Patrick Michael Ballard:
TO LIVE A LOVING LIFE
Oct 23 + 24 8pm, Oct 25 2pm
Automata welcomes multidisciplinary artist Patrick Michael Ballard back to our Chinatown space with his new installation-performance To Live a Loving Life. Patrick Michael Ballard invites audiences into his surreal, participatory world where performance unfolds in response to those present.
Part ritual, part game, part poetic provocation, To Live a Loving Life is an intimate, roving theatrical experience that resists description and unfolds differently each time it is performed. Audience members are invited to either observe or make the choice to join the action; the degree of participation is entirely up to them. Each performance of the piece is uniquely shaped by chance, circumstance, and the collective decisions made in the room. The actions or inactions of those present determine where the performance travels, what unfolds, and how far into the experience the group ventures before it ends.
At the beginning of the evening, Ballard will offer brief instructions for engagement. Once underway, a shifting world emerges, supported by collaborators and shaped in real time by the people gathered.
Performances of To Live a Loving Life will also be joined by several surprise guests.
PERFORMANCES:
Friday, October 23, 2026 8PM
Saturday, October 24, 2026 8PM
Sunday, October 25, 2026 2PM
Seating is very limited; advance reservations strongly suggested.
Please arrive early or on time, as latecomers cannot be seated.
About the Artist
Patrick Michael Ballard is a food closet filled to the brim with perforated, mummified, and erewhile leftovers. He beguiles his own navel between Santa Cruz and Los Angeles with ample mirrorgazing and lint sifting, populating the scar of his own origin with the embers of artist conch. He primarily focuses on developing techniques for revealing endangered processes of nuance in gradients of nonsense: forging speculative dowsing rods, symbolic resonators, and atmospheres for the orchestration of psychomagical parlor games and performances.
Patrick Michael Ballard is a member of the Gawdafful Theater, a custodian of the Nowhere Lab through the nonspaces that it operates, and an art director for the Auschwitz Study Foundation. His work has been shown in theaters, artist spaces, historic architectures, living rooms, birthday parties and at funerals.