The Park Avenue Armory is hosting Anne Imhof’s experimental and multidisciplinary performance piece, DOOM: House of Hope, until March 12. It is her largest scale work to date and exhibits original script, music, and dance from Imhof and her collaborators.
Imhof’s work is highly experiential: it relies on the way it makes you feel rather than creating a definitive statement. Her performance pieces are Gestalten, and must be fully experienced through immersion. She often divides the large venues she works in into multiple rooms and has her characters simultaneously performing in these separated spaces, such that an audience member cannot experience the entire performance in a single viewing. Additionally, the crowds at Imhof’s performances are so large that they section off parts of the work from others.
Imhof’s method of collaboration plays with instinct and the subconscious. She encourages her performers to follow their intuition and keep pushing a pose or movement even after it feels like it should be complete. Part of the “Je ne sais quois” of Imhof’s exhibitions comes from the collective action of the performers following their feelings to create a primal and surreal environment.
DOOM is different from Imhof’s previous work, not only because the Park Avenue Armory Drill Hall is the largest venue she’s exhibited in, but also because it pulls from an existing narrative. It is mainly structured from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet but also pulls from Jean Genet’s novel Querelle of Brest, Poems from Heinrich Heine’s Buch der Lieder, Raymond Moody’s Life After Life, and excerpts from reviews and obituaries.
During DOOM, the cast of characters representing the major players of Romeo and Juliet and others go about their lives – courting, partying, smoking vapes – all while a jumbotron in the middle of the drill hall counts down the runtime of the performance like a doomsday clock.
Youth culture is a major theme of DOOM. In addition to the source material of Romeo and Juliet being focused on the tragic love story of two teens, the character’s youthfulness is expressed through their actions. They joyfully mosh to punk music, skateboard around the room, and one character gets a tattoo in the back of a car. Some of these actions may be seen as irresponsible, but the characters are unburdened by these consequences in the way that children are.
This is in stark contrast to the messages of doom throughout the performance. Many of the characters wear familiar logo T-shirts such as Coca-Cola, Harvard, and the Beatles with DOOM printed over them – reminiscent of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Mclaren’s fashion at their 70s punk fashion boutique, SEX. There is reoccurring nihilistic choreography, such as pantomiming a gun to the head or crying. The theme of doom is reminiscent of the “no future” slogan from the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen, which was interpreted by fans to mean that there is no promise of a future in which all people can freely thrive.
Imhof’s bleak presentation of what is to come for society, is juxtaposed by the hopeful message of the piece. DOOM states that, yes, western society is becoming more and more fascist over time, but we have the power to reroute the future. Because of the piece’s overall focus on youth, the performance is particularly focused on empowering young people to affect change. The piece ends with Eliza Douglas’ Mercutio singing, We Can. When asked about the song, Eliza offered, “I actually wrote it before working on DOOM, but then we thought it fit well with the piece.” The lyrics are a call to action for the younger generation and anyone watching the performance:
“When the rain is falling and the sky is tumbling down
When the ocean is rising, I will never let you down
I’ll be there for you
Daddy couldn’t do it, mommy couldn’t do it, the teacher didn’t do it and the preacher didn’t do it
But we can… we can we can”
There are moments in the performance where Imhof presents her characters fighting for the better world she would like to see. In particular, there is a moment when a group of characters are creating posters with slogans supporting trans existence. Imhof creates a vignette with this moment, having two characters write the slogans on cardboard, while Tybalt (trans skater and model Efron Danzig) sits in the back of a Cadillac, staring out at the audience as if daring them to challenge the statement.
The music in the performance also emphasizes the hopeful message and is a mix of genres and original and existing material. Hyperpop was a clear influence for many of the songs. Many of them use heavy autotune and distorted electronic music – key components of hyperpop. This use of this genre is significant because it was pioneered by trans musicians. In fact, the characteristic high-pitched autotune vocals of the genre originated from Laura Les of 100 Gecs in order to assuage her vocal dysphoria.
Additionally, call and response is a major aspect of the script and music. In Western culture, call and response is popular in genres influenced and descended from Black music, such as Blues, Gospel, Jazz, and Hip-Hop. This format grew from the African Diaspora when enslaved Africans brought their musical culture with them across the Atlantic. Call and response has always represented resistance to oppression.
DOOM: House of Hope distills life down into a 3-hour chunk. It expresses the very salient fear of rising fascism in the U.S. However, DOOM offers that it is up to us to stand up against oppression and that we can make a difference.
