As I walked into EMPAC’s Studio 1, a triplet of shrouded edifices rose up before me. The room itself was completely dark, except for a monochrome image of a garbled face projected onto three tall, white banners. After a short wait, the face began to recite the famous Whitman poem, the Saxophonist. Then, just as the poem ended, the leftmost banner dropped to floor, revealing a 28-foot tower of scaffolding, wooden planks, and none other than Japanther’s Ian Vanek and Matt Reilly. Instantly, the duo launched into the first segment of The Cake of the Three Towers. Within moments, I knew I was in for quite the ride. Part loud, lo-fi punk rock, part performance art, and part unadulterated fort building, TCO3T simultaneously managed to entertain and instill a pertinent message throughout the course of the 45-minute performance.

A conceptual housing project characterized the first of the three “towers,” complete with a rundown exterior, a sweatshop, and constantly dimming light bulbs. While Japanther ripped through the first third of their set like a freight train barreling down the rails, a young girl worked away at a sewing machine, and a man clad in nothing but his birthday suit wailed away at a piano. For what the portrayal lacked in factual accuracy, it certainly made up for in its creativity.

This theme continued throughout the performance, which eventually shifted to a museum setting, and finally that of a prison. Along with uniting the three towers under the banner of a shared industrial complex, the performance challenged its viewers to step out of their comfort zones through collaboration with the Gelitin collective. Throughout the set, the collective’s members climbed across each of the structures in drag, and in one person’s case, nothing at all. In short, TCO3T managed to cram an astounding level of philosophical depth into a project, which on its surface, was based around an “obsession with building forts and towers as a kid.”

As Ian stated after the performance, “when making art, you’re trying to be as childish as possible.” Judging from everything The Cake of the Three Towers packed into 45 minutes, it could easily be said that the unique perspective of a child, melded with the time-tested sensibilities of adulthood, sometimes lead to the most insightful experiences of all.