire billboard location, 1988
(opposite page) Public proposal for Nuclear Resort Community at Seabrook, 1988, drawing by George Lee Crosby
30
31
Old Glory Cond om
Old Glory Condom
worn with pride country-wide
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I
know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death. —Patrick Henry
Old Glory Condom President Jay Critchley first invoked these
words of Patrick Henry at a 1989 press conference of the
artist’s patriotic condom corporation. Held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Visual Arts Center,
Critchley called on President Bush to organize an army of
safer sex soldiers to fight HIV/AIDS and redefine what it
means to be patriotic: to protect and save lives.
The actual business—Old Glory Condom Corporation—which
marketed condoms and tee shirts bearing the flag-inspired
logo worldwide—was launched on Flag Day in 1990, concurrent with the World AIDS Conference in San Francisco. The corporation filed for a Trademark from the US
government for its logo and its name, but the Trademark
Office ruled “it was immoral and scandalous to associate
the flag with sex” and denied the application. Center for
Constitutional Rights lawyer David Cole protested the de-
cision, and the Trademark was ultimately granted after a
three-year legal battle.
Old Glory Condom—Condoms with a Conscience received widespread media coverage, including a front page piece in
the Washington Post and a feature story in People magazine.
Senator Jessie Helms, an architect of the culture wars, inadvertently created the first global safer sex commercial by
holding up the logo and denouncing its Trademark in the
US Senate, which was broadcast on CNN.
The Old Glory Condom Corporation also launched the successful project Latex is for Lovers, a campaign structured to
alert the public that lambskin condoms do not prevent the
transmission of the HIV virus. Latex is for Lovers was the result
of an in-depth study of condom usage in the US, initiated by
Old Glory Condom Corporation at Simmons Graduate School.
Critchley at Old Glory Condom’s launch and exhibition, 1989, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA
33
(clockwise from above) Patriotic Three-way, 1993–2015; condoms and mixed media, 6 by 2 inches; Penis of Willendorf, 1993–2015, condom
and mixed media, 4 by 2 inches; Clogs with Tits, 1993–2015, condoms and child’s wooden clogs; Condomized Heads—Jesus, James Dean, JFK
& Lincoln, 1992, condoms and mixed media, 6h by 4w by 3d inches
(opposite page, clockwise from top left) Transamerica—Condoms with a Conscience, 2007, model design for San Francisco show, 40 by 60
inches, graphics by Andrea Pluhar; People Magazine feature, 1993, photo by Barbara C. Laing; Latex is for Lovers, campaign button, 1990
34
35
(above, left to right) Father & Son, 2015, condom and mixed media, 5h by 3w by 2d inches; Gold Lady in Yellow, 2015, condom and mixed media, 7h by 4w by 2d inches
(opposite page, left to right) Old Glory Condom poster for NYC launch of Men of Old Glory 1992 Calendar, 1992, photo by Michael Thompson, produced by Michael LaBelle; poster linking HIV/AIDS to the environment, 1989–94, 8.5 by 11 inches
36
37
—an excerpt from “Tunnel Vision,” a song from “Big Twig Tunnel Tapes”
At its completion, Boston’s Big Dig—the Central Artery/
Tunnel Project—was the most expensive public works project in the United States, its cost totaling $22 billion. But
long before these numbers were finalized, Jay Critchley
did the math.
He determined that 12.5 million carbon-filtering trees
would be required to mitigate the mega-highway’s annual
350,000 metric tons of pollution generated from 250,000
auto­mobiles per day. He used these numbers to craft a
public proposal of his own, The Big Twig. Inspired by the
Big Dig’s branch-like footprint, Critchley proposed a new,
holistic way of doing business: make pollution reduction
and the environment a priority of public works projects.
The Big Twig proposed the acquisition of land parcels
throughout the impacted region; using original estimates, a
minimum of 250,000 acres would be required to mitigate
Condomized Living (installation view), 1992, condoms and mixed media, Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA
38
new pollution levels. At $10,000 per acre, it would cost
$25 million, .002 percent of the cost of the Big Dig. Big
Twig received special citation awards from The CooperHewitt-Smithsonian Museum and the University of Oregon.
Of course, the Big Twig project involved going underground. Critchley and a range of musicians and other
artists descended 125 feet into the soon-to-be opened
tunnels of the Big Dig, and there they recorded ambient sound, music, and field recordings, all of which were
produced by Timothy O’Keefe and other musicians into
“The Big Twig Tunnel Tapes—Boston’s Big Dig Sings!”
The opera, the ambient music, the viola solos, the throat
singing, the rap music—“The Big Twig Tunnel Tapes” is a
moving sample of the collective, human cry that’s rooted
deep inside the earth.
big twig
I’ve got tunnel vision, let the bombing go on!
We’ve got to protect ourselves from all those morons,
So I can charge and buy the goods to set myself free,
Sugar in my coffee and my SUV.
(clockwise from left) Critchley and cohorts in Big Dig tunnels, 125 feet below Boston, 2004; A Conceptual
History of the Shawmut Peninsula (located in the settlement of Boston), 1998
(opposite page) Provincetown Magazine cover, 2004
40
41
Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess
Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess
immaculate protection
“Latex condoms and rubber dams may well be the most efficient and practical barrier against HIV, unwanted
pregnancies, and overpopulation. Our own barriers impeding our well being, however, include: continued
destruction of the tropical forests, moralistic attitudes and policies about sex, and our own disconnection from our
sensate and sexual bodymind, and from the earth. And of course, from our spiritual being.” —Jay Critchley
Exploring the links between sex, religion, and the environment, the Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess—Immaculate Protection
reclaims the mythology of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Critchley’s invocation of the renowned holy mother turns Mary’s
eyes toward the planet in crisis. Together with artist Lydia Eccles, Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess was created to inspire
ecological stewardship of the earth.
The project generated significant controversy from the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, as well as the Massachusetts
Bay Transportation Authority, which destroyed a Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess poster at the Hynes T-stop in 1994,
the year the goddess appeared in an installation on World AIDS Day at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston
and at the Boston Center for the Arts.
The Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess—Luscious Lady of Latex has since appeared on prayer cards, votive candles, and newspaper advertisements, and she has been the subject of numerous symposiums. Critchley’s goddess is an inventive
call to ecological alms and arms—the ultimate link between the rubber tree, erotic pleasure, auto travel, and the
overall health of the earth.
(above) Enola Ebola—Atomic Virus, 1945–1995, 1995, designs by Lydia Eccles
(left) Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess sticker, 1994, 6 by 4 inches
43
Deep Bones
All artists have their fascinations and obsessions, and for Jay Critchley, one is cars.
In the 1980s he covered, filled and sand-blasted them, and left the cars parked in
the waterfront parking lot “gallery” of Provincetown.
30 years later, the artist stood in New York’s Freight + Volume Gallery and wrapped
each engine part of a classic 1979 MG sports car with recycled plastic shopping
bags, the first ritual of Deep Bones—an exploration of society’s voracious appetite
for hydrocarbons.
In this performance installation, Critchley not only eviscerated the “organs” of
the car, but he also ritually displayed them, before returning them to the corpus
vehicle. The artist then mummified the car with more woven plastic bags. Above
the car, a descended nimbus fashioned from these same bags hovered over the
entombed machine.
Like many installations from previous years, Critchley presided over opening night at the gallery as a kind of civic priest,
proclaiming in “O Breaker of Bones,” “Our pilgrimage to the afterlife begins in this earthly place, the place we return to
after our spiral journey into the multiverse. But return we must, as we take our prized possessions and techno necessities
into the afterglow! Have we lost our desire for eternity?”
The automobile has remained a vessel for Critchley’s hopeful search for his own “desire for eternity.” Keeping one foot in the
car world and one in the afterlife, Critchley also created Final Passage in 2006, mummifying an iconic 1965 Chevy Impala in
an abandoned Providence, Rhode Island mausoleum in the North Burial Ground. The artist’s summer long collaboration,
Cryptic Providence, engaged other artists and thinkers throughout the cemetery.
Critchley enjoying a glass of BP oil during Deep Bones Opening Ceremony, “O Breaker of Bones,” 2011, Freight + Volume Gallery, Nyc
(opposite page) Deep Bones (installation view), 2011, 1979 MG Sports Car and mixed media with recycled, woven, and hung plastic shopping bags,
Freight + Volume Gallery, photos by Adam Ryder
45
Final Passage (installation view), 2008, mummified 1965 Chevy Impala, muslin, and mixed media, North Burial Ground mausoleum, Providence, RI, photo by Michael Persson
(opposite page) Deep Bones Opening Ceremony, “O Breaker of Bones,” 2011, Freight + Volume Gallery, Nyc, photo by Adam Ryder
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47
GLOBAL YAWNING
YAWNING
GLOBAL
Global Yawning
for a Small Planet
It’s been shown that yawning increases alertness, reduces stress and enhances personal, community and planetary health.
We yawn to cool the brain; we act to cool the Earth. The personal is planetary. What is our exhausted planet telling us?
Critchley investigates this idea in Global Yawning for a Small Planet, recognizing that the green chic of climate change has
sabotaged the radical actions necessary to confront it, and desensitized us to our own bodily participation in the crisis.
Yawning is mysterious and without definitive explanation. One theory is that yawning is a herd instinct, and serves to
synchronize mood behavior among gregarious animals. Adelie Penguins employ yawning as part of their courtship ritual.
It is an essential human activity that crosses cultural and geographic borders, and can be liberating, reenergizing and
therapeutic. If all global citizens yawned, Critchley asserts, we would collectively cool the earth.
First exhibited at the Boston Center for the Arts Mills Gallery in 2008, Global Yawning for a Small Planet was an
installation, accompanied by still photos and videos of yawning humans. Critchley recorded the yawns of people from
Provincetown, Boston, Rhode Island, New York, and DC, and edited them into a continuous study that documents and
investigates the health benefits of yawning and its metaphorical relationship to ecological concerns.
Global Yawning traveled to Bogota, Colombia with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in 2009.
Global Yawning for a Small Planet: Stock Page, 2008, digital print, photo by Kevin Thomas, design by Andrea Pluhar
48
49
a community ritual
In the hysterical spring of 1983, when the media coined Provincetown “Ghost Town” in the midst of an accelerating HIV/AIDS epidemic, the community was angry and scared. The town had been portrayed on televisions across the region as a contagious seaside
epicenter of empty beaches.
In September of the same year, Jay Critchley, in collaboration with choreographer Paul Fonseca, organized a group of friends to create
a ritualistic healing ceremony on the harbor beach in response to this mysterious disease. Hundreds attended the Immunity Mandala,
the nation’s first public performance piece in response to HIV/AIDS.
The event was a structured performance running just over 30 minutes, centered around a mandala sand painting at the edge of the
incoming tide. There was dance, there was rhythm, and there was prayer. There was Jay Critchley on a simple lobster pot, wearing his
lobster claw helmet and delivering the following:
Let us pray
(clockwise from upper left) Global Yawning for a Small Planet: Lincoln Memorial; Nukes; Cracked Earth, 2008, digital prints, various sizes, photos by Kevin Thomas, designs by Andrea Pluhar;
Global Yawning for a Small Planet: Lincoln; Nukes; Cracked Earth, Global Yawning for a Small Planet photos and video, (installation view at Boston Center for the Arts), 2008
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O God of the Universe, give our community the strength and resilience to continue our upward movement on this fragile,
spiral, spit of sand.
Give us the energy to fulfill the historic and spiritual mandate of our community, opening our arms to artists, writers, gay
people, and tourists from around the world, providing refuge and nurturing to all those lured here to these shores . . .
Give us the strength and pride shown by the women of this community who have many times stood on this shore in vigil—in
silence—waiting for their beloved fishermen—who often did not return. Through this mandala offering, we gather together, and
pray for health and wholeness, especially for those suffering from unknown and strange diseases, that each of us may continue to
rejoice in hope and celebration with the life cycles around us, and for our short, but exuberant life.
Amen.
Immunity Mandala
Immunity Mandala
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Immunity Mandala—A Community Ritual, 1983, performance images: Critchley and ensemble, Provincetown Harbor, Provincetown, MA, photos by Grace Consoli
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resort & theme park
In March 2006, Jay Critchley filed a permit application with the US Army Corps of Engineers to build Martucket Eyeland
Resort & Theme Park, a family friendly “floating jewel” to be anchored by the proposed turbine towers of a different project:
the Cape Wind development proposed for Nantucket Sound. Critchley’s new “third eyeland,” together with Nantucket
and Martha’s Vineyard, would create a healing, pyramidal energetic field, and become a tourist destination, recreating
the maritime and cultural history of the region.
Martucket Eyeland was an outlandish mirror for outlandish proposals like Cape Wind, which aimed to scatter wind turbines
420 feet high throughout the ecological sanctuary of Nantucket Sound. Using his trademark style, Critchley manipulated
the lexicon of large-scale development proposals and crafted one of his own. The result was a Disney-inspired destination
park with attractions like the Tower of Terror, the Climate Change Casino & Sweat Lodge, and the Vanishing Oyster Bar & Grill.
“Combining energy production with the pleasure principle is a win-win for the economy,” said Critchley in the original
press release for Martucket Eyeland. This type of relentless satire in the face of equally relentless development earned the
project a special citation from the Boston Society of Architects and the slightly bewildered admiration of the media.
“Artist, Deadpan, Floats a Proposal,” wrote the Boston Globe. “Master of situational art skewers the wind farm process
. . . this time Critchley has gone too far,” wrote the Cape Cod Times.
(above) Immunity Mandala—A Community Ritual, Program Flyer, 1983
(right) “Beach Ritual Celebrates Community,”Provincetown Advocate, 1983
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Despite the humor, Martucket Eyeland was no laughing matter. If the project was deemed fraudulent by the US Army Corps
of Engineers, Critchley risked a fine of $10,000 along with five years in prison and investigation by the Department of
Justice. His 3,000,000 square foot theme park, his “third eyeland,” was an urgent call to arms in the face of unrestricted
corporate development.
martucket eyeland
Martucket Eyeland
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Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park, digital prints, 2006, graphics by Jeanpaul Raymond
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57
Maskuerade Ball
Maskuerade Ball
whose cover-up?
“The SARS outbreak scared people and provided another dramatic example—like HIV, the Avian Flu and the Ebola
virus—of how globally vulnerable we have become.” —Jay Critchley
In 2003, the surgical mask was everywhere. During that year’s SARS outbreak, major American magazines and newspapers repeatedly utilized the image of the simple tie string surgical mask as an emblem of fear, panic and powerlessness.
Maskuerade Ball, an ongoing project, is Critchley’s response to both the media’s tendency to prescribe fear and to the continuous state of ecological collapse. By physically appropriating the surgical mask and scrawling his own actual messages
on its surface, Critchley redirects our gaze toward the multiplicity of political unrest and the urgency of environmental
repair, turning the mask into a symbol of empowerment.
With Maskuerade Ball, he asks important questions. Whose fear? Whose voice? Whose cover-up? As with his project
in Buenos Aires, communities around the globe have been encouraged to host Maskuerade Balls of their own, donning
surgical masks that name their private fears and anxieties.
“Masking and ritual practices reconnect us with our deep emotional and psychic identity and release us from the burdens
of the human condition,” Critchley wrote in 2006. “At a time of global environmental collapse, the simple surgical mask
has become a symbol of both the state of the planet and our inability to address its ailments—sometimes to protect,
sometimes to cover up. And to respond to environmental pollution and fear.”
Maskuerade Ball Project: SARS to CARS, May 5, 2003, appropriated news magazine covers
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(clockwise from upper left) Street performance snapshots in Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2008;
Self Portrait, 2012, photo by Bobby Miller; Masked Moose, 2011, tie string surgical masks and mixed
media, 24h by 30w by 20d inches
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(above) Fear File, 2011, tie string surgical masks and mixed media, 17h by 15w by 5d inches
(right) Masked Flag, 2006, tie string surgical masks and mixed media, 94 by 39 inches
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a flaccid trip
“The greatest danger that a long period of
profound peace offers to a nation is that of
[creating] effeminate tendencies in young men.”
—President Theodore Roosevelt
Olympdick
just don’t do it!
less is more
Olympdick Gold
it ’s hard to be a man
One year before the city’s role as host to the Summer Olympics, the Arts Festival of Atlanta extended an invitation to
Jay Critchley to use his particular set of subtle, satirical, and
imaginative skills to make a formal investigation of sports,
masculinity, sexism, racism, and classism.
Known for his playful appropriation of language and terminology, Critchley hatched his own variation of the term:
Olympdick Gold—It’s Hard To Be A Man, which evolved into an
ongoing art project that focused on the culture and history
of the Olympic Games.
Critchley dug in. He learned that the rise of sports culture in
America was directly linked to the rise of industrialization in
the mid 1800s, which bumped boys off the farm and toward
the cities for work. Sports teams and leagues were fashioned
as an antidote to the perceived fading virility of these young
men, who for so long had used their bodies for work.
Olympdick Gold was represented by a reincarnation of the
male symbol with a limp arrow, for which Critchley received
his second US Trademark. A line of Olympdick clothing and
consumables followed, as well as the creation of the theater
piece “Lympdick Diatribes” at Harvard University, where
Critchley was an artist in residence from 1999–2000.
The artist responded with Playing Games: Zoa the Greek Fertility Goddess Shoots for the Gold: a paper doll cutout book of
athletes that explored the history of the Olympics. Critchley was surprised to learn from festival lawyers and from
Coca Cola, the premier Olympic sponsor headquartered
in Atlanta, that the word “Olympic” is not legally available
for public use.
Of the play, the Harvard Crimson wrote, “The Office for the
Arts brings many odd people to Harvard. Some are musicians, some are artists, others write plays about flaccid
organs. Jay Critchley is one such invited guest . . . a perversely
witty original manifesto of cock that mocks The Vagina Monologues, embraces bestiality, and addresses such problems as
a constant erection.”
you’ve got a friend
you’re ok. it’s ok.
live and let lymp
snap, crackle and flop
be less than
you can be
your day will come
trying hard isn’t
good enough
it’s up to you
(above) Olympdick Gold Trademark Registration document, 1999
(left) Olympdick Gold—It’s hard to be a man, list of additional slogans
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P-Town, Inc.
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P-Town, Inc.—Formerly Provincetown
“you’ll swear you were really there”
Jay Critchley’s beguiling, satirical, probing art has long
examined cultural trends, ecological crises, and public
health epidemics. He is regarded as an artist who looks
out into the world and asks the important questions.
With the creation of P-Town, Inc., Critchley turns his gaze
in: he examines his own community and exposes internal
crises of diversity erosion and gentrification.
As the housing market exploded in the 1990s, P-Town, Inc. presented a public development proposal with a crown jewel called The
Visitor Processing Center—a replica of Disney’s Cinderella Castle—to
replace the burned down landmark Whaler’s Wharf. The proposed
center would screen visitors for credit history and shopping profiles.
Critchley’s satirical plans would accommodate Provincetown’s demographic shifts by transforming the town into a playground for
the affluent. He proposed a Center for Fecal Studies, and a Front Street
Mall & Arcade—the complete enclosure of downtown Commercial
Street to facilitate year round shopping.
Other P-Town, Inc. projects were more pointed. The Survivalist
Camp Resort was a response to the influx of second-home
owners and the Y2K computer crash panic of 1999.
Critchley proposed Provincetown become “the world’s
only gayted theme park for the well-heeled gay, lesbian, and
bisexual survivalists fleeing botheration from Y2K.” He laid
out his vision for the project in Provincetown Arts. The proposal
was accompanied by a placemat insert bearing the project’s name
and special sites and attractions.
Critchley’s vision for P-Town Inc. grew more intimate with his proposed Septic Summer Rental in his abandoned, backyard septic tank.
This historic, bee-hive shaped structure morphed into a “theater
in the ground” and was dubbed Provincetown’s “only true underground art scene” by the New York Times, presenting classical and contemporary opera, drag, art installations, poetry, and performance,
as well as serving as the setting for Critchley’s HBO award-winning
movie, Toilet Treatments.
P-Town, Inc. Survivalist Camp Resort placemat, 1999, 9 by 12 inches, drawings by George Lee Crosby
(opposite page) Septic Summer Rental launch, Critchley’s backyard septic tank, 1997, digital print, photo by Kathy Chapman
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(clockwise from above) Postcards: Septic Christmas, 1998, 4 by 6 inches; Visitor Processing
Center, 1998, 4 by 6 inches, graphic by Maryalice Johnson; P-Town, Inc. products and
souvenirs, 1997–2004, 4 by 6 inches
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(above) Septic Opera: Heaven & Hell, 2002, Critchley with cast, directed by Donna Roll; Critchley in Septic
Opera production, 2001
(right) Critchley featured on Boston Globe Calendar cover celebrating centennial of Provincetown arts
colony, 1999
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irs
International Re-Rooters Society
“If you purge it, Jay will burn it. That’s the sizzle behind Re-Rooters day, a voyage into kooky conflagration
at the Cape tip.” —Provincetown Banner
There’s more than one IRS, and Jay Critchley’s International Re-Rooters Society (IRS) collects things only to remove them.
Each year, the artist includes the public in a personal ceremony to discard the objects and experiences that prohibit them
from a deeper connection with the earth and human life, and to “re-root” themselves to the earth.
This post-Christmas, post-consumption, environmental movement got its start in 1983, when Critchley created a forest of discarded Christmas trees at the Provincetown Dump. More than 30 years later, the annual community ritual is
performed on Provincetown’s harbor on January 7, a purging of political and personal distress from the year gone by.
Each International Re-Rooters Day is accompanied by a hot button political theme (1999’s Sports Futility Vehicles; 2013’s
Pistol Cliff) and the ceremony is performed by Critchley himself, with song, ranting, and a call and response structure that
mimics many religious rituals. The rite concludes with the dramatic burning of a discarded Christmas tree on a makeshift
boat, sent out into the harbor at sunset.
Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, Super PAC Rats (repuS CAP star), 2012, Provincetown Harbor, photo by Nancy Bloom
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23rd Re-Rooters Day Ceremony
January 7, 2006, Provincetown Harbor
Georgi-flu
ulf-igroeg
And Our Lord appeared to Moses in the
form of a Burning Bush and gave him………
The Ten Commandments of Petro-Ideology:
Chant ulf-igroeg after each Commandment
(above) Christmas Tree Dump Forest at Provincetown Dump
and Lonesome Tree, Herring Cove Beach, Provincetown,
MA, 1983
(right) Critchley presides over 2001 Re-Rooters Day
Ceremony
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1. Crude is the Lord Thy God and thou shalt not have strange
Wal Martinis before me;
2. Thou shalt not oppose frothy celebrity teeth implanted by
wiretapped refugees seeking deodorizing light bulbs;
3. Thou shalt not question ownership society’s virginity testing
imprisoned by time porn thruthiness leveraged into can-do
compensation neurosis;
4. Remember thou keep holy social society disorderees branding
eavesdropped Deep Throat indictments against caffeinism;
5. Honor thy father and thy mother: Cut & Run;
6.Thou shalt not murder except with money-laundered
viruses balkanizing mountaintop wremoval brain dumps
dopplered by exploding head syndrome;
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery unless false memory diets
calm loot jogger-nippled TomKats in vitro hamburger
prisons;
8. Thou shalt not steal except when inverted yield curves elect
hedge-funded His & Her TVs, insurgent auto-miniums
& nuclear optioned wedgies;
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against trust-sprayed
sitcom-loyalty-oathed bridezillas butt calling credit card
sciatica;
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors’ buzz-marketed
singing tooth brushes & Hogzilla flying toys attacking
Homo Depotism’s irreducible complexity with ice-capped
mercenaries.
Let it be known that the devils and sinners who deceive us shall be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where
the beast and false prophets are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. AMEN.
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Chronology
1947
Born in Forestville, CT into Irish-American Catholic
family of nine children. Oldest son, fourth oldest child,
six sisters. Family spends summers on Huntley Island in
Long Island Sound, East Lyme, CT at aunt and uncle’s
summer home. No electricity or running water. Mentorship with uncle, who rebuilds house and repairs
rock seawalls with hand tools. Learns creative use of
seashells and sand.
1958
The Critchley Sextet−Jay and five of his sisters−appear
twice on the nationally televised Ted Mac and the Original
Amateur Hour in NYC. They sing barbershop harmony
taught to them by their father. Becomes an altar boy
and attends Catholic school.
1965
Graduates from St. Anthony High School with high
honors. Plays Captain Von Trapp in the school’s production of Sound of Music.
1966
Participates in first antiwar demonstration at Fairfield
University, CT, an all male Jesuit school.
Re-Rooters Day ceremonies (clockwise): 1987, 1998, 1986, 1995
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1968
Attends the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Visits Berkeley and San Francisco. Volunteers for
Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.
1969
Graduates from Fairfield University with a BA in English
Literature. Minors in philosophy and theology. Awarded a summer student work exchange position at the
Salvation Army’s Booth House in East London, UK.
1970–72
Becomes an AmeriCorps VISTA Volunteer in Cottage
Grove, OR, where he organizes The People Center for
teenagers. Collects naturally found colored sands in
Arizona’s Painted Desert.
1973–75
Directs Reach a Friend Today, a youth program in
Southington, CT. Marries Alva Russell.
1975–1980
Moves to Provincetown in 1975. Son Russell is born.
Employed at the Provincetown Drop-In Center, which
closes in 1980. Comes out as a gay man. Divorces.
Helps organize the Provincetown Center for Coastal
Studies. Organizes local Earth Day Celebrations.
1981
Comes out as a “born-again” artist. Installs the summer long Sand Car Series in MacMillan Wharf Parking Lot
called Just Visiting for the Weekend, a sand-encrusted Dodge
Coronet 500 station wagon. Installs Just Visiting for the
Weekend, a sand-encrusted Dodge Coronet 500 station
wagon, in Provincetown’s MacMillan Wharf Parking Lot,
the first summer-long installation of the Sand Car Series.
1982
Mountain Farms Mall Monument & Museum of Modern Archaeology, 1982, A.D., Hadley, MA., a public proposal for
historic designation of the dying shopping mall. Installs
Sand Family—a sand-encrusted car holding Ronald and
Nancy Reagan and their children—in MacMillan Wharf
Parking Lot, the second installation of the Sand Car Series.
1983
Launches the International Re-Rooters Society (IRS) at
Provincetown Dump. Performs Immunity Mandala: A Community Ritual. Forms Nuclear Recycling Consultants (NRC).
Creates and hosts radio program, A.R.T. Focus
(left to right) The Critchleys, the CT Catholic Family of the Year, saying the rosary, 1958; Critchley on Huntley Island, building castles in the sand, 1956; Critchley’s first visit to Provincetown with sister Eileen, brother Dinnie and mother,
MacMillan Wharf, 1950s; Critchley campaigning for JFK, 1960; staff of the Provincetown Drop-In Center, 1978
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outdoor, site-specific performance and sculpture, interactive nuclear cooling tower, Boston Center for the
Arts. The Fertility Project: Cape Cod Bay Tampon Blockade,
a public proposal to create a 20-mile string of 52,800
applicators from Provincetown to Plymouth to protest Boston’s planned 9.5-mile sewage outfall pipe into
Massachusetts Bay.
(left to right) Critchley teaching class at Center for Coastal Studies, 1978; Critchley’s new colorful friends, Liberty State Park, 1986; Bible reading in abandoned nuclear cooling tower, 1988, Hartsville, TN; Herb (Critchley) and Mrs. Herb
(Pat Bruno) with Paula (Mark Lincoln), Women for Whoppers, at Burger King hearing, Provincetown Town Hall,1986; Mrs. TACKI visits Three Mile Island, 1986
(Artists Reveal Themselves), on WOMR 92.1 FM Radio in
Provincetown. Interviews 50+ artists on their lives, work
and creative process. Installs third Sand Car Series in MacMillan Wharf Parking Lot: A Fullfilling Summer, a sand-filled
1970 Chrysler sedan.
1984
Holds first annual Re-Rooters Day Ceremony, sponsored
by the IRS, at Ciro & Sal’s restaurant on Commercial Street. Co-performs Popcorn Super Bowl with Ben
Kettlewell and Jacqui Mac at PAAM, Provincetown,
MA. Forms TACKI (Tampon Applicator Creative Klubs
International) to ban plastic tampon applicators and
other marine pollution. Installs fourth Sand Car Series in
MacMillan Wharf Parking Lot: Blasted!, a sand blasted
car that slowly rusted over the summer.
1985
Clandestine burial of time capsule at Pilgrim Monument for its 75th anniversary. TACKItown installation,
Hells Kitchen Gallery, Provincetown, MA. Boston Arts
Festival commission with Jerry Beck, Satellite at Lotta’s
Landing on Esplanade. Atomic Equinox, multimedia ritual,
ensemble performance, PAAM and Mass College of Art,
Boston. Receives MA Council on the Arts New Works
grant. First burning of Christmas tree in makeshift boat
in Provincetown Harbor at annual January Re-Rooters
Day Ceremony (IRS).
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1986
Miss Tampon Liberty installation at PAAM. On occasion
of Statue of Liberty centennial, invited by Clean Ocean
Action to perform as Miss Tampon Liberty at Liberty State
Park for “Freedom for the Environment” rally. Event video
documentary by Maria Manhattan. Public proposal,
World’s First Nuclear Resort Community at Seabrook, NH.
Women for Whoppers appearance with Burger King’s promotional character Herb, played by Critchley, at Provincetown Town Hall hearing to consider the fast food chain’s
request for a local restaurant license, which is denied.
1987
Live Free or Die, NRC public proposal and media campaign to establish the National Nuclear Monument & Energy Research Institute at the Seabrook, NH nuclear plant.
Promotional billboard installations at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, and on MA and NH highways.
Performs Re-Rooted Purple Cow, Williams College, MA.
Dedication of the world’s first NRC Community in Phipps
Bend, TN. Receives Real Art Ways Residency and Media
Residency. Produces NRC: Atomic Journey. Proposes Whale
and Human Evacuation Canal on Cape Cod, an escape route
for whales and humans stranded from potential accident
at Pilgrim Nuclear Plant in nearby Plymouth, MA.
1988
Future Earth Corporation, NRC site-specific nuclear
cooling tower installation, Boston City Hall outdoor
atrium, sound score. Homage To The Atomic Age, NRC
installation with performance, Penn State Museum,
College Park, PA. Forms Provincetown Swim for Life with
Walter McLean to celebrate Provincetown Harbor and
raise funds for HIV/AIDS services. Forms the International
Museum of Plastic Archeology. Participates in Choices in the
Late ‘80s, PAAM panel in conjunction with BiNational
Exhibition of German and American art at Institute of
Contemporary Art and the MFA, Boston.
1989-1990
Old Glory Condom Corporation—Condoms with a Conscience,
installation, safer sex business and AIDS activist campaign
at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA. Participates in related panels at MIT; Univ. of Maryland, College
Park; Real Art Ways; Hartford Athenaeum; and San Francisco Art Institute. Featured in Newsweek, Playboy. Receives
Art Matters grant. Receives Franklin Furnace Performance
Art Award, NYC. Receives Public Art Fund commission,
NYC. Featured on the PBS news report, and in documentary Troubled Waters—Plastics in the Marine Environment.
Performs Re-Rooted Purple Cow at Williams College, MA.
Featured in PBS documentary Provincetown, U.S.A.
1991
Group show Art in General, NYC. Receives Art Matters
grant. Atomic Pulpit—Nuke My Lips (ekuN yM spiL), 13’
1992
Condomized Living: Smart Accoutrements for An Erotic Planet,
Old Glory Condom installation, Berta Walker Gallery,
Provincetown. Conn-dom Nation, Old Glory Condom collaborative AIDS project with Hartford, CT teenagers,
Real Art Ways RAW Specifics Project, with CT Department
of Public Health. TACKI hat commissioned by Women
and Environment Education & Development, (WEED),
Toronto, featuring US Congresswoman Bella Abzug.
1993
Forms the Provincetown Community Compact, a non-profit,
tax-exempt organization to enhance the arts, economy
and environment of the Lower Cape. Receives Jacob’s
Pillow Dance Festival artist initiative. Granted a US
Trademark for Old Glory Condom name and logo after
a three-year legal battle, defended by Attorney David
Cole from the Center for Constitutional Rights.
1994
Over The Rainbow Rubbers—Worn with Toto Pride for Gay
Games NYC; product and installation, Storefront for Art
& Architecture and 494 Gallery, NYC. Receives grants from
MA Cultural Council and Arts Foundation of Cape Cod.
1995
Playing Games Project: installations in Atlanta, GA and
Provincetown, MA. Creation of Playing Games—Zoa, the
Greek Fertility Goddess, Shoots for the Gold, a paper doll
cut-out book of athletes for Olympics, Arts Festival of
Atlanta. Blessed Virgin Rubber Goddess—Immaculate Protection, DNA Gallery; Institute of Contemporary Art,
Boston; and Boston Center for the Arts. Blessed Virgin
Rubber Goddess: Enola/Ebola-Atomic Virus 1945-1995, public proposal on the 60th anniversary of the dropping of
the atomic bombs by bomber plane, Enola Gay, and
the emergence of the Ebola virus.
1996
Olympdick Gold—It’s hard to be a man, installation, product
souvenirs, DNA Gallery. Receives MA Cultural Council
grant. Featured in documentary Under Wraps, by Penny
Wheelwright and Teresa MacInnes; screened at Margaret Mead Festival at American Museum of Natural
History, NYC.
1997–2003
P-Town, Inc: Formerly Provincetown “You’ll swear you were
really there,” theme park proposal, related multimedia installations: Septic Summer Rental @ Septic Space;
P-Town, Inc. Casket and Capsule Condo Community, installation, DNA Gallery; Visitor Processing Center and Septic
Christmas installation; Theater in the Ground @ Septic
Space, with opera, performance art, music, poetry and
installations. Outermost Alms Museum, street facade
installation on historic home before demolition; court
charges for trespassing and defacing property dismissed. Featured in Cultural Battlefield: Art Censorship &
Public Funding, Jennifer A. Peter and Louis M. Crosier
(Avocus).
1998
Big Twig proposal receives First Prize in National Art &
Design Competition for Street Trees from City University
of NY, Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum,
and Trees New York, NYC. Proposal also receives award
from The Holistic Options for Planet Earth Sustainability Conference (HOPES), University of Oregon.
1999
Harvard University artist in residence, creates and produces theater piece, Lympdick Diatribes. Re-creates the
male symbol with a limp arrow and secures second
US Trademark. Receives LEF Foundation grant. Survivalist Camp Resort, public proposal, placemat insert in
Provincetown Arts magazine. Included in 100 Artists in the
Community, a centennial celebration of the arts colony in
Provincetown. Featured on the front page of the Boston
Globe arts section.
(left to right) NRC President Critchley (left) touring unfinished nuclear power site at Phipps Bend, TN, 1988; Louisville Slumper Olympdick Gold trophy, 1996; Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla start at Long Point, Provincetown, MA, 1996,
photo by Mike Syers; “Ten Days That Shook the World,” Herring Cove Beach Bathhouse spectacle before demolition, 2012
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2000
No With the Flow, protest of the opening of the 9.5-mile
Boston Sewage Outfall Pipe, Race Point, Cape Cod
National Seashore, Provincetown. Receives LEF Foundation grant. Cohosts radio program Scat Chat with Jim
Vincent, on WOMR.FM Radio, about human waste
and the ecology of the human body and the planet.
2001
Tiresome Tabernacle—a sanctuary for our tired and weary planet, site-specific, outdoor installation and performance,
Cape Cod National Seashore, Provincetown.
public proposal, receives special award from Boston
Society of Architects. Designed with John Paul Raymond and exhibited in Provincetown and at Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA. The proposal traveled
throughout Europe.
2007
Maskuerade Ball Project, performance, Hemispheric Institute, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Portland, OR. Produces
video Christmas Warming Alphabet, screened at Provincetown International Film Fest.
2002
Providence Dirt Newsreel, first video written, directed,
produced by Critchley. AS220 residency, Providence,
RI. Produces film Toilet Treatments, receives HBO audience award, Provincetown International Film Festival.
Receives Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center residency, NYC. Featured in, Ptown—Art, Sex, and Money on
the Outer Cape, Peter Manso (Scribner). Receives Tanne
Foundation Award.
2005–2008
BEIGE Provincetown, Beige Brigade, artSTRAND, Province­
town. Beige Motel, 1955; opening ceremony Twenty-one
Gun Salute with 21 vacuum cleaners from motel, artists’
installations (2007); put up for sale on eBay (2008);
Beige Motel arrives in Boston at Rose Kennedy Greenway
(public proposal, 2008); Revolving Museum installation, Lowell MA; artsSTRAND (2007); installation,
PULSE Miami, Art Basel (2008).
2003
Installs SARS/CARS—Weapons of Gas Destruction, Provincetown. Founds Maskuerade Ball Project. LETOM SWODAEM installation in one of the last affordable motels in
Provincetown before its demolition: 11 artists, 8 rooms,
10 days; curated by Critchley, sponsored by The Compact.
2008
Cryptic Providence, summer long, multimedia project with
artists, musicians, dancers, North Burial Ground, Providence, RI; Final Passage, mummified 1965 Chevy Impala in North Burial Ground underground mausoleum,
Providence, RI; funded by Rhode Island Foundation.
2004
Big Twig Tunnel Tapes—Boston’s Big Dig Sings, CD and video
produced by Critchley with engineer/musician Tim
O’Keefe and a dozen musicians, singers and engineers
onsite in the tunnels of The Big Dig.
2009
Big Tent Theory—Obama’s First 100 Days, mixed media
installation, DNA Gallery. Deep Bones/Orpheus Descending, Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival
commission, DNA Gallery. Ptown Diaries, featured in
documentary film on LOGO TV.
2005
Providence Dirt Newsreel and Toilet Treatments screened at
Anthology Film Archives, NYC.
2006
Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park—Trust the magic,
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2010
Artist in residence, Milepost 5, Portland, OR; works on
Wigwam Burner video documentary. Insurgent Bodies,
Maskuerade Ball Project installations, Milepost5 and DNA
Gallery. Twenty-one Gun Salute, Provincetown Tennessee
Williams Theater Festival commission, festival opening
performance, Provincetown Harbor and simulcast on
WOMR.FM Radio.
2011
Deep Bones, video and performance installations, Freight
+ Volume, NYC; reviewed in New York Times, New Yorker
and Village Voice. Day Without Oil—Don’t Be Crude, web/
multi-platform, commemorating the first anniversary
of the BP oil disaster; videos: BP: Life is Good; BP: Don’t
Be Crude; BP: Be My Valentine. Receives Awesome Foundation Grant.
2012
Provincetown Swim for Life & Paddler Flotilla, in its 25th
year, reaches $3M raised for AIDS, women’s health
& the community, sponsored by The Compact. Curates
Ten Days That Shook the World: the Centennial Decade, a
project with 50+ artists and performers at Herring Cove
Beach Bathhouse before demolition, Cape Cod National Seashore, Provincetown; sponsored by The Compact.
THE iZONE—Archival Interlude, with BabySkinGlove,
installation/performance with an historic Cape Cod
outhouse in a 48’ tractor-trailer, The Deconsumptionists,
Brooklyn, NY.
2013
Artist in residence at both Fundacion Valparaiso,
Mojacar, Spain, and CAMAC, Marnay-sur-Seine,
France; works on book project begun in 1990, HIV:
Matisse Cuts It Out.
2014
Writes, produces and directs Planet Snowvio at University
of California Berkeley Art Museum, musical director,
Masis Parunyan; play is also performed at Provincetown
Theater and imagines the meeting of Edward Snowden,
Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Mario Savio on
the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at
UC Berkeley.
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