A collaboration with Manlio LoConte (audio) and Greg Howard (text). Instructions on the Removal of Birds from the Head is a work of fiction composed of fragments, anecdotes, self contained stories, unfinished stories, lists and vignettes, all relating to an unknown disease that surfaces among the populace in an unknown country. The book details the disease’s many and seemingly unrelated symptoms, the stories of patients and presumed patients’ experience with the disease, the attempt by four doctors to understand and diagnose it, and the world that created it.
Using custom audio and video software, Manlio and I accompanied Greg’s text and created an improvisational performance for Anti-Gravity at the Tank. Manlio and I had been working with one another for several years at that point, and Greg and I had been friends for over 15 years. However, this was the first time we had all performed together (and Greg’s first reading in a setting like this).