Artist Pat Oleszko leads climate-themed Pride performance aboard New York’s Staten Island Ferry

Polar bears, elves and the Wicked Witch of the West boarded the Staten Island Ferry on Sunday (30 June) for The Future Is For/Boating, an activist procession led by performance artist Pat Oleszko. The curatorial duo Acompi (Constanza Valenzuela and Jack Radley) arranged the climate change-inspired production for eager attendees and unwitting commuters alike, with help from David Peter Francis gallery—where Oleszko’s first solo show in 25 years, Pat’s Imperfect Present Tense, is on view.

Though she has already won the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and been nominated for Tony Awards, among other accolades, Oleszko is on another tear. “The range of human production goes from tragedy to comedy,” Oleszko says, “but comedy is something you have to work harder to get accepted.”

Performance isn’t unprecedented aboard the ferry—which connects Lower Manhattan to Staten Island, New York City’s only Republican borough—but it is rare. The Future Is For/Boating began on the second floor of Whitehall Terminal in Manhattan. Performance artist Alex Tatarsky, dressed as Lady Liberty, marked the meeting point, bearing the giant statue’s distinctive torch and a despondent expression. Once the crowd convened, artist Amando Houser took the floor dressed as their witchy character named DeliaDelia and challenged an attendee to basketball. “Or are you gay?” DeliaDelia taunted, a risqué joke considering the event coincided with New York’s Pride celebration.

After the crowd heeded DeliaDelia’s loaded instructions to chant a spell that would render the sorceress “a real girl”, Lady Liberty led dozens of revelers aboard the 11:30am boat to St George, Staten Island. There, queer performers dressed as Santa and several sexy elves christened the waterborne parade by handing trinkets out to guests scattered about the vessel’s first floor.

The procession began as Oleszko appeared and led everyone upstairs, clad in a blue cheetah-print cape she has worn in performances before—updated this time to feature the performance’s title, with “Roe v. Wade?” embroidered below it. A fish whose fin read “Help We’re Dying” crowned her head, and a dramatic fringe of salvaged plastic emphasized both her flailing, rhythmic strut and the flow of her long matching dress, embellished with trash and marine creatures’ skeletons. Beyond her performances, costumes made from collaged detritus comprise Oleszko’s principal art form, and are the focus of the show at David Peter Francis.

Performers dressed as squealing polar bears and additional marchers bearing adornments seen in Oleszko’s previous shows trailed their pied piper, capturing the attention of ferry riders. The performers’ t-shirts—featuring slogans like “beware a writhing sea” and “there is no planet B”—did much of the talking.

Oleszko says she had staged a similar spectacle before—in Tribeca, during the pandemic—to draw attention to climate change. When kids started following that performance and asking their parents questions, she knew she was onto something that could actually make a difference. The scene was much the same during the ferry performance. Children in particular were entranced.

Tatarsky concluded The Future Is For/Boating with a side-splitting seven-minute monologue in front of St George Terminal’s Lady Liberty Deli, embodying Lady Liberty’s exhaustion by demanding that one guest pour a bottled Long Island Iced Tea down her gullet then taking crowd questions. Among her insights: crabs do think that fish are flying, and there are no good jobs.

For 50 years, Oleszko has followed her hunch that humor can lower viewers’ defenses enough to get them to think critically about fearful topics like climate change. Her latest stunt harnessed that power, particularly by empowering art to transcend the insular art world.

• Pat Oleszko, Pat’s Imperfect Present Tense, David Peter Francis, New York, until 20 July