\u201cI don\u2019t really care,\u201d says Boehme with a laugh. \u201cI do what I want to do. If the work demands that I do something, then I do it. Whether or not I\u2019m considering the audience\u2026 I don\u2019t, really.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Boehme says that his art isn\u2019t about entertaining somebody; it\u2019s a work of art, which means that even though things have changed\u2014such as the acceptance of nudity in a public exhibition\u2014Boehme still strikes a balance between the times.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way you could do that in public [anymore],\u201d says Boehme. \u201cI mean, people do. It\u2019s more open in China than it is here, having done work across China. We\u2019re like a police state here\u2014very conservative with abstract thought and abstract construction. You want to work in the box.\u201d<\/p>\n Where the show is, and the culture of that place, influences the show significantly, says Boehme, pointing out that performance art is not theatre by any means.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThere are no rehearsed activities. It\u2019s performance art,\u201d he says, talking about the specifics of his show Doing Things n\u2019 Stuff: An Accumulation of Actions, Relics, and Recent Work and More from John G. Boehme<\/i>. \u201cThere\u2019s images, there\u2019s some video projections used in performances, there\u2019s sculptural objects, manifestations of performances that have happened, and relic objects, meaning objects that derived and were made during an action or a performance.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One of the photos in Boehme\u2019s exhibition is of him sitting at a table set for a fancy dinner. Seems normal, right? Something you might see every day? The difference in this piece of art is that the table is at the bottom of a tailing pond in Northern Ireland, a site used in gold mining to separate the gold from the rest of the earth using cyanide. In the photo, Boehme is eating a ploughman\u2019s lunch\u2014traditionally consisting of bread, cheese, onions, and pickles\u2014covered in gold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI ate the gold covered in encrusted ploughman\u2019s lunch while drinking Goldschl\u00e4ger,\u201d he says. \u201cAll of the gold was ingested and then I left my own gold-encrusted tailing in the hole in the ground, not unlike a tailing pond, so it refers to the activity that\u2019s supposed to take place there: leaving a tailing, then covering it up.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n As part of the exhibit, on October 10 Boehme is considering doing through performance art an homage <\/b>to his father, who passed away on September 22 of last year.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m thinking about doing some kind of a sound homage\u2014a durational sort of sound performance,\u201d says Boehme, explaining that this could take place over \u201cthree, four, five, six hours, using the spoken word.\u201d<\/p>\n Boehme\u2019s work comes from a variety of interests pertaining to the world around him, he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m interested in social contract theory,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m interested in how we identify using language and paralanguage\u2014gestures and all that\u2014just how humans interact with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Boehme-2.jpg\")
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