“Growing Takes Time” by Karley Wasaff - A Performative Playtime Extravaganza in SoHo (August 2025)
The story of my encounter with movement artist & educator Karley Wasaff began on a scorchingly humid evening in late-May. After visiting a bunch of exhibition openings throughout the Lower East Side, I was walking home when I happened upon a performance art event taking place inside Satellite Gallery at 279 Broome Street. From outside, I could make out a lively crowd gathered in a darkened space while some pixie-like figures were cavorting here and there with faux-plant sprouts attached to their heads. The usher at the door informed me this was a ticketed event but that there would be future performances in New York over the coming months. I left my contact information and received a warm message from Wasaff a few days later on Instagram.
Wasaff wisely did not give away what exactly the performance was about as an element of surprise was a prerequisite. Mid-August comes around, and I received an invitation to attend her next performance, and this time it was at a much bigger venue in an upper-level, open-floored space in SoHo. But first, I had to respond to a few prompts in my Instagram messages seen in the below screenshots:
As soon as she mentioned Pikmin, I finally picked up on the costumes worn by her performers during my initial glance in May. In 2001, the videogame company Nintendo launched what would be the first of several games in the Pikmin franchise, which focus on the titular tiny plantlike creatures who need to be guided by the player from hazardous, ecologically threatening obstacles. Though I had a frame of reference, there was still much to be uncovered during the performance. The pre-performance written instructions definitely called to mind the 11 Rules for Happenings as delineated by the artist Allan Kaprow (American, 1927 - 2006) from the late-1950s & early-1960s. Though there were a certain degree of rules in place, you will find that chance-based elements ultimately held sway for how the rest of the evening unfolded.
Unsure of what to expect, I cut my trip at the Hunter College Art History Master’s social mixer short to ensure I would arrive on time (I was a half-hour early). As I waited on a quiet block along Crosby, the 7pm attendees began to trickle in and I was curious to learn how each found out about this Growing Takes Time event. Interestingly, there seemed to be two types of people - theater / performance types and a more general audience, both of whom found out about Growing Takes Time through social media, word of mouth, or personal connections to Wasaff’s performers. I spent considerable time speaking with Eva Heinemann, a New York theater critic (to look her up, make sure you make some reference to theater in your search or else you’ll get results for a fictional character from the 2004 Japanese anime series Monster) and she was visibly enthused.
7pm finally rolls around and we were promptly escorted a few floors up to a spacious room lined with white columns, an open-floor space, and wide windows looking out onto the store-lined streets of Broadway - an unmistakably SoHo atmosphere. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were inside a former artist loft! Pink tinged lighting warmed up the space with their rosy glows and odd-sounding music (undoubtedly, music from one of the Pikmin games) played over some speakers to inspire a lighthearted conviviality pre-game set-up.
As soon as the festivities began, attendees were asked to either step inside of the columns to become event participants or to stand outside of them as observers. Most of us opted for stepping in and, my goodness, who knew the zaniness in which we would find ourselves!
I do not want to over-share the experience, but I do not want to leave you out in the cold, so I will approach this with a measured balance of specificity and broadstrokes. Wasaff took on more of a choreographic role during the performance as one of her collaborators, a fabulously dressed character in a chic and campy outfit, emceed and provided important instructions. The Pikmin - Wasaff’s performers - emerged from behind a curtain and were costumed according to how the videogame characters are portrayed: flesh-colored bodysuits, plastic flowers over their breasts, plant sprouts growing from their heads, and shocking pink circular eye makeup. The trio of Pikmin began to frenetically run all over the place whilst making mysterious wincing, screeching, and crying sounds that may as well have been their own language. It was up to us to shepherd them to designated safe zones as these overly-energized, sprite-like characters were at risk of being separated from their pack or suffering a terrible fate (such as burning in an invisible pool of lava).
These were our main tasks for several rounds, but we had to adhere to a very important rule: the Pikmin must not be physically brought to their goal. Instead, the only way we could guide them to their designated area was to engage in mimicry by copying whatever their actions may be while keeping in mind the potential sudden shift in activity at any given moment. I couldn’t dance if my life depended on it, but dance I had to (sort of) with the playfully rhythmic gestures the Pikmin displayed as a means to gain their trust and safely bring them “home”.
Each of these games would be bookended by an additional conflict in which the Pikmin, who are awarded a flower upon the completion of each round, erupt into argument over the disparity in the sizes of their flowers. The ostentatiously dressed emcee would come around and “pause” the fight with a parodied commercial advertisement for special prizes to be awarded to the participants after each round, which included women’s underwear from a local BIPOC-owned business, cannabis THC gummies, and plant seedlings to grow your own fruits & vegetables at home. Needless to say, just about every participant came home with one of these prizes!
Additional activities transpired in conjunction with these games such as a duck-duck-goose-inspired circular hand slapping game, individualized thumb wrestling matches with the Pikmin at random, red light / green light, and hot potato. As a participant, it’s obvious that you need to stay on your toes and remain aware of not only the activities going on around you, but the potential for the spontaneous to just as rapidly appear. It eventually dawned on me that Growing Takes Time is our contemporary Happening / Fluxus event meets the childhood-inspired competitive games of the South Korean tv series Squid Game (but, thankfully, non-lethal and inherently fun).
A bonus round occurred at the very end when Wasaff offered a free, impromptu lesson on jiu-jitsu choking self-defense maneuvers so that we could all come away feeling stronger, braver, and better prepared in the event of a violent attack. Those who stuck around for this martial arts exercise were placed in pairs to practice both the act of utilizing the jiu-jitsu chokehold as a defense mechanism along with the ways in which to get out of such a situation if you are the one being choked. I have a bit of a sensitive neck with these kinds of things, so I just observed from a distance!
Was Growing Takes Time a totally bananas experience? Absolutely, which is what makes it such an incredible, one-of-a-kind, hyperreal, fever dream of an experience - and I would gladly do it all over again at a moment’s notice. Honestly, I am so grateful to that usher from the May performance for not letting me in because this is the type of performance art that you need to enter into from the start or else you’ll completely lose the plot (or not even know what it is from the outset). Even with this in-depth review that I composed, it really is impossible for me to spoil the event because, unlike a film or a book where the engagement is more passive, this requires active participation in order to fully appreciate the awesomeness of Wasaff’s surrealistically humorous, communally-centric performance art. And much like the teachings of Kaprow or Joseph Beuys, Growing Takes Time proves how anyone can become an artist, performer, or agent of change!
