I’ve always really loved studying languages and writing and storytelling. In performance, when you’re working with bodies, you don’t always have the benefit of language to describe what’s happening. So I’ve become really interested in communication difficulty and communication problems, and how to center those as a key part of the performance experience for both the performer and the audience…
We live in a time when there’s a camera that’s embedded in our conscious minds all the time now. Whether or not we’re standing in front of a camera, we could always potentially be photographed. [siccer] is trying to explore the stress that I feel about that—the trap of the sort of ever-present camera and the labor of becoming a moving image…
The title [siccer] comes from my interest in drawing attention to the ways in which we point out deviations from standard English in written text. When you write an essay and you quote someone, and the spelling of what they say is non-standard, you put [sic] next to their quote to point out that you know, as a writer, that that’s not correct English. I find that to be problematic. — Will Rawls*
When spoken, [siccer]—the multivalent title of Rawls’s work—evokes concepts of comparative excellence (“sick”= outstanding), dogged pursuit (“sick her”), or a diseased dominant culture in decline (“sicker”). As a corrective to a corrective, [siccer] utilizes choreographed movement, video installation, green screen, and stop-motion photography to plot paths by which Black performance can reject Western forms of classification without resolution—a state of continuous evolution and becoming.
Presented in Los Angeles in what the artist has called a “diptych”—an immersive exhibition at ICA LA (organized by Senior Curator Amanda Sroka with Curatorial Associate Emilia Shaffer-Del Valle) and an engagement of live performances at REDCAT—Rawls’s project explores “the ways in which we become alienated from ourselves when we see ourselves through the media. It emphasizes the impossibility of ever cohering a single subject.”**
Holland Andrews, keyon gaskin, jess pretty, Katrina Reid, and Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste are featured in the ICA LA installation and will perform at REDCAT as well. See info and links below for exhibition and performance schedules.
WILL RAWLS — [SICCER]
Through August 31
ICA LA
1717 East 7th Street, downtown Los Angeles
theicala.org/will-rawls-siccer
WILL RAWLS — [SICCER] performance
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday
April 10, 11, and 12, at 8:30 pm
REDCAT
631 West 2nd Street, downtown Los Angeles
See: Art Talk: Will Rawls and Amanda Sroka on [siccer]:
*Will Rawls, Brooklyn, 2022. Video transcription text courtesy and © Will Rawls and MCA Chicago.
mcachicago.org/will-rawls-siccer
**Will Rawls in conversation with Katy Dammers, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Performing Arts at REDCAT, 2025.
Will Rawls, [siccer], from top: Installation view of [siccer], Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (PICA), 2023; Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste(left), keyon gaskin, Katrina Reid, jess pretty, Holland Andrews; Reid (photo by Will Rawls); PICA installation; [siccer] performance stage.
Images courtesy and © Will Rawls, PICA, and the artists and performers.
