Artists Julie Tolentino and Stosh Fila performed the final live showing of HONEY as a part of the three-day Elemental Media Conference on Thursday. The showing was also presented by the IGNITE Series campus project, a Brown Arts Institute initiative.
During the three-hour performance, Tolentino, who conceptualized the show, swallows viscous clusters of honey poured over gold threads by partner Fila. The honey drips and pools around Tolentino, never stopping, as the two performers remain in position for the entire showing.
Held at Fishman Studio in the Granoff Center for the Creative Arts, the performance was viewable from multiple angles and the audience sat around the couple.
Tolentino is a Filipinx-Salvadoran artist and a visiting associate professor of the practice of the arts at the BAI. Her most recent performance-based works, HOLD TIGHT GENTLY and ECHO POSITION, were featured at the Whitney Biennial in 2022. Fila, a professional scenic artist and performer, has toured with Tolentino for the last 15 years.
Since 2009, HONEY has been presented in various settings around the world as a form of collective study, according to the performance’s handout. The piece aims to reflect “pressured, receptive and resistant spaces of connection” and “respond to the contexts in which it is performed,” the description reads.
Leon Hilton, an assistant professor of theater arts and performance studies who was at the performance, interpreted the piece as a story of connection between Tolentino and their partner Fila. “It actualizes this really intense, tender, loving, at times painful, endurance of both the body and consumption,” he told The Herald.
Hilton added that the piece presents “a complex ecological web that we are all enmeshed in” and invites viewers to engage with the relationship between the performers. He noted that the performance is “beautiful, but also quite intense,” asking observers to question their complicity in consumption.
Courtney Lau, a PhD student who has worked with Tolentino, sees the work as a “negotiation of power” between the two artists as well as something tender and caring, held together by the honey. When discussing the performance’s length, Lau noted that while Tolentino “is enduring this honey drip … the audience is also enduring.”
As the performance continued, bright lights shone on Tolentino as the sun set over the Granoff Center, and the audience was treated to a different view. When asked about how this changed the performance, Lighting Designer and Technical Director Andy Sowers said “it’s up to each audience member.”
The room’s lighting aimed to have the audience focus on “the honey and … the sculptural elements,” Sowers said, not “seeing the body or seeing the work.”
He added that no matter the location, the performance is “equally beautiful and just as powerful.” “It’s really about the performer,” he said. “It’s tragic, it’s violent, it’s beautiful.”
For audience member MJ Cunniff GS, the performance was “fascinating.” They said that the lighting change made “the honey feel much more illuminated in the darkened space.”
While the live performance has reached its last iteration, Tolentino remains at Brown. They are currently teaching a course called ARTS1012: “Body as Medium: Queer Lineages of Duration, Resonance and Excess,” and will be presenting at Queer Durations, a three-day symposium curated by the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies in December.
