Wilhelm Cortez is a performance artist. Here’s a taste of his work, and why he does it.
“Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.” Edward Abbey
Stir the stew. However, if you stir too rapidly, aggressively, the stew cools and doesn’t cook as well to blend flavors into something delicious. A gentle slow occasional stir keeps it moving and still allows the heat to simmer and the flavors to blend.
Stir society but not too abruptly, give it time to stew, time to contemplate. This is not cooking instant noodles. This is a slow cooked hearty bean stew.
A small town, almost forgotten on the fringes of Eastern Europe, a brief time on a weekday afternoon, unexpected and unadvertised, it just appears from nowhere and disappears the same way. Where did it come from and why did it come? A question that will be answered for the individual observer once their stew has simmered long enough after getting a real nice gentle stir from this performance.
The blank person, no visible “humanity,” every muscle held tight, organic movement flows from the moment. It appears just like it should be there, has always been there but obviously shouldn’t be and hasn’t always been anywhere.
A skew emerges in reality’s stew; this stirs things up. The observer can’t immediately explain. This simmers in the mind and maybe the dinner bell rings days, weeks or years later. Maybe.