Asia Stewart's ANY EXPERIENCE WITH MEN AND ALCOHOL to Premiere at JACK

Offering a well-stocked bar and multiple orders of food, any experience with men and alcohol is an hour-long performance that examines consumption. Inspired in part by Asia Stewart’s time working in hospitality, the piece draws on her encounters with affluent men in the restaurants and lounges where she has worked. After countless shifts spent observing tables and the conversations, transactions, and exchanges that unfold around them, Stewart transforms her own body into a table, becoming an object of service for the audience.

The performance title references a line from Ben Lerner’s novel 10:04, which meditates, at times, on discursive power and dominance. Stewart extends this inquiry by asking, “Who holds the power to shape an experience, and for how long?”

The poses Stewart adopts throughout the evening echo those in British artist Allen Jones’s 1969 “Women as Furniture” series: Hatstand, Table, and Chair. These sculptural works feature white eroticized mannequins in positions of subservience: on their hands, knees, and backs, with limbs outstretched. While Jones has insisted that his Chair was never meant to be sat on, Stewart invites guests to grab seats at her table.

any experience with men and alcohol was previously included in the Sight/Geist performance series at The 8th Floor in 2024. Development was made possible through the support of Anjuli Nanda, Charles de Agustin, and George Bolster.