Life (and work) as performance art.
hello, dear reader! Pre-warning: This is a long essay and you’re getting the full version. I’ll post a shorter version on LinkedIn that’s more straight business and less personal.
Things I’ve launched in Q1
A new 5-week class on mastering feedback & goal-setting for teams for Stanford’s Continuing Studies Program
I wrapped up a 6 month fractional CPO role at a pre-seed startup, helping them fundraise ~$1M and apply for a National Science Foundation grant.
Speaking to Apple’s Hardware group, Applied Materials & a national nonprofit on mindful management AKA the neuroscience of emotions, conflict and self-awareness.
If you’d like me to come speak at your organization, reach out!! tiffany @tiffanyteng.com
Life as Performance Art (and why Startups are Performance Art)
As a child of the 80s and 90s, I had this vague idea of Yoko Ono, mostly because there weren’t many Asians in the arts and media that were mainstream enough that I would know of them. All I knew at the time was that she was partnered to one of the Beatles.
In my twenties, I remember picking up a random book in a random NYC bookstore that described a series of public installations that Yoko Ono did as performance art, and I remember feeling surprised - she was more than just a famous musician’s girlfriend.
A description of her art from the MoMA: “Ono’s earliest works were often based on instructions that she communicated to the public in verbal or written form. Painting to Be Stepped On (1960–61), for example, invited people to tread upon a piece of canvas placed directly on the floor, either physically or in their minds. ”
This was also my first encounter with the concept of performance art. (I stopped taking art classes in middle school; choosing to focus on science, math, and things that I was good at that also look impressive on a college application).
I remember reading the description of her art and feeling puzzled: What was the point? Was this truly art? It felt temporal; insubstantial.
The Tate defines performance art as “Artworks that are created through actions performed by the artist or other participants, which may be live or recorded, spontaneous or scripted”
In the years since I first picked up that book, I’ve fallen in love with live theater, largely through my years living in London, but also through local community plays.
My favorite playhouse in SF has a quote painted on the threshold of the main entrance, “Our theater is an empathy gym where we come to practice our powers of compassion. Here, safe in the dark, we can risk sharing in the lives of the characters. We feel what they feel, fear what they fear, and love what they love. And as we walk through our doors we take with us greater powers of understanding to make our community a better place, one play at a time.”
Performing.
Before we talk about performance art, we need to talk about performing.
I have been performing my entire life.
I started playing the piano and violin at 4, which means my first “concert” was probably at age 5. I remember being terrified. I remember forgetting the notes I’d learned through muscle memory, and sitting mutely silent at the piano, feeling the incredible weight of the audience’s watching eyes. My parents, my sisters, my teacher, and then the strangers.
I remember my parents having church friends over and being encouraged to demonstrate some skill: piano, singing, or even speaking uber articulately for a 5 year old. (That became my go-to performance piece.)
At some point in my preteen years, I learned to perform for my parents; to stop telling them how I truly felt or wanted or needed and to perform the “good girl”.
The good girl does not cry. She has no needs or wants.
She smiles, she sparkles; she listens, she is obedient.
She has no rage, she has no anger, she is pleasant.
At school, I was a gifted student through most of my elementary school years and then in middle school, as I realized there were better students (or equally good students), I learned to perform the “gifted student”. Each day, I showed up prepared for every class; beneath the seeming effortlessness was sleepless nights because I needed to read everything. I needed to do everything exceptionally well.
In college, the mask cracked. I remember ugly crying for the first time in decades into my friend Daniel’s sweatshirt; years of pent up tears and grief pouring out.
I remember apologizing for getting snot all over my friend’s sweatshirt; feeling guilt that I was inconveniencing him with my tears, with my messiness.
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The last 2 decades since college, I have been learning to inhabit the fullness of my own humanity. To stop pretending that I don’t have needs, to learn the contours of emotions, and to name those needs with specificity.
At work, I have performed, and I have learned to show up with more authenticity and with my humanity. My colleagues respect the former and the latter is what creates our connection beyond work; what makes us friends and co-journeyers on the road of life.
During the isolation of the pandemic and the geographic distance of living in London, I began to ask, “What would it be like to only perform for an audience of one?” where the one was not the judeo-christian God of my younger years (or parents’ faith), but me.
What if I lived for my own pleasure? My own joy? What if I chose things because I thought they were good? Not for anyone else (or because anyone else told me they were good), but just for me?
And I was worried.
I was worried my life would be selfish, disastrous; bad, a train wreck.
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This all happened before I decided to stop out of corporate life to take a sabbatical.
And one of my chief fears during sabbatical was that I would become indolent; lazy and lacking self-discipline. (I probably overcompensated by setting myself weekly OKRs.)
And during sabbatical, the fear of failure/nihilism/meaninglessness that was kept at bay by success at work would knock on my subsconscious: “But what are you doing with your life?”
And I knew that my own risk-aversion and people-pleasing could keep me on the same ruts I’ve trodden before, instead of finding a new path.
I can’t remember when I first had this thought, but during sabbatical, I began to ask myself, “What if I see my life as performance art?”
Instead of everything needing to fit into a plan or a larger picture, or to be for an end goal, what if I did things simply to see what happens?
What if, instead of trying to optimize for a goal or build repeatable/scalable products right now, I give myself permission to experiment? To learn and grow, which inherently requires failure.
And what I have found, is that I create beautiful things.
Both physical things, like watercolor & baked goods, and temporal, insubstantial things, like experiences that create community, or experiences of empathy and connection.
For those of you who have worked with me, this will sound familiar: you’ve seen me create similar things in the context of work.
My managers and coworkers would ask me to create a thing, and I would do so, with creativity, attention to detail, and an additional sometimes-secret goal of creating more humanity, authenticity and connection at work.
And for the sabbatical season, I had the extraordinary privilege of creating wholly for myself and my own pleasure, fulfillment and joy.
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As I’ve exited sabbatical, I’ve held onto this idea of life as performance art.
Google has this idea of 10% time; that of your working hours, 10% are set aside for creative, exploratory time.
I was a person who allocated my whole life to work, not 40 hours, but every waking hour, and I’ve now carved out 10% (sometimes more) of my life for the generation of creative, exploratory work.
And it’s led to some beautiful things.
In February, I held an intimate birthday celebration where we laughed, we played and we listened - and each person walked away, vibrating with energy; like we were a bunch of atoms where our collisions with and into each other in this confined space somehow left us more energized instead of depleted.
The main speaker spoke about her life; her courage and her creativity struck a chord that resonated slightly differently in every person who attended, across gender, race and occupation.
Last week, I hosted the San Francisco launch of a Vietnamese author’s memoir, something I’ve given an hour to every other week for 6 months. And while this will never make it onto my professional resume, it's on my life resume - things I’m glad I did with my years on earth.
I had a seed of an idea 6 months ago; last week was the blooming of that seed that Susan (the author), my friend Terry, and I watered with our tears, nurtured with our laughter and efforts, and left dormant other weeks to grow in the darkness of our inattention.
Startups as performance art
So I can imagine you saying, “Ok, I can agree with life as performance art - but startups? Work? Startups are work; work is performance; work is not art.”
Here’s why I treasure live theater: As a business person, I recognize the money that’s gone into funding this production. As a leader, I recognize the will of the producers to say, “We will do this.” As an artist, I recognize the imagination of the director to say, “Let’s try it this way.” And as an individual, I recognize the opportunity cost to each individual actor who both applied for this role and the disappointment of the many actors who were not cast. And that even if this play is repeated for a week, a month, or a year - this cast will never be reunited in exactly this same configuration of players.
I treasure live performances because they are the culmination of hours of work and will; they are like the fleeting, blooming beauty of a flower; here today and gone next week. Or next month.
Here’s why I’ve learned to treasure the startups & workplaces I’ve been a part of, even when they were not values-aligned, even when I was not fully flourishing.
I can recognize the funders & capitalists who believe in the CEO’s vision & the value and good the company can create. I can recognize the sheer will that it takes to keep 5 or 500 or 5000 people aligned against the CEO’s vision. I can appreciate the masters of their crafts, the subject matter experts who partner with me and gift me their brilliance and insight. I recognize that everyone who works for me has chosen this over other options; has other options.
This permutation of these people, this team, this company, this vision, at this point in time will never happen again.
Startups are performance art. They are a point-in-time production, where the CEO is the artist with a vision and everyone else participates in the creation of that vision.
Sometimes, the art (their collective product) is valuable enough that others buy it and it funds the creation of more art.
Sometimes, the art is meaningful enough that others want to repeat it at scale.
More often than not, the collective product is either haphazard, disjointed, incohesive and reflects the company or culture or the CEO.
Sometimes, the art is truly beautiful but there is no buyer.
Most startups are flowers that bloom briefly and fade. Not in weeks, but within a decade.
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What is art?
Art is action with intention.
What art you create depends on your intentions, which are shaped by your values.
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What are businesses?
Collections of people creating value for their end customers.
Business is action with intention.
What products you create depends on your intentions, which are shaped by your values.
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What is life?
Life is a series of actions, with intention.
What life you create depends on your intentions, which are shaped by your values.
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Art. Work. Life.
One and the same; values shaped into action.