Poster for ASYLUM #1, April 24, 2015, by Alex Degen.

MISSION STATEMENT

Have you ever performed an extremely personal monologue about being alive while female and had a cis-white-straight-man who performs shockingly sexist standup come up to you and tell you that your piece was making people "uncomfortable??" TRUE STORY

Have you ever been asked to perform at a benefit and had the emcee of the benefit mis-gender you in their introduction of you? TRUE STORY

Have you ever sat through extremely racist standup while a bunch of your friends laughed along and the hosts of the event did nothing to intervene? TRUE STORY

Have you ever been asked to perform at a series of events and, after your first performance, you were taken aside by the event host and told to "tone it down" for the next two performances because your performance was "too weird??" TRUE STORY

Have you ever been asked to perform at an event and then watched the (white) host of the event code-switch to a vernacular that they would never use with their white friends in order to introduce you to the crowd? TRUE STORY

Have you ever watched your other straight-white-male friends play a game of "ironic" white macho satire that makes you sick to your core when all you'd rather do is get onstage and talk about your very painful relationship with your father, who is too afraid of being a "sissy" to put his arms around you? TRUE STORY

Have you ever been asked to perform at, speak at, or patronize a "progressive" art venue and had to decline because it wasn't wheelchair accessible? TRUE STORY

It's either happened to us or happened to our friends or we have witnessed it firsthand and we have ENOUGH. We SEEK ASYLUM from this madness and we also feel relegated to an ASYLUM for being too weird/marginal/"identity-based"/upheaved/aware/self-aware/consciousness-raised. We also seek to create a space for performance, art and music that is DIY, all-ages and FREE and available for those who have been unable to find a stage for their own work, as well as for those who have work that their current stages will not accept.

Open your minds and hearts, step into the margin and leave your old programming at the door.

ASYLUM WILL INCLUDE:

Hosts HALO ROSSETTI and O.K. FOX

FEATURED ACTS:

HOUSE OF LOVE (Lucia Love) presents Fashion

Music set by RAFiA

+ MORE SPECIAL GUESTS TBA

+ ART SHOW curated by SESSA ENGLUND

+ A SPECIAL SECRET PRIZE

WE HOPE TO SEE YOUR SET:

Friday, 4/24* at 8pm (sign-ups at 7:30)
*Last Fridays of the month

Big Irv’s
381 Hooper St (btw S. 1st & S. 2nd)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Performing the "One Woman Improv Team" at ASYLUM, Big Irv's, April 24, 2015 .

Portraits of O.K. and Halo by featured performer Edy Modica at ASYLUM, Big Irv's, April 24, 2015.

Poster for ASYLUM #2: NIGHT OF THE AUBADE, May 29, 2015, by O Horvath.

ASYLUM: Performance Art Open Mic

NIGHT OF THE AUBADE

An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn. It has also been defined as "a song or instrumental composition concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak".

In the strictest sense of the term, an aubade is a song from a door or window to a sleeping woman.

BUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN LOVE SONGS ARE SUNG AT DUSK

EVOKING DAYBREAK AT NIGHTFALL

TO PEOPLE WHO ARE WIDE AWAKE

COME SING TO US YOUR MORNING PARTING LOVE SONGS THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THIS ASYLUM, TO US PINING, HYSTERICAL WOMYN, AGAINST THE MENSES OF THE SETTING SUN

~*Interpret widely at a five-minute length*~

Hosted by Halo Rossetti and O.K. Fox. Art show curated by Sessa Englund.

FEATURING:

performances by

art works by

+ MORE SPECIAL GUESTS TBA

+ A SPECIAL SECRET PRIZE

Friday, 5/29 (last Fridays of the month)

Art opening at 7:30
Open mic at 8pm (sign-ups starting at 7:30)

Big Irv's
381 Hooper St (btw S. 1st & S. 2nd)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

~*All are welcome; hysterics may never leave*~
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

"Artwork" by O.K. Fox.

ORDAINED MINISTER:

"Dearly beloved audience attendees, friends, and weirds, we are gathered here to join Chloe Rossetti and Olivia Fox in holy matrimony and moneytree-mony.

I will now charge the couple 50 dollars each, please rise for the ceremonial exchange of bills. Now please recite the ceremonial creed of consumance:

"With arms wide open

Under the sunlight

Welcome to this place

I'll show you everything

With arms wide open

With arms wide open"

The couple will now exchange vows, the manuals for the rest of their lives. Part A fits into Part B and so on…

*vows*

The couple will now exchange cool rings they bought for each other at the mall or whatever.

"With this ring, I wed thee" x2

The couple will now exchange the telling of their favorite animals, before this moment this fact was a secret, and with these words I command their freedom

Halo & O.K.: *whispers* "giraffe! panda bear!"

Wise choices. The giraffe signifies great heights to shared prosperity, the panda bear bestows trust and green-ness.

With the waves of my arms and my heart on my sleeve I now pronounce you manned wives.

You may kiss and hug

Blessed be the kingdom of queens! Amen!!" [Guitar Break]

A special event at ASYLUM #2: NIGHT OF THE AUBADE, Big Irv's, May 29, 2015.

"Give me my One Thousand Benefits, Uncle Sam

My Prime Minister went to war on behalf of your Bushes

And we reaped the visa benefits

But that is not enough for me

I want to be free to roam your stolen country, penniless and afraid

I want to plant wildflowers back in the gardens you plundered

I want to hop fences with people much more disenfranchised than me

I want to get arrested at marches

I want to freelance

I want to be reimbursed for my artistic labor

I want to leave your country without having to enter an embassy on the other side of the world in order to come back again

How is Canada? How is Mexico? How do you treat your neighbors, America?

How is your healthcare? How is your monogamy? How is your porn industry, America?

I want to hoard money in piles of cash under my bed

I want to stitch money into my backpack

I want to dropout

I want the right to one day refuse the work that I am so thankful for, that keeps me here

I want to be a Slacker, America

I want you to take care of me

I want to be Your Problem, Now

Let me into your municipal buildings as one of your own, America, so that I may impregnate you with the alien baby of change from the inside out

I want to vote, America, in your dictatorship because it’s poison not to

I want to leave and come back again

I want to worm my way into your paperwork

I am not an alien, America, just alien to you

Make me a citizen of your occupation so than I can change it

Grant me the weapon of your mobility

Marry me, America, into a system that I don’t understand

Marry my friends, too — let’s have a group wedding at the edge of the earth

Though wedlock is a kind of hemlock I would like you to need me, America, so that I may get inside of you

Green card me, America, so that my citizenship appears before me on a three-year track lined with lies about your history of genocide

Let my wedding ring be a strap-on, America

I wanna fuck you until you burst at the seams and all of your borders fall down

I’ll let you grab my ass if I can grab your land-grab and give it back to the people on the other side of the marital fence, on the other side of your perfectly manicured lawn that is spawning other lawns in a land of lawns and agriculture that is washing away the earth beneath our feet

I wanna fuck you, America—marry me so that we may break this vow of celibacy once and for all

May all citizens of America be fucked the way they want to

May all who people walk in beauty be free."

—Halo Rossetti, Asylum #2 wedding vows, May 29, 2015.

Documentation of a special event at ASYLUM #2: NIGHT OF THE AUBADE, May 29, 2015.

"La la la la la!~

Lu lu lu lu le

You are my friend, my friend Chloe.

A man once told me, well I assume he was a man because he said he was a lawyer...

Anyway he said to me:

"This document is legally binding, by signing here you agree to the terms above"

And that really spoke to me, resonated deep in my soul, and I decided then are there to set out on a mission; to find and sign as many legal documents as I possibly could. As long as I can shake a pen, as long as pens are still legal.

I think it was Ayn Rand that said, and I quote:

"Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife" And I think happiest is the wife-groom that finds their willing participant in futuring their quest for stability and welfare. I can be that friend. I'm ready, and willing, and the police haven't confiscated my collection of pens yet nor have they ratified any laws against friendship. I had a question for the ordained actually, is "consummation" really a requirement? How antiquated does this shit get in 2015? And by antiquated I of course mean sacred and protected institution.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "Check please!" 'cause I don't think they give these certificates out for free, and we really need the receipt (to show the police so they don't take my pens away)---I mean because I'm committed to this Asylum, I mean my betrothed."

—O.K. Fox, Asylum #2 wedding vows, May 29, 2015

"Artwork" by O.K. Fox.