Special Thanks To:

Natosha Via – Photography and Video

Martin French – Light Control

KMAC Museum and Moremen Gallery

Video documentation will be made available during exhibition opportunities.

“HOW I LEARNED TO KEEP THE FLOWERS is less a spectacle and more a chamber piece.The performance incorporates items such as a 1940s hospital bed, a cellphone, a garden bed, and a razor blade. The way these objects are used, and why, is complex, but I can give you some ideas. We should be aware of the violence in the world, and how this broad concept of violence is affecting so many systemically and interpersonally. Amidst these realities, I will perform an action of “resistance” that can also speak to our need for the permanence of that essential state. This piece also questions human nature’s proneness to self-destruct, and how self-destruction can lead to possibilities of resilience and other transformations.”

How I Learned To Keep The Flowers

• Walk up to nightstand and pour Everclear into one of two shot glasses. Drink.

• Next pour Everclear into a plate.

• Brennen proceeds repetitively to get out of bed to alarms, water a flower bed with 3 watering cans, and go back to bed.

• The alarms over time start to go off key.

• The alarms then transform into audios consisting of ICE raids, suicide calls, death videos, bombs, film clips, religious songs that suddenly turn into school shooting footage, hidden recordings of Brennen’s personal conflicts and confession, alcoholism, business hostility, racism, criticisms of Louisville such as prejudice and the job market, drug abuse, car accidents, sexual assault, humiliation, sexism, deforestation, money, crying animals, police sirens, and so on.

• Once the alarms change to the above audio, Brennen will proceed to cut a flower into his chest and abdomen with razor blades. This action will be included in his repetitions between watering and returning to bed for the next alarm.

• The performance ends with the final alarm referencing the movie ending to Cabaret. Brennen proceeds to kick watering cans towards the audience, throw a shot glass on the ground, and throw dirt around. He pours another shot of Everclear, drags a blanket in the other hand, and then kneels in the flower bed.

• Brennen sings the final lyrics that were sung by Emcee in the musical “Auf Wiedersehen… à bientôt…”. He pours the shot onto his chest. The alarm turns to drums and then bass drone rumbles. He throws the shot glass behind him. Brennen proceeds to struggle to get dressed and bandage the wound. He grabs his phone, walks down the aisle and grabs his bag near the door. He leaves the audience alone as the audio from the alarm cuts in and out on the speaker.

• Most of the audience sits in silence, one awkward clap, then some mumbling starts, eventually people quietly start dispersing. While that is happening, Brennen is walking an 1hr 30min back to his apartment in Clifton.