Michael Portnoy
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
multimedia artist
Multimedia artist
Multimedia artists are contemporary artists who use a wide range of media to communicate their art. Multimedia art includes, by definition, more than one medium, therefore multimedia artists use visual art in combination with sound art, moving images and other media...
, choreographer, musician and actor. He calls himself a "Director of Behavior".
Performance artist
Portnoy was born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
and studied comparative literature and creative writing at Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
and theater at the National Theater Institute. After moving to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, he formed several short lived experimental theater groups and then began concentrating on solo performance. His early performance works, such as Gymnastics and Schizophrenia, and 5teen3sy: Kicking Games of Lip, were antic and unpredictable, and characterized by dense language play, song and movement fragments and rapid transformations of character. In the mid '90s, Portnoy started to perform in venues associated with the new "Alternative Comedy" scene. His wild, raw theatrical performances, which occasionally interrupted and challenged other comedians on stage, prompted Time Out NY to describe him as "the bad boy of comedy", and The New York Post to dub him "the next Andy Kaufman". Simultaneously, Portnoy started working as a dancer for New York choreographer Koosil-Ja Hwang, and as an actor in commercials, music videos and short films. He also sang and performed his own operatic, electro-progressive-rock music as XAR, and in the theatrical-conceptual band The Liquid Tapedeck.
Soy Bomb
For Bob DylanBob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...
's performance of "Love Sick
Love Sick
"Love Sick" is a song by Bob Dylan, released on his 30th studio album Time Out of Mind in 1997 and released as the second single from the album on June 1, 1998.-Notable performances:...
" at the 1998 Grammy Awards
Grammy Awards of 1998
The 40th Grammy Awards were held on February 25, 1998. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the previous year. Rock icon Bob Dylan, Alison Krauss, and R...
, Portnoy was hired by the Grammys to stand in the background with other dancers and bob his head to the music to "give Bob a good vibe." Instead, halfway through the performance, Portnoy ripped off his shirt, ran up next to Dylan, and started dancing and contorting spastically with the words "Soy Bomb" written boldly in black across his chest.
When questioned by reporters, Portnoy said, "Soy... represents dense nutritional life. Bomb is, obviously, an explosive destructive force. So, soy bomb is what I think art should be: dense, transformational, explosive life" according to Entertainment Weekly and that "he meant Soy Bomb as a 'spontaneous explosion of the self' to re-invigorate the current music scene. He has also said that the phrase is a combination of Spanish and English, meaning "the bomb of 'I am'" The Grammy Awards chose not to press charges against Portnoy for the act, but did decline to pay Portnoy's $200 fee for the dancing gig.
The event was soon parodied on comedy television shows. It was the subject of skits on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
, where he was portrayed by Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell
John William "Will" Ferrell is an American comedian, impressionist, actor, and writer. Ferrell first established himself in the late 1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in the comedy films Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega...
, and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In 2004, the band Strawman featured the track "Soy Bomb" on their album American Idle in reference to the incident. One year later, the band Eels
Eels (band)
Eels is an American indie rock band formed by singer/songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, better known as E...
featured the track "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" on the double-disc album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations
Blinking Lights and Other Revelations is a 2005 double album by Eels. It was described by E on the official website as an album about "God and all the questions related to the subject of God...
.
Portnoy: 1999-present
He has presented work in museums, art galleries, theaters and music halls internationally, including: The 2nd Moscow Biennial, The Taipei Biennial, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa Biennial 07 & 09, Art Unlimited Basel, Centre Pompidou, SculptureCenter, The Kitchen, Kunsthalle Basel, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Gallery, IBID PROJECTS, Deitch Gallery, White Box, ACE Gallery, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Roulette, Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Migros Museum (Zurich), Le Comfort Moderne (Poitiers, France) and The National Review of Live Art (Glasgow).