MOBILE, Ala. — Need to get away? You can leave the planet at Alabama Contemporary Art Center (ACAC) thanks to performance art duo Princess, whose multimedia piece “Out There” boards passengers at 301 Conti St. on April 20 at 7 p.m. as part of a 40-plus-city tour.
Princess is Michael O’Neill and Alexis Gideon, who formed the project in 2004 in a Chicago DIY performance space before parting ways in 2006. A decade later, musical ideas shared long-distance — Gideon in Pittsburgh, O’Neill in Brooklyn — piled up, and their participation in the 2017 Women’s March gave the work a sharper purpose.
“We wanted to make this music into something related to those issues as a way for us, as men, to process our feelings about what was going on,” O’Neill said.
“Out There” features the costumed pair performing 16 musical pieces as an animated tale plays on a large screen between them. The visuals blend personal and archival photography with video footage and stop-motion into a Technicolor quest for identity and cooperation, as a fictional version of the duo flees Earth seeking refuge from “toxic masculinity and misogyny.”
The soundtrack is rich with hooks, raps and rhythms, including a closing trio of songs made with the female group TEEN and musician JD Samson. O’Neill, who calls Princess a “queer band” expressing fluidity through costume, said letting women collaborators reshape their compositions was difficult but necessary.
Reaction on tour has been lively — plenty of conversation, and the occasional walkout during a hyper-phallic scene. O’Neill respects those choices. For his part, he’s eager to reach Mobile for the first time: another frontier for a musician who has played in 49 states.