Abramovic's "Imponderabilia", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd

The MoMA has never shied away from presenting artists who challenge the viewer.  Their latest exhibit, featuring performance Yugoslavian-born artist, Marina Abramovic, is no exception.  Abramovic challenges the viewer from the onset.  Want to see the exhibit?  Sure, but you’ll have to squeeze through two nude performers first.

This isn’t about sensationalism.  The exhibition is too intimate and too personal and the artist is too present to allow any room for sensationalism.  On the surface, the exhibition is about discomfort and fear and the gamut of insecurities that fill the spaces between these two experiences.  At the crux, the exhibition is about the viewer’s (and the performers’) confrontation of these very real, very universal human experiences.

Abramovic's "Imponderabilia", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd

The nude performers stand only inches apart.  What is immediately apparent is that contact may be unavoidable.  At the very least, there is the necessary uncomfortable proximity of one’s body brushing dangerously close with the nude body of a stranger.  Suddenly, it is no longer only the nude performers who appear vulnerable, it is the viewer as well.

Aptly entitled, “The Artist is Present”, the word “present” metamorphoses into a myriad of interpretations.  The show takes place in the very real present; the artist is present (one might even say omnipresent); the source from which stem some of our fears is presented for us to confront…

Abramovic_Performance4

For much of the work, the setting is as intimate as our own personal insecurities.  In “Performance“, one small table sits in the middle of the MoMA’s Marron Atrium.  Two chairs face each other across the table.  One can imagine sitting down to dinner with a close friend at such a table, only this isn’t about dinner and it isn’t about close friendship.  It’s about knowledge and acute self-awareness.

On one chair sits Abramovic.  The other invites the viewer to sit.  And therein begins an unsettling exchange which has nothing to do with words.  Abramovic stares right at you and you, are free to stare right back.  The experience is like having your very being penetrated by a stranger.  Suddenly, intimacy can appear frightening, perhaps even claustrophobic.

When does the staring end?  When the viewer decides to get up.

Abramovic’s art encroaches on all aspects of our fears and insecurities so that, by the end of the exhibition, we are as stripped of our clothes as the performers who greeted us at the exhibition’s entrance.

Abramovic's "Nude with Skeleton", MoMA, 2010, photo credit: Scott Rudd

The gates of Government house after the "blood spill", March 16, 2010

Just a thought, but when I heard about the protests going on in Bangkok, specifically that thousands of Thai demonstrators were standing in line so their blood could be collected for an anti-government protest, it made me think about the whole concept of performance art.  The collected blood was later spilled onto the gates of Government house as a protest against Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his cabinet.

So the question – Could an anti-government protest by thousands of protesters, be viewed as performance art?

Thai protester on his way to Government house

On the surface, the demonstration (held by the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship – also known as the red shirts) shares some of the common principles of performance art:  The demonstation and the spilling of blood is temporary – already it has been washed clean by the authorities; the demonstrators, like performance artists, are not actors – they play as big a role in this happening as the event itself;  the public – the audience – becomes part of the “performance” by the sheer act of watching;  the demonstration serves as a symbolic conveyor of a peoples’ statement.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I do know that the question is worthy of consideration.

The idea of “transitstation” exhibition as an event, started with the image of a German “Rummelplatz” (a “fun-fair” in English).  From there, it developed into a multiplicity of images and small event places – huts, wagons, platforms – all within the confines of the Gallery Space and beyond its doors.

The fun-fair offers a huge and overwhelming impact of different activities that challenge the visitor. The Gallery Space was envisioned with different temporary structures. Artists could temporarily occupy places to counter-act with the idea of entertainment. Like in a mirror maze, the viewer and artist alike were imagined to partake, share and search ways through the different positions and places, walking up and down, through doors, climbing ladders, standing on platforms. …Imagine Rumpelstilzchen on the Rummelplatz after all the people have left, he is dancing alone, talking to himself: “hi hi hi, no one knows where I hid the art!”

The traveling fun-fair or even a traveling circus have the fact that they are nomadic and transient in common. Their “home” is indeterminate and temporary. People working and living with the circus or fun-fair are in a binary position in regards to the idea of “home”. They are traveling and establishing an alien temporary position.

Apart from the initial images of “staging” an exhibition like that, it became more important to experiment and research the idea of transience and to engage with the notion of “the nomadic artist”. Artists on the road, artists transporting their work, artists searching for destinations and places.

The idea arose between stations en route; there is a train moving between destinations and different cultures. The station became the transitstation. The work and exhibition concept developed in the process of production on a transient route.

Kabakov, “the Palace of Projects” ( 1995-1998)

“In principle, such a Palace can … be disassembled and assembled in any other place, similar to a traveling circus.“

Kabakov’s work consisted of 65 staged, themed and constructed projects, known, created and invented by the author. (reference: http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/1998/the_palace_of_projects/introduction_to_the_palace_of_projects/page_3)

Over the years, since 2003, it seems that the process of moving is governed by networking with new artists, regional artists’ organizations, host-city partners, host spaces and the organization of funding for each event. The procedures embrace the methods of synchronized encounters, snow-balling, idealism and a systematic sensitivity to meet with interested audiences and people from everyday and professional lives.

transitstation stop Copenhagen 2010 has a total of 62 participating artists performing and exhibiting individual work, during the 24 hour weekend. 22 regional Scandinavian and Danish artists are greeting and hosting 40 visiting artists. They are coming together uniquely to present their art work within the week-end of April 17-19 in 2010. The work of transitstation is seen as  “Gesamtkunstwerk”, it begins to shape itself only in the duration of a 24-hour non-stop action of art in action.

The process of nomadic moves between host cities, their partners and foreign spaces, foreign languages require several visits and negotiations. Three production teams conquer language difficulties in a slow process until they are able to communicate a language which is foreign to society but familiar to artists.

The invention of transitstation is dealing with the kind of mastery of chains of situations. Situations occur during the transitstation weekend with a privilege to devoid rules and boundaries of assumed categories. If the attempt is made to capture a definition or a category of genre or conventional differentiation, the moment of experiencing Live Action is lost.

Where is the art? In a place with situations that change according to perception and interaction.  Presence, endurance and witnesship provides the chance to capture a total image of transitstation as “Gesamtkunstwerk”.

Artist next to artist next to artist next to viewer next to viewer next to object next to object next to viewer next to artist.

The gravitational code of artistic genre within continuous, overlapping actions has been redefined and apparently the center of assumed genre is off-balance. The project is everywhere, the places are everywhere and the “author” is visiting with its foreign “bundle” moving between strange locations. Though the structures are clear and the margins are lit on the outskirts of the transitstation space suggested by the scaffolding, the space with continuous Actions of the moment remains in the constant state of change.

A world within a world defines itself through the live experience, audience and artists alike: the transformation of ideas, re-directing the expectation level for completeness into the permissiveness of curiosity and surprise. Artists and viewers alike are amenable to possibilities of dis-categorization between performing art and fine art, between classical music and fashion, between film and theatre, between projection and speech. The experience itself offers change.

During the transitstation week-end the idea of freedom and the expansion of social or personal opportunity in a mixed inter-disciplinary and inter-active context opens the door to a live experience. The audience –artist relationship neglects the untouchable distance between work and artist and creates a platform of immediacy and intimacy in unpredictable situations.

The viewer’s position is one of discovery.

Follow transitstation train to the next stop Copenhagen 2010 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art.

When does making begin and end and are there such artists that are makers and non-makers?

Maybe if we first consider the action or process upon a material, or the creation of an art object as the art itself, as our argument to start?

It is my belief that today’s wider culture is only now starting to catch up with the ideas of conceptual art of the early 50’s and 60’s and I feel the action of an artist applying paint to a canvas and an artist slicing, rubbing against or even smashing through the surface of a canvas such as Shimamoto, Klein or Murakami, should be classed as equals in an art history context.

However, all these artists do bring something else to the table- the theories of documentation. The documentation of the event and it’s worth as art is another argument to be made at another time, but there are aspects that need to be presented here and now.

Many artists such as Sophie Calle, Bill Drummond and Fischli and Weiss have used the documentation of an art event they have experienced as their work in many different ways. Nearly every big name artist has been in some form of book or film about his or her work. On the other hand, artists such as Calle and Drummond publish books of story-like poetry and posters, which represent their experiences during the time of the event.

Again, these artists are creating some form of object, surface or installation that reflect ideas of craft or action which is physical and therefore can’t be considered in this argument as I explained in Part 2.

I guess my next questions are now; can art solely exist as a memory in a world of digital history and footprints? If the art has to be an event, how do you advertise without seeming like a massive consumer company trying to sell a product as an idea of a social utopia? How can it take place without being captured through any form of documentation or even talked about? More importantly, what is the place of the artist in a world where the objectivity of the art may lower its contextual worth. Art can’t only exist in the minds of thinkers and not be presented to the worlds’ public? It is about communicating an idea, message or opinion. But now art doesn’t have to be something that you look at. If art is moving into the fourth dimension of interaction, I suppose the question should be, where’s next?

Edi Rogers Murakami

My work – Public Voice

Public Voice is an art piece where I walked around London’s Southbank area near the Tate Modern and Trafalgar Square while carrying a large wooden placard sign covered in black board paint. While walking around I invited the public to write their message on the board and present it however they wanted. Once they had finished, the message was wiped off and it was given to the next person.

Melissa Wyman Spring Play

Have you ever been in a different country with different codes of conduct and reached out for a handshake but been met with a bow?… or embarrassed yourself by moving in for a second cheek kiss when only one was necessary?

My work:  Diplomacy and the Beauty of Awkward …
…an experience that is simultaneously aggressive, strikingly symbiotic and awkwardly frictional: a form of collaboration that could otherwise be described as human connectivity…

Relationship building depends on the flow of both verbal and non-verbal communication between ‘grappling partners’…with many cultural subtleties lost and discovered in transition – and translation. Even those trained in diplomatic exchanges find themselves in clumsy situations that can variably lead to laughter, embarrassment, or anger. Drawing together the personal with the global – ‘international relations’ are like wrestling, simultaneously beautiful, awkward, and exploratory.

Drawing from exhilarating and sometimes awkward experiences practicing close-contact martial arts and working in various countries over a period of ten years, I have been investigating the humor and aggressions involved in interpersonal and cross-cultural (mis)communications.

Fight Therapy
I began the project, Fight Therapy, in graduate school after returning to the U.S. as a way of recreating some of those unpredictable moments.

Let me set the stage:
Two people are entangled in a rather strange looking shape. One person (person A) is on her back with her legs wrapped around the head and one arm of another person (person B). Person A squeezes her legs together in this triangular formation restricting the blood flow through B’s neck.  But B reverses the situation by staking A’s legs (which are still wrapped around B) onto her head and pulling his arm free – running his feet around while attempting to squash A flat to the ground… but A turns towards him and shoves her hips away, thus escaping the pin… And they continue like this; morphing from one strange and awkward-looking position into another until one is caught in the other’s web of limbs and has to submit or the time runs out then it’s time to switch partners.  And then they return the next day for more.

Fight Therapy is a place where this behavior is acceptable and encouraged. It involves teaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to sometimes unlikely participants (including professors and other students) as a method of exploring psychological and physical relationships with both themselves and others.

Both humor and discomfort come into play as the absurdity of some of the moves break down walls of composure. The awkward and uncomfortable moments can be valuable in understandings one’s physical role in the relationship being explored. One person outside their comfort zone while the other person is comfortably within theirs creates an imbalance of power.

Two people outside their comfort zones opens up the possibility for mutual understanding or “empathy” – here, the ability to feel, understand, and possibly identify with the other person’s situation. The discussions after the training session often reflect this newly opened space in that they are usually less composed. I have follow-up sessions with those that want to continue training.

The culmination of their training results in a public or private grappling match. I act as both a Fight Therapist and referee, sometimes putting myself in the role of one of the grapplers.

Quick Backdrop
I’m an artist in a partnership with a diplomat. In our work, we both explore possibilities for inter-human relationships. In the art world, this medium falls under the umbrella of ‘Social Practice’ , which utilizes the ‘social’ as it’s medium, it’s context, and it’s stage as it explores the aesthetics of these relationships (‘Relational Aesthetics’). ‘Relational Aesthetics’ is a term coined by curator and theorist Nicolas Bourriad in the late 1990’s, referring “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context….”

Today
Now based in Santiago, Chile I am continually interested in how strange, ungraceful, or unexpected interactions might be helpful in opening up spaces for new kinds of understanding and negotiation.  My work is represented through performances, videos, drawings, and installations.

Jacko Restikian's Made in China series "Aleatory performance interaction with installation" (Oct 2009) (Courtesy of the Artist)

I like art that makes me think.  The art of Jacko Restikian makes me think.

In 1917, the Society of Independent Artists in New York City held an exhibition.  Marcel Duchamp entered Fountain (a urinal) – one of his first ready-mades (his first was Bicycle Wheel, 1913).  Of even greater significance, Duchamp did not sign the urinal with his own name.  Instead, he signed it “R.Mutt”.  Of the work, Duchamp stated: “Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance, he CHOSE it.”

For Duchamp, art was not the manifestation of the artist’s original creation, but rather the manifestation of the artist’s idea.  Similarly, in signing his name “R.Mutt”, Duchamp openly brought into question the authenticity of “creator”.  Since the conception of Fountain, the deconstruction (and reconstruction) of originality and the value an artist’s name confers upon an artwork has been an ongoing exploration by many artists.  Two of the most recent and notorious examples of artists who have explored these concerns are Gavin Turk and Damien Hirst.  Gavin Turk’s English Heritage Plaque memorializing his presence as a sculptor when he was, as yet, an unknown artist, is now a familiar story as is the fact that some of Hirst’s best Spot Paintings were done by one of his assistants, Rachel Howard.

Jacko Restikian is yet another artist who explores the concepts of originality and authorship within the artistic context.  His Made in China series openly questions mass production versus original creation.  The title, alone, signifies the universally recognized definition of  de-identification – the mass production of “stuff” by nameless, faceless individuals who the Western world neither sees nor thinks about.  In the case of Restikian, however, originality and authorship are not the focus but rather the starting point from which to examine the more complex, albeit interconnected, issues of displacement.   For Restikian, displacement is not only on the artistic front, but on the personal and political front as well.

On the personal level, Restikian struggles with the uncertainty of identity.  On the surface is his dual connection to both Lebanon and Canada.  On a deeper level, dual-citizenship becomes intertwined with a political duality – the history of Lebanon’s war with Israel echoed within the broader context of what has happened to Canada’s Northern indigenous communities following the implementation of neo-liberal policies;  Policies which have seen the systematic erosion of a traditional way of life in favour of a more Western-influenced approach.   Erode a culture, erode an identity.

Comprised of various performances, Restikian’s latest Made in China series (exhibited at the Université de Quebec’s gallery) is not afraid to explore and push the de- and dis- of everything to the limit.  In the ultimate physical act of creator disconnected from his art, Restikian leans against a stack of empty, made in China canvases.  On top of his head, more empty canvasses.

Jacko Restikian's Made in China performance, 2009

As such, art is not one person’s interpretation of an event but is, instead, a filtered down interpretation depending on who is interpreting and who is using (the actor Restikian hired for the evening also answered all questions pertaining to the work of Restikian).

The de-identification, the dis-placement and even physical de-socialization is something that is part of our facebook world. Artists, through history,  have been looking at the effects of changes in society on people.  Jacko Restikian makes us look at these issues today.

Jacko Restikian's Made in China performance, 2009

What’s next is Beirut-born, Montreal-based artist Jacko Restikian’s installation-performance work, Made in China.  Also, next is Melissa Wyman’s views and explorations of something she calls Fight Therapy.

Performance artist Liu Bolin paints himself into his surroundings, literally disappearing into the backdrop.  His performances explore the loss of our humanity in today’s society.  His transformations are an attempt to blend the old with the new – to accept new art while respecting the old.  He has performed in China, the U.K., France, and Italy.  His next performance will involve his “disappearance” mid-air while on a plane.

]]> http://www.checkoutart.ca/cool-stuff/where-has-our-humanity-disappeared-to-the-performance-art-of-liu-bolin/feed/ 0 http://www.checkoutart.ca/artists/point-of-view/experiential-art-1/ http://www.checkoutart.ca/artists/point-of-view/experiential-art-1/#comments Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:22:48 +0000 edi http://www.checkoutart.ca/?p=1749

Society has a cultural need for art, but likewise art needs a society on which to comment to make the work culturally valid.

Experiential Art and the idea of ‘Do It Yourself’ has been initiated by artists since the 1920’s with the Surrealists and the use of ‘the Game’, the 1950’s with Guy Debord’s ‘Psychography’ and the 1960’s Fluxus groups with their anti-art, anti-commercialism manifestos. This is an art form which provided the viewing public with more of physical experience, either through participating in an activity or paying witness to an action or event, rather then just looking at a 2D or 3D representation.

We are now in a world so filled with media orientated developments and modes of communication that the saying ‘it hasn’t been done before’ could soon become a scary reality for society and especially the creators within it- artists. Due to this most recent and ongoing recession, artists have been put in a very delicate position with the task of keeping up with TV, Celebrity, Advertising and the speedily digestible culture that surrounds us.

One of the major arguments that I have faced in my art career so far is to see if it is possible to put a price tag on such Experiential Art works, and if not, whether they class as art works at all? The accessibility of the art and the artist having to give the audience what it wants poses a further question- is it right for the artist to sacrifice his or her principles for profit?

Over recent years, one phenomenon has come to have a greater importance than ever before in the developments of interaction and the concept of ‘Utopian Situations’. These ‘Utopian Situations’ are being used by companies in their advertising schemes to invoke powerful and seductive sub-conscious emotions that make us, within our western culture, feel strong, free-spirited and persuades us to buy their product. For example, the T-Mobile’s ‘flash-mob’ dance event in London’s Liverpool Street Station promoted their product as bringing people together. The ideas behind these kind of schemes are basic but work brilliantly in an Internet-viral world like today. The T-Mobile advert is very effective; who knows if the next time I’m catching a train, music may start to play and get people dancing?

Where do these ideas come from and why do we find them so appealing? It is my belief that such social developments (such as the birth of interactivity) are becoming mainstays of the entertainment industries, developing programming which encourages us to think of how we work as human beings. Telephone voting for reality TV shows such as ‘Big Brother’ and ‘The X Factor’, designed to give an everyday person the opportunity of gaining celebrity status merely offers the illusion of public and personal empowerment.

So in times like this, when artists are trying to keep up with popular culture, perhaps the idea of the generous artist handing over control to the public, allowing self-interpretation and easy access to art is a good direction to move in. This risk of creating static visual items in our ever-evolving culture is that the work may have a very short shelf life. Should we be looking at creating art more explicitly as a form of entertainment rather than something that is an aesthetic personal pursuit?