The old worry, revisited

On Friday July 26 at 7:30pm, JOAN presents The old worry, revisited, an original performance by Ajani Brannum inspired by Ulises Carrión’s 1981 artist book and lecture Gossip, scandal, and good manners. The performance is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, a bookwork in many places, on view from May 24-August 9, 2026.

Conceptually framed as a field study, Gossip, scandal, and good manners enlisted a group of Carrión’s friends to circulate gossip about the artist himself around Amsterdam over a three month period, from March to June in 1981. Participants documented the dissemination of these false narratives in notebooks, reflecting on the difficulties of fabricating convincing stories and the challenge of finding appropriate times to introduce them into a conversation. Yet the collaborator’s greatest challenge lay in maintaining their circulation after its initial transmission. Based on their reported findings, gossip was often met with indifference.

Carrión’s project exemplifies his approach to language beyond conventional and literary forms. At its conclusion, Carrión produced an eponymous artist book, delivered a lecture at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and created a video adaptation, all within the same year. Drawing on the material collected during the experiment, these presentations illustrated the participants’ observations with diagrams that differentiated gossip from rumors and slander, along with visual references to film and opera. In the artist book, Carrión reflected on the project: “My intention was to test as an individual and as a public image, to check the boundaries of my territory and my endurance. I consciously chose to do it by means of marginal, erratic, uncontrollable channels.”

In The old worry, revisited, Brannum departs from the questions raised by Carrión in Gossip, scandal, and good manners, exploring how information circulates through social groups and how it serves as a conduit to the construction of collective and individual identities.

Ajani Brannum is an undisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. He has worked with a range of choreographers and performance-makers, including Miguel Gutierrez, Deborah Hay, Will Rawls, and Elliot Reed. He has shared performances, workshops, and lectures at REDCAT, ODC, Human Resources Los Angeles, Materials & Applications, Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles Performance Practice, in classrooms, on tabletops and screens, and when no one is looking. Born in Anchorage, Alaska, he holds an AB in English and a Certificate in Dance from Princeton University, and a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA.