Nicole Blackman
Nicole Blackman is a New York City-born performance artist, poet, author, vocalist, teacher, and former music industry publicist. Blackman is involved in the North American goth, spoken word and transgressive literature scenes. Her live shows, either poetry readings or as a vocalist with a variety of musical collaborators, incorporate disturbing elements. Some performances between 2000-2002 involved her drenching herself in blood and cutting her hair.
Blackman self-published three now out-of-print chapbooks: "Pretty," "Sweet," and "Nice," and were collected in Akashic Books' "Blood Sugar," the cover of which features her wearing a white tank top reading "I did it for you" written in blood. Blackman explained in an interview that the book's cover image appeared to her in a dream, but she couldn't read what was written in blood, and emailed a fan-friend in Australia for his suggestions. He wrote back immediately: I DID IT FOR YOU. The 'dream image' was soon re-created for the book cover.
Her work as a performance artist include "Bloodwork" performed at The Kitchen/NYC in 2000, where she debuted her blood performance (and shook hands with the audience, bloodying them too), slipped secret messages into the audience's coat pockets, projected text on the street and created visual/sound installations in the venue's bathrooms. Since then she has performed "Courtesan Tales" at PS122 art space in New York City, at The Andy Warhol Museum/Pittsburgh, and for three years at the Fierce Festival in Birmingham England. The "Courtesan Tales" are "tales of the senses for a blindfolded audience of one," Blackman has said[citation needed]. She debuted "Harm's Way" (a multi-media performance of her email diary of working at Ground Zero) as a work in progress in New York.
She was commissioned by the British Arts Council to create a new work for the Fierce Festival -- an audio tour of the Deritend neighborhood of Birmingham.
Blackman's most recent work is the personal Beloved, also commissioned by the Fierce Festival and British Arts Council as a site-specific performance and installation. Designed as an intimate pilgrimage of memory and kindness for one patron at a time, it was created expressly for the Compton Verney Museum in the British West Midlands in April 2007.
She is also in-demand voiceover performer, heard regularly on a slew of commercials and channels, including major campaigns for Chrysler, Ford, Blockbuster, Lysol, and Verizon, and channels including Turner Classic Movies, Discovery Health Channel, Cartoon Network, Court TV, PBS and Cinemax.Blackman said in an interview that the Golden Palominos album "Dead Inside" led to her auditioning for a Ford campaign in 1997 and resulted in her leaving the music publicity field to work exclusively in voiceovers.
“You will start a band.You will start a magazine.You will start a family.You will finish nothing.”
“The flowers need wateringthe silver needs a shine.Daughter is a magnetdrawn back to where she was last safe.She touches the tablecloth like a talisman.Tell me who I was. Tell me what I’ve become.”
“The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.”
“At any moment, you know, your manufactured cool could blow.”
“One day I'll give birth to a tiny baby girland when she's born she'll screamand I'll tell her to never stopI will kiss her before I lay her down at nightand will tell her a story so she knowshow it is and how it must be for her to surviveI'll tell her to set things on fireand keep them burningI'll teach her that fire will not consume herthat she must use it”
“Someone's writing down your mistakes, someone's documenting your downfall. ”
“Whether you're in bed or in court, everybody gets off.”
“When I knew what I had to do / I took all my notebooks, all my manuscripts / and ate them page by page / so I could take my words with me”
“Girls have to go somewhere dangerous every now and then just so they know they can find their way home.”