The Bridge Club's "Natural Resources" at Lawndale

Natural Resources by the Bridge Club accomplished the groups mission as stated on their website, "... the presence of the four costumed member artists lends an unsettling normative air to odd or uncomfortable situations, while costuming and object choices create a historical ambiguity of era that addresses change and continuity of gender and interpersonal histories, roles, expectations and behaviors," but perhaps not much more.

At Lawndale's Mezzanine gallery site, the four artists, clad in wigs, white lab coats, and high heels with protective coverings,

I'll bet June Cleaver would have pimped the Beaver out for these...
from www.lawndaleartcenter.org

dipped a set of apparently random objects (hats, shoes, string...mainly objects that would absorb liquid) in vats of either milk or oil and then stored them in large glass jars. The four members' manor was methodical and deliberate. The audience's demeanor was silent, almost reverential. When they finished baptizing and storing the objects, the jars were to be sealed and the contents allowed to pursue their natural course, namely deteriorating and\or decaying.  It had a normative, unsettling aire, but that was all.

Given Houston's energy and agricultural heritage, it seemed appropriate enough, but no more appropriate than in any other city. In Milwaukee or Los Angeles, this piece would have been as contextually relevant. In Houston, it seems to miss an opportunity. A more site-specific performance might have highlighted the process of extracting these natural resources and their toll on the environment. Think milk squirting hot from a cow's udder or oil erupting from a well. Both of which distinguish Houston from the rest of the oil-burning, milk-drinking contential U.S.

Instead, the performance focused on our consumer relationship to these resources. The Bridge Club utilized these iconic resources in their refined, one might say commoditized state, which in a site-specific context seems to pasteurize and reduce the piece's symbolism. But maybe that's their point. Despite the complex realities of acquiring these resources (extracting and refining oil from under the sea or raising, feeding, milking, and breeding thousands of cattle), we are dispassionately consuming them without taking into account their finite nature (in the case of oil) or their effects on our environment or our health. So the Bridge Club gives us an object lesson.