The Ransom Corp. performances embraced inner and outer risk. We sought to scramble and unscramble the senses, to explore spatial and perceptual possibilities in order to give birth to new and sometimes very ancient experiences. We cultivated personal and collective mythologies to enable and inspire understanding and transformation within our species and our brother and sister organisms.

During the course of researching and developing The Fractal Seed, the Ransom Corp. performed a series of smaller works in 2001 before devoting their focus to the large-scale project for all of 2002.

Mythos Lunatarium in Brooklyn October 27, 2001
A four-person ritual involving two homemade electric cellos, a series of large scale flaming symbols and two battling aerialists on bungi cords.

Emergence Studio 111 Jersey City and Smack Mellon Studios in Brooklyn Summer 2001
A Butoh Choreography set inside of plastic Larve with live mixed video projections, and audio from scrap metal instruments attached to bungi flying acrobats.

IN ME, ABC NO RIO community art space, May 3, 2001
A butoh improvisation using video projection on white bodies and audio composed from scrap metal instruments.

5 Performances of the Body, 23 Windows, April 14, 2001
A 5-hour ambient happening with four separate overlapping butoh performance culminating in a two-hour suspension of 2 inverted bodies accented by surveillance audio manipulations.

Sky Plots Tour previews, Physical Arts Center, North 8, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. October 5,6 & 7 2000.
Before embarking for a European Tour, we staged Sky Plots three nights and threw a benefit party in Brooklyn. The Physical Arts Center had a lower ceiling than the show ultimately required but it offered a spring loaded floor and great setting for a send off with a little help from the Hungry March Band. The show was billed as follows: "Inside the outside, everything happens at once. Sky Plots is an experiment in simultaneity, a mosaic of stories told to the elastic and unpredictable ticking of the imagination's clock. Everyone is a participant in a moment flowing towards an uncertain end. Will time stop? And if it does...?

Hyperbolic, Smack Mellon Studios, DUMBO, November 1999.
Smack Mellon was a vast white walled former spice factory still with inches of cinnamon and paprika caked to its top timbers. The RC hosted this night in collaboration with the Williamsburg Chamber Orchestra, an upstart ensemble conducted by Michael Arenella, hoping to raise funds for a full season of premieres. This was an ambitious, eclectic, in some sense groundbreaking night. It began with a performance by the 32 piece orchestra followed by live electronic acts including Himawari and Amoeba Technology. At midnight, the space went dark and silent and a 45 minute piece, then called Hyperbolic, began. The audience, at 500 capacity, was contained within a performance environment of 8 simultaneous pieces played out on suspended pods, a trapeze hung from the rafters, a massive cargo net turned into a web, ladders and elevated floor sets. Half of the action took place overhead, ending with a climb up a 30 foot rope to discover a lost rose on the overhead beams. The midnight ritual unleashed a celebratory energy that spun for hours as the party resumed. The RC was invited to evolve this piece to be performed at the Annex at La Mama ETC. It eventually became Sky Plots.

Riddled with Holes East and Central Europe and Israel, Summer Tour 1999
An improvisational work based on the I Ching and surrealist distortion of form involving modern and aeriel dance, video projection and electronic sound. Touring crew included: Zemi17, Kathi von Koerber, Sean Clute, Maurice Abnez, Hiroko Yo, Victoria Hanna.
Bulgaria: The Black Sea Solar Eclipse Shabla Sun & Moon Festival
Florence, Italy with M.A.C. crew: Art Rave in Massive abandon space
Kischkemaischa, Hungary: Discomaicha
Prague, Czeck Republic: The Roxy
Nuremberg, Germany: The Desi
Zurich, Switzerland: The Neon Bar 486
Tel Aviv, Israel: Dynamed Dwasch and Timuna Theater

Augenblick directed by John Sully, August 2000, DUMBO Theater.
This first installment in the Augenblick cycle, hosted by Mephistopheles in full regalia, was served in two parts: the first, a dense multi-layered, multimedia, sense-scrambling cachet of stories told in the interior which reached a climatic whirl as the massive loading dock door shimmied open, revealing the dark streets under the Manhattan Bridge. The audience exited to an enactment of Lions, Hyenas and Vultures and the calamity of a car accident turned battlefield. Members of the RC accounted for half the cast.

JFK Relays, late summer 1997, John F. Kennedy International Terminal, Queens, NY
Well before homeland security, this relay race to the death pitted two priests against two 70s era basketball jocks as played by the Brothers Coelius (Bill and Robby, aka Kass and Schaefer) and the Brothers Kuffner (Geoff and Taylor, aka agent mT and Zemi 17). We mapped a half mile course around the concourse. Mehuman Johnson sang the anthem as spectators gathered then the brothers were off. Water stops were manned by Erin Kelly. Full reporting and interviews, now sadly lost tapes, provided by xxxxx. Who won, after Schaeffer and Zemi dove and collided at the finish, is still in dispute.