We arrive a bit early to find Gecko getting dressed for her "Cook Gecko Cook" affair. Gecko is a performance artist that to coin a phrase, pushes the envelope, of performance art just a little. Gecko was flying under the radar of ArtCall's predecessor, The NetLetter, so we don't have any prior documentation of her body of art. Yet, Gecko has been one of the busiest little bees on the art scene in the last decade in the Lower East Side. Gecko has also been a model for Morrie Cramer, and various other artists. We wandered back outside into the high humidity and looked at this wonderful little barrel fountain that is installed each nite outside the Collective Unconscious space at 145 Ludlow Street.
The Collective Unconscious Space is kind of like ABC No Rio in that it too is a non-profit art agency, that they do much performance art, and that they are extremely innovative. At this point they begin to part company as Collective Unconscious is in leased space as opposed to No Rio's owning the building outright. Collective Unconscious is also an artist collective as opposed to No Rio's being an artistic collaboration. There is a bit of a pressure cooker that bubbles under the Ludlow St. space that forces the space to schedule something every day to attempt to pay the rent.
There was a predecessor to Collective Unconscious on Avenue B called Gargoyle Mechaniqe. They wound up folding due to gentrification and skyrocketing rent. The collective faces the same challenge, as they get hit with a whopping 46% hike in their lease rent in a couple of months. Pressure is pervasive across even the Lower East Side as gentrification creeps ever southward from the East Village. For the time being it seems as though a liquor license is a more of a printing press to print money than to help a neighborhood. What started the upgrade process of a neighborhood, art, is rapidly being discarded in favor of cold hard cash, and frankly we hope that the saturation to all the bars and restaurants ends soon.
The sold out show (pop. 40), was a hit as Gecko revealed her Texas past while cooking up the garlic. Smell is a little used element of performance that Gecko has latched on to, much to her advantage. The heat prevented Gecko from doing much actual cooking, but she promises to do just that when the show regularly launches for every Sunday nite in September. Sprinkled with seasoned sexual innuendo throughout, Cook Gecko Cook was indeed a very tasty performance.
The entire collective has an electronic element to their work. Gecko's performance was no different as video was taken and an old electric generator contraption was used for cooking the desert, "Bananas Foster". The machine creates bolts of lightning and when the bananas were lit aflame with 151 proof rum, the bolts of lightning actually cooked the bananas! (they were very tasty too!) I attempted to take a picture of the finale, only to come up short as the charges from the device actually erased the picture as it was being taken. I was lucky I didn't lose my camera altogether.
It was an international audience that was onhand catching this rising performance star. Erica Steinhauer of Oxford, England was very happy with what she had witnessed. Erica was visiting her daughter her in the states and was also "buying up the bead district", she said,  for things she couldn't get back home.
As Gecko had set up the performance series, she had landed a couple of local sponsors, Jeremy's Microbatch Ice Cream (at first I thought it was beer), and Original Sin Cider (hard). We liked how she managed to "plug" the items without it detracting from her patter on-stage.
As the assembled multitude gathered to consume the feast, it was apparent that they were satisfied at the performance they had witnessed. Gecko had no serious delivery problems, only one minor glitch, (the rum has to be delivered just before it it lit) and Yes Gecko You Can Cook!