Casey Waldner on performing at Experimental Action 2017.
Casey Waldner performed her first performance art piece, entitled Refund, this past February as part of Houston's International Performance Art Festival, Experimental Action*. One unique aspect of Experimental Action is that in order to fulfill a part of its mission to nurture the Houston performance art scene, it offers opportunities for beginner performance artists alongside well established artists. Casey is a glowing example of an artist, new to performance art, taking this opportunity and creating something beautiful and powerful. When asking her more about her process and intentions of the piece, I deeply resonated with her process. This piece is a shining example of how performance art can function as healing ritual, catharsis and personal transformation. In her writings she explains how this piece functions as healing for her, but it is important to connect how her actions have a healing effect on the audience as well. To witness a woman push through the unspoken rules that are placed upon her in this culture, rewrites the rules of being a woman; for Casey obviously, but also for those that truly witnessed her brave and righteous rebellion.
Here are some words from Casey about her piece:
âRefundâ was initially inspired by the emotional reaction of disgust I experienced when I was informed that there was talk of mandating a rule for abortion clinics to cremate the fetal remains/miscarriages of their patients. To me, this was an obvious act of shaming women, their bodies, and gave more care, attention, and value to the dead tissue that was removed from a womanâs body, rather than nurturing and healing the the life of the woman who had just gone through an emotionally and physically traumatizing ordeal. I told my neighbor and local performance artist, Cat Scott, that hearing this news created an opportunity and gave me the  confidence to speak my truth in a way I had never explored before-- the medium of Performance Art! I have been fortunate to speak/express my truth in my music ventures and art pieces, but nothing as raw as recreating a vigilante fantasy in my mind. Charged with all my feelings and with the intention to connect with an audience in a raw manner, I wanted to literally and figuratively spill my guts! And after overcoming a serious bout of bulimia in my formative years, I knew I could throw up on cue, a talent learned, again, from the shame of what I put into my body. It all seemed so equivalent in significance to exposing the shame and oppression that women face as perceived items of beauty and reproduction. I wanted to show my disgust, I wanted it to be vibrant, and I wanted to channel all the sadness/pain Iâd experienced from acting out shamefully upon myself as well as represent those women shamed by society because they didnât fit into the "ideal female form," a mold our delusional culture has created via the oppression of women.
The vision of my performance âRefundâ was clear to me. I wanted to have 7 white boxes with baby blue bows, that graduated in size, and yielded jars of watery beets (gifts). The bigger the box the more jars of beets were in the box. This allowed me to pace myself upon reacting to each gift of beets and also served to mentally prepare me to consume the beets, knowing that the workload of consuming them would only increase, or get worse to the point of physical discomfort, causing me to vomit.
I wore my most feminine baby blue dress, clipped in hair extensions, and made myself look as preened and âprettyâ as possible. I wanted to put a lot of effort into my appearance, only to slowly dismantle it by the stains of my own gluttony and vomit, which I shamefully kept trying to correct/hide. It was coincidentally appropriate that my color scheme was red, white, and blue.
I had a purse filled with makeup, a mirror, and a white chair on stage. After eating/accepting each gift I would to return to my chair and try to make myself look perfect again, a ritual that became more and more impossible to accomplish, causing an eventual meltdown, which I genuinely experienced onstage.
I began to bond with the beets onstage, as if they were my own fetal remains. I relished them at first, became resentful towards them, experienced extreme guilt and sadness for interacting with them at all, and finally felt relief to release/vomit them from my body- yet still attempting to clean up my âmessâ afterwards, perpetuating the cycle of shame until eventually
accepting the mess I ended up becoming, releasing me from all outside expectation.
The end of my piece was probably one of the happiest, most cathartic moments of my life. Everything disgusting I felt of had experienced was made public, there was no shame, and I actually felt good for vomiting in public- something that I had done previously only in secret. I got to connect with people on a deeper level and I feel like Refund offered something for everyone to connect with, which was my main goal, to connect and relate my experiences/interpretations with those that might need healing, or a voice around the subject matter. I had never experienced something so profound and healing. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to be involved with ExA. Since my involvement in the festival I have a whole new perspective of the art I make, new conversations with the people I meet, and more involvement in my community. Thank you to everyone who made it possible for me to bring a vision to life.
Photography Credits:
Photo 1: Unknown, Photo 2: Tyler Price, Photo 3 and 4: Rebecca Burwell
*It should be noted that Casey's piece was one facet of MERGE, a one night collective of performance artists curated and facilitated by CAT SCOTT for Experimental Action 2017.












