Miles Greenberg: TRUTH

In his world debut of TRUTH at Powerhouse Arts, Miles Greenberg creates a portal into an alternate reality through which viewers are encouraged to leave the real world behind as they experience a utopic, watery landscape, populated by mysterious, silent avatars. This piece is the first in a trilogy, titled TRUTH, CANDOUR, and HONESTY, named after a scene in the novel Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. In Woolf’s text, these words are repeated over the course of a supernatural transformation that takes place when the leading character, the poet Orlando, morphs from man to woman. 

“But here, alas, Truth, Candour, and Honesty, the austere Gods who keep watch and ward by the inkpot of the biographer, cry No! Putting their silver trumpets to their lips they demand in one blast, Truth! And again they cry Truth! and sounding yet a third time in concert they peal forth, The Truth and nothing but the Truth!

At which - Heaven be praised! for it affords us a breathing space the doors gently open, as if a breath of the gentlest and holiest zephyr had wafted them apart, and three figures enter.

[…] ‘Truth come not out from your horrid den. Hide deeper, fearful Truth. For you flaunt in the brutal gaze of the sun things that were better unknown and undone; you unveil the shameful; the dark you make clear, Hide! Hide! Hide!' Here they make as if to cover Orlando with their draperies. The trumpets, meanwhile, still blare forth, 'The Truth and nothing but the Truth.'

[…] We are, therefore, now left entirely alone in the room with the sleeping Orlando and the trumpeters. The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast: ‘THE TRUTH!'

at which Orlando woke.

He stretched himself. He rose. He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth! Truth! Truth! we have no choice left but confess–he was a woman.”
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Greenberg views his installations as spaces for meditation and therapeutic release, for both performer and viewer alike. Once inside, the viewer is engaged in an abstract poem whose meaning develops through its extended duration. 

TRUTH borrows the form of an epic battle, at once violent and balletic, unfolding over many hours. Greenberg likens his work to an extended sensation of ecstasy or an unending convulsion. Viewers feel as though they have arrived on another planet, newly unfamiliar with their own senses. The audience may be incited to rediscover their own bodies in relation to this novel environment, a vantage point through which they may more deeply access their own psychic landscapes. 

All movement is improvised and autonomic within a shared visual language. Once engaged, the performers use their own memories as prompts, choosing how to ambulate and react, ultimately disappearing into their own bodies in a trance. Greenberg confides that performance is the only space in which his worldly fears of death, fragility, anxiety, and his own health fully disappear. In this ‘avatar state,’ he can exercise a kind of relinquishment. Imbued in studies of ritual, the performative act is utilized as a tool beyond expression–it serves as a source of power, a means of protection, and a pathway to bodily transcendence.