Fix
Ben Gould's The Waiting Room
By Peregrine Honig • October 2025
Ben Gould steps into a medium historically fixed in exposure to blood, endurance of time, difficult smell, endless sound, or wet electricity. This room is at capacity with generations of students sensitive to the legacy of performance art, and Gould panders mercilessly to this threat.
There’s a joke. How many performance artists does it take to change a lightbulb? I don’t know. I got bored and left. Self-depreciation is decadent. Everyone here can afford to take an hour to risk it feeling wasted and talk about it later.
Video still from Ben Gould's "The Waiting Room.” Courtesy of Ben Gould, photography by Patricia Bordallo Dibildox.Ben Gould is half-brothers with my first roommate, Nemo Gould. Nemo and I share a birthday, grew up in California, and had one common friend before we arrived in Kansas City. We catch up on the lawn, make each other laugh, and head inside to sit down. I arrive after Nemo, but he takes a seat behind me. We are bookended between waiting rooms; the doctor’s office, the DMV, a bus stop, a lecture hall—patience wanting to leave. I am still thinking about the first question Nemo was asked after a recent art talk. A man had come in off the street. Hand raised. Could he sleep in the studio?
Ben Gould tumbles into the auditorium spotlight in EKG chorded epaulettes, framed by his father on strings and his cousin on drums. He’s transporting a T-bend of steel cast in a ball mass of ice. It is a melting kettlebell, invisible as an anatomical plastic toy. The condensation catches the sweat on his arms, soaks his stained saffron undershirt. Brown Dickies, a beige cummerbund, pipetted flowers, and hospital instruments clatter with his spin to the wooden floor. The friction of legs on front-row pillows and late chair-filling freezes in the dark.
Video still from Ben Gould's "The Waiting Room.” Courtesy of Ben Gould, photography by Patricia Bordallo Dibildox.Gould’s Tourette’s is indivisible from his choreography, and the objects in his pockets project premeditated harm. His inclusion of his family amplifies the tension of his audience’s permission to watch him. He moves like someone violently resisting medical attention. His father is facing us. Act normal. Don’t be rude. Cough drops at the opera house, because our throats collectively contract in reaction to what we hear. Looking away is a self-prescribed shame when we know we are too old to stare.
Video still from Ben Gould's "The Waiting Room.” Courtesy of Ben Gould, photography by Patricia Bordallo Dibildox.Gould’s body as material is believable. He captures himself and performs for and as all people trapped. So, everyone. We are formed by this arch of time and projected into a capacity to survive. What we are born into and seek creates this spectrum of attraction, addiction, and potential solutions. Our first desires, early drive, and so many tests define how we are seen. Our worth. Resources and documentation are such a spectrum. We are completely what we cannot control, and Ben Gould delivers us.
Ben Gould premiered The Waiting Room on September 6, 2025 at Kansas City Art Institute's Epperson Auditorium during the opening reception for KCAI's Biennial Alumni Art Exhibition.