Performance Anxiety

On Oct. 4, hundreds of people flooded downtown Toronto for the city’s annual all-night arts festival, Nuit Blanche. The ones wearing these Day-Glo helmets and marking people with invisible ink were part of “Halflife,” an interactive art performance exploring themes of fear and connection, by Buffalo artist Shasti O’Leary Soudant (MFA ’11). In one of the most buzzed-about performances of the evening, Soudant’s volunteer army of “carriers” tested the public for the so-called Halflife virus. At midnight, the “infected” gathered for a group “quarantine” and “cure”—and the chance to take some unusual selfies.