At the end of April, Brooklyn-based arts blogazine Hyperallergic hosted the first in its New York series of talks, “The Lost Lectures,” which took place at the Knockdown Center in Brooklyn. The location was formerly top-secret and seats were super limited, but those lucky enough to score a ticket got to see pop prince Blood Orange AKA Dev Hynes perform an audiovisual lecture titled "Anxiety," which is streaming today. "Anxiety" brings together his experience with anxiety and synesthesia, a neurological condition which cross-wires the senses and manifests for Hynes in the form of interconnected color and sound. Beyond an inventory of Pantone swatches and paint drips evocative of a three-dimensional Jackson Pollock painting, the performance—which includes him singing in front of kaleidoscopic visuals—allows his fans to imagine what having synesthesia feels like. Hynes describes his anxiety as “a huge part of my life that kind of cripples many other aspects of my life,” but through this otherworldly odyssey of a performance he expertly turns an impairment into an art form.
