In the thick of lockdown, when isolation weighed heavy and nothing made sense, we chose unruliness and joy. Procession is a collaborative performance and video work conceived by Deborah Read with filmmaker John Eric Steiner and the DeSala Crew. Together we stitched costumes, gathered a circle of friends who’d all tested negative, and—without permission—took over the MBTA’s Alewife Brook Parkway for a guerrilla art intervention.
We carried the artworks I made throughout my MFA, then staged a funeral pyre—burning everything not with flame, but with digital alchemy. The performance was part wake, part carnival: a refusal to calcify, a gesture of generosity to ourselves and any passerby who needed a spark. It was a dive into the unknown, a celebration that didn’t make sense in a time that didn’t make sense—and precisely for that reason, it felt true.
Video and sound by filmmaker John Eric Steiner. Concept and art direction by Deborah Read. Performance and glorious mayhem by the DeSala Crew.
Collaborative costume making for the art intervention
