Imagine six plus men and women on stage dressed to the androgynous-nines in hyperbolic costumes. A guitar strums heavy and a shirtless man runs around the stage screaming “my sciatica” in the microphone as the others roll around the ground, take off their clothes or spread their legs in front of the audience, maybe revealing a bleeding diaper.
Meet the Jugger-nuts, a punk troupe of performance artists that met in Bushwick and exploded out of the womb of Brooklyn together. At introduction they may rub off as hosts to a nightmare or freakshow. However, the roots of their performance run deep in the performance art scene of Northern Brooklyn.
In the 1980s and 1990s Williamsburg was the neighborhood in Brooklyn known to be a drug hub for crack-cocaine.
Kokies infamously had two lines that would wrap around the bar: one to buy a drink at the bar and another for cocaine. Gradually it transformed to a neighborhood, where ground-breaking music birthed from. Various unlicensed theaters and music venues began to sprout and street artists began to roam the streets; however, their aim was not as clandestine as Williamsburg politics were. The theme was circus-oriented with trapeze artists using the Williamsburg bridge to suspend themselves with the air as their platform to perform.
Remnants of this movement still exist with studios, such as The House of Yes (providing performance space for Lady Circus Corps – a “troupe of femmes fatales, who are taking circus arts to new heights”) and Big Sky Works. In 2011 an aerial performer used the Williamsburg Bridge Tower to perform without a safety harness.
Jugger-nuts is keeping the boisterous theme in performance alive by incorporating noisy, explosive-punk music, along with an in-your-face performance.
They can be seen throwing themselves around at 2012 the Whitney Biennial, the greasy basements of crust-punks or Time Square on October 5th, 2012.
Body Dialect 