Ian Douglas
Reviews (2015)
In Death Asshole Rave Video, Wade embodies a dead-clown version of working-class despair, with the tyrannical tone of a car-salesman-slash-stand-up-comedian and all the physical ticks of Heath Ledgerʼs Joker. A rotating wardrobe includes a blue velour tux-track suit from the 1980s; a Statue of Liberty skull hat with Black Swan-like coat and matching platform boots; and, quite simply, a nurseʼs uniform. With berating and intense glares, Wadeʼs terrifying basket-case persona had the audience glued to their chairs. This is a clown with whom you do not want to fuck.
The performance opens with projected video of contracting butt-holes and clearance-style ads announcing “!!SUICIDE!!”– thus establishing the thesis: everything must go, including us. This especially applies to the soulful artist. “The thing Iʼve dedicated my life to, it is killing me,” Wade declares bitterly. “These aspirations I had for the good life, it is changing too fucking fast for me to catch up.” (Incidentally, this is the thesis of practically every show at American Realness.) “You are dead,” Wade repeats over and over, in between metaphors about the working class getting fucked over, brains being blown out, and sucking dick in a Financial District alleyway. The only moment of relief arrives at the end of the performance, when Wade shrouds the audience in fog and beams of light while calmly describing to us all the details of a dead bodyʼs breakdown from morgue slab to crematorium. Whitney Kimball for artcity.com, 2015
Biography Jeremy Wade
Jeremy Wade graduated from the School For New Dance Development, Amsterdam in 2000. Wade premiered his first evening length work titled “Glory” at Dance Theater Workshop, New York City in February of 2006, for which he received a New York Bessie Award. Since then, Wade has been living in Berlin, working closely with the Hebbel Theater. His most recent performance works include ”…and pulled out their hair” (2007), “Throwing Rainbows Up” (2008), “I Offer My Self To Thee” (2009), “There Is No End To More” (2010), “Fountain” and a trio titled “To The Mountain.”(2011) In 2013 Wade served as Guest Professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste, Munich and embarked on a new collaboration titled “Dark Material” with Berlin based Sculptor Monika Grzymala and the California based Experimental Musician Jamie Stewart aka Xiu Xiu. In February of 2014 Wade premiered “Together Forever” a three hour group experience / participatory project made at the Hebbel am Ufer. He will premiere a new solo in New York City January 2015 titled "Death Asshole Rave Video" at the American Realness Festival. In the spring of 2015 Wade will premiere a new project centered on queer futurity and utopian critique titled "Drawn Onward" at the Hebbel am Ufer in collaboration with young Sci-Fi writer John Eric Jordan.
Besides the creation of performances and a rigorous teaching practice Wade has always been drawn to the curation, production and subsequent hosting of ecstatic events. He is interested in curation as an extension of artistic research and this practice evolved from his experience as a vibrant coordinator of parties and Night Clubs in New York City during the mid 90's, to becoming a founding member in 2003 of Chez Bushwick a Live / Work loft for the performing arts in industrial Bushwick, Brooklyn. He curated the “Politics of Ecstasy“ Festival in January of 2009 at the Hebbel am Ufer together with Meg Stuart, Eike Wittrock, and Brendan Dougherty. From 2009 to 2011 Wade focused on a queer performance series with 13 editions at Basso, Berlin titled “Creature Feature”. In April of 2014 Wade curated a focus on participatory group experiences at the Donau Festival, Austria called “The Great Big Togetherness" sharing facilitating different critically generative positions of collectivity through the lens of choreography, sculpture, sex magic, group experience, shamanism, activism and queer theory.
http://www.jeremywade.de/