Site-Specific Performance
All pieces written, designed and performed by Zibby Jahns and Ruth Mascelli
Fifty Sade’s of Gray
Still from a performance at the Alvar Branch of the New Orleans Public Library in 2016. We also performed this piece at Hell & Gone Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and the Scott Edwards Gallery in New Orleans. This piece was about connection through internet culture and the appropriation of BDSM in mainstream apparel. The two characters have abstract notions of cultural theory and yet are too alienated by social expectations to be able to communicate.
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At Hell and Gone Gallery, NYC
Photo by Chris Berntsen
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At Alvar Library, New Orleans
Photo by Laura Borealis
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At Scott Edwards' Gallery, New Orleans
Photo by Beau Patrick Coulon
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Body Systems, Inc
The illustrated book that Ruth and I released in conjunction with the performance at the Alvar Library, our imagined speculative factory.
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Zine Club
Performance in conjunction with the New Orleans Public Library.
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Rehearsal
The Inner Lives of Nita and Zita
We performed this piece at the New Orleans Wax Museum in 2014. We examined the dual lives of infamous 1920's Jewish Hungarian immigrants to New Orleans. They were renowned for their glamorous cabaret performances, but secretly turned their home into a life's work of folk art painting and installation, only uncovered years after their death.
Images of Rapture Creep Into Me Slowly
The performance piece was written, performed, and designed by myself with Ruth Mascelli as part of the Disappearing Acts performance series. We explored notions of legitimacy and gender within dance and performance as it pertains to art, specifically centered around stage fright. The movement, visuals, and dialogue in my collaborative performance with Ruth spark conversation about human connection and history within the places we perform: here, on the steps of the New Orleans Museum of Art.