The cast of colorful and eccentric characters populating downtown and Over-the-Rhine will inflate by one this Friday when performance artist Jimmy Kuehnle comes to town.
At first, he’ll look pretty normal just before his performance starts at noon Friday near Washington Park.
But within seconds, without warning, he’ll transform into … well, it’s hard to describe, actually. He’ll be concealed within an inflatable, 9-foot-tall, purple-banded pink cube with swaying hammer-like appendages coming on all sides. And then he — or should we say it? — will begin walking all over town. Weather permitting, that is: He can’t do this in high winds.
What exactly is he supposed to be? In three separate cities, strangely, this costume been taken by people as a visualization of the H1N1 virus.
“I don’t know how to describe it except saying people think it looks like a virus,” Kuehnle says by telephone from Chicago after completing a performance in Millennium Park.
Read Steve Rosen’s entire interview with Kuehnle and get event details here.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2009.