Darren O'Donnell profiled in Eye Weekly cover story

Eye Weekly enters the world of the performance artist, playwright and author Darren O'Donnell, spotlighting innovative art projects past and present in O'Donnell's practice of 'social acupuncture.' His most recent work, Eat the Street, makes Parkdale schoolchildren the critics of Queen Street West restaurants.

From the article:

'There would be no need to describe O'Donnell's neurosis if his work wasn't about how to socialize. He wrote a book about it, Social Acupuncture, for Coach House Press in 2006, using his experience in shiatsu to describe politicized art as akin to the act of stabbing needles into someone's back.

' "Acupuncture is used to break system-wide holding patterns that are compromising the function of nervous, muscular, vascular, organ and psychological systems," he writes. "Theoretically, the same thing should apply to the social body: small interventions at key junctures should affect larger organs, in turn contributing to feedback loops that can amplify and affect the distribution of energy resources." What O'Donnell fails to mention is how good it can feel to be touched.'

Read the full, in-depth article at http://www.eyeweekly.com/arts/features/article/57343.