Performa Magazine

Catalyst Artists

Thu, 30 May 2013 16:18:23 -0400

By Charlotte Cosson

The works of many contemporary artists—Jochen Dehn, Aurélien Froment, Dominique Gilliot, Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Gareth Long, Benoît Maire, Olivia Plender, Julien Prévieux, Benjamin Seror, Nathaniel Sullivan, Raphaël Zarka and many others—involve library research, essay writing and lecture-performance as well as more tangible objects. Indeed, the 2000s saw the emergence of a trend in current art practice towards methods resembling those of academics rather than visual artists. The temptation is strong to call these artists “researchers”, but they do not see research as an end in itself, and allow themselves considerable freedom of methodology. As a result, the presentation of their findings is often unconventional in form due to deviations, improbable connections, even deliberate mistakes. The resulting art is therefore discursive in more ways than one: it is a reasoning, chiefly expressed through speeches and words, yet paradoxically untrammeled by strict continuity and tending to proceed through digressions. These artists work as what Elisabeth Wetterwald calls “connectives,” using analogies and subjective associations, building an entirely personal continuity between the facts and anecdotes they have assembled. These materials thus function as ingredients for use in “artwork-laboratories” designed to test their possible combinations. Consequently, the artists modify the connections between data without changing the latters’ nature, just as catalysts work in chemical reactions.

The relationship between these “catalyst” artists and those known in the United States as “research-based”—whose works are inspired by research—is not so clear. Moreover, this American neologism is itself ill-defined as it refers both to historic figures (most of whom taught or studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, such as György Kepes, Piotr Kowalski, and Antoni Muntadas) and younger artists whose research is more in the nature of investigation. Moreover, the catalyst artists in question here have moved away from the age-old art-science debate, and do not confine themselves to investigation. As there are similarities between these movements, it seems necessary to develop a fresh analysis of the influences behind this new trend. It probably owes its origins to reflexive and critical practices in which narrative, or even fiction, plays a major role; as these are recurrent issues in the works of Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, or Philippe Parreno, and of their predecessors Robert Smithson, the conceptualists and General Idea, this seems an interesting path to pursue.

Narration and discourse have constantly grown in importance since the era of Conceptual Art, with its artist-theorists; over the same period, the questioning of the border between fiction and reality has shifted into a questioning of truth. Jean-François Lyotard proclaimed the “end of great narratives” in the late 1970s, and Nicolas Bourriaud promoted relational aesthetics almost two decades later. So, what is the explanation for these contemporary tales that function primarily through the creation of links?

One avenue worthy of exploration is the methodological borrowing from science, but also from the Internet—whose hyperlinks foster serendipity—and from the humanities, notably postcolonial and cultural studies. These programs of study—and the artistic practices under discussion here—are characterized by the use of all data, regardless of whether or not they come from the art world or an elitist culture. Moreover, these new approaches to knowledge, which challenge its underlying power relations, are central to the questions inherent in this discursive trend and are sometimes even advocated, by artists such as Mathieu K. Abonnenc. This art appears to take a deliberately political stance with its rejection of positivism and promotion of knowledge, and poses a challenge to historians precisely by stepping outside the conventional artistic framework.

Finally, at a time when the Bologna Process requires Fine Art students to write an academic thesis, how should we understand practices that lie between research and visual output? The “catalysts” appear to question their own legitimacy to claim artistic status when extending their field of activity to extra-artistic disciplines. However, by conceiving of their work as a work-in-progress, every piece of which represents a step, they actually exhibit their own creative process as a work in its own right. Catalyst artists: artists squared?

Charlotte Cosson is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Center of CUNY, New York/ La Sorbonne, Paris, and an independent critic and curator.

Images, from top:
1. Gareth Long, Bouvard and Pécuchet’s Invented Desk for Copying, 2007-2011. Materials and dimensions vary. Image courtesy of Kate Werble Gallery, New York. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.
2. Gareth Long, Bouvard and Pécuchet’s Invented Desk for Copying, 2007-2011. Materials and dimensions vary. Image courtesy of Kate Werble Gallery, New York. Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein.

Futurism in Egypt: Nelson Morpurgo and The Cairo Group

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:12:00 -0400

By Przemyslaw Strozek

The leader and founder of the Futurist Movement, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was born in Alexandria in 1876, of Italian descent. He spent his early school years in Egypt, and, as a teenager, he founded a small literary review, Le Papyrus: revue bi-mensuelle litteraire, artistique, fantaisiste et mondaine (1894-1895), in which he published poems and articles in defense of naturalism and modern literature. In this eclectic periodical, of which he published 21 issues, Marinetti showed a keen interest not only in the newest French poetry, but also an early fascination with politics, and especially anarchism, that marked his later writings, including the first manifesto of Futurism. The manifesto, published on February 20, 1909, led to the launching of a Futurist group, which had during its 35 years of activity far-reaching representatives in various parts of Italy and abroad. Marinetti was certain that a radical condemnation of tradition and the transformation of provincial Italian towns into large industrial centers would lead to a strengthening of the country in the international arena and would make the country a fully modern one, governed by the “proletariat of geniuses.” Marinetti believed that the proclamation of a futurist Italy would take place simultaneously by means of political as well as a literary and artistic upheaval. It was not without reason, therefore, that the Futurists were the first to call for Italy to participate in the First World War, as it was the War which paved the way for political fights, culminating in the March of the Blackshirts on Rome and the establishment of the Fascist government in 1922.

From the very beginning, Marinetti’s ideas achieved great acclaim, mainly among young poets and artists who under his protectorate were eager to mark their existence on the artistic scene. The budding local Futurist groups were taking up ideas connected with the political and artistic renewal of the country, and yet, before the Great War, apart from the Futurists residing in Milan, there was only a Florentine group connected with Lacerba magazine. During the war between 1916 and 1919, the number of local groups started to grow: L’Italia Futurista (Bruno Corra, Emilio Settimelli) in Florence, La Folgore Futurista in Pavia, Noi (Enrico Prampolini) and Roma Futurista (Mario Carli, Settimelli) in Rome, Vittorio Veneto (Carli, Settimelli) in Venice. They united mainly local Futurist soldiers and combatants (Fasci di Combatimento) who desired to use the turmoil of the post-war political scene and under Marinetti’s leadership to take control of the country. In November 1919, combatant groups ran in elections, where Mussolini was on the same list alongside the futurist leader. The elections ended in spectacular failure and as a result of this severe defeat, the Futurists left Fasci de Combettimento in May of 1920.

Top: Nelson Morpurgo attending Fascist March in Milan (after 1918). Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
Bottom: Movimento Futurista. Futuristi di Cairo (1921)

In the face of these events, special attention was paid to the first (and probably only) group of Italian Futurists out of Italy—in Egypt’s capital city, Cairo. Almost all its members took part in the war and were members of Movimento Futurista, an association which was also incorporated in Fasci di Combattimento. It had its headquarters in Cairo in Via Cheich Abour El Sebaah 25. They shared Marinetti’s political views, supporting Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s expedition on Fiume, and turned against the internal politics of Giovanni Giolitti and socialism. Its members included Italian lawyers, politicians, poets, playwrights and painters.

Nelson Morpurgo, born in Cairo in 1899, an advocate in the Appellate Court, poet, and Marinetti fan, was the leader of Cairo’s Movimento Futurista. In his memoirs, he recalled his teenage fascination with the Futurist leader, who gained support from the Italian youth during the tough times of the war. During the First World War, when Morpurgo was staying in Milan, he became involved in intervention and irredentist movements, printing leaflets aimed at the Central Powers and the Vatican. In 1915, he contacted Marinetti, organizing interventionist manifestations, which were to lead to Italy’s involvement in the Great War. Fascinated with the idea of a literary experiment and words expressing liberty, as an 18-year-old, he started publishing his poems in La Folgore Futurista and L’Italia Futurista, to which he contributed with his Citta’ + Campagna, which he also published in his later book of poetry, Il fuoco delle Piramidi. During his stay in Italy, he befriended Mario Dessy and Francesco Cerati—authors of several theatrical syntheses—Futurist plays, written to reflect the truth about the dynamic, contemporary world and usually lasting only a few minutes. While in Italy, Morpurgo also encountered Settimelli and Carli, who were involved in the political battles of the Futurists following the war. As the war ended, Morpurgo returned to Cairo and started to form a Futurist group, which would support the country’s legions of Futurists in political and artistic terms.

In 1920, Morpurgo issued his first futurist publication in Cairo, Movimento Futurista. Per i bimbi, which was an expression of propagandist support for the fights over Fiume. On June 26, 1920, he organized a great Futurist evening in Egypt, a performance of 12 theatrical syntheses by Umberto Boccioni, Paolo Buzzi, Remo Chiti, Francesco Cangiullo, Cerati, Dessy, Marinetti, Corra and Settimelli. In 1921 in Cairo, the first and only issue of a futurist periodical XX Settembre 1921 was published by Ferrentini, whose name recalled a historical event, when the Italian army under Victor Emmanuel II seized Rome from the French. This Egyptian Futurist magazine included, among other contributors, Morpurgo and Renato Servi, who on October 12, 1921 signed the manifesto “Noi Futuristi Italiani.” This was also signed by other members of the Egyptian group: Natale Luri, Rudolfo Piha, Saverio Critelli, Enrico Pirro, Pietro Luri, and Rambaldo di Collalto. Four days later, Morpurgo put on stage in Teatro del Giardino (Esbekieh) his own trilogy in three acts, titled Morfina!, which was published in the same year by Edizioni del Movimento Furutista. In the early 1920s, he organized some futurist performances in Egyptian theaters, not only in Cairo but also in Alexandria, promoting the poetic and theatrical revolution of Marinetti’s in North Africa.

From top: Morfina!, Teatro del Giardino, 1921. N. Morpurgo, Il fuoco delle piramidi, 1923. N. Morpurgo, Amore, 1923

From 1922, Morpurgo edited the magazine Bar, and in 1923 he published his first volume of poetry, Il fuoco delle piramidi: liriche e parole in liberta. In the preface to this volume, Marinetti described Morpurgo as a “great paroliberist”; the book was published by the most prestigious Futurist publisher, Edizione futuriste di Poesia. Morpurgo’s book was a collection of works that formed a type of Futurist hieroglyph, which inscribed the Italian language and the liberated Italian words in the form of pyramids and Egypt’s natural landscape. Simultaneously, they were inspired by the spirit of Marinetti’s poetic revolution and life experiences of the sunny Cairo. It is worth mentioning that one of the poems, “Sintesi,” was reprinted for a leftist organ of the Czech avant-garde “Red” in 1929, receiving international acclaim.

N. Morpurgo, Sintesi, “Red,” 1929.

In 1923, Morpurgo worked as a futurist correspondent based in Egypt for the magazine L’Impero, edited in Rome by Carli and Settimelli. Nonetheless, neither Morpurgo nor the group from Cairo were listed in an index of “the world’s Futurists” published by Marinetti in his manifesto “Le Futurisme Mondial” (1924). The founder of Futurism pointed to different centers of international Futurism in Europe and across the world, including in it the different tendencies of the European avant-garde: Dadaism, Constructivism and Zenitism. The idea of the manifesto was to highlight that the whole avant-garde upheaval, which intensified in the 1920s, grew out of the Futurist foundations of individual artists.

The Manifesto “Le Futurisme Mondial” was reprinted in the Egyptian magazine AnaMali, published on December 25, 1929, in an issue entirely dedicated to Italian Futurism. At the same time, on December 28, 1929, a special issue on Futurism was published by another Egyptian magazine: Maalesh. They were published on the occasion of Marinetti’s arrival in Cairo for the Congress of the Association of Literature & Art (December 15–22, 1929). The representative of the fascist state arrived then as an Italian delegate (already a member of the Mussolini’s Royal Academy). Taking place in the then-inaugurated literary club Al Diafa, presentations of the poetic revolutions of Futurism were made.

From top: Caricature from Maalesh (28 XII 1929). Caricature from Maalesh (28 XII 1929). Front page of AnaMali (29 XII 1929).

Yet, in 1932, Morpurgo released the book Per le mie donne, under the supervision of the magazine La Semaine Egyptienne, published in Cairo in French. The French translation of Morpurgo’s work was by Jean Moscatelli, who, in the same year, published an article presenting Morpurgo in the pages of the same Egyptian periodical. It is worth mentioning that Valentine de Saint-Point—the founder of the manifesto of Futurist woman of 1913—published poems in the same issue, which also contained an article by a French painter Albert Gleizes. The following year, Marinetti published the book Il fascino dell’ Egitto (1933), displaying an interest in the pleasures of contemporary Egypt; in 1938, he once again visited Cairo, which turned out to be his last visit, remembered heartily by Morpurgo as the last meeting with his master.

In studies covering Futurism, it is hard to find further information regarding the group of Futurists established in 1920 in Cairo. However, the group deserves significant attention, as they were probably the first colony of European avant-garde artists in North Africa. They were certainly the first group to unite representatives of Italian Futurist literature and art, residing permanently away from Italy. Other advocates of Italian Futurism residing abroad, such as Prampolini and Ruggero Vasari, did not go on to form independent groups in their given countries. The former resided in Germany, the Czech Republic and France from 1917, while Vasari, following his arrival in Berlin in May 1922, went on to publish the German magazine Der Futurismus. For a short time it became a German voice for Italian Futurism, promoting its ideas mainly in central Europe. Although Marinetti did not include the Cairo group into his list of “world’s Futurists” in his “Le Manifeste Mondial,” it is worth mentioning that it was in Egypt that the new Futurist ideas were spreading on a wide scale, and Futurist performances were organized in Egyptian theaters and literary clubs. Cairo became a significant colony of the Italian Futurists, who in North Africa, away from their homeland, were promoting Marinetti’s political ideology and propagating the values of the futurist revolution.

Top: Nelson Morpurgo and a group of Italian men (1930).
Bottom: P. Oriani, Enigmo del deserto (1937).

Przemyslaw Strozek is based in Warsaw, and runs futurstro.blogspot.com.

Barbara Bloom at The Jewish Museum

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:17:01 -0400

By Liz Moy

“As it were … So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom” at the Jewish Museum is an exhibition which reflects the artist’s interest in the fallacies of language. The title speaks to the intricacies of communication—each phrase that was chosen intrinsically contains doubt. “As it were” is in the subjunctive tense and “So to speak” is a condensed version of the modifying phrase “in a manner of speaking.” These common expressions, which call little attention to themselves or their oddness, suggest that what you are about to hear or have just heard is not exactly what it appears to be.

This fascination with the indelible nuances of language manifests in the array of objects Bloom culls from the museum’s permanent collection. Her curatorial choices in grouping the objects enhance their delicateness and curious nature. Vestiges of past lives, the objects are juxtaposed with selected texts from rabbinical debates and contemporary conversations, to point to the occurring misdirection and misplacement of value caused by semiotic subtleties.

One portion of the show focuses on synesthesia, as possessed by popular figures such as Geoffrey Rush, Wassily Kandinsky, Marilyn Monroe, Duke Ellington, Nikola Tesla, and Mozart. Delicate silver spice containers embody this mingling of sensory information. Another section is solely devoted to the idea of gift giving, and the social, ethical, and political implications that come with participating in such customary exchanges. Focusing on Freud’s analysis of a gift cycle, we see how the implied generosity of giving gifts can be problematic. One example is a silver cigar box that Freud received from his patient Anna. Inscribed on the top corner of the box is the word “Christmas,” indicating the bestowal of a gift based on a word that is fundamentally English and Christian. The German “Weihnachten,” Jewish “Chanukah,” or the more neutral “Holidays” would have all been more culturally appropriate.

Adjacently shown is a signet ring, which Freud gave to his daughter. Despite joyously ushering her into his inner circle, the gifting of this ring also reinforced the pressure bestowed upon her to protect the famed psychoanalyst’s legacy.The exhibition almost boasts its own intellectualism with a selection of texts, including Jonathan Spence’s Memory Palace of Mateo Ricci, Daniel Dennet’s Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. But Bloom can be comical as well, as shown by the plaques of “Laws Regarding Charity” written by Moses in the 12th century and Bloomberg recently in New York City. While the former pays attention to the important roles of will and guilt, the latter remains purely bureaucratic, discussing taxes, itemization, and fair market value. Bloom creates a dialogue across time and space, which tests the viewer’s ability to infer a whole from all of the gathered information. This discourse is appropriately represented by the pairs of painted eyes highlighted in slots on the walls connecting each room. Their penetrative gazes assume an unspoken reciprocity that effectively sums up the main concerns of this show.

Images, from top:
1. “As it were…So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom at The Jewish Museum,” 2013. Exhibition view. Photo by David Heald.
2. “As it were…So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom at The Jewish Museum,” 2013. Exhibition view. Photo by David Heald.
3. “As it were…So to speak: A Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom at The Jewish Museum,” 2013. Exhibition view. Photo by Christine McMonagle.

Tales from the Western Front (part 2)

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 21:54:00 -0400

By Liz Park

“Vis-à-vis”, Canada Shadows, 1978.

This is the second half of “Tales from the Western Front.” The first half is available here.

If I am to imagine the Western Front Lodge as a living organism, its heart would be the Grand Luxe Hall—a 1,250-square-foot black box performance space with a 14-foot-high ceiling fitted with theatrical lighting and adjacent media production facilities. The Luxe has hosted not only performances, screenings, readings, and occasional exhibitions, but also rehearsals, community meetings, dinner parties, marriages, funeral wakes, festivals, badminton games, and other social functions of various sizes. In this hall, relationships are forged, ideas exchanged, declarations made, and life becomes intertwined with art.

As Hank Bull recalls:

It is useful to remember that for the first 5 years of its existence, the Front did not have a gallery in the sense of a white cube. The idea as I understood it was to leave all that behind for a trans-disciplinary, performative, networked, and collaborative collectivity, [striving for] a kind of revolutionary creative movement.

The Luxe was the platform for these collective activities. However, just as a single-cell organism divides and multiplies to become complex in their composition, the Lodge soon began evolving in its physical and operational structures. Glenn Lewis was an exceptional administrator and organizer who facilitated many such changes.

Our aims and purposes were defined at the get go when we formed as a society. Each of the member/curators defined their own program, and I, as the administrator, would get the details of each and then work out their individual budgets with them. I conceptualized the Media [Arts] Program, which was mostly because I was applying for the funds.

“HP Radio Show”, Hank Bull and Patrick Ready, 1977.

While Lewis was laying down the foundation for further media-related experiments at the Western Front, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov conceptualized the Exhibitions Program. After their departure from the organization, Bull was entrusted with the curatorial responsibility.

When the gallery was set up circa 1978 it was used for things like an exhibition of colour photocopy, mail art, and the first slowscan and telecom show produced by Bill Bartlett and Peggy Cady from Victoria. While Michael and Vincent conceived and designed the gallery, laid the beautiful new floor, and decided most of the exhibitions, after they left for Berlin [in 1980] I became the first formal “curator” of the gallery in 1982.

A few years prior, the Performance Program came under Eric Metcalfe’s direction.

Glenn passed on the Performance Program to me in 1979. But I also did the music program, because of my interest in jazz, and some gallery shows. When Glenn got the job as the Head of Media Arts at the Canada Council for the Arts [which remains a financial supporter of the organization to this day], he said I should take on the Performance Art Program. I did for probably too long—20 years. It was a very successful program, given that it sustained itself for those 20 years.

For Metcalfe, Lewis’s mentorship was of utmost importance, especially to him and Kate Craig, who was in charge of Media Arts, Artist-in-Residence Program:

Glenn was very encouraging to us. He really mentored Kate especially. Kate had a chance to start her own thing – the visiting Artist-in-Residence program for video production. This was very innovative for the time.

It was a sentiment shared by many others, including Lewis.

Artists-in-residence is perhaps the most significant Western Front contribution, an idea which has spread worldwide. There are residency programs for artists everywhere now. In the early years of the Western Front, I don’t recall any other galleries or centres promoting performance or artist-in-residence.

“Mini-FM”, Tetsuo Kogawa demonstrates the fabrication of a 1-watt FM radio transmitter, 1994.

As the member/curators started molding their own programs, the silo-like structures became more defined. However, the process of becoming an institution of sort was not a conscientious decision for Lewis.

I don’t think I, or probably we, thought, OK, now we are going to be professional… but more likely it snuck up on us. It was a slow process where more was demanded from us from the funding agencies.

For Bull, this period of professionalization was also an opportunity for curatorial experimentation.

In the 1980s, the Front became a platform for curatorial production. As the organization professionalized, so did I. I produced a project with musicians from Africa, which failed but taught me a lot. Then I did Infermental VI, “a video map of the world.” Exhibition projects with William S. Burroughs and Canadian tours organized for a number of Japanese artists closed the decade. At the same time I remained active with telecommunications and video projects, including a number of video productions with Eric. The 1980s also saw the proliferation of artist-run centres in Vancouver, with the founding of Or, Artspeak, Grunt and others…

At the same time that we clung to our inter-disciplinary ideals, Glenn, and later Karen Henry, did a lot to develop an effective board and gradually separated the roles and responsibilities of owners, board, and staff.

As Keith Wallace reminds in Whispered Art History, the gradual process of professionalization and division of programs had its root in the funding system from the very beginning.

In late 1973, the Western Front was encouraged by the Canada Council to apply for a grant from the newly instituted Explorations Programme which encouraged ‘exploration’ in new areas of cultural activity. As a result, [Martin] Bartlett, Lewis and Morris developed a music and performance series comprised of six events for the 1974 season… The music and performance series marked the beginning of the Western Front’s gradual division of programmes, a development that often corresponded with the gradual division of funding programmes at the Canada Council. As different media became more evident or specialized within the artist-initiated centres, the Canada Council responded with new programmes. (1)

What Wallace suggests is that the relationship between the arts council and the organizations that it supports is not unidirectional. In fact, as Morris imagined and wrote into the mandate of the Western Front, artists had an important role in determining the cultural ecology, and even shaping the funding structure. Lewis is a prime example of an artist-administrator who has had an influential role at the level of the federal granting body as Head of Media Arts. Nonetheless, as Metcalfe affirms, his performance programming had to be responsive to the context of the funding structure.

My rule was that the performers have visual arts training. If they came from theatre or dance, I was always suspicious. The program was born out of visual arts… and that’s how I ran the program. By the time other people took it over, the whole funding structure shifted and the money was coming from media arts. So the criterion has shifted.

It is no surprise that after the Canada Council disbanded a separate funding stream for performance art that the Western Front began to fold performance art activities into other programs. However, the dissolution of the Performance Art Program itself is no indication of the Western Front’s commitment to supporting the production and presentation of inter- and trans-disciplinary art activities which include performance and live art. For instance, in fall 2012, Media Arts Curator Sarah Todd invited New York-based artist Brendan Fernandes to produce The Working Move. Developed in collaboration with Vancouver-based choreographer Justine Chambers, this performance piece involving ballet dancers in various movements with museum pedestals sat somewhere between dance and visual art, performance and a rehearsal, an exhibition and a demonstration. The work questioned these boundaries and drew new contours around how the audience understands their role at a performance event.

Another example of how performance is currently taken up at the Western Front is Exhibitions Curator Jesse Birch’s most recent group exhibition “Edible Glasses,”which was on view from January to February 2013. The title comes from the performance work of Lithuanian artist Ieva Miseviciute, in which edible glasses are brought to life as part of a joke. The curatorial decision to ground an exhibition about how objects become animated through the work of performance is truly in line with the spirit of the Western Front; its members furiously rejected the bourgeois understanding of objet d’art and instead, engaged in intense experimentation around what can be done with such objects. Just as Metcalfe breathed life into the wooden saxophone with leopard spots and a kazoo mouthpiece in his performances under the alter-ego Dr. Brute in the 1970s, the exhibition was pregnant with the potentiality of the objects that can become something else in a performance.

This exhibition opened on January 17, 2013, in honour of Art’s 1,000,050^th Birthday; in 1963, Robert Filliou proclaimed that Art was invented a million years ago when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. This anniversary tradition at the Western Front is a way of looking back and acknowledging art as something living, growing, and maturing—something worth celebrating. At the Western Front, such celebrations often take place at the Grand Luxe Hall, where its constant use is like the beating of the heart. The hall has recently undergone a number of improvements, including new walls, technical equipment upgrades, and uncovering and reinstalling the windows.

Each time the physical building is renovated, it is indicative of a new phase, growth, and evolution of the organization itself. It only makes sense that the architecture that fostered certain kinds of practices and socialization would be modified according to the structural changes that take place. With every new addition to the staff, the building, and the community that it supports, the Western Front builds on the work of its forbearers. The work and the very lives of those who made the Western Front what it is today can be seen and heard in the walls and the floors. The Western Front is a place for not only the living but the memories of those who are no longer in this world. Traces from Filliou, Craig, the late Patrick Ready, and others are in the media archives, the old filing cabinets, pictures on the wall, and dusty storage bins in the nooks and crannies of the building.

As an upstart curator and researcher, I had the good fortune to sift through these traces in 2008–09. During my time there, I got a sense that the organization has a life of its own. Precisely for this reason, the task of introducing the Western Front is a tall order. In place of a conclusion, and with my most humble respect, I close this text with the words of the late Kate Craig—a pioneering video artist who was at the helm of the most innovative video production and residency program in Canada.

It’s very easy for an outsider to analyze work from the Front and see it as critical of the general culture, but I know with my own work, and my attitude to the Front, it’s not so much a critique, as it is an alternative, a way of dealing with one’s life 24 hours a day, how one relates to the outside world or to one’s community. The motivation behind a lot of the work is very positive; it’s about being able to find resources—people, buildings, and facilities to actually produce something new. It’s never been a school, there’s never been a manifesto, there’s never been an over affiliation, except with other artists. (2)

Liz Park is a Performa Magazine writer in residence.

All photos courtesy of the Western Front Society and Hank Bull.

Works cited:

1. Keith Wallace, “Introduction,” Whispered Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp, 1993, p.5.

2. Kate Craig, “Personal Perspective,” an excerpt from Personal Perspective. Vancouver: Art and Artists 1931-1983, ed. Luke Rombout, Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1983, pp.261- 262. Re-published on the Western Front website: http://front.bc.ca/events/personal-perspective/

…

Tales from the Western Front (part 1)

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 00:24:00 -0400

By Liz Park

The Western Front, Vancouver’s historic artist-run center for new art forms, is celebrating its 40^th anniversary. Founded in 1973 by eight artists—Martin Bartlett, Kate Craig, Henry Greenhow, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov, and Mo van Nostrand—the Western Front has been an important pillar in the city’s contemporary art community. This interdisciplinary art organization has supported the production and presentation of exhibitions, media art residencies, performance art, music, and publications, and houses an impressive archive of early media work and recordings of performance art by international artists including Antoni Muntadas, Tania Bruguera, Mona Hatoum, Chip Lord, and Sanja Ivekovic, to name a few.

I first became involved with the organization as a Media Arts curatorial intern, and soon after, as a curator in residence. This experience has been instrumental in my development as a curator and the Western Front continues to be one of my most cherished workplaces, sites of social gathering, and contemporary art spaces. What makes this organization unique is that it is a living space, literally and figuratively. Initially conceived as a communal live-work space by the eight founders, the Western Front still remains home to Eric Metcalfe and Hank Bull, who later joined the group and took up residence with his late wife Kate Craig.

In writing about the activities of the Western Front, it is impossible to separate the lives of those involved with the organization from their art practice. The members were inspired by Fluxus ideals, and saw their life as art and the everyday activities of their communal living as a performance. This brief text cannot do justice to the 40-year history of the organization that has fostered the growth of so many people in the arts and has left a profound impact on the arts community in Vancouver and beyond. In place of writing an authoritative or a didactic account, I engaged in a conversation with Eric, Glenn and Hank as well as consulting previously recorded statements and publications about the Western Front. This text is a confluence of stories from the artists whose performance of the everyday became the very fabric of this important organization that continues to define the place of art in the larger cultural ecology.

Stories of the Western Front often begin with the purchase of a building, now lovingly called the Western Front Lodge. Keith Wallace, the editor of Whispered Art History: Twenty Years at the Western Front, writes about the Lodge in the introduction:

The building initially catered to the secret fraternity of the Knights of Pythias, a charitable organization founded in 1864 to heal the hatred instigated by the American Civil War, and whose rituals are based on the story of Damon and Pythias, two ancient Syracusians so committed to their friendship that they were willing to die for each other. The interior contained two large gathering halls, two kitchens, office areas, staircases, a long corridor dotted with closet-like spaces that stored ritual paraphernalia, and other assorted undefined rooms and closets. The doors were fitted with peepholes that serviced requests for entry during initiation rites. For artists, it was a building ripe with possibilities for residences, common areas and working spaces that, though within the same complex, could also provide some degree of privacy.

It was indeed a space of possibilities. As Kate Craig states in a 1983 statement about her personal involvement with the Front:

It was becoming increasingly difficult to find space to work, and the nature of the work was changing. So when the Western Front building became available we decided to buy it… In the seventies, with the performance work that was going on, the beginning of video, a place like the Western Front was ultimately suitable. In fact, I think the building itself had a tremendous influence. It made it easier to do certain kinds of work.

Kate Craig, Flying Leopard, 1974

For Eric Metcalfe, the building itself and the collectivity of the group fundamentally changed how he practiced as an artist:

I am sure the architecture informed our practice. The bigger room upstairs offered itself to performance. We had poetry reading, musicians coming by to play music…. The next thing I know, I found myself moving more and more in the direction of performing and making videotapes as did Kate. The practice shifted into what was going on there. The development of our practice was very organic, although there was a strong dose of conceptualism.

The physicality of the building also helped foment a sense of community. It not only provided a much needed space for performance and exhibitions, but also acted as a hub for long-distance exchanges.

A lot of people came here the first year to see what we were doing. Ant Farm, an architectural group from San Francisco, came up. Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar from Avalanche magazine came and did a profile on us. Robert Smithson [who also visited Vancouver, but earlier in 1970] was on the front cover of the issue we were in. Those were the kinds of infusions that happened at that time.

[Because of the building] they could come and stay here. It was like a big rooming house.

We were trying the communal thing. Undoubtedly we shared meals together, talked about ideas. The building allowed for social exchange, parties, and the things that went with it, in the best possible way.

But it was not all parties, of course. It was a site of learning. When Hank Bull joined the organization shortly after its formation in September 1973, it provided him with an unparalleled education in contemporary art:

I had already spent a couple of years at the New School of Art in Toronto, which was an artist-run alternative art school. The Front was kind of like a post-grad experience, if one were to compare it to formal education. In material terms, it is also worth pointing out that although I was there almost daily (and nightly) and worked in many capacities, I was not paid for the first few years. So that makes it more like a school. And of course it was not a formal education; it was an informal education.

Speaking only for myself, I took a kind of anti-professional stance, a kind of militant improvised Renaissance amateurism, inspired in part by Don Davis, the one-man band we met in Hollywood during the Deccadance (1974), whose motto was TOTALmedia. The seventies were a period of intense artistic production, with HP radio [a weekly radio show I ran with Patrick Ready on Vancouver Co-op Radio for eight years starting in 1975], the shadow plays, numerous collaborations, and support for many productions by other artists.

Guiding the experimentations, collaborations, and the ongoing learning process were key mentors. By 1973, Glenn Lewis had had experience teaching at art schools and organizing exhibitions and performance events as a member of the Intermedia Artists Co-operative (1965-1971). Michael Morris was another member of the co-operative with significant curatorial and administrative experience—it was Morris who penned the organization’s mandate to promote “the role of the artist in determining the cultural ecology.” They had an influential role at the Western Front, as did the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, a frequent visitor and artist-in-residence in 1973, 1977, 1979, and finally in 1980. Lewis states:

Filliou and his Fluxus work were a great inspiration when he visited and worked at the Front in the early days. I had already been doing conceptual work at Intermedia, like the film Blue Tape Around City Block in 1969, but Filliou confirmed and strengthened this direction for me, and showed me the depth of this kind of “living art.” There were a tremendous number of artists and their work from all over the world passing through the Western Front. As an artist, some of that must have rubbed off on me.

Filliou provided affirmation and encouragement by providing an international context for the activities at the Western Front, which considered itself one of many hubs in the Eternal Network. As Wallace explains:

This term was coined by… Filliou, who optimistically expressed a belief that artists should be in communication at all times in all places without dependency upon the art establishment. Within the Network, artists most often used correspondence through the postal system as a means of exchanging ideas and images. In this context, making art was a shared activity and not dependent upon the individual artist creating objects within the isolation of the studio. The Network also challenged the idea that certain cities constituted geographical art centres; through the medium of correspondence each artist could be connected internationally without having to live in a major urban centre.

Filliou’s Eternal Network connected the Western Front to its counterparts dotted across the globe, but the members were immersed in other postal exchange networks as well, including Ray Johnson’s New York Correspondence School of Art and the Image Bank founded in 1969 by Morris and Vincent Trasov. In an obvious nod to Johnson, Lewis founded the humorously named New York Corres Sponge Dance School Vancouver, under the auspice of which he performed synchronized swimming dance routines with all the swimmers sporting a shark-fin cap.

From top: Martha Rosler, slowscan transmission, 1990; Vincent Trasov, Mr. Peanut Mayoralty Campaign, 1974; Wadada Leo Smith, solo concert, 1976.

Lewis, Morris, and Martin Bartlett provided guidance as well as a lineage and local context for the kinds of experimental art activities that took place in Vancouver before the inception of the Western Front. As members of Intermedia (short for Intermedia Artists Cooperative as well as being a Fluxus reference to discipline-blurring), the three artists brought much of the ethos of the previous collective to the Western Front. Lewis recounts the arts community in Vancouver in the 1960s and some of the events that led up to the formation of the Western Front:

Intermedia established an art community in Vancouver… I think in the late sixties it had arisen as part of that period’s worldwide young people’s (student) uprising, drugs, free love, and back to the earth movement. McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller were looked at seriously. The environment at Intermedia was collaborative, but artists did individual work as well… Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer came and gave performance art workshops and the first performances in Vancouver were done in 1968. By 1973 Intermedia had ceased operating.

During the late sixties the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), under Tony Emery, had been enormously supportive of the work Intermedia was doing, basically turning the Gallery over to the artists once a year. I co-ordinated the exhibition at the VAG in 1970. The artists would have large meetings to decide what we would do. In this case, we all decided to construct domes (re: Buckminster Fuller) for each room of the Gallery…. Performance, readings, and installations took place in the domes. It was quite innovative for its time. I mention this because I think Michael Morris, Martin Bartlett, and I took this spirit with us in forming the Western Front. When Intermedia folded, the artists divided like a cellular division, if you like, and formed separate organizations (some not formal) to carry on activities that were developed at Intermedia. The Grange with Glen Toppings and Gary Lee Nova did construction and installations for themselves and others. Intermedia Press was formed by Henry Rappaport and Ed Varney. Video In (now Vivo) was formed by Michael Goldberg and a number of others… Women in Focus was formed by Marion Barling and others. Cineworks was formed…

Western Front was formed and probably had the most ambitious programming (of subsequent artist-run centers in Vancouver) incorporating exhibition, new music, performance, readings, film screenings, video documentation… and you could probably throw in cooking and dinners.

So began the first few years at the Lodge and a new chapter in all of the artists’ lives as the Western Front became a way of life for them. In the words of George Maciunas, the leading proponent of Fluxus who penned its Manifesto, the members of the Western Front “obtain[ed] their ‘art’ experience from everyday experiences, eating, working, etc.

WF NOW (New Orchestra Workshop), concert, 2008, Grand Luxe Hall.

Liz Park is a Performa Magazine writer in residence.

Images (from top): Glenn Lewis, New York Corres Sponge Dance School of Vancouver, 1973. Hank Bull and Patrick Ready, the HP Radio Show, 1976.

All photos courtesy of Hank Bull and the Western Front Society.

Backstage with Dorit Chrysler

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:31:03 -0400

Last week, Dorit Chrysler gave an intimate performance for Performa friends and supporters in New York at the Standard, East Village. The Standard Culture caught up with her backstage.

Photo @ The Standard, East Village.

One might wonder just how, without ever touching her instrument, the ethereal Dorit Chrysler can make such beautiful sounds. She plays an early 20th-century electric device called the theremin which, after a fit of Googling, we are still at a loss to fully explain. Something to do with electromagnetic fields and etherwaves, but more on that later.

We had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Ms. Dorit when she performed this past week at The Standard, East Village. Chrysler’s eclectic musical career includes a vocal début at the age of 7 at an Austrian opera house, a rock band at the age of 13, side-by-side billing with Marilyn Manson, musical collaborations with the likes of Neon Indians, and, most recently, a more classical turn towards the mysterious theramin. We sat down with her after sound check to learn more about this fascinating instrument.

Standard Culture: The theremin is still very under the radar. How did you discover it?
Dorit Chrysler: I was introduced to the theremin at a friend’s house. Because it is still fairly obscure there are no set rules when approaching it, so I thought that it opened a lot of interesting venues. I was really just being creative and experimenting. There were really no limits to what I could try to do so it was very appealing.

How long ago was that?
Eight years ago. It takes a while to get somewhere with it.

You had been a musician for many years prior to that…
Yes! I had a rock band for many years. I was playing guitar and singing and really felt kind of limited and I also thought if I pick up the theremin, ya know, even at age 70 you can stand on the stage and maybe bend towards a more classical repertoire. But there are so many different angles that you can take. It didn’t limit me to any genre or style. I thought it was really interesting.

How did the music world react to your new act?
Well, it causes a tension. Just like it did when it was invented in the early 20s. It still has such an unusual and spectacular way of playing it. You have your hands in the air and don’t touch it. So, it causes a tension. Which can be good or bad. But some people that know it are pretty opinionated. They’ve heard it sound really dismal or make noise. So they kind of disregard it as a serious instrument. In a way I try to incorporate it as one of many aspects into my musical work, but I also feel obliged to pay tribute to the instrument and show a little bit what it can do so that people give it the respect that it deserves.

When you are playing the instrument does it have anything to do with energy kinesiology?
It’s very physical. I mean, one wonders. It’s an electromagnetic field and it’s just very physical and very internal. Like the voice. Every motion of yours, even the tiniest motion, translate into sounds. So if you’re nervous, or you have a bad day, or if you’re happy you can hear it. So in that sense it is a very spiritual instrument and it’s really almost like dancing. It’s very much about body control. All the parts of my body translate into sound for the theremin. It’s an extension.

Débussy’s Clair de Lune, transformed on the theremin.

Let’s talk about the experimental side of your music… Do you find that it’s more supported in Europe versus New York or L.A.?
That’s a really interesting question. I am always surprised that I find people working with the theremin in the most remote, odd places in the world. I find Scandinavia is very eclectic and down with the sound, but is more minimal and almost too dense for them. New York of course is a great city. They’ve seen it all. The inventor Léon Theremin was living in New York in the 20s. He was the toast of the town. So actually New York has a strong history with the theremin. I’m also the cofounder of the New York Theremin Society.

What are the messages or themes that you are trying to share with your music?
Autonomy. Autonomy! Liberty and openness. Explore fearlessly and be creative. Whatever makes people excited is fine with me.

This interview first appeared in The Standard Culture on March 21, 2013. The complete piece is available here.

An Ode to Tilda Swinton's The Maybe

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:59:14 -0400

By Grant Klarich Johnson

Likely, you have already heard about Tilda Swinton’s The Maybe at the Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan. Reported by several media outlets by early Saturday, the work has proved a sensationalist stroke of brilliance on MoMA’s part, buzzing across social media channels both in the art world and otherwise.

The piece, originally performed in collaboration with the sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker in 1995 at London’s Serpentine Gallery, then later at the Museo Barracco in Rome, features Swinton feigning sleep atop a thin white mattress in a raised glass-and-metal vitrine. Her costume of rolled denim, sneakers, and oversized work-shirts echo the hipster ease distilled in the thick square frames of her glasses, which punctuate the bed. Recalling the coy geometry of Damian Hirst, the minimalist set frames and compliments Swinton’s own sparse, androgynous form, literally lifting her from the realm of the everyday and into a consecrated box, a readymade sign of the aesthetic.

As the piece will continue to reappear unannounced at the museum, its invasion of pre-existing museum installations will draw both an exceptional crowd and comment to these unsuspecting spaces. Mindful of this promising Situationist-esque intervention, MoMA curators likely already have plans to rhyme The Maybe with Joseph Beuys’s vitrines (with which and whom it bears both a striking formal and performative similarity) currently on view on the fourth floor, as well as many other insightful pairings, from Monet’s Nympheas to the dreamy and threatening surrealist objects down the hall, already caged in their own sterilizing vitrines. When I caught it, The Maybe stood in the shadows of Douglas Gordon’s towering video work Play Dead; Real Time (2003), itself a recording of a trained elephant playing at its own extinction, and thus a delightful backdrop and interlocutor to Swinton’s striking performance.

Joseph Beuys, Untitled V (1949-82).*

Perhaps a passive-aggressive form of institutional critique, The Maybe threatens MoMA’s prowess without even getting out of bed. Indeed, to sleep (perchance to dream?) upon some of the most valued real estate in the art world, to close one’s eyes to supposed masterworks suggests an extremely literal critique—boredom of the institution and all it contains. And yet, ultimately, The Maybe presents no real threat. It—possibly all too—flawlessly continues MoMA’s popular performance programming and gives a sense of history and community to Marina Abramovic’s call for long-durational work. In the end, it may not challenge, but reinforces all that for which MoMA stands.

Free of a formal press release, website, or even an extended interpretive label, The Maybe suggests an art event as free of discourse as possible. And yet, like Swinton’s convincing slumber, punctuated by transcendent passages of elegant tossing and turning—this is all largely an act. The variable presence of the piece seems tailor-made both to the museum’s interest in luring visitors away from other, less fleeting urban attractions, as well as to engaging the attention deficit world-brain that is Twitter. The Maybe makes MoMA itself an event, trending, tempting, tough-to-beat.

The presence of a celebrity actress like Swinton means the import of the full discursive field she, and her public, carry with them into the museum—a field arguably much vaster than that of any living artist. Navigating the aura of supposed evanescence while also highlighting a performer and work whose potency is largely contingent on the aura of celebrity, the fetishistic notion of the author drives The Maybe and makes it a strong argument for MoMA, the kingmaker incarnate, to stage. This is not just anyone in a box. This is a highly accomplished, highly skilled, luxury-goods-endorsing, sometime fashion model performing an idealized form of slumber. The Maybe has more in common with the precise, confident beauty of Maderno’s Saint Cecilia (1600) than the prosaic performance of the sleeping homeless that likewise present themselves unannounced on the exterior architecture of one’s local church.

That said, just as I go weak before Cecilia, I must admit my pure delight at the prospect of The Maybe, as well as its promise of Swinton in the role of Sleeping Beauty. An unselfconscious fan of Swinton’s various apparitions—from the utterly unassailable visual banquet I Am Love to a certain spread in W magazine where she (not uncommonly) looked more alien than human—as soon as I heard about The Maybe, I reserved the right to drop everything and rush to the museum to bear witness to Swinton in all her startling perfection.

Grant Johnson is a Performa Magazine writer in residence.

*Images (from top):
1. Joseph Beuys, Untitled V (1949-82), MoMA.
Courtesy of www.adiciones.es.
2. Stefano Maderno, Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia, 1600. Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome.
Courtesy of www.bettybaroque.wordpress.com.

Yoko Ono: Half-A-Wind-Show. A Retrospective.

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:48:00 -0400

The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt presents a stunning retrospective by Yoko Ono. “Half-A-Wind-Show. A Retrospective.” looks back at the past six decades of the artist’s work, who has been a leading figure in the development of conceptual, performance, and Fluxus art, and a pioneer of avant-garde and experimental music and film.

More information about “Half-A-Wind-Show. A Retrospective.” is available from Schirn.

Images above:
1. Add Color Painting, 1960/1966. Paint, newspaper, tin foil on canvas. Collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
2. Apple, 1966. Apple, Plexiglas pedestal with brass plaque engraved: APPLE. Collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
3. Bed-In for Peace, 1969. Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam, 25.-31. März 1969. © Yoko Ono.
4. Blue Room Event, 1966. Detail Installation with handwritten texts. Concept collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
5. Ceiling Painting, Yes Painting, 1966. Text on paper, glass, metal frame, metal chain, magnifying glass, painted ladder. Collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
6. Cut Piece, 1965. Performed by Yoko Ono Carnegie Recital Hall, New York, 1965. Photo: Minoru Niizuma © Courtesy Lenono Photo Archive.
7. Fly, 1970. Still from 16 mm film transferred to digital. Color, sound, 25 minutes. Collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
8. Fly, 1996. Billboards. Concept collection of the artist. © Lenono Photo Archive.
9. Morning Beams / Riverbed, 1996. Installation view, Israel Museum, 2000 Photo: Oded Lobl. © Lenono Photo Archive.
10. Sky TV, 1966/2013. TV monitor, closed circuit video camera. Concept collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
11. Yoko Ono and John Lennon, War Is Over!, 1969. Billboard installed in Times Square, New York. © Yoko Ono.
12. Water Piece, 1962/1966. Sponge, eyedropper, water in glass vial on Plexiglas pedestal engraved: WATER PIECE YOKO ONO 1962 / WATER EVERY DAY. Pedestal: Collection of the artist. © Yoko Ono.
13–14. “Half-A-Wind Show. A Retrospective.” Exhibition view. © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2013 Photography: Norbert Miguletz.
15. Action Painting, 2013. © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2013. Photography: Bernd Kammerer.
16. Sky Piece to Jesus Christ, 2013. © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt 2013. Photography: Bernd Kammerer.

Performing around capitalism (Part 2)

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 17:55:00 -0500

By Victor Wang

This essay is part two of two. Part one is available here.

In the past, the Turbine Hall has seen some live art that Sehgal’s These Associations nods towards, knowingly or not. For example, Tania Bruguera’s Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008) a piece which included an exercise in crowd control by mounted police, or Martin Creed’s Work No. 850 (2008), which saw sprinters race through the Duveen Galleries (1).

Tania Bruguera, Tatlin’s Whisper #5, 2008. Performance view, Tate Modern, London. Photo © the artist.

For Sehgal, the body is not the only medium that can generate immaterial value. The chance conversations In These Associations are actually based on a set of open-ended questions asked by Sehgal, such as “When did you feel a sense of belonging?” and “When did you experience a sense of arrival? (2)’ This use of performative speech is what OJ.L. Austin described as phonetic acts, which has a long history of knowledge production in non-European models. In his text How To Do Things With Words (1954), Austin distinguished what he calls speech acts that simply say something (constative) from speech acts that do something (performative), i.e., they accomplish what they say (3). In this sense the use of language in Sehgal’s pieces are doing more than conveying lexical or grammatical convention (producing an English sentence). Language here is directly tied to the act of doing something, activating a response, and producing a non-material exchange of knowledge production that is immeasurable by monetary gain.

In a recent interview it was noted that Sehgal has developed a ‘literal interpretation of Benjamin’s statement that authentic art has its basis in ritual’ (4). The tradition of passing on knowledge through ritual or ceremony has an extensive history in non-Western civilizations, such as the First Nations of Canada or in Asian folklore such as the Jingjiang (Telling Scriptures)—a ‘local style of oral prosimetric narrative performed in ritual contexts in the area of Jingjiang…in Jiangsu Province, China’ (5), where semi-professional storytellers perform oral narratives that are accompanied by the audience. Examples of other cultures producing community value (other than material exchange) are important when defining the above stated thesis, because it is non-Eurocentric forms of knowledge production such as these that according to Boaventura de Sousa Santos are crucial to the anti-capitalist perspective. Where ‘Western supremacy was also instrumental in suppressing other, non-scientific forms of knowledge and, at the same time, the subaltern social groups whose social practices were informed by such knowledge’ (6). Conditioning Western audiences to expect specific avenues of receiving knowledge from the media to its cultural centers, dominating economic systems such as the late capitalist model of the museum in turn dictates the forms of display and representation used when constructing exhibitions.

Does every exhibition have to be documented? Allan Kaprow didn’t necessarily believe so. As a producer, what are the best methods of documentation that allows for the public to experience the live act? For Sehgal the museum and the industrial society are solely concerned with the displaying of objects and the ‘kind of wealth that can be derived from objects and promoting that point’ (7). Where Rosalind Krauss points out in her essay “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum” that historically this was not merely out of dire financial necessity, but a result of the American tax law of 1986 eliminating the deductibility of the market value of donated art objects (8), where the governing bodies of the market have introduced incentives for such structures to exist. And because of the current funding structure of the Turbine Hall commissions—funded by Unilever—it may be appropriate to also point out that Krauss accounts for this profound shift in the very context in which the museum operates, a context whose corporate nature is made specific not only by the major sources of funding for museum activities, but also, closer to home, by the makeup of its boards of trustees (9). Thus the writer of Selling the Collection can say: ‘The notion of the museum as a guardian of the public patrimony has given way to the notion of a museum as a corporate entity with a highly marketable inventory and the desire for growth’ (10). But it is within this desire of growth that Sehgal as producer makes a departure.

If we think of economist John Kenneth Galbraith’s question of whether persuasion can keep up with production, can the institution—like the products of corporations—continue to persuade us to consume or commit to ‘things’ that we don’t necessarily need. An idea that many Conceptual art movements of the 1960s and ’70s explored. But what does it mean to produce non-object, nonducumentable work today? Where those like the Fluxus artists (George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, George Brecht) made instructions to subvert the role of authorship in art production, and as Claire Bishop points out in her Art Forum International article: the first generation of Conceptual artists, for whom dematerialization was a way to subvert the work of art’s relationship to the market and museum (Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Lawrence Weiner) Sehgal has no such desire for circumvention (11). Where Sehgal intentionally works within the system, looking for new ways of adjusting the existing model rather than disposing of it completely. Where even his own artworks are no longer passed on, or sold, but rather verbally exchanged amongst different parties—the only stipulation is that his pieces cannot involve the ‘transformation of any material, in any way. No written instructions, no bill of sale (purchases are conducted orally, in the presence of a notary), no catalogs and (to the dismay of photo editors in the art press) no pictures’ (12), positioning a practice that seeks to develop alternative forms of acquisition and conservation, concurring with the views of economist Tim Jackson, author of Prosperity Without Growth, which states that one method is to move away from products, and invest in areas such as health, education and experiences, rather than having the museum be a repository of material objects.

As a curator or artist producer, one can choose to produce work for art’s sake (historically inward in scope), often for a privileged class, or produce art for change—society and the systems that govern them at large. A combination of the two may be ideal, but perhaps utopian in scope. Yet with the expansion of art (globally and across disciplines), the definitions that hold its structures in place—perhaps should be contested. For when one is given a stage (with a potential to reach millions) of global proportions, to not address issues that are pressing (globally and socially), which also threaten to change the very structures that frame our cultural experience, seems like an opportunity missed. For museums are structures that not only affirm and implement belief systems (in the perceived value of objects, and the dissemination of knowledge); but assist in the transition of culture to social value in a society. Where museums are spaces of affirmation – teaching individuals how to interact, perceive, and value culture. Like physical newspapers they inform us of what issues a society should be contemplating and addressing. Funded by the people (and corporations) the institution in its many forms must aim to be sustainable, like every other entity in the ecology of the market—looking to improve on outdated business/exhibition models, and rethinking the product life cycle that was once thought of as being liner—with a beginning and an end.

In a recent interview Nicolas Serota noted: ‘At a time of austerity, people are rethinking their values and looking at art that doesn’t straightforwardly have a market … artists want to make work that engages directly with audiences and is not so susceptible to commercial development’ (13). Unlike Gustav Metzger’s Art Strike 1977–1980, Sehgal does not seek to fully recreate the economic structures of the art world, but simply reaffirms the viability of service goods and oral knowledge production, from the supply side of the economic equation. During a time where the museum has seen unprecedented growth globally (China, Brazil, Mexico, etc.), and with the professionalization of the artist and curator, the question now is how to manage our cultural resources and maintain a system that is not merely producing objects and positions. Where perhaps now the museum can become a testing ground for new ways of art production, that takes on characteristics of capitalist production, such as socially engaged art practices, but still allows for institutional support and reflexive dialog to exist. Developing a new lexicon that can eventually be applied to other areas of production outside of the arts.

Victor Wang is an independent exhibition maker, curator, and writer based in London. He is also an MA candidate in the Curating Contemporary Art program at the Royal College of Art.

Works cited:
1. Kari Rittenbach, “Tino Sehgal,” Frieze D/E, Issue 6, Autumn 2012. Retrieved November 5, 2012, Frieze database.
2. Charlotte Higgins, pg9.
3. Jörg Heiser, “This is Jörg Heiser on Tino Sehgal,” Frieze magazine, Issue 82, April 2004. Retrieved November 5, 2012
4. Anne Midgette, “You Can’t Hold It, but You Can Own It,” The New York Times: November 25, 2007.
5. Mark Bender, “Asian Folklore Studies.” Published by Nanzan University, Vol. 60, No. 1 (2001), pp. 101-133.
6. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joao Arriscado Nunes, and Maria Paula Meneses, “Opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference.” Published by Verso 2007, pg.1.
7. Jo Confino, “Tino Sehgal’s Tate Modern exhibition metaphor for dematerialisation,” Guardian Professional, October 5, 2012.
8. Rosalind Krauss, pp. 429.
9. Rosalind Krauss, pp. 429.
10. Rosalind Krauss, pp. 429.
11. Bishop, Claire, “No pictures, please: Claire Bishop on the art of Tino Sehgal,” The Free Library, May 1, 2005. Retrieved December 6, 2012, from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/No pictures, please: Claire Bishop on the art of Tino Sehgal.-a0132554959
12. Anne Midgette, “You Can’t Hold It, but You Can Own It,” The New York Times, November 25, 2007.
13. Charlotte Higgins, pg9.

Performing around capitalism (Part 1)

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:28:00 -0500

The museum as a place of art production

By Victor Wang

This essay is part one of two. Part two is available here.

This essay seeks to provide a tentative bridge between the conditions of the museum as a cultural institution undergoing a transformation: one that see its current structure as a late capitalist model—collecting objects as a form of asset—come into question by artists and producers concerned with ephemeral, non-object based art production. Using live art and performance as examples of art production that can continue to produce value in an art economy, while simultaneously not producing an object. This essay will focus specifically on museums, as a site where the ‘cultural logic of late capitalism receives its concrete expression within both the economic structures and aesthetic forms involved in it’ (1). Using Tino Sehgal’s exhibition These Associations, 2012, to provide the reader with a definition of an artist that embodies both an artist-curator and producer. This text will draw on aspects of his practice to outline his socially engaged ‘signature’ as a form of ecology activism—from the lack of documentation allowed, to the ways the artist has navigated around traditional methods of artwork consumption, i.e., the verbal contract as a subversion of modern material consumption within the art market. By critically examining the exhibition, and Tate Modern’s ambitious expansion of the Tate Tanks, we can read the exhibition as an economic experiment where the museum becomes a testing ground for future methods of ecological art production.

These Associations debuted just after the opening of the Tate Tanks, one part of a £215 million extension project that will increase Tate Modern’s size by 60% (2). This expansion saw the repositioning of the former oil well reserve of the once-power station converted into a space for performance and installation art inside Tate Modern. In a late capitalist society, with institutions that are so finely woven into the economic climate of a city, every decision made by the institution will ultimately affect how a society views the production of art, and the dissemination of culture. It is no coincidence then that Sehgal’s work accompanies the inaugural season’s program, The Tanks: Art in Action, of live dance and performance. At a time when the art market and its institutions have been what Dietrich Dietrichson would call ‘speculating’ on a form of art production (performance/live art) ironically often sides with concepts of anti-art production. American performance scholar Peggy Phelan once stated, “To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology” (3).

Official opening of the Tanks, 2012, Tate Modern, London, Photograph: Luke Macgregor/Reuters. The Guardian. Web; 1 December 2012.

Being one of the UK’s top three tourist attractions (4), the Tate Modern cannot elude the all-reaching invisible arm of the art market. In fact, no institution is immune. At the moment performance and live art is the flavor of the month, perhaps year. And if we inspect the art world through an economic lens, one can start to see trends develop. For the first time in its history, a performance artist,Spartacus Chetwynd, has been shortlisted for the Turner Prize. This year also saw the release of veteran performance artist Marina Abramović’s documentary about her recent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. And this is not to mention all the biennales and exhibition spaces opening in an attempt to catch the performative wave. Like brokers speculating on commodity markets, the art world has its curators and directors dictating what is shown and what is not—not so much by reason of the audience. ‘These are places of high, high legitimation in our culture,’ says Tino Sehgal in an interview with the Guardian. ‘A museum is like a valuing machine’ (5). Yet according to the Tate Modern’s website, the museum generates an estimated £100 million in economic benefits to London annually (6); therefore the valuing machine is not only symbolic, but also largely measurable. Further, one cannot forget that These Associations would not be possible without the £4.41 million sponsorship between the gallery and the Unilever Company, whose brands include Dove soap and PG Tips, among others. The new space thus appears as a ‘grand metaphor for (cultural) energy in a post-industrial, service-industry economy, where the body is easily fetishized as bearer of the real’ (7). Fashioned with ideas of preservation and collecting as a form of appreciating wealth, the museum from its inception has slowly digressed into a post-state of what Karl Marx would call ‘commodity fetishism,’ which would account for the neglect of performance art by the museum. Even Nicholas Serota, the Director of Tate, confessed that performance art had traditionally been left for alternative spaces, ‘and often barely recorded, into the museum’ (8). Where the marginalization of live art may have more to do with the structure of the institution (and its exhibition makers), rather than its ‘avant garde’ nature. It is said that the ‘two greatest mistakes of modern capitalism have been to confuse materialism with happiness, and growth with the need to produce an ever-increasing number of physical goods’ (9).

As a producer that deals with the notion of anti-production, Tino Sehgal has taken control of the assembly line to forge a work that directly addresses many of the above stated issues. Perhaps a self-reflexive act that examines the museum as a testing ground for capitalist production is necessary. As Rosalind Krauss points out in her essay “The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum” (1990), ‘it is not exactly [the] viewers who are raising controversy in this matter, but artists themselves’ (10). Krauss sees the museum as a space where the boundaries of the aesthetic experience are tested against capitalism (11), where the producer/curator is to co-constitute a model of ‘post-capitalist’ existence through the function of the museum as a testing ground for possibility and inception.

In These Associations, producer and artist Tino Sehgal creates a stage of ephemerality, where we (the audience) activate and become the artworks. The work is mobile, allowing for it to engage with the audience, even if the audience does not wish to engage with it. Like a tide of people, rising up and down the banks of the Turbine Hall, These Associations infiltrates families, groups of tourists, or the individual. Consisting of roughly seventy ‘agents’ camouflaged by streetwear—one could easily mistake them for a large crowd of loitering tourists—gathering by the ramp near the museum entrance or at the far end of the Turbine Hall. This inconspicuously constructed crowd mixes with visitors who soon find themselves in a strange assortment of personal tales—one young woman describes a love affair in Thailand—related by the performers, or caught in a game of chase that turns the museum into a playground of running objects for the young and old alike.

Yet Tino Sehgal’s piece would not be complete without an oral component: “electric”…”electric”…”electricity”; the voices reverberate off the wall, framed by the flickering of lights in the Turbine Hall. With several hundred participants involved in the project, how do we distinguish the curator’s voice? Can a curator have a voice when Sehgal has taken on the role of producer? Boris Groys wrote that ‘the work of the curator consists of placing artworks in the exhibition space, and this is what differentiates the curator from the artist’ (12) but if there are no art objects to be placed, and the producer of the exhibition is also the maker of the artwork, then perhaps Sehgal is playing with the fine line of artist as curator, at least in this context. For These Associations the agents (or walking art objects) were ‘recruited through networks of friends and acquaintances, and rehearsed by Sehgal and his producer, Asad Raza’ (13). However, how does the use of a ‘network’ or ‘acquaintances’ (with people being the main form of production) reflect how the art economy works in London? As Jessica Morgan, the curator of the Tate show explained in a recent interview, ‘the hardest thing is getting a cross section of society’ (14).

Yet one could argue that this difficulty in getting a ‘cross section of society’ is not a coincidence, but in fact an integral component in how Sehgal’s works speaks to issues of the market and how the institution (the Tate) wishes to position themselves—as a democratic public institution where opportunity is equal for all, regardless of race, gender, or class. However, one reporter noticed on a recent review of the exhibition that ‘on Monday morning … none of the participants [were] black’ (15). According to Raza, the work ‘shows London to itself; it is a more accurate picture of London than something that is cooked up by one particular person’ (16). Ironically, this aspect of the work, being largely a white middle-class participant group, may not be far from the truth—as Raza states, economically speaking the labor involved, and the class ‘associated’ with the work, would have to reflect a section of society that dominates the fine art sector of London—which it does. Like a mirror, the exhibition holds the reflection of the contemporary art scene in London, for all to see—homogenous, dominant, and predominantly of a single class.

Victor Wang is an independent exhibition maker, curator, and writer based in London. He is also an MA candidate in the Curating Contemporary Art program at the Royal College of Art.

Works cited
1. Dr. Pablo Markin, Towards the Theorization of Cultural Logic of Museums as Places of Memory in the Late Capitalism, Munich, GRIN Publishing GmbH, 2006, pp.4.
2. Tim Masters, ‘Tate Modern’s Oil tanks to fuel live art performances,’ BBC News, April 23, 2012, Arts, pp.8.
3. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge London, 1993, pp.146.
4. Tate Modern official website, 2012. Retrieved December 5, 2012, http://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/history-of-tate
5. Jo Confino, ‘Tino Sehgal’s ‘Tate Modern exhibition metaphor for dematerialisation,’ Guardian Professional, October 5, 2012.
6. Tate Modern official website, 2012. Retrieved December 5, 2012, http://www.tate.org.uk/about/who-we-are/history-of-tate
7. Kari Rittenbach, “Tino Sehgal,” Frieze D/E, Issue 6, Autumn 2012. Retrieved November 5, 2012, Frieze database.
8. Charlotte Higgins, ‘Tino Sehgal fills Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall with storytellers,’ The Guardian, July 23, 2012, Arts Section, pp.9.
9. Jo Confino, ‘Tino Sehgal’s ‘Tate Modern exhibition metaphor for dematerialisation,’ Guardian Professional, October 5, 2012.
10. Rosalind Krauss , ‘The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum,’ October: The Second Decade, 1986-1996, MIT Press, 1990, pp. 425.
11. Dr. Pablo Markin, p.3
12. Boris Groys, Art Power, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2008, pp.42.
13. Charlotte Higgins, pg.
14. Lauren Collins, “The Question Artist,” The New Yorker, August 6, 2012, p. 34.
15. Charlotte Higgins, pg9.
16. Charlotte Higgins, pg9.

The Politics of the Social in Contemporary Art

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:06:42 -0500

By Esther Belvis Pons

Image courtesy of Ztohoven.

Discussions around the politics of the social in contemporary art are taking place in all sorts of scenarios: informal gatherings in alternative spaces, public squares and parks, university campuses and cafés, and, of course, galleries and museums. The Tate Modern in London recently hosted a one-day symposium titled “The Politics of the Social in Contemporary Art,” which presented work from artists working in the blurred fields of social practice and visual art, such as Etcetera, Ztohoven, Renzo Martens, and Wafaa Bilal, among others. The emergence of participatory, interactive, and collaborative art practices has stressed several concerns that address not only the capacity of these practices to intervene in social relations, but also their particular way of performing politics within the public sphere. The revivification of social movements and the reoccupation of public spaces by the citizens affected by the global financial crisis through the Occupy movement has intermingled perspectives and interests, activating a specific social agenda. This one responds to current political matters and triggers actions that often perform between the boundaries of art and the social.

An example of that is the work of the collectives Not an Alternative, from New York, and WochenKlausur, from Vienna, who have both staged discussions of issues regarding housing and urban planning in New York City as performances. These collectives often use processes of appropriation to further their message: In the case of Occupied Real Estate, Not an Alternative used the imagery and tools of real-estate corporations to perpetrate their own actions and empower the citizens affected by this problem.

The interdependent relationship between politics and art has given birth to the development of intermedial practices that often engage participants in global actions. Often these artworks allow participants to become socially engaged in practices that might not be referring to their immediate context, but rather address a topic of social interest beyond the particularities of their territory, or that explore the tensions emerging between individuals and socially constructed spaces. This would be the case, for instance, of Renzo Martens’s Enjoy Poverty or Wafaa Bilal’s A Call. The latter premiered simultaneously at the Aaran Gallery in Tehran and at a parallel opening at White Box in New York, as the Iranian government denied Bilal an artist’s visa. Thus, the artistic proposals are also mediated by specific contingencies. Each piece responds and triggers its politics through the network of institutions and individuals that make the artwork possible. This embedded understanding of art and the social surfaces of the negotiations appears among the cultural institutions, the artists, and the broader public sphere. The comprehension of the pieces is consequently described by the disciplinary barometers that are used to present and interpret the artwork.

Stating discomfort and disagreement through social intervention is one the aims of the Latin American collective Etcetera. Regarding their political tendencies, the collective made an interesting point stressing how working closely with the human rights group H.I.J.O.S. (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence) increased their motivations and affiliation to a particular cause but also triggered certain tensions and difficulties that appeared when performing some of their committed interventions. This is an interesting point, as these practices are framed by relational parameters that perform within a constellation of affects and effects.

So, the political implications of collaborative art appear in the act itself, of establishing personal and artistic commitments that are obviously marked by ethical issues. In her keynote speech, Shannon Jackson gave evidence of the need to rethink the politics of the social in contemporary art through an interdependent approach. It is important to find a discourse to help us describe these practices within a wider context and beyond the assumption of dissidence or disruption. In this regard, she proposed the term ‘antagonism’ through the ideas of Mouffe and Laclau to spark new directions in the discourse of art and politics. Antagonism understands and explicates the interdependency that emerges in the creation of socially engaged artwork; often, practices include our ideological opponents or are even built through a network of partners that we recognize as the constituents of a system with which we don’t agree. The supporting system that surrounds the piece becomes therefore explanatory. This approach might enlighten how dissensus has been managed and included in the creative process and might also prompt a more in-depth approach of analysis regarding politics and contemporary art.

It is not surprising that many practices try to discuss the faults and weaknesses of democracy, as the current social fracture responds to the neglects and crimes carried out under its umbrella. That is the case of the Czech guerrilla collective Ztohoven, who promoted The Moral Reform by hacking the mobile phones of members of Parliament. Some members received a text containing a statement of complaint of the abuses committed as politicians. As each text had a sender of another member of Parliament, the work generated a moment of confusion, but also a discussion that emerged through an exchange of texts which were collected by Ztohoven and made public. Thus, the politics of contemporary art navigates through the spaces that construct the social, and as Ztohoven pointed out, for them these are: the institutional space, the public space and media space. Contemporary artists find in the bordering and unexplored spaces a position from which they ca temporarily trigger action; an action that can be politically ambiguous too.

The range of practices shown at the Tate gives evidence that their impact and comprehension has not been yet circumscribed in a paradigm. This is probably due to the fact that their complexity demands systemic and interdisciplinary reflections that are still under construction, as art has always been.

Esther Belvis Pons is a researcher-artist and writer based in London and Barcelona. She recently received her PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom.

Forced Entertainment

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:52:00 -0500

By Chris Green

For nearly three decades, Forced Entertainment has been making work at the forefront of experimental theater in Britain. Their work is playful in nature and often subversive, but after almost thirty years, how relevant is the work to a contemporary audience? Can their work still be considered “experimental,” or has it become the mainstream of alternative theater?

In June 2012 I attended the UK premiere of FE’s latest performance, The Coming Storm, at Battersea Arts Centre, London. Like most people who have studied contemporary performance at the university level, my first and most substantial experience of Forced Entertainment has been institutional. I found myself sitting through the performance thinking about how the work is similar to their other pieces, the different strands of work they have made, and making connections to the conventions.

Forced Entertainment has dominated the world of alternative and experimental performance in England almost from the outset. They challenged the way that theater was being made: their work is created collaboratively, which indicated a new way of working by breaking away from the traditional hierarchy found in most theater, and their notion of collaboration is a rich and complex area with multiple definitions and practices undertaken. Ranging from Deleueze and Guattari’s collaboration of the self along to the more contemporary debates around the subject within the field from Claire Bishop and Grant Kester. The development of socially engaged art in recent years has seen the development of a new model of collaboration, adopting a much more democratic approach where performers and audience work on the same level, without having one author the other. For companies such as the Wooster Group and Forced Entertainment, their model of a collaborative practice is slightly different, placing the artistic director at the top of the spectrum.

Forced Entertainment has different strands of work that they present, ranging from the very theatrical performances—The Thrill of It All (2010), Bloody Mess (2004),12 am: Awake & Looking Down (1993)—all of which seem to have a level of chaos and a suggestion of spontaneity. However, we know that all of these performances are highly rehearsed. The performances make a clear parallel to the form of traditional theater, yet clearly shaking up normal conventions by creating chaos and mess on the stage. Spectacular (2008) consisted of two actors standing on a bare stage. The male character wore a skeleton outfit and the female screamed into a microphone, enacting a death scene and trying to provoke a reaction from the male character, who was describing all of the things that would be happening and the scenery that should have been onstage. This was the first Forced Entertainment performance that I saw live, and it was something completely different from what I had seen from their previous work, and not what one would expect from the mainstream theater context in which it was presented.

The suggestion that the work is experimental means that some of it will inevitably fail. This is most apparent in their durational work, a challenge on both audience and performers, as performers reach a point where they will shift from performance mode into their natural state. “The essence of Speak Bitterness (1994) is a line of people making confessions from behind a long table. Occupying a brightly lit space, the performers take turns reading from the text that is strewn across the table.” (Forced Entertainment, 1994) As Speak Bitterness was six hours in duration, there would have been points where the traditional concept of performer/audience was destroyed and was replaced by a new relationship and experience.

This idea of failure, then, suggests that to experiment is to open up the opportunity to fail. Work such as Speak Bitterness, Quizoola! and 12 am: Awake & Looking Down all have an aspect of uncertainty. They are inquisitive: the format has been decided beforehand but what happens within that is open to chance and as well failure.Reciting confessions in Speak Bitterness, there is no way of knowing who will be talking, at what point, and if people are going to over lap with one and other or cut in at the wrong moment. This is what is exciting about these works—it is these acts of failure that are experimental, or at least leave the opportunity for failure, so the performance is not closed off, creating an exciting atmosphere and potentiality for something new to be created at each performance (although arguably, no performance is ever repeatable). The challenge, now the company has settled into its own format, is to avoid habit. The audience can find itself identifying techniques and devices rather than being surprised, shocked, or challenged. But, the question still remains, are they still challenging the norm if after three decades, they are the norm?

This April, Forced Entertainment will performa a 24-hour version of Quizoola! at the Barbican Centre as part of SPILL Festival. More information about participating in this performance is available here.

Chris Green received a Master’s degree in Visual Language of Performance at Wimbledon College of Art, London, and is currently an Associate Lecturer in Performance at Sheffield Hallam University.

Images, from top: The Coming Storm, Quizoola!, and 12 am:Awake & Looking Down. Performance views. Photos by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Forced Entertainment.

Venice International Performance Art Week

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 19:30:00 -0500

Interview by A.E.Zimmer

Top: Ilija Šoškić, Panoptikon 2012 (-1969). Photograph © Monika Sobczak.
Bottom: Boris Nieslony, A Feather Fell Down On Venice. Photograph © Monika Sobczak.

In Venice, in the suggestive location of Palazzo Bembo, a new exhibition made its debut on December 8, 2012, entirely dedicated to performance art: the 1st Venice International Performance Art Week.

Under the title “Hybrid Body–Poetic Body,” this first edition featured the contributions of 31 artists: pioneers such as Yoko Ono, VALIE EXPORT, Hermann Nitsch, Ilija Soskic, Boris Niesloni, established artists such as Jan Fabre, Lee Wen and Jill Orr, and other emerging ones, set forth a series of live-actions, installations, videos, movies and meetings.

Some numbers of this first edition: Over 2,000 visitors at the opening; more than 9,000 in the whole week; over a hundred newspapers, magazines covered the event.

These results have been quite unexpected to the festival’s founders, Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes, considering the timing—the Venetian winter—and the novelty of such an event, in a city not so accustomed to performance art.

A.E.Zimmer: How did the idea of the Venice International Performance Art Week come to life and what is its identity?

Andrea Pagnes: In the summer of 2011, Jennifer Macmillan Johnson, President of the Cultural Association Studio Contemporaneo (the event’s promoter), introduced me to Rene Rietmeyer, Director of the Global Art Affairs Foundation, at its new Venice location of Palazzo Bembo. For my work as a performer (as VestAndPage, with Verena Stenke), he proposed that I conceive a project specifically dedicated to performance art. I immediately imagined the maze of rooms in the palace lived by artists in action enhancing their art during its process of making, thus giving evidence of a conflict: whether and how vital but ephemeral art can be documented, without losing its content and substance. Gradually, the vision of a live art exhibition, which could transform continuously day by day, begins to shape clearly to me.

Why “Hybrid Body – Poetic Body”?

I wanted to line up a very accurate indication since the very beginning. The question of the body (the artist’s body) as a means of expression is, in fact, the fundamental feature of the entire project. Hybrid body as indicator of form and substance in constant transformation, even if it’s put at risk or subject to manipulation; a body carrier of meanings while in possible extreme situations, element from which, in the here and now of the performance, just as in life, it is impossible to ignore, and then poetic because it is genuine, a place where emotional intelligence resides to come true, a holder of authentic and immediate sense.

Zierle & Carter, At the Edge of Longing. Photograph © Monika Sobczak.

Performance art in the past and the present: which differences do you find comparing your actual experience to the one at the beginning? In other words, the necessity to play the double role of curator and performer as you do remarks also the need that today Italy lacks a methodical study and more in-depth history of performance?

Performance art, by its nature, is a “non-discipline” in continuous transformation. One must live it inside his/her own flesh to try to understand it as much as possible. The more you practice it, the more you can comprehend it. It is dynamic and complex as the life itself. It says that simplicity and essentiality, synthesis and intensity, are the most difficult things to reach. It is research and exploration into the human. The multiplicity of languages and expressions we use today there wasn’t sometime ago. There are different styles and emergencies related to the place of belonging and the ways of leaving of each artist. This is positive because generates thoughts, knowledge and continuous inspiration. If technology, ecology and emotional intelligence are just some of the topics that are most frequently treated (since nowadays they are those the world focuses its attention on, however), the analysis of the individual placement in political situations, or special social conditions, always remains and is particularly pointed out in the works of artists from countries where certain achievements in this regard are slow to come.

Performance art, over the years, has contaminated so deeply certain avant-garde experimental theatre, dance, and cinema, that the term “performing arts” is now far too abused and also generates some confusion even among the experts, and not only in Italy. Looking at examples from the past and present, I think, though, that performance art has always wanted and wishes to speak through a quality work, an essential value, the one of authenticity: it has to refer essentially to our true inner self—the place where there is no pretense—beyond what we want to or believe we are.

It’s true, however, that in Italy the study of the history of performance art is perhaps still too superficial because of the lack of specific publications and improper teachings, although it is an art form of great interest, especially among the young people.

How did you select the artists?

For their historic itinerary; adherence to the main theme of the project; also for their cultural consistency, with respect to a certain ideal of performance which bases its raison d’être in the practice and constant dedication. Finally, militancy—something which I see tactile, physical, and which emerges clearly from their ouvre: In other words, when performance art is their real-life project, devoting themselves entirely to it, without compromise.

Although it is a term that I don’t like, I am interested principally in the “specialists” of performance art, but today I can’t—for intellectual honesty—recognizing as valid a few sporadic raids or targeted interventions by artists who are not performers in the strict sense.

In this first edition, Yoko Ono, VALIE EXPORT, Hermann Nitsch, Jan Fabre—whose works are milestones of the performance art movement—participated with interactive installations and videos. Live interventions by masters such as Ilija Soskic, Boris Nieslony, Jill Orr, Lee Wen, Gonzalo Rabanal and young emerging in the international arena with durational outstanding actions contributed to make the Art Week extremely vibrant. There has been also be a section dedicated to the students of the Academy of Venice, and a Fringe section where we have invited to participate young international performers to present their proposals too. During the mornings, we have set a program of artist talks: the public could meet the performers directly, debate and discuss with them, and listen to their life stories. We had also four bloggers, who wrote daily about the event, among them Randy Gledhill, the Director of Live Art Vancouver; and Francesca Romana Ciardi, co-Curator of the Month of Performance Art in Berlin (Celeste Ricci and Chiara Cartuccia the other two).

Top: Manuel Vason. Exhibition view. Photograph © Monika Sobczak.
Bottom: Yoko Ono, Night and Day for Venice, 2012. Installation view. Photograph © Monika Sobczak.

What does mean to be a curator of performance art and a performance artist today?

First, I think is important to seek, as far as possible, a certain historical continuity in terms of open confrontation between what was (and still is) and the new, especially for this art form, where the artistic value often coincides with human qualities. The overall vision will be always partial, of course, but at least we will avoid slipping on the shoals of another hypertrophied platform of global art.

As a perfomer, what I try is to reduce the apparent boundary that exists between art and life with my work, the constant practice, and again I’d like to conclude with a renowned phrase that many have already said, “if you dream alone it’s only a dream, if you dream together it’s the beginning of reality.”

That is to work and act even in the art to reach this goal, but dutifully with full consciousness of the time and the world in which we live in. It is a pure matter of responsibility towards themselves and others.

The next edition?

We are now investigating new possible funding sources. It will be probably held in the second week of March 2014, at Palazzo Mora, another fabulous building that the Global Art Affairs Foundation has been starting to renovate these days.

It will be titled “Ritual Body-Political Body,” always having in mind and heart, as Lee Wen wrote about the Art Week, that ”this is not a circus, this not a show, this not a biennale, this is a meeting of artists and people who looked for the pearls in the rivers of human civilizations and came to share what they found.”

BBB Johannes Deimling, Blanc #9. Photograph © Monika Sobczak.

More information about Venice International Performance Art Week can be found here.

This interview took place in December 2012 and has been edited for clarity.

Get Ready for the Marvelous: Simone Leigh

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:40:00 -0500

This week, The Performa Institute presents Get Ready for the Marvelous: Black Surrealism in Dakar, Fort-de-France, Havana, Johannesburg, New York City, Paris, Port-au-Prince, 1932-2013, a two-day symposium focusing on international black artists who were directly or tangentially involved in Surrealism, engaging with it as an ideology, artistic movement, and a state of mind—a way of being in the world—and their influence on contemporary art and culture throughout the African Diaspora.

Get Ready for the Marvelous will take place at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development this Friday and Saturday, February 8–9. As we count down the days, we’ll be revealing glimpses of some of the fascinating material that will be shared at the conference. Join us! A full schedule of the symposium is available here.

Today, we have artist Simone Leigh, who will be sharing her work at Get Ready for the Marvelous:

Simone Leigh and Liz Magic Laser, BREAKDOWN, 2011. Digital video.

Get Ready for the Marvelous was organized by Performa’s Associate Curator, Performa Institute, Adrienne Edwards.

Performance and Digital Poetics in Brazil

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 20:17:00 -0500

By Michele Louise Schiocchet

To invent something is to invent an accident. To invent the ship is to invent the shipwreck; the space shuttle, the explosion. And to invent the electronic superhighway or the Internet is to invent a major risk which is not easily spotted because it does not produce fatalities like a shipwreck or a mid-air explosion.*

The aim of this text is to describe different experiences which explore the connections or boundaries between arts, technology and society in a Brazilian context. These works are not just performances which can immediately be recognized as such, but I have chosen to bring a variety of examples of works that may dialogue with each other, composing a quite a heterogeneous reality.

Eduardo Kac. © The artist.

According to Eduardo Kac, Abraham Palatnik was the first Brazilian to explore the creative use of technology in Brazil. Mario Pedrosa called his devices cinechromatics (Morais 2012). In 1951, his work was part of the first edition of the Bienal de São Paulo, despite being initially refused, as the curators couldn´t categorize his work. The devices were composed of 600 meters of electric wires and 101 lamps (Morais 2012):

In 1968, Waldemar Cordeiro in collaboration with Giorgio Moscati produces the first Brazilian artworks made by computer; BEABÁ and Derivadas de uma imagem. Cordeiro aimed to produce works of emotional content using techniques and tools know as “cold.” In 1969, the Bienal de São Paulo opens a section for arts and technology and in the same year Waldemar Cordeiro and Giorgio Moscati exhibit their work in another national event called “Computer Plotter Art.” Cordeiro represented Brazil in several events worldwide, such as “Cybernetic Serendipity” in London in 1968. He believed that the computer was able to change society, due to its capacity of apprehend reality and translate it into digital form, proposing then alternative developments through simulation processes. The artist wanted to create a new art form: “repeatable relation, a mechanism for integrating the object in the outer world,” with accurate meanings that do not exist in conventional and subjective formulas of traditional aesthetics (Fabris 1997), compatible with the industrial production.

The first known Brazilian video work is M 3x3 by Analivia Cordeiro, Waldemar’s daughter. It was a choreography for video, composed for the Edinburgh International Festival. The project was recorded with the resources of TV Cultura de São Paulo in 1973. She conceived the work using the notion of embodiment, using the body as interface between subject, culture and nature (Machado).

According to Arlindo Machado, the first generation of video artists, such as Sonia Andrade, were actually working with performance for video. The artist recorded little self-mutilations, deforming her body with nylon threads, nailing her hand on a table, or removing body hair with a pair of scissors; or Rafael França, producing a video testament a few days before dying of AIDS; or Letícia Parente, another artist of the period, embroidering “Made in Brazil” on her own foot.

During the sixties, few portable video devices were available throughout Brazil, and even if accessible to just a few artists, they allowed them to explore different ways of expression, blurring boundaries between artistic fields, and especially offering alternatives to the television perspective, as television has always had a massive influence in Brazilian popular culture.

The use of digital technology in dance today is also thoroughly explored through advancement in the use of sensors, images and telepresence, wearable devices and so on, seen in the work of Cena 11, the PIP pesquisa em dança, Lali Krotoszynski, and universities such as the Grupo de Pesquisa Poéticas Tecnológicas from UFBA. Artists have also applied creative use of technology in installations, such as Aguilar, a first-generation video artist; Chelpa Ferro; Lucas Bambozzi; Sandro Canavezzi de Abreu; Raquel Kogan; Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima; and Vivian Caccuri.

In theater, we can quote the work of pioneer Jocy de Oliveira, whose work has experimented with everything from installation to opera, creating multimedia pieces such as Probabilistic Theater (1967–68) and Polinterações (1970). The Teatro para Alguém group affirms to be the first Brazilian group to produce web plays. Since 2008, the group has created over 60 works accessible online and free of charge. The TPA website also has a cultural network where artists can have a profile and interact with each other. The Phila 7, founded in 2005, works with telepresence and remote spatialities. In 2006, the group produced Play on Earth, which was performed simultaneously in São Paulo, New Castle, and Cingapure. Corpos Informáticos, led by researcher Bia Medeiros at Brasilia University, is another national reference regarding the use of telepresence in performance, having produced several performances, texts and events between 1999 and 2006.

We can also look to Luis Duva, who explores the idea of live cinema using his own body; Eder Santos; and Otavio Donasci, a pioneer of video performance since the eighties with his video creatures. Later on, he explored multimedia performance, like the one presented in Videobrasil in 1992, where he built an immersive environment with floating screens and projectors on wheels moving during the scenes. Artur Matuck, also active since the eighties, was one of the first Brazilian artists to raise questions of copyright, proposing a series of publications of previously published articles with the author’s consent. A Semion label was applied to the text.

Photo © NANO.

Other cross-disciplinary projects with an emphasis on the dialogue between organic and artificial organisms include núcleo de artes e novos organismos (NANO), a study group based at Rio de Janeiro university that investigates hybrids of natural and artificial organisms within the fine art departments. One of the projects, developed in collaboration with the University of Bahia (UFBA) and the University of Ceará, UFC, is a telematic performance involving an antropofagic hyperorganism (AH) robot. For the performance, three interfaces communicated with each other and the robot. Body sounds, vibrations, and breathing noises were captured through OSC protocol transmitted via xBee from Rio de Janeiro to Fortaleza. Group leader Guto Nóbrega also explores the artistic use of plants.; the professor facilitated a workshop where a simple interface was built, using plants as organic sensors for hybrid interfaces. They also built a shield for Arduino, using the devices to produce a sound installation.

Another artist that has been very polemic and has destabilized some frontiers between biology and technology is Eduardo Kac. Kac performed Time Capsule in an event curated by Lucas Bambozzi titled “Arte Suporte Computador,” hosted by Casa das Rosas in 1997. In this action, the artist implanted a chip in his leg; the event was broadcast on television nationally. Kac´s works raises many discussions concerning ethics: He has worked with telematic connections, biopoetry, and transgenic organisms, like Alba, the rabbit. He used a protein from a Aequorea Victoria and injected Alba with the genes of the zygote, making the rabbit glow fluorescent when exposed to blue light. In another work titled A-positive, made in collaboration with Ed Bennett, Kac explores the relationship between living organisms and hybrid machines. These machines incorporate biological elements like metabolic and sensorial functions. In A-positive a human and a robot are connected through a tube and a needle feeding each other mutually. The robot is called “phlebot” and uses human red blood cells to absorb oxygen in order to maintain a small flame. In exchange, the robot gives dextrose to the human. Kac´s works have many ethical and philosophical implications, suggesting in one of his articles an inversion of McLuhan´s quote: “the machine is an extension of the body.” Kac’s works is a proposal that the body is becoming an extension of the computer.

Arlindo Machado suggests that the value of art lies exactly in its ability to subvert the productive functions of machines and being able to create new ethics and aesthetics for the technological era. The artist is capable of refusing the industrial project, creating a metalanguage of the mediatic society, acting as medial and institutional derivations, creating critic alternatives for the laws and models of the mechanisms of control (Machado 2004: 5-7). For Machado, the arts could deprogram the techniques of industrial tools, distorting their symbolic functions, proposing them to work outside of their know parameters, making then visible its mechanisms of control and seduction.

A movement of new ethics is connected to technologies in the open source and copyfelt movements. Making tools, programs, and knowledge accessible and questioning the notions of property and authorship could be the beginning of more processual researches that are not necessarily connected to final products or subject to institutional restrictions. Many artists in Brazil are developing projects which use very cheap and simple prototyping platforms like Arduino. The changes in the perception of space, body, presence, and human communication beyond a space-time unity definitely have many more implications in several aspects of everyday life, and new aesthetics and ethics are still emerging.

Philip Auslander believes that the performing arts have already been placed within the culture of commodities, and they are almost impossible to distinguish from the mass media discourses. For him, one of the most important aspects of performance was its liveness, or presence, but once it is circumscribed in the culture of flows, the difference between life and mediated presence is irrelevant (Auslander 1989: 130). For Auslander the organization of spaces in flows, controlled by capitalism, has created a global hypertext which converts every element and place to its logics; he suggests, then, that it might not be very important to determine whether a work is performance or if it is art at all; but rather we could ask ourselves in which way these works can create a differentiated experience inside a network that tends to standardize discourses and isolate experiences (Auslander in Connor 2004: 99-100).

*Virilio in Dufresne 2005: Dufresne, David. (2005) Virilio - Cyberesistance Fighter: An Interview with Paul Virilio. Trans. Houis, Jacques.

Michele Louise Schiocchet is a PhD candidate in Theatre at the UDESC, Santa catarina, Brazil. She is based in Florianópolis, Brazil.

The Brazilian Experience—Puzzling Morality and the Effusive Body (Part 1)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:37:00 -0500

By Cristiane Bouger

Daniel Fagundes, Existe alguma possibilidade ética que não acene ao totalitarismo? (Is there any ethical possibility which will not wave to totalitarism?), 2008. Performance view, VERBO 2008. Photo by Ding Musa.

When asked about her perspective on performance, the independent curator Daniela Labra stated with simultaneous confidence and perplexity: “Brazilians are performative. We deal with the body in a libertarian way, but we are also impregnated with moralisms.” The paradox raised by Labra can be identified in almost every aspect of Brazilian culture and social behavior. Nevertheless, her statement also addresses a poignant criticism to the conservatism of art institutions.

Labra has been working as a researcher and curator of performance works since 2004. In 2011 she conceived the Festival Performance Arte Brasil at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro–MAM RJ. The six-day festival received a grant from FUNARTE/MinC (The National Foundation for the Arts/Ministry of Culture) in the amount of approximately USD 125, 000. A curatorial team formed by professionals from different regions of the country composed the festival program, which presented the work of more than forty artists and art collectives.

According to Labra, there is a lot of work to be done before Brazilian artists working in performance could benefit from a professional art market. She defines the institutional reception of performance as precarious. In her analysis, curators and artists face a lot of institutional conservatism, bureaucracy and nepotism, which are aggravated by a lack of understanding of this practice by those who work in the museums. “In Brazil, performance production is still considered underground,” she states.

Daniel Toledo with Ana Hupe, Veste Nu, 2011. Performance view, Festival Performance Arte Brasil, Rio de Janeiro. Photo by Julio Callado.

Her perspective evokes, for instance, the polemic around Márcia X in 2006. The first performances by Márcia X (1959-2005) date back to the 1980s, but it was Desenhando com Terços (2000-2003) that became perhaps her most emblematic work. Performing in a white gown, Márcia X silently and repetitively connected white rosaries, shaping them in the form of phalluses on the floor of a room or gallery. The performance duration varied from three to six hours, in accordance with the size of the space in which the work was performed.

In 2006, an image showing four rosaries shaping the form of two crossed phalluses was part of the collective show “Erótica–Os Sentidos da Arte” presented by Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil–CCBB in São Paulo. When the same exhibition was presented in Rio de Janeiro, members from Catholic groups claimed the work was offensive and urged CCBB to remove it from the exhibition. CCBB, the cultural institution of Banco do Brasil (Brazil’s Federal Bank), ceded to pressure.

Notwithstanding the censorship resulted in counter-protests, the expected opening of the exhibition in Brasilia was canceled after the incident in Rio. The anachronism implied in the decision of censoring Márcia X’s work caused to many artists a bitter perplexity, and perhaps, a reminiscence of the censorship experienced during the years under dictatorship (1964–1985).

Márcia X, Desenhando com Terços, 2000. Installation view, Casa de Petrópolis, Instituto de Cultura. Photo by Vicente de Mello.

Performer and curator Marco Paulo Rolla uses nudity to nullify the economic and social status that clothes inscribe over the body. He points out another variant to the conservatism equation: “Some public art institutions are more concerned with the schools visiting the museums than to the art that is presented there. I cannot be naked in my work because the school will be visiting the museum. So, it is the school who defines my work and what I cannot do.”

If the Brazilian scenario seems not to be so enthusiastic, do not let this perspective fool you. The concomitant aspect in this paradox reveals that the institutions in the country have been also showing signs of maturity since the last decade or so.

In the last years, the Bienal Internacional de São Paulo included in their program performance works such as A Bondade de Estranhos (2008), by Maurício Ianês; and Divisor (1968/2010), by Lygia Pape (1927-2004).

In the south of the country, Luiz Ernesto Meyer Pereira, Director of the Bienal Internacional de Curitiba, affirms that in 2013 performance will be included in the biennial program, receiving the same visibility of works created in more traditional mediums. For the performance’s program curatorship, artist and curator Fernando Ribeiro was invited to join the team.

Along with Patrícia Valverde, Ribeiro also co-curates the performance event p.ARTE at Bicicletaria Cultural in Curitiba. The independent venue is a hybrid bike repair shop and cultural space run by Valverde and the visual artist Fernando Rosembaum.

In Florianópolis, the visual artist Yiftah Peled runs Contemporão Espaço de Performance, a garage studio in which exhibitions and performance works have been presented in a non-regular program since 2009.

Festival Panorama founded in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, was originally conceived as a dance festival. Currently directed by Nayse Lopez, Eduardo Bonito and Catarina Saraiva, the festival has expanded its program to incorporate interdisciplinary works. In 2012, Panorama Festival partnered with the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage to commission the presentation of happenings and performance works, including the piece Big Bang Boom by choreographer and performer Michelle Moura.

Events such as Performance Presente Futuro at Oi Futuro in Rio de Janeiro from 2008 to 2010, curated by Daniela Labra, conceived as an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to research the cross-boundary between performance and technological/scientific resources; Encontros de Arte e Gastronomia at MAM SP in São Paulo in 2012, curated by Felipe Chaimovich and Laurent Suaudeau, proposed to pair visual artists and cuisine chefs; and Performa Paço at Paço das Artes in São Paulo in 2011, which was conceived by Priscila Arantes and curated by Lucio Agra around the theme “extreme actions,” constitute important investigations and curatorial approaches that reflect the renovated interest for performance in a Brazilian context.

Michelle Moura, Big Bang Boom, 2012. Performance view, EAV - Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, during Panorama Festival 2012. Photo by Inti Briones.

Back in the late 1990s in Belo Horizonte, Marco Paulo Rolla felt the performance field was lacking vigor. According to Rolla, there was a lot of resistance against performance, as institutions feared this practice for not having much control over it. So in 2003, Rolla founded the event Manifestação Internacional da Performance – MIP along with Marcos Hill and CEIA – Centro de Experimentação e Informação de Arte.

MIP constitutes a platform to present performance works, reflect upon current productions, and document work. A book is published after each edition of the event and distributed in print and online. The second edition of MIP occurred in 2009 and presented the work of more than 60 artists from different parts of the world.

Galeria Vermelho presented the annual performance festival VERBO in São Paulo from 2005 to 2011. According to curator Marcos Gallon, in those years, around 400 performances were presented at Vermelho. In 2012 the festival format was extinguished, and performance was incorporated on the gallery schedule of exhibitions throughout the year.

Based on the importance performance has achieved in the current context, Gallon affirms that the idea of sustaining a separate festival for this art form seemed a paternalist choice. According to Gallon, “there are no more reasons to separate performance from the other mediums.”

Left to right: Cris Bierrenbach Comida, 2008. Performance view, VERBO 2008. Guilherme Peters, Marcando Território, 2010. Performance at VERBO 2010. Photo by Ding Musa.

Considering institutional art collections, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo was the first museum in Brazil to acquire an artwork based on a scripted action. Laura Lima’s piece Quadris de homem=carne/mulher=carne (1995) was included in the MAM SP collection in 2000. In 2006, Inhotim – Instituto de Arte Contemporânea e Jardim Botânico, in Brumadinho/Minas Gerais, acquired Dopada (1997), among other works by Lima.

Since the mid-nineties, Laura Lima has rejected the foreign term “performance,” which she considers inadequate to surrogate the concepts of her work. The understanding of carnality and flesh as simply matter is a fundamental aspect of her production, in which people and animals are deliberately employed. This option confers to the work what the artist calls “a brutal fragility,” and the artworks are sold to the institutions under very specific demands scripted by the artist.

Laura Lima, Marra, 1996. From the series Homem=carne/Mulher=carne. Photo by Eduardo Eckenfels, Inhotim, Belo Horizonte/MG.

The 2012 retrospective of Lygia Clark (1920-1988) at Itaú Cultural in São Paulo included some of the artist’s participatory propositions. Rede de Elásticos and O Corpo Coletivo are among the works visitors could experience. The iconic proposition Baba Antropofágica (Cannibalistic Drool), first proposed by Lygia Clark to her students at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1973, was also recently reenacted by the Clark Art Center - CAC, in Rio de Janeiro, with the participation of musician Jards Macalé. In the experience, Macalé lies down on the floor while the other participants, carrying spools of cotton thread in their mouths, pull the threads with expelled drool and place them over the body on the floor, creating a kind of connective net among the participants. The attention that has been given to the reconstruction of Clark’s propositions, including the recreation of Livro-Obra (1983), with its manipulable structures on a free iPad application, also signalizes a significant progress for the preservation of Brazilian cultural legacy on the field.

This month, MAM RJ opened the anticipated exhibition “Arquivo X/X-Files,” curated by Beatriz Lemos. Engaging with the conundrums of how to archive or exhibit performances, as well as in the process of donating Márcia X’s works to MAM RJ, Lemos and the museum staff developed an extensive research on the artist’s performance and visual art production archives since the early eighties. The exhibition, part of a larger project that included the publishing of a book on X’s production and the restoration of some of her pieces, will be on view until April 2013.

Marco Paulo Rolla with chef Henrique Fogaça, O Esmagamento Sensível, 2012. Performance view, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo. Photo by Edouard Fraipont.

Independent efforts to document and map the works developed in Brazil have been significant: in 2007 artist and researcher Zmário mapped the performance scene in Salvador; in 2008 the visual artist Newton Goto launched Circuito Compartilhados, a 35-DVD collection, the result of extensive research on the production of independent video art and video performance in Brazil since the seventies. In 2010, the art critic Paulo Reis curated the exhibition “O Corpo na Cidade - Performance em Curitiba,” mapping this practice in the city since the early 1970s.

The independent scene is also acquiring more visibility and public funds. With grants elaborated by the Ministry of Culture and FUNARTE based on artists’ participation, the inclusion of interdisciplinary arts in the public programs and the creation of grants focusing on art research have been replacing or expanding old models and obsolete art categories. An increasing number of independent artists have become proponents and facilitators of events related to performance.

Art collectives such as Corpos Informáticos, Grupo Empreza, Couve-Flor, ES3, Coletivo Filé de Peixe, Grupo de Interferência Ambiental – GIA, and e/ou (Curitiba) have developed a diversity of discourses and extended practices that incorporate interventions, happenings, actions, performance, technology, and interdisciplinary discourse permeating theater, visual arts and contemporary dance. The challenge for artists in Brazil remains the uncertainty of the continuity of cultural programs. Federal, state, and municipal grants tend to suffer disruption or changes according to the politicians in office. Brazil has not developed a culture of art philanthropy. The available funds are usually provided trough competitive grants and commissions directly related to the cultural marketing departments of private corporations (tax-deductible sponsorship), or by federal sponsorship concealed for art projects with budgets and creative standards previously approved by the Ministry of Culture. Given the extent of the country and its geographical and socio-economical diversity, to trace a comprehensive picture of Brazil is a challenging task.

Brazil is in a frank transition. Advancements can be seen in many of the structures related to its art production, but the cumbersome aspects of stagnating models based on old behaviors and an intimidating bureaucracy are still aspects to be faced and overcome.

Rose Akras and Rob Visser, Movement with a rest product: space, 2010. Performance view, VERBO 2010. Photo by Rafael Cañas.

Cristiane Bouger is a Performa Magazine writer-in-residence.

Get Ready for the Marvelous: Aimé Césaire et le mouvement Surréalisme

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:36:00 -0500

Today, we have poet Aimé Césaire discussing Surrealism with Michel Fried, from September 2, 1994. The English translation is below:

Aimé Césaire: So, when I met the Surrealists, it was for me a great encounter. I did not become a Surrealist; it didn’t make sense.

Michel Field: Why?

No…

But why were you not more involved then?

No, because I am not a man of movements. I am not a man of clan! It wasn’t at all my direction! What did I find in the Surrealists, that I love enormously? I admire André Breton a lot. And I admired and loved profoundly the man. Well, I was less with Aragon. I found him too urbane, pathetic actually, a bit of a socialite, which I could not bear, especially coming from a Communist comrade. Well, it shocked me. Whereas Breton posited himself on the same level, a Celt, a mystic, a love for the wonderful. It is extraordinary, a man who had an astonishing sense of poetry; it’s prodigious. He found it everywhere; in the street and in the landscape. In the ‘objet brut’. It’s wonderful, Breton. A detector of poetry! A fantastic man and with an extraordinary purity. But, pardon me, still the same issue, I love the Surrealists a lot. I love André Breton a lot but it is always the same for me: I never forgot I was a Martinican. Nicole, are you listening to me? And you don’t leave.

[Laughs]

Here you go.

It’s very autocratic.

A bit. Yes, but it is ‘Enlightened despotism’. No, but she knows it is also a sign of affection and connivance with her. That is why she is listening actually. But she also knows well how to disobey…

You were telling me that you had never forgotten that you were Martinican.

No, I never forgot that, you understand? Never. So that in this respect I enter what I got from Surrealism. What is it? Well, it is not the wonderful; we Martinicans have this naturally. But it was the will to descend into oneself. It was in reality authenticity and sincerity. But one has to really do it; it is not that easy. You forget that we are prisoners of conventional forms, academic poetry, and even the most beautiful of this poetry … it wasn’t what we wanted. The Surrealist quest was something else; it was profoundly different. It was to descend to the deepest part of oneself. It was to liberate the repressed imaginary. We are in the lineage of psychoanalysis. Some automatic texts could even be psychoanalytic documents. That is what interested me. It interested me as a Martinican, Sorbonnard [graduate of the Sorbonne], Normalien [graduate L’École normale supérieure]. Just like that! What are we going to do? What will we find? Come on! Further! Even further! So what? Further, again further, but what I found in me when I was at the bottom. I found, laughingly actually, the nègre fondamental. This is it. I didn’t want to be another French Surrealist, although my admiration was big. I wanted to be surrealist but to put it to the service of my own ego and my own cause.

Get Ready for the Marvelous was organized by Performa’s Associate Curator, Performa Institute, Adrienne Edwards.

Get Ready for the Marvelous: Black Surrealism

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 11:31:00 -0500

Get Ready for the Marvelous was organized by Performa’s Associate Curator, Performa Institute, Adrienne Edwards.

Left: Cover of Légitime Défense (Self-Defense) journal, 1932. Right: Adam Pendleton with Jaan Evart and Marc Hollenstein,Black Dada (Ian Berry, couple dancing, independence celebration Congo, 1960), 2008/2012. Courtesy the artist, Pace Gallery, and Shane Campbell Gallery.

The Performa Institute and NYU Steinhardt are pleased to present Get Ready for the Marvelous: Black Surrealism in Dakar, Fort-de-France, Havana, Johannesburg, New York City, Paris, Port-au-Prince, 1932-2013, a groundbreaking conference exploring historical Surrealism in the African Diaspora and its relevance to contemporary art. The conference is a platform to elaborate on the group of international black artists who were directly or tangentially involved in Surrealism, engaging with it as an ideology, artistic movement, and a state of mind—a way of being in the world—and their influence on contemporary art and culture throughout the African Diaspora.

The context-setting keynote address titled “Blues People and the Poetic Sprit: Recovering Surrealism’s Revolutionary Politics” will be given by Robin D.G. Kelley, Gary B. Nash Professor of American History, University of California Lost Angeles, and co-editor of Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora with Franklin Rosemont. Participants include Awam Ampka, Associate Professor, Africana Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; Isolde Brielmaier, Chief Curator, Savannah College of Art and Design; Barbara Browning, Associate Professor, Performance Studies, New York University; artist Simone Leigh; Gabi Ngcobo, Curator and Founder, Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg; Tavia Nyong’o, Associate Professor, Performance Studies, New York University; artist Paul D. Miller a.k.a. ‘DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid’; artist Wangechi Mutu; artist Adam Pendleton; Lowery Stokes Sims, Curator, Museum of Art and Design; Greg Tate, Visiting Professor of Africana Studies, Brown University, musician with the Black Rock Coalition and Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber, cultural critic, and record producer; and director, producer, writer, actor, composer, and editor Melvin Van Peebles.

The two-day convening will traverse a medley of dynamic interrelated themes, including the art of Wifredo Lam; the poetics and politics of Negritude poets Aimé Césaire and Léopold Sédar Senghor; the intersection of dance and ethnography in the work of Maya Deren and Katherine Dunham; theater and politics during the period of decolonization in West Africa; Afro-Futurism and black science fiction; élan vital and black performance; and contemporary art-making and curatorial approaches to Black Surrealism. Adam Pendleton will present a new performance piece, inspired by and in honor of award-winning playwright Adrienne Kennedy.

The conference will be complemented by a remarkable film program comprised of a suite of historical and contemporary documentaries, featuring Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (1985), a documentary film about dance and possession in Haitian Vodoun compiled from footage Deren shot during her fieldwork on the island between 1947 and 1954; William Greave’s The First World Festival of Negro Arts (1967), the official documentary film of the 1966 festival held in Dakar, Senegal, which over 2,000 writers, artists, and performers from throughout the African Diaspora attended, including Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, Alvin Ailey, Léopold Sédar Senghor, and Aimé Césaire, and other artists, performers, and dignitaries from 30 countries; and Gilles Elie-dit-Cosaque’s Zétwal (2008), a documentary film that tells the story of local Martinican legend Robert Saint‐Rose’s attempt to propel himself to outer space, through the poetry of Aimé Césaire.

The conference title is inspired by Suzanne Césaire’s poetic description “Surrealism is permanent readiness for the Marvelous.” It is also informed by Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci’s The Prison Notebooks, in which he wrote, “The starting-point of critical elaboration is the consciousness of what one really is, and is ‘knowing thyself’ as a product of the historical processes to date, which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory.” Further, despite “the vast critical literature on surrealism,” as Kelley and Rosemont note in their introduction to Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora, “all but a few black surrealists have been invisible…Occasional token mentions aside, people of color – and more particularly those from Africa or the Diaspora – have been excluded from most of the so-called standard works on the subject.”

Accordingly, the conference proceedings will illuminate the complex heterogeneity of historical Surrealism, its circuits of artistic and political exchange in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States, and its accumulations as manifested in interdisciplinary art created in relation to ideas of the sublime, the miraculous, the supernatural, the surprising, and the wondrous as expressed in political and socially oriented works by black contemporary artists. The conference is an important part of Performa’s curatorial and program planning for the Performa 13 biennial’s historical anchor of Surrealism.

Kelly Nipper, then and now

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:53:00 -0500

By Jennifer Piejko

On Wednesday, January 30 and Thursday, January 31, Performa artist Kelly Nipper presents a newly commissioned performance at the Museum of Modern Art. Kelly Nipper with Japanther: Tessa Pattern Takes a Picture will explore the processes of photography, the influence of choreographer Mary Wigman, and Laban Movement Analysis, just as much of her previous work has moved seamlessly between photography, video, installation, movement, and personal history.

Her performance for Performa 07, Floyd on the Floor, her first live work, was titled after 1999’s Hurricane Floyd, which devastated much of the East Coast and parts of Florida. Floyd on the Floor considered the hurricane’s movements through the interpretions of eight contemporary dancers handling an oversized striped parachute while responding to instructions from a square dance caller.

Tessa Pattern Takes a Picture is directly influenced by Floyd on the Floor, and these tensions between old and new work, communication, and perspectives continue entangling in accidental and electrifying ways.

Images: Kelly Nipper, Floyd on the Floor, a Performa Commission, 2007. Performance views.

For more information about this week’s performances at MoMA, click here. For more about Floyd on the Floor, read our interview with RoseLee Goldberg and Kelly Nipper.

Doing, Being, Performing

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:03:00 -0500

By Bree Richards

Live and performative art practices are enjoying a resurgence today internationally. While the range of influences is as diverse as the approaches employed, a new generation of artists are making works that utilize a startlingly direct gaze in their forthright engagements with viewers. Alongside the literal positing of entanglements between subjects, authors, and viewers, these younger, experimental, and, in an Australian context, frequently female artists are referencing performative art practices of the 1960s and seventies. Of particular interest are works that bridge the gap between artist and viewer—creation and reception—whereby the audience is an indispensible participant in the enactment of art (1). The diversity of approaches includes redeploying the intense focus on the body as subject and object, emphasizing the theatricality of performance, and intermingling mirroring self-portraiture where unconscious selves are actively projected externally.

In a general sense, renewed interest in performative forms of art is being driven by a number of overarching factors: the abundance of new technologies has had a huge impact on the reception of contemporary performance, given it is now easier than ever before to document and distribute; a growing trend towards self-surveillance and public sharing via online platforms and social networking, along with the rise of mass media and a celebrity-obsessed culture. We live in a time that is essentially awash with ‘performance’, so it makes sense then that artists are responding to the situation, whether explicitly or implicitly.

Perhaps a broader question to ask here is whether feminism has played a role in this resurgence. Trying to define what feminism means today is infinitely problematic, and the fact that it is nonprescriptive is perhaps the only thing we can all agree on. Yet in the art world, a number of major exhibitions examining feminism and contemporary art—”WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution,” “Global Feminisms,” “Rebelle: Art and Feminism 1969-2009,” and “ells@centrepompidou”—evidence a recurring question, regardless of the different approaches applied: Have ideas of gender equality become more acceptable in a wider range of areas, or have the multiplicity of contemporary feminisms served to fragment a central idea? (2) Discussions abound, with no clear-cut answers to be found other than to say that there is more than one way to be a feminist today.

In the 1960s and seventies feminism was a political force, and though its image has shifted radically over the years, in some quarters “feminism” has been transformed into “the f-word.” Increasingly weighed down by its own history, its mere mention can elicit sighs of exasperation. Or is this position simply part of the inheritance for a younger generation—the bounty of battles fought by first-, second-, and third-wave feminism—that women feel they have earned the right to disavow feminism altogether? Feminist and postfeminist theory has become increasingly institutionalized, which in turn, has stripped the word of some of its political sting. The writings of Judith Butler, Luce Irigaray, and Simone de Beauvoir are now commonplace in university tutorials, yet pop culture is nonetheless riddled with conflicting messages about empowerment and femininity. From Sex and the City to Desperate Housewives—we’re left questioning whether the early aims of the women’s movement, or later waves of feminism, have been achieved. (3)

The activist bent of early feminism emphasized the importance of doing, and for artists this meant cultivating an agency. Performative forms of art (and video) in particular are genres we now associate with the history of feminism—in fact, these formats were pioneered by avowedly feminist artists. With greater access to early performance documentation, there is now a history of these kinds of works for artists to respond to, and contemporary visual language has increasingly been recharged via appropriation. Many younger practitioners have moved to distance themselves from feminist discourses, yet whether consciously or not, reference the performativity of seventies feminist practices with the intense focus on the body as both subject and object. While the range of influences is as diverse as the tone of their approach, this new generation operates freely in a culture of obsessive self-documentation, under the “omnipresent gaze of myriad media formats.” (4) These artists are fluent in the execution and reception of the gaze, employed both as a self-conscious tactic and method for articulating and disseminating their own representation.

Narrowing the field somewhat, let’s look collectively at a group of emerging Australian women artists working across analogous thematic lines, and whose practices criss-cross between disciplines and interests, foregrounding site-specific, performative and ephemeral art forms. Whether employing humorous, critical or sensual approaches, these artists present work that interacts with the everyday in order to offer new vantage points on the worlds we inhabit and negotiate. This focus on the performative seeks variously to titillate the viewer’s curiosity, to activate visual and auditory senses, and shake up notions taken for granted about life and art. In these supposedly post-feminist times, these artists are engulfed in a world of options where identity and gender constructions are precarious, and viewpoints are multiple, contingent and fractured. (5)

While some artists would not agree with attributing a feminist reading of their work, there is often acceptance that some kind of feminist trace may linger. Though she describes herself as a painter, in recent times Lauren Brincat has worked predominantly in performance, drawing inspiration from durational, body-oriented forms of practice that came to prominence during the 1970s. Her action-based works are often presented as video documentation and sometimes accompanied by a live element. High Horse (2012) documents a feat of endurance, with the artist standing proudly atop a horse, bearing a tambourine like a talisman. Her monumental stance recalls two of her heroines, Joan of Arc and celebrated performance artist Marina Abramović, appearing in The Hero (2001). The nearby sculptural objects—timber pyramids topped with tambourines—signify both the artist’s presence and absence, and their circular arrangement denotes the zone within which she presented a sound happening in real time, incorporating both pyramids and tambourines to create an intuitive sonic soundscape in collaboration with percussionist Bree van Reyk.

Lauren Brincat, High Horse, 2012. Documentation of an action. Single-channel high-definition video, 16:9, colour, sound; 26 seconds, looped. Courtesy the artist and Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Kate Mitchell, like Brincat, is known for performance videos that see the artist conceiving a scenario and then living it out. She places herself at the center of precarious cartoon situations that involve an element of risk, becoming both the agent and object of the work. Defiantly tongue-in-cheek, Mitchell weaves a spirit of larrikin abandon into her projects, which have seen the artist swinging from a chandelier, falling through an awning, and sawing a circle in the floor and falling through. Often set at the edge of what is possible, or socially permissible, Mitchell uses her art both to test her physical limits and to ask questions about the society in which we all perform.

Top: Jess Olivieri and Hayley Forward with the Parachutes for Ladies, I thought a musical was being made, 2011. Photo by Jess Olivieri, courtesy of the Parachute for Ladies.
Bottom: Jess Olivieri with the Parachutes for Ladies,I am an Island, 2011. Photo by Lucy Parakhina, courtesy of the Parachute for Ladies.

An exploration of how norms of behaviour structure experience is a core interest for Jess Olivieri and Hayley Forward with the Parachutes for Ladies, who make works that sit at the juncture of live art, dance, sound, performance and installation. Often considering individual behaviour within broader public contexts, they also work with a continually changing group of participants, who form the ‘Parachutes for Ladies’ on any given project. The duo frequently deploy media platforms in unexpected ways, a strategy that is tied to a sophisticated understanding of participatory practices whereby the audience is complicit in producing both meaning and ideas. Their works, which often take place in public settings, have variously spanned humming choirs, self-help audio guides, large-scale pseudo-musicals and video installations in order to investigate the vulnerability of individuals in society and the sociopolitical territorialisation of space.

In a number of ways, space is also a recurring theme in Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano’s art, though drawing forms the basis of many of their collaborative works. Typically low-fi and self-produced, the duo records their carefully choreographed actions on video, utilizing a pared-down visual language that at times recalls Italian neorealist cinema. The Manganos are twin sisters, and frequently use their own bodies as subject and object, creating elegant mirrored conversation with selected props—pencils, paper, fabric, and furniture—to explore their relationship to each other and the spaces in which they perform.

Sharing the Mangano’s interest in mirroring self-portraiture is Anastasia Klose, an installation, video and performance artist known for her “aesthetic of the pathetic.” Using a lo-fi style derived from YouTube videos as much as from the history of performance art, her works strike the viewer with their startlingly direct gaze, as much as their pointed performativity and confessional aspect. Klose often draws on painful and funny moments from her own life, creating works about being single, love, sex, as well as the process of making art. One video, Film for Nanna (2006) sees her walking along a major Melbourne thoroughfare, decked out in ill-fitting bridal garb, bearing a sign that reads “Nanna I am still alone.” In another work, we watch, or rather we bear witness, to the artist having sweaty sex on the floor of a public bathroom with a boy we know only as “Ben.” These are moments laid bare—it’s not about cheap thrills, but about uncovering human experiences, whether absurd, humiliating or perverse. Self-deprecating, melodramatic, and romanticized, the dry humor of Klose’s works is balanced by her sensitivity to the foibles of human nature and a resilience of spirit.

Anastasia Klose, Film for Nanna (still), 2006. Images courtesy of Tolarno Galleries.

Humour forms the lynchpin of Brown Council’s practice, a collaboration between four artists who make video and performance works that deliberately blur the distinction between stage and gallery, high and low culture. The group draws on the histories of both visual and performance art, combining these sources with elements of street theater, amateur magic, and stand-up comedy. Ranging in tone from biting political satire to slapstick farce, Brown Council’s works often engage with notions of endurance, humiliation and spectacle, dissolving boundaries between artist and audience in the process. Performance Fee (2012) for instance, an endurance event, where for two dollars viewers can procure a kiss from one of the blindfolded artists, sees performance combined with installation and elements of vaudevillian sideshow. And while the work engenders a range of emotional responses—curiosity, laughter, disbelief—there is also a discomforting undertone: in this lineup, the artists are vulnerable and very much on display, at the same time they are literally playing out the cliché of the starving artist. Forthright and unapologetic, Brown Council succeed in their aim to re-vision objectification as objective, asking us to consider the politics of representation in the process.

Above and top: Brown Council, Performance Fee, 2012. “Contemporary Australia: Women,” Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art, 2012. Courtesy of Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art. Photo: B Wagner.

This is just a snapshot showcasing the diversity of performative practice among a group of younger women artists working in Australia today, and is far from exhaustive. While it is impossible to speak collectively, for this emerging generation experience, gesture, action and bodies are inexorably tied to production. By repositioning the artist repeatedly, and often literally, in the frame or in a live situation, the viewer is forced into a ‘series of negations that create a turbulent understanding of human personae and human vulnerability.’(6) In a variety of ways, these artists successfully bridge ‘multiple points of interruption, moving through media platforms, spaces and the center of our vision with occasional savvy impudence.’ (7) While some, such as Brown Council, contextualize their practice within an avowedly feminist framework, others are less comfortable with this attribution, yet at the same time continue to reference strategies associated with its history in art, particularly an embrace of new media technologies, and tropes associated with the performative. And whether acknowledged or not, and in spite of the diversity of approaches to artmaking, each in different ways speaks actively of freedom from social constraints.

Distance is often sought from such interpretations, yet these shifting concerns and debates in art about the body are certainly pertinent and continue to have currency in the contested landscape of international theory and art production. This new generation often performs—whether for an audience or for the camera—and they hold unprecedented control as author, performer, director, and even distributor. The artist is the image in this case, spanning production and representation in a way that enables them to reveal themselves without flinching. The antithesis of passivity, instead, the artist orchestrates, interrupts, or turns the perceived order of things inside out. By neatly sidestepping disavowal, repression or the taken-for-granted, these artists are authors of their own representation: their collective sidelong glances, quotations, nods, random encounters or riffs on the multi-layered histories of the body and the performative in art history gives presence to the past, reimagining the terrain for new parallels. (8)

1. Warr, Tracey and Jones, Amelia (eds), The Artist’s Body: Themes and Motives, Phaidon Press, London, 2000, page 70.

2. Glass, Alexie. “Extimacy: A new generation of feminism.” Art and Australia, Volume 47, Number 1, Spring 2009, page 135.

3. Linz, Talia. “Ways of Doing: T&A and the F-ing Gaze.” Runway, Number16, 2011, page 23.

4. Glass, p.135.

5. Linz, p.23.

6. Glass., p.136.

7. Ibid., p.139.

8. Ibid.

Bree Richards is a 2012-2013 Performa Writer in Residence.