Dangerously Artsy: Geneva Jacuzzi at the Lodge Room?

Geneva Jacuzzi‘s “Art is Dangerous” isn’t just the banger single from her most recent Dais Records full length album, Triple Fire, “Art is Dangerous” is both an affirmation of the intention to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable (a sentiment lost among more and more corporatized and bubble-wrapped, cookie cutter artists) and it’s also a reference to a timeless debate that transcends culture.

Is art dangerous? Were Tipper Gore and the PMRC right all along? Can you ingest as much devil worship, pornographic, sinful material as possible without having your soul tarnished one iota? Can you play endless hours of GTA, shooting up civilians without feeding a subliminal bloodlust, can you listen to Radiohead without feeling lonely or binge-stream Slayer without losing faith?

Far too many people in the current state of the world are beginning to veer toward answering “yes”. That art, is in fact, dangerous. Even though Geneva Jacuzzi is affirming that danger, I have to wonder if she sees it dangerous in the same way as a certain sector of extreme believers who’s rhetoric makes you think they desire a modern bonfire of the vanities.

Geneva Jacuzzi at Lodge Room shot by Abraham Preciado

I say this because Geneva Jacuzzi’s performance for her album release show at the Lodge Room reminded me of the controversial Olympics opening ceremony. Not because both were intentionally blasphemous, although the 2nd half of Geneva’s might have somewhat been, but because they took inspiration from the same pool of ideas. Both performances were Fellini-esque, playful, light-hearted yet chaotic, wildly sexual yet symbolic, and in the case of Geneva, balancing the avant-garde with the down-right hilarious. Geneva’s was also much better, whereas the Olympics, sans the Gojira performance, were derivative.

The first time I saw Geneva Jacuzzi at Substance Festival years ago, it was clear to everyone at the Belasco, she was a talent and mind so unique, she stood apart from every contemporary. Her set was something wholly alien, like Klaus Nomi era Bowie from outer-space, you could feel the inspiration of theater, mime, disco, Bladerunner, Russian futurism, all that ambiguously futuristic weirdness. Other Geneva performances I saw online seemed like Victorian-inspired post-apocalyptic Hunger Games-core that you could bump and jive to. Geneva always had the songs to boost her artistic vision. “Do I Sad”, “Casket”, and “Cannibal Babies”, were all highlights of her set that make people feel an uncontrollable need to dance.

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With every performance, but especially this album release show, everyone that knew Geneva was infinitely curious as to what she would do next. That curiosity was finally satiated when a specter floated into the sold out Lodge Room, carried by four toga-wearing servants and singing a frosty melody. She was dressed ghoulishly, icicles dripping off the silken cobwebs in her hair, white as death with a pale fog in her wake after every inch she lurched toward the stage.

Arriving onstage, her cult uncovered numerous Roman columns, harkening back to antiquity, as if although it might not be explicit, you know every song is philosophically elavated. Ancient Rome and Greece are settings present in various Dais artist performances I’ve seen throughout the years, to the point I’ve wondered if goth music is somehow a more Apollonian than Dionysian form. Geneva Jacuzzi upended that notion though, because things were about to get downright Bacchic.

Every movement of her servants was coordinated with hers because every movement of this pop performance was art. By the time she got into “Art is Dangerous” and sang the lyric “Hang it on the wall”, followed by making a hanging pose with her arm holding a noose from which her neck limply dangled, we were all starting to feel her music on a deep level. It’s like the poppiness, the humor, the fun, the disguises and the antics are all there to sneak in some very deep ideas.

It was all a very art affirming experience. A rebuke to all the haters out there that think art is itself has transgressed into irrelevancy. Through humor and poetry, art will prevail against its detractors and those that scream “satanic” every time they see something strange will only grow more bitter until they’re ideas are proven wrong using the evidence of their own joylessness. Art is dangerous, hating art can kill you.

By the 2nd half of her performance, once she finished performing much of her new album, Geneva changed costumes and sets to animate a vision that could be more easily construed as satanic. With crimson reds blowing in the wind and fires draping across the background behind her, one might sense some kind of Marina Abramovic or House that Jack Built deviousness present in the art direction.