Net(work): A Review of Structure

Please visit the Net(work) blog at : 

http://networkvivoperformance.blogspot.com/

This semester I coordinated and co-curated "Net(work): A Performance Art Fair", the second annual Emily Carr performance art show at VIVO media arts. The event consisted of performances by Anna White, Ashley Howe, Dalia Levy, Emilio Rojas, Francis & Patrick Cruz, Genevieve Cloutier, Glena Evans, Jaclyn Blumes, Jason Fielding, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa,  and myself, Martina Comstock. 

The structure of the event consisted a main performance area where audience members could sit and watch performances. Along the other VIVO walls were smaller "fair booths" that surrounded the main performance space. I was interested in this structure because I envisioned that people could move between watching the main performance in the middle and  interacting with the performances on the periphery. 

The reality was that when people walked in they immediately sat down and watched the center pieces, and were initially timid about visiting the performance booths.  It was also hard to pull focus on the performances because all the pieces in the center and the sides were evenly lit. This made it difficult to create a mood and to hold that audiences undivided attention. However, it more responsibility on the audience to make meaning of the various components that were competing for their attention.  My hope was that a greater sense of agency was achieved through synthesizing the fragmented information. 

As the show went on and the performances in the center became more interactive, the audience members felt more comfortable branching out and exploring the booths. By the end of the show, the chairs in the center were removed allowing for a more free flowing and almost anarchistic environment where people were visiting the booths and congregating in the middle and even engaging in chair fights. 

In my own performance as a "customer service representative" for the show I got audience members to take survey.  I received a wealth of insight about what people thought was effective and in effective at the show based on the criteria presented within the survey.  I got lots of suggestions about how to improve the show theme at many ends. Overall I felt the show was a really good learning experience and I plan on incorporating the feedback I received as well as the lessons that I learned from group dynamics into future shows. 

Blog #4: Review of Final Performances

At the "diaspora, displacement, dislocation and the creation of the new community`" performance festival, artist showed common interest in a variety of themes. However, this review will focus on how individual and cultural identities are expressed through the language of media. While this subject was pertinent to my own work, it was also explored within other performances.

http://ykonishi.wordpress.com/

In his performance "This is Why I Don't Go to Gym", Yota enacted the displacement of the physical body within the digital interface by using old computer parts as weights, and workout equipment. Yota states: "Being at an art school, I’ve spend too much time in front of a computer researching, reading and writing… etc. I’m tired of them all. I feel I need to do some exercise."

I similarly explored the the dislocation of the body within the digital in my performance"Interface". My performance additionally explored the interconnected nature of language and identity by creating a continuous loop between such elements. For 3 minutes I typed a stream of consciousness on my lap top. The words were simultaneously projected onto my face, which was wrapped in white cloth.

http://puetamilenio.wordpress.com/

Ruben also inquired about how identity is portrayed and displaced through the language of media in his video "yOUR dADdY". He states "The sequence shows the same young person mesmerize by the TV, playing drums and sitting in a contemplating state. It also shows the images display in the TV which are the images of the same young guy playing drums". Through this portrait of his friend as a musician / artists juxtaposed with static and incomprehensible television images, his video work both unravels and hypnotizes through repetition. The dislocation of personal identity in this piece and is support by Ruben's examination of "the mental dislocation we, the viewers, suffered by the media each time we sit down and watch TV".

http://deryafvim322.blogspot.com/

Derya explored how the "satanist's" have been represented culturally through images and documentary. He further participated in this process by creating his own zine, which was quite saturated with diverse representations of the satanist group. His work suggests that in media's attempt to document a cultural group, because the decentralized nature of the representations of groups on the internet, cultural identities become confused and inaccessible. This was further proven by the fact that although he held and advertise an online chat to further explore this phenomenon, no one participated.

Within the context of this assignment I will not be able to discuss all of the performance works. However, I will briefly mention that the other issues present within the festival include the reinvestigation of identity through the shedding of outer layers, cultural/gender/inter-species hybridity, and the creation of new structures and meaning with organic and reusable materials.

Final Project

TITLE: Interface

DESCIPTION: 

I will wrap my entire face and head with a white cloth and sit a close distance in front of a projector as a work document is projected onto my face.  For 3 minutes I will type a stream of consciousness on my lap top that will simultaneously be projected back onto my face.  

ARTIST STATEMENT:

Through ritual, repetition and duration, my performances explore how identity is expressed through the expression of materials and the language of media. I am currently investigating contemporary issues surrounding the digital interface to present a fresh perspective about how personal identity is shaped within it.

"Interface" explores the interconnected nature of language and identity, and the dislocation of the body within the digital. My work will present these issues by creating a continuous loop between these elements.

I have been inspired by the work of Ann Hamilton, a guest speaker at the festival, who explores issues similar to those I am working with through large scale performance and installation. 

This performance walks away from the ephemeral in my previous work and into the digital.

BUDGET: 

$50 black clothing

$25 white "wrap" fabric

$10 Cinefoil 

_________________

                     $85 total 

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS: 

Mac Book laptop 

Projector 

Cables to connect laptop to projector 

VENUE: Galley Gachet 

RESUME:

Fall 2006-present Emily Carr University Vancouver, BC
· 3rd year Film, Video, Integrated Media Major
· 3.716 Cumulative GPA


Net(work): a performance art fair VIVO Media Arts Centre, March 20, 2009
· Event Coordinator and Co-Curator
· "Customer Service" performance


Emily Carr Media Show
· Event Coordinator and Co-curator Fall 2008-Spring 2009
· "Cry of the Great Woman" short film Fall 2008
· "Through the Motion" short video Spring 2008


Emily Carr Film Production and Documentary Practices Screening Pacific Cinematheque, January 2009
· "Cry of the Great Woman" short film


Pressure to Perform: An Evening of 8 Performance Art Events VIVO Media Arts Centre, March 21, 2008
· Event Curator and Coordinator
· Director of Fundraising and Promotion
· Blind Date performance


Emily Carr Concourse Gallery Exhibitions
· Media Show: Through the Motion video installation, Apr 2008
· Engendered: Pomegranate video, Feb 2008
· Red: Blow Dry video, Dec 2007
· Fractured: Flour Angel performance, Oct 2007
· Foundation: Shower sculpture/photo installation, Apr 2006


NoArt Artist Collective Exhibitions at ECUAD
· RED: Blow Dry video, Dec 2007
· Currency: Prosperity performance, Nov 2007
· Deconstruction: Stuck sculpture, Jan 2007
· Here: Beauty Burden sound installation/performance, Nov 2006
· Waiting: Untitled Color Photo montage, Oct 2006

Midterm Installation Festival

The Video and Performance Midterm Installation Festival took place over two classes. Artists demonstrated interest in the three following themes: language and the nature of ideas, performance as practice, gender & the male body.

Francis, Genevieve, Jenny, Lindsay and Victor expressed concern with nature of ideas and how they come into fruition through language. Francis installed a voice recording at a spotlit podium. His voice recording struggled to put thoughts into language, humming and haaaing, unable to find words. Jenny dressed in white and projected the subtitles of her Spanish voice recording. She spoke of the origin of ideas and the space of potential before their arrival. Genevieve talked about the inspiration from her performance coming from a dream. She insisted that she was being "used" by the small ghost to tell the stories of red pears. She refered to them by their first names, while talking about their career status and personal life. The name she used referenced famous female writers, such as the ghost"Sylvia", aka Sylvia Plath. Through language, Genevieve created fictious personal histories for inanimate objects. Lindsay constructed a drama on her blog by asking others to report any information about her missing lover. Victor similarly created a fictious senario through language. He exited the classroom leaving a note explaining that someone in the room was a threat to his heath. Futhermore, he stated that we only had 3 more hours to live. The class was left to question the implications present within his note.

Jenny, Andy and Anna presented performance as a practice and a skill. Andy brought in a video installation of a rap performance that he did at UBC. The video positioned 

Andy as a performance artist through his career as a emerging hip hop artist. Jenny invited the class down to the concourse Gallery to visit her sewing installation where she was holding workshops to teach people sewing skills. Anna built on this idea in her "practice space", where she encouraged people to practice activities such as skipping rope, playing yoyo, meditating, and writing. She encouraged participants to record what they practiced and how long they practiced for in a notebook on the installation's corkboard.

Mariana also suggested endorsed performance as a practice by asking two men that she knew to lend their clothing to her installation. She selected these men because they represented two different economic status': one was a businessman, and the other man was homeless. She gave us insight into their personal lives by explaining that the businessman was into street performance on his days off. She also revealed that she bought her homeless friend a new pair of clothing because the set he lent her was the only one that he had. She invited members of the class to try on the clothing of these two men. Mariana's exploration brings us to the next topic of interest which is gender and the male body.

Ruben, Skunk, Francisco, Grant, Derya's performance all worked within this realm of interest. Fransisco stripped down to his underwear, laid himself down on the flooer and covered himselve in maple syrup with a paint brush. The syrup acted as an adhesive to which he applied sheet after sheet of golf leaf onto his body with a roller. Francisco's body became a painting, a sculpture and an object of spectacle. Ruben also made himself and object of spectacle by covering himself in white powder, and posing as a sexualized crucifix. Signs on his body read "super sexy" and "xxx". He seemed to imply the interrelated nature of sex and sacrafice, religion and sexual repression. Patrick explored mating rituals and their ties to Easter in Pegan religions. He made a dramatic enterance into the spotlite wearing an easter bunny head and a long red robe. He expressed his virility through a Jackson Poluck like expression of spraying silly string all around him. He then made a padded "nest" where he laid his egg. Therefore his Easter bunny became androgenous and multigendered.

Grant performed an the ambigious ritual of sitting inside of small painting sink while his classmate poored flour over his head. He than played with a tube, sucking in and blowing out water. As a full grown man, Grant returned to a moment of childishness and boyhood. The tube could be seen as an exploration of the phallus, while being caught inbetween the states of man and boy. Lastly, there was lots of phallic material in Derya's blog and zine which explored the construct of identity and fiction through images and language.

Invitation:

When: March 20th, 8pm
Where: VIVO Media Arts 1965 Main Street, Vancouver, BC
Cost: $4 ($3 if you bring an unneeded object from home)

My Mother Worked in A Factory

On the evening  Monday January 26, 2009 I debated whether I should go home and call my parents before they got in bed or whether I should stay at school and attend "My Mother Worked in A Factory". The show was curated by Genevieve Cloutier and included performances by Francisco-Fernando Granados and The Cruz Brothers. Because I have working and personal relationships with each of these artists, I decided to skip out on the phone call to my parents to support my friends at the show. 

The Cruz Brother's performance "waiting" began when the brothers sat on the floor facing one another. A hand quilted blanket was placed at their sides. Patrick held a microphone with a live feed in front of Francis's mouth as he let out a whimper, which eventually turned into a cry.  When Francis' crying died out, Patrick proceeded to put down the microphone, cover his brother with the blanket as he carried his brother outside of the room. 

In relationship to the performance, Francis Cruz states: 

"desperation, comfort, vulnerability, and assurance were the fundamental elements that arose from our conversation". 

The roles in the performance were delegated very strategically. While Francis'  expressed desperation and vulnerability, Patrick supported this action with gestures of comfort and assurance.  While the microphone was used to amplify the cry, the blanket was used to conceal or shield the performer.

 In a show that I curated last year at VIVO, together they explored the power dynamic of brotherhood through a series of gestures towards one another.  The performance came to climax as the brothers spat on one another's war painted faces. Conversely, "waiting" seems to explore a dynamic that is closer to one of  child and motherhood.  Francis  seemed to be in the role of the child as he expressed his vulnerability, while Patrick was in the role of the mother while supporting Francis with loving detachment. 

Rebecca Belmore: Community Performance Art

Rebecca Belmore is a Vancouver -based, Canadian performance artists. In 1991, 1992, and 1996 Belmore traveled across canada with her  community based artwork "Ayem-ee-aawach Ooma-mowan: Speaking to the Mother". She created this work in response to the early 1990's "Oka Crisis", when Mohawk people protested to maintain their territory in Kanesatake.  "Speaking to Their Mother" invited members of the First Nations community to speak directly to the land through a giant megaphone. 

I responded to this work because it gives the members of community an opportunity to speak their voices while encouraging the alternation of leadership. Belmore is concerned with expressing "protest through poetic action".  She is recognized both nationally and internationally as a performance, sculpture/installation and new media artists interested in history, place and identity.  Since the late 1980's Belmore has produced a large body of work exploring such issues.  In 2005 Belmore represented Canada at the Venice Biennale with her video installation "Fountain". 

http://www.rebeccabelmore.com/home.html

Jamie Hilder: Durational Performance Artist

The Miracle Mile was a year long performance by Vancouver based artist Jamie Hilder. Hilder trained for a full year to run a mile in 4 minutes. He documented himself and his progress by daily photographs and journal entries.  His entries detail his exercise routine, diet, what music he was listening to while training, as well as his personal thoughts. Each entry was accompanied by a picture showing the gradual physical changes in his body while training. 

The exhibition was installed in the Charles H Scott Gallery.  I was fortunate enough to visit the exhibition while it was running. I was impressed by the degree to which his durational performance was documented.  In addition to the year's worth of journal entries posted all over gallery the walls, he also incorporated time based documentation. This documentation included a time lapse of his daily portraits, videos of him training, and his attempt at the 4 minute mile on the last day.  I was fascinated by the artists discipline to train rigorously for an entire year. The Miracle Mile extends art into the everyday ritual and documents human determination and ability to make change through a change in habits. 

Hilder is an emerging contemporary artist as well as a critic and poet. He has a background in English and is currently pursuing his PhD at UBC. His past work deals with navigations through urban and suburban environments.  This past summer he engaged in a collaboration with Brady Cranfield (a sound instructor at Emily Carr) in the Artspeak exhibition "Island Developments: Utopia's Adrift", which examines the utopian/disutopian pardox.

Sophia Calle: Relational Artist/ Photo Conceptualist

Shadow began when Calle moved back to Paris and became fascinated by people she saw walking around in the street. She began to wonder what they were doing when they were not at work and decided to follow them.  Calle would choose to follow someone in particular by chance.  Eventually she started taking pictures and notes for herself. She once followed one of her subjects all the way to Venice. She began taking pictures of him and what he was doing, and where he was going. She would wait for him at his hotel, follow him until she lost him and then find him again. She would follow her subjects until she decided to stop and find some else to follow and the relationship would end. 

Although Calle is a photo conceptualist, and I will argue that she is also a relational performance artist because of the individual relationship that she builds with her subjects through the camera. Calle Documents her and subject's "joint journey" that they go on together.  She is able to rediscover a place through her subject. A portrait of the subjects rituals emerge through her photographs and notes. 

Later Calle decided to flip the camera on herself in her series Detective after she asked her mother to hire a detective to spy on her and take pictures. Later she would compare her own notes of what she was doing and how she was feeling with the notes of the detective. From this a "double portrait" emerges. 

Calle began her work in the 70's and continues to produce work up through the present.  More recently she represented France at the 2007 Venice Biennale with her work "Take Care of Your Self". 

Shadow Puppet Performances Group 4

Group 4's performance was an improvised choreography between performers. 

The piece relied on gestures and interactions between the performers and featured a plexiglas structure that had the effect of shrinking the appearance of one of the performers. The piece was performed to a techno beat of a keyboard which set the pace and rhythm of the performance.

The performance began with the male performer dancing into the frame and ripping paper off the plexiglas structure to reveal the shrunken female character that appeared to be tapped in a box. The mass of the performance consisted of a power and control relationship between the characters. The male figure seemed to dominate and torture the female figure through violent gestures including eating her head. The second time the piece was performed without music, the musician added to the performance by licking the face of the female with the other male character. Later the two male character engaged in a fight. 

I enjoyed this performance because it was very playful in nature. The power dynamic between the the characters engaged the audience through dark humor.  Although many of the transitions seemed spontaneous, I felt that the performers did a good job staying in character by pacing their movements to the music.  I felt that the piece could be interpreted from a feminist point of view because of the interplay between genders. 

Shadow Puppet Performances Group 3

Group Two's performance consisted of a role-play dynamic between a pig, and a cop, and a two head monster. 

The performance began with the unfolding of a pig mask into the life of the puppet show. The show consisted of a series of focused gestures between characters. The cop figure's performance included removing his shirt and coming into a reclining backbend. Additionally, the cop lets of out a muffled cry into a microphone. Later, he turns into a two headed monster that engages in a dialogue with the pig through subtle implied eye contact. The entire piece was performed to live drumming music. The space in between scenes was signified with a head bending forward in front of the light of the projector. The performances was concluded by the joint humming of the group. 

Group Two's performance engaged the audience through it's simplicity. They used a limited amount of props and relied most heavily on the characterization and gestures of the performers cued by music. I felt that the use of sound and music was particularly strong in this piece. The sounds of the performers such as the yell and the collective humming set a very surrealist tone to the piece that had the impact of engaging the viewer more strongly. 

Shadow Puppet Performances Group 2 (My Group)

Shadow Puppet Performances Group 1

Group one's shadow puppet play was a surrealist dream sequence about a creatures night journey.

 The sequence begins with the creature crawling out of the mouth of a giant face. The use of scale in this opening image is particularly thoughtful. The creature continues to explore various natural landscapes such as mountainous terrain, bodies of water, and tall blades of foliage. The journey takes places against various colorful backdrops. The sequence ends with the creature crawling back into the mouth of the giant sleeping head. 

Group One Effectively took the class on the journey with their mystical creature. They held the audiences attention through the creative use of the live body, puppet,  props and colorful backdrops.  The combination of these elements where placed to create an image of depth with background, middle ground and foreground. The structure of the play was generally y effective however, I did feel that there could have been more diversity in the action of the puppet in the middle section.  However, overall the piece was creative, engaging and satisfying. 

Culture Jamming

Centre for Communication and Civil Engagement

Adbusters

Nancy Strider graduated from Emily Carr last year and she is an active performance artists and culture jammer. Check out here blog to see what she is passionate about:

Came of Age Before Computers

3 Performance Histories

My presentation will focus on artists who have multi-media practices that feature performance as a vital component. The various forms of media in their works, including the body, become vehicles for communication. Other vehicles such as film, photography, and performance begin to mediate or translate the meaning of the performance. Simultaneously, such mediums have the ability to document or extend the life of the work beyond the performance. Furthermore, the spontaneous elements of the performance are preserved, and in some instances, the artist is able to continue to manipulate the work beyond the performance, extending the event of the performance into a creative process.

I am interested in looking at the histories of performers artists who are balancing elements of performance and the performance’s preservation simultaneously. Performance and the respective medias become inextricably attached. The means of Mediation or documentation informs the performance, and the performance informs the means of mediation.

Wolfgang Laib

Laib's spiritual practice consists of performing the creation of his sculpture installations. Laib spends each spring and summer gathering pollen from friend and meadows of Southern Germany, where he lives. His "Pollen" installations involve collection pollen by hand and shaking it into a jar. When he has collected enough material, he distributes the pollen by hand into square like formation on the floor of the exhibition space. His "Milkstone" installations are equally labor intensive. He sands down one side of a square marble slab and places it on the gallery floor. He then pours an even layer of mile onto the slab. when the milk curdles, Laid cleans the slab and repeats the process.



The repetitive nature of his work brings him into a state of mediation where he sees himself as "participating" with natural materials instead of making art. Laib's use of natural material is intended to create an experience of pure potentiality. Laib treats his physical body as a vessel for divine beauty. He does not credit himself for the creation of his art objects. He simply devotes himself to regular spiritual practice and his sculptures become and extension of his performance.

Laib states: “I am not afraid of beauty, unlike most artists today. The pollen, the milk, the beeswax, they have a beauty that is incredible, that is beyond the imagination, something which you cannot believe is a reality—and it is the most real. I could not make it myself, I could not create it myself, but I can participate in it. Trying to create it yourself is only a tragedy, participating in it is a big chance.”—Wolfgang Laib




Laib's work is influenced by both Western and Eastern mysticism. His work is grounded in various aesthetic cultural rituals such as Tibetan Mandalas and Navajo Sand Painting. Laib's conceptual art references are very few, but included performance artist Josephy Beuys. Beuys was know for his shamanistic rituals intended to heal the sick. However, Laib's practice differs from Beuys because he prefers to work in silence and solitude. Instead of using charisma to involve a crowd in his work, he immerses himself in solitary practice where is able to acknowledge himself as part of the larger whole. His sculptures capture the essence of his deliberate performative gestures without the need to explicitly perform in public.

Laib at the Sperone Westwater

Cindy Sherman

Overview of Cindy Sherman's work

Cindy Sherman’s work is often classified as photography however the primary content of her work is achieved through her role as a performance artist. Sherman fused performance and photography to create female archetypes within popular culture. Over the years, Sherman has believably embodied hundreds of female characters.

However, by nature, Sherman is far more introverted and soft-spoken than her pictures would suggest. By working in the medium of photography she is free from the pressures of the live performance space. Instead of being concerned with holding the attention of a live audience, she is able to devote her attention to constructing conditions and embodying her character.
Sherman creates context for her performances by controlling the elements within the frame such as location, props, and costume. Her complex system of visual cues begins to suggest a narrative. Her series Untitled Film Stills evoke the essence of hypothetical female characters within traditions of film. By recreating the fiction, she reveals the fiction.

Working in the medium of photography, Sherman is able to perform outside of the conventional live performance spaces. The settings in Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills range from intimate, domestic, interior spaces to both public and desolate exteriors. Separated from a live audience, Sherman is able to truly create the essence of solitude in her works. Sherman portrays woman and her constructed relationships to internal and external worlds.

In her later Untitled Color Photographs she reduces the roles of costume and set and focuses in on gesture to create characterization. For example, she often positions herself in passive reclining postures to imply submissiveness. She seduction positioning of her body is juxtaposed by her the look of distress in her facial expressions. In one of her Untitled Color Photographs, she poses a schoolgirl crouched down and looking up with a sense of fright and desperation as if she has been attacked. The use of photography gives her performances a heightened sense of voyeurism. The viewer is able to peer into a seemingly private moment of the characters life that we are not supposed to see.

Additionally Sherman uses composition and framing to highlight the performance elements within her photographs. Furthermore, Sherman is able to heighten emotional tension and create a desired mood with lighting. Sherman later dives deeper into the characterization with the use of cosmetics. She also reintroduces wardrobe even more strongly than before in her series of Untitled History Portrait as well as her Untitled portraits of aging women.

Maya Deren

Maya Deren is known as a pioneer in experimental filmmaking, however her role a performer is the most pertinent form of expression in her early films. I will argue that Deren is primarily performance artist, simply working in the medium of film. Deren is drawn to film’s ability to capture the poetry of movement.

I believe that if video had been accessible to her, she would have preferred it. Given the difficulty she had acquiring the funding to make her films, she may have been inclined to make a much larger body of video work because of its comparative affordability.

The narratives in Derens works are much more ambiguous than conventional film. Instead of being driving by story, her performances are comprised of a series of gestures. Maya’s use of gesture is derived from various traditions of live performance including dance. Maya brings the presence of dance into her films simply through the way she moves through the space. She has been described as a dancer, who is not dancing.

Film enabled Deren to explore spaces outside of the conventional live performance environments. Deren performs in remote locations and vicariously brings her audiences to these locations on screen. For instance, in her experimental film “At Land” she creates the metaphor of being a mermaid washed up at shore. Additionally, she is able to manipulate the limitations of time is space. Through film editing, Maya’s performances weave seamlessly between various locations giving the impression that she is navigating through a dream.

In Meshes of the Afternoon, Deren performs multiple characters in her films and through editing she constructs implied relationships between these characters. Through this process, identity is longer a slave of the singular body of live performance. Thus identity becomes decentralized and hangs loose in an altered state of reality.

Later in her career, Maya created collaborative works with artists who expressed themselves through dance (A Study for Choreography for Camera) and martial arts (Meditation of Violence). In relationship to her later works, Deren states, “special attention must be given to the creative possibilities of Time, and that the form as a whole should be ritualistic”. This idea was most clearly articulated in her finished film Ritual in Transfigured Time. As an extension of her art practice, she visited Haiti where she immersed herself within the Haitian Voudoun traditions.