Live Art / Performance Art Skillshare

Live Art!

Live art, or performance art, is an art form that grew out of the Dadaism and Avant-gardism of the early 20th century as well as the “happenings” from the 1960’s. Performance art can be defined as such:

“Performance art is art in which the actions of an individual or a group at a particular place and in a particular time constitute the work. It can happen anywhere, at any time, or for any length of time. Performance art can be any situation that involves four basic elements: time, space, the performer's body and a relationship between performer and audience” (Wikipedia).

RoseLee Goldberg states in Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present:

“Performance has been a way of appealing directly to a large public, as well as shocking audiences into reassessing their own notions of art and its relation to culture” (Goldberg).

In other words, performance art is often connected to radicalism, since the object is usually to shock the audience as a way to gain attention for an art piece and the motivations behind it. This intention to “shock” can be summarized in the term “agit-prop”, which is an abbreviation for “agitation propaganda.” Agit-prop can be described as any form of visual or aural aid that appeals strongly to a spectator as to agitate him or her to believe something to be true or to take action. In this sense, “agitate” does not have negative connotations-- it means simply to persuade. Television advertisements are a kind of commercial agit-prop, because they utilize auditory and visual cues to agitate the spectator into buying a good. Performance art is often agit-prop because it often has a personal or political agenda (or both simultaneously) that aims to shock the audience into believing something or doing something.

Karen Finley is an example of a feminist performance artist. She is well-known for disrobing before her audience and smearing chocolate on her body. In her book “A Different Kind of Intimacy,” Finley explains that the chocolate-smearing was to commemorate Tawana Brawley, a young black woman who alleged that some police officers raped her and smeared her with feces (the police officers were found innocent). Her performances often deal with sex, sexuality, rape, and objectification.

Another example of feminist performance art is the Guerilla Girls, a “bunch of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. [They] have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film and the culture at large. [They] use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny. [They] wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities” (from the official Guerilla Girls website). They also do performances at schools, museums, and organized events, in which they wear their gorilla masks and perform skits dealing with the issues they protest.

[Clare then expanded on the origins of live art in Dadaism and sound poetry]

To Do Live Art:
Here is a summary of what we did today to do live art.:

1. Clare and I led the class through two fun improvisational games: the Sound Circle, and "Yes, But...". This helped us loosen our vocal chords and allowed us to experiment with sound. Our final exercise was to warm up our bodies.

A) Sound Circle
Participants stand in a circle, and the first player makes a motion with their body accompanied by a sound. The sound/motion combination travels to everyone else around the circle until it gets back to the player who started it. The next player makes a different sound/motion combination, which again travels around the circle of players, and so forth.

B) "Yes, But..."
The first player comes up with a completely outrageous situation and tells it to the person on his or her left. The person on the left says "Yes, but" and then offers a response to the first person. Then the person on the left makes up a new situation which he or she relates to the person to his or her left, and the game continues around the circle of players.

C) Directional Movement
Players are told to move in ways that have to do with timing, weight, or space; or in directions or orientations. Examples: horizontal/vertical, downward/upward, light/heavy. Players cannot stand still and must move around the room.

2. We then split up the class into two groups of five people and worked on using our bodies as vehicles for agit-prop. We did this by experimenting with prototypical statements one might make using performance art as a medium (with the option to come up with an original statement), and using only our bodies to communicate these messages.

5. Then we introduced character development and incorporated specific character traits into our performances.

6. Finally, we performed!

Please feel free to repeat these steps if you are interested in warming up for or experimenting with performance art. :)

Artist Lecture: Christopher Coleman

I recently attended the artist lecture by Christopher Coleman, who is an animation teacher at the University of Oregon. He presented on four projects, three of which I will discuss here.

The first project was a video installation titled “Collusion,” which depicted smokestacks expelling and consuming pollution to the soundtrack of realistic human respiration. It was installed as a full wall projection in a gallery with “surround sound” so that the visual image of the “inhaling, exhaling” smokestacks and the sound of breathing immerses and overwhelms the spectator. According to Coleman, the intention of this project was to play with “notions of hope”-- and, in effect, dispersing hope by portraying a never-ending deluge of pollution into the air followed by the re-consumption of it. He mentions that one can’t breathe exactly with the piece because the smokestacks “breathe in” more than they “breathe out,” and human respiration does not function with this ratio. In this way Coleman is remarking that one can’t consume more than one wastes. Coleman begs the question: What if smokestacks sucked in pollution instead of emitted it? He also uses immersion to remind the spectator that he/she is the secret collaborator in the process of pollution. I enjoyed the way Coleman juxtaposed the cold, steel machinery with the organic, living sound of breathing.

Coleman’s second project was named “Spatiodynamic.” This work consists of an interactive machine that records and codifies the patterns of its spectators, then transmits this data to a grid of computer fans which receives and interprets the code into a pattern of wind. This wind then manipulates a sheet covering the fans, creating billows and ripples in the fabric. The image of these billows and ripples is recorded into a live feed that can be seen by the spectator on a small screen in the gallery. On screen, the manipulated sheet appears to be a moving landscape or ocean waves. The spectator is then able to walk around the corner to examine the machines that are creating the image he/she just witnessed on screen. The spectator can see that the image thought to be endless and organic is actually contrived and mechanical. What’s even more interesting is that the spectator IS the material, the conduit for this art piece! The spectator is translated in a unique landscape. I find that to be a very exciting viewing experience.

The third project of Christopher Coleman that I will discuss is an animation titled “Modern Times,” which was inspired by Charlie Chapman’s film of the same name. This piece deals with human relationships to information and terrorism. To create this animation, Coleman used characters from the online safety pamphlets on the government website www.ready.gov, which is a campaign about preparing the American public for terrorist attacks, in order to critique the government’s appropriation of fear and terror to advance patriotism and ideas of nationality. This work also deals with identity and the arbitrary lines that divide countries and other territories. He describes today’s “Modern Times” as being the age of information and misinformation, and this work shows his distrust in the governing system that pretends to enlighten the masses with “information” that really just keeps the population afraid and under control.

In conclusion, Coleman’s artist lecture proposed that we use art and other creative means to reassess our safety systems currently in place, question our management style and structure, understand our collective responsibility, and critically examine the dangerous implications of a “data body” that is codified, controlled, and managed by others, and that is arguably more valuable than our real, physical body. I found Coleman and his art to be very interesting and pertinent to real-world concerns. I like the way he uses art as a persuasive tool to agitate the viewer into critical thought and (hopefully) into action.

paper beads from skillshare

I painted and embellished the paper beads I made in the paper-making skillshare and strung them onto a necklace that I gave as a gift. :) Here are some photos of the finished product.

But is it Installation Art? - Claire Bishop

This article discusses the blurred boundaries between what can (or should) be considered “installation art”, and what does not comply with its sometimes unclear definitive characteristics. Claire Bishop points to the similarities and differences between installation art and an installation of works of art: “Both point to a desire to heighten the viewer's awareness of how objects are positioned (installed) in a space, and of our response to that arrangement,” but “In a piece of installation art... the whole situation in its totality claims to be the work of art,” whereas an installation of works of art is a collection of “separate entities” (Bishop).

What I found to be most interesting is how Bishop describes the ways in which installation art involves the spectator by immersing him or her in the totalizing effect of the work’s environment. Bishop mentions that in the 1970’s, installation art was used by some artists (such as Vito Acconci) to activate the spectator as a parallel for political activism that was the opposite of the passive spectatorship of watching mass-media television. This specific purpose of installation art reminds me strongly of Brechtian theatre techniques as a response to the Wagnerian style of passive, irresponsible voyeurism in the theater. Brecht’s theater used various techniques (such as making the apparatuses of production visible to the spectator) in order to continuously remind the spectator of their presence in the theater, and to make them active, responsible political agents. I believe that Brechtian theater and installation art are similar in that they both attempt to involve the spectator and to make him or her “the main actor” in the piece of art.

I agree with the critics of the magazine October that it is problematic how popular and institutionalized installation art has become. While I appreciate the fact that the genre has been given credibility as an art form by the museums in which it is shown, the fact that galleries are containing installations which, historically, were created in order to undermine and subvert the bourgeois elitism of “high art” galleries, is somewhat insulting to the genre’s integrity. And yet, as Bishop notes, installation art, by definition, needs viewers in order to be experienced and remembered. How can installation art purport to subvert the elitism of The Gallery while it uses it as a host to gain audiences? I believe this question is integral to understanding our current perceptions of installation art.

Installation Art

Prior to reading Coulter-Smith's Installation Art, I had some ideas about what constitutes "installation art" from briefly studying its radical origins in the 1960s and 1970s in my Modern Theater class last semester. However, Coulter-Smith's Introduction in the book was especially helpful in offering a workable definition for this kind of art.

Installation Art, according to Coulter-Smith, is "gallery-bound expanded sculpture... that one can walk into," that "presents the viewer with fragments that must be explored and assembled in a manner that ‘activates’ the viewer," and that attempts to "create a more direct involvement between the viewer and the work of art" (Introduction, Coulter-Smith). Installation art has its roots in other art movements earlier in the 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, Avant-garde, and Performance Art.

Like the Avant-garde and Dada movements, Installation Art was born out of the desire to overcome the eliteness surrounding art and its bourgeois connotations, to instead make art available to everyone, to take it out of the gallery and put it into the hands of the working and middle classes, and to make it universally accessible and free. However, Coulter-Smith acknowledges a problem with Installation Art that shows that it has not lived up to its own aspirations. Since part of its definition is that Installation Art is a constructed environment and a space, and since contemporary Installation Art is primarily shown in galleries, it could be said that Installation Art is elitist, bourgeois, and only accessible to a few. Coulter-Smith sums up this problem: "...transgression has become a civilised activity to be protected and preserved by the art museum and framed as the product of extremely remarkable individuals" (Introduction, Coulter-Smith).

The image I have posted is a photograph of an Installation Art exhibition of twelve horses by Jannis Kounellis in the Galleria L'Attico, Rome in 1969. This example illustrates Coulter-Smith's definition of Installation Art because by installing a set of twelve horses in a gallery, the artist is making a bold statement about what is art and what belongs in a gallery. The horses are clearly everyday objects that can be found outside of a gallery, but by placing them in the context of a spatial environment in which they are to be looked at as "art," the viewer experiences the horses in a different way than if the viewer saw them in the everyday world. In this way, the artist forges a new relationship between art and everyday life.

Personally, I find Installation Art fascinating. I'm already bubbling with ideas on what I will construct for my Final Project Installation.

Teatro Luna S-E-X-Oh!

Teatro Luna, Chicago’s first and only all-Latina theatre troupe, came to St. Mary’s College for a post-Valentines Day show about sex, women, and Latina culture. Although not advertised or loudly proclaimed as being a "feminist" performance, my literacy in the language of feminist theory and rhetoric enabled me to look beyond the entertainment factors of the show and locate the subversive meanings behind the performances. That is not to say that I took more away from the show than another audience member who may not have a rich background in feminist performance theory—to the contrary, I was impressed by how accessible the feminist messages were. Whether or not the average audience member walked away from the performance with the clear notion that what just transpired on stage was feminist, everyone left Bruce Davis theater feeling invigorated and empowered by those five women. Their autobiographical stories—sometimes poignant, sometimes hilarious—were experienced by the audience in fascinating ways. As a collective group of witnesses to these “real-life” accounts (embellished with performative qualities, but not fictionalized), the audience were given the opportunity to glimpse into the lives of Hispanic women within the context of our contemporary world. The audience laughed innocuously at Tanya Saracho as she performed herself as "Carla," the exotic Latina phone sex character, moaning about her "huge brown nipples," but also had to contemplate Saracho’s more realistic disgust with the popular exotic fantasy among the Caucasian male customers: "Brown is hot right now, it's in with perverts… We play out our colonized histories over and over again for $2.99 a minute." Bringing to the surface the complicated issue of sexual colonization is a strong (and, some may say, brave) choice. I was blown away that this particular feminist critique of post-colonial desire was finally being liberated from the stuffy confines of my text books and performed on the Main Stage.

The set was also influenced by feminism. Behind the performance space were five life-sized (or maybe larger than life!) posters of each of the members of the theatre troupe naked. Overlapping these photos was added text that was hand-written by the subjects of each poster. The text added a certain "relief" to the photos, since it discreetly covered any points of female body parts that might be read as "pornographic" (Heaven forbid!). Additionally, the text served as a personal statement from each troupe member on the subject of her own body—the Latina body, which is used in the media without consent in harmful ways that promote degrading stereotypes. In this way, the Teatro Luna members reclaimed their bodies with these multi-textual images.

I enjoyed Teatro Luna’s S-E-X-Oh! performance immensely, and was ultimately inspired and empowered by the subjects raised and the feminist techniques employed.

Documentation of Jewelry Box Theatre

My Jewelry Box Theatre!
(Click for full size images)

:)