art training letter (love)

September 2001, Many Voices Evening of Ritual, Resilience and Resistance post 9/11, Babylon Café & Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN

“Little over a month after 9/11 – Gabrielle Civil walked up the 3 stairs to the raised stage at the Babylon, Art and Cultural Center and performed – “Art, Training Letter” for a standing room only audience. The night had seen political poetry, film and theater all denouncing the U.S, Governments appalling response to the attacks on 9/11.  Civil offered something else. Intimately she and her tape recorder carried on a conversation about a recent sexual fling she had in New York. [it wasn’t in New York.] She adorned herself with honey and glitter and continue to recount the details of her sexual encounter on the tape and through her correcting herown memories of the night. The straight forward descriptions of sex and the sharing of her inner dialog were vulnerable and erotic. When the story revealed its connection to the events of 9/11 there was a small charge of energy that you could feel through the room. Gabrielle Civil brought the experiences of the body and the inner thoughts to a night mostly out of the body and in the head. There was a collective leaning in from the audience as she moved about the stage, to hear everything she said, to hear the breath we all needed to exhale in those tight days.” —Ellen Marie Hinchcliffe, poet, video and performance artist