NOTHING: more (Photo: Brian Rogers)

In the K-pop group BTS, there is a famous vacation video where the members are making dinner outside and one of the younger members wants to flip a Korean pancake and catch it with the skillet. Everyone is nervous about what might happen. Will dinner be ruined if the pancake lands on the ground? But the eldest member says “If he flings it, he flings it.”

This saying has become a recognized philosophy among BTS fans. But it came to mind as I was watching Autumn Knight’s show NOTHING: more which offers an exciting lens on the idea of artists taking risks, flinging things, building on the unknown, and all in a flow of creation and renewal.

Billed as an anti-still life performance piece, the thrust of the work is that Knight along with collaborators Kayla Farrish, Dominica Greene, Jasmine Hearn, take random objects and their own bodies and in a state of constant movement build something, while the others disrupt or deconstruct, and what was built morphs or disappears.

I thought from this premise you might take away the feeling of futility. Putting energy into something that someone else deconstructs. But instead, it had more of a sense of play without conflict.

It reminded me of children who just accept the random logic of a friend’s imaginary world and slot themselves right in. “Ok the ground is poison peanut butter and we are trying to get across the space without touching the ground, sure, let’s do this.”

NOTHING: more (Photo: Brian Rogers)

These dancers tacitly agree to the action of their collaborator, until they don’t. And their resistance, rebellion or self-interest shifts their direction. But the movement in a new or different direction was not hostile. It was building of a new sort. A moment of assistance to a collaborator shifts and then they return to their own task at hand.

With items like a wheeled cart, a human sized picture frame, crinkly silver fabric, a large sheet of pink lighting gel, a disco ball, traffic cones, microphones, a yellow metal fence on wheels, the artists make impromptu forts, mobile objects, places to hide, or instruments to play.

There is vocalization, occasional music, and vocal direction from Knight who joins them on stage from time to time but also calls out from the sidelines.

And sometimes there is disagreement. One performer when seeking help in moving said “I don’t want to get higher, I want to get lower.” They refused to be lifted. Suddenly consent was injected into the space. And that was respected.

The collaborators ping off one another. Sometimes literally. Using one another to leap from a ladder into a bean bag. Sometimes they use each other’s bodies together to create what they need—a shape, momentum, movement.

The sharing, assistance, and creating takes center stage while the deconstruction is seamless and simply a part of building something more. There is no smashing. More like removal begets evolution. If you’ve moved away from the object you were building it becomes fuel for someone else’s new work.

As Jasmine Hearn removed their outer shirt and it got stuck on their head. So, Dominica Greene, seeing this conundrum, came to their aid. But rather than just pulling it off Hearn’s head, Greene removed it by tying the arms of the shirt around her waist and pulling. Suddenly a shirt, becomes a hat (as it envelopes Hearn’s head), and then morphs into a belt on Greene. This happens all in a continuous flow of movement.

This sounds so simple and yet it felt profound: the ease in which things change in a second and struggle may become relief, or someone’s obstruction becomes another’s accessory.

NOTHING: more (Photo: Brian Rogers)

Knight says the piece is “a process of making the self” and it starts “from nothing” and ends not far from that. Maybe it surprised me to think of that process as something wonderful and joyful.

That is not to say that there is not struggle. In Knight’s work, I felt the sweat of the artists. Through the intimacy of the work, you could appreciate their efforts. You saw the movement of their bodies and the labor they expounded to generate their creations. And amidst all that there was this electric charge of fun between them. Teasing, play, and release. So while carving out your identity takes work it also does not have to be a constant slog.

And for the audience there is a constant sense of anticipation as to what might happen. As the cart is hurled across the stage, or someone runs with black string, or a yoga ball is thrown and bounces, the audience lives in the unknown. Is that ball going to bean someone on the head? Will the fence that fell down create an obstacle?

And that is when I thought of, “If he flings it, he flings it.” Here the flinging is a moment of discovery and change. And it will keep changing. So let them fling away and we will discover something new. What a thrill!