FINAL TOUR — NOELLE CHOY

A series of nine funeral service performances for my late dog (companion, muse, mascot, collaborator) that took place from July through August of 2017 across the country. It was a continuous party commemorating a relationship through reenactments of a portable ceremony that fit into an orange suitcase. There was an altar and a record spinning “Girl I’m kind of glad you walked into my life” as I was a flower and her ashes were shot out of a confetti cannon. The audience was presented with an exaggeration of a memorial. It was reminiscent of tacky bar rooms, except the locations were places she had lived throughout her life, as well as multiple imagined Heavens. The fiction of these “heavens” is that hierarchically, we imagine resting places in physical and metaphysical forms in order to continue our trust in past traditions. A cartoonish representation of this relationship is an attempt to idealize loss in comedic over-the-top services. The disco light ran out of battery on a West Virginia golf course and the record nearly melted in the California desert heat. We want to be swept up off our feet. In longing for companionship we often repeat repeat repeat. A dog is reliable.