This might sound a little blasphemous to the small cadre of experimental art aficionados scattered across the RPI campus, but I honestly never thought I would see something "entertaining" at EMPAC. Interesting, yes. Thought-provoking, yes. But entertaining? Laugh-out-loud funny? Poignant? Straightforward? Paul Abacus's grand tirade against national borders, titled, simply enough, "ABACUS," features all of these traditional features of pop entertainment, but unlike a simple TV speech or documentary film, this is something entirely unique to EMPAC.
ABACUS begins with static playing across all six of its massive vertical screens, which are laid out in two parallel, vertical arcs. The continuation of their shapes seem to form the bottom piece of a large sphere, something Paul was likely aiming for considering his obsession with author/inventor/visionary Buckminster Fuller and his concept of the geodesic dome. Like Fuller's theoretical device, ABACUS's screens provide visualizations of data that enhance any of the variety of messages that Paul conveys throughout the presentation. These range from the artistically fascinating (a series of stark black-and-white Steadicam shots of Paul, the audience, and the performance space) to the absurd (relative differences between American, Mexican, and Canadian kaleidoscope purchases) to the deadly serious (statistics regarding the imminent danger of continuing to live in a world separated by borders).
ABACUS meanders in philosophical territory for the first segment of the piece before finally getting into the meat of his message: namely, that national borders are arbitrary, absurd, and dangerous artifacts of a previous time, and that for humanity to progress to the next level, we will need to transcend such self-segregation and work together as a single species. His goal is noble, to be sure, but obviously a little utopian upon first glance.
That said, it is a testament to Paul Abacus's presentational skills — which lie somewhere between a TED talk and a secular church sermon — that he manages to provide as coherent and believable an argument as he does. While there are no certain solutions in ABACUS, Paul utilizes a cache of philosophy, data, and theories consisting of everyone from Charles Darwin to Al Gore to Plato, leaving the audience with an honest feeling that (a) national borders should be dissolved and (b) such a dissolution is in line with the natural evolution of the human race.
What makes ABACUS so exceptional, however, is its accessibility. Everything Paul says is presented completely straight, without the self-indulgent ambiguity that so often plagues experimental art. As such, there is a surface level that can be easily understood and enjoyed by fans of non-experimental art and entertainment. Underneath that level is an artistic use of the EMPAC space and technology — at one point lights flash on and off to create an unnerving back-and-forth pattern in the shadows on the back wall — that helps to underscore all of Paul's explicit arguments.
Unfortunately, a series of twists at the end, in seeking to create a sense of escalating emotion, actually succeed moreso in pulling the audience out of the experience. We are aware from the beginning that Paul Abacus is a fictional character being performed on stage, but only in the final act (which indeed creates some significant emotional tension) do we actually understand that he is not real. As visceral as the act is, it undercuts the Paul's brutally realistic message by portraying him as an insane street preacher whose life doesn't really follow the same rules of mortality as a real person's does.
Nevertheless, ABACUS is a performance that only could have been created and performed in EMPAC or a similar space. At once experimental and accessible, Paul Abacus's powerful work is a testament to the wide range of EMPAC's expressive ability, and reminds us that surface entertainment need not be sacrificed for the sake of artistic depth.
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