4D Foundation 2: Time, Space and Body (Individual Research)

“I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.” – Marina Abramović

And so we begin a new project. I asked a friend what she thought of arresting controversial performance artists in Singapore, like for indecent exposure. She said, “They just need to use a better filter, the kind that reduces light hitting the camera lens.”

Off to a great start!

Here are some installations and performance art pieces I found interesting and thought might serve as inspiration for this project. (Not all of them are controversial, though.)

 REC/PLAY (2014) by Thessia Machado

 

“an installation/instrument made with a stripped down double cassette-deck with motor and spindle mechanism. Fabric belts fan out of the rotating spindles and into the space to activate an assortment of sound generating elements – rustling paper, ringing glass jars, tapped wood; teasing out from humble materials their inherent musicality.”

description from website

Working in analogue and interested in sound’s physicality, Thessia Machado creates kinetic, sculptural, music-making machines for installations and performances. Her invented instruments also make use of more mature materials, like customized turntables, LCD screens, and >cassette decks.

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Event, Stream, Object (2010) by Florian Hecker 

Florian Hecker creates sculptural sound installations, like his sound objects installed at Frankfurt’s Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in 2010. Speakers hung from the ceiling with curved mirrors not only reflected the look of the sounds’ source, but altered the atmospheric sounds’ waves as well. The artist is also interested in a concept he calls “chimerization,” like his projects at Documenta 13 or his collaboration with Mark Leckey, where he manipulates voice recordings to create glitchy compositions.

I read this article about his works, and there was a discussion of “chimerization”:

“In terms of audio content, the process of chimerization means, for Hecker, the grafting together of characteristics of different sounds in a new mixture, which nevertheless displays dissimilar qualities. The timbre or “color” of one sound can be modified to adopt the dynamic of another, to take a fairly straightforward example. Already the techniques of musique concrète included the splicing of familiar sounds into an uncanny shape – changing the gradual “attack” envelope of a bowed instrument into a quick burst like that of a snare drum etc. Contemporary digital resources in audio manipulation have made the possibilities of such production of sonic chimeras almost limitless.”

– Janne Vanhanen

It’s like what I was studying (and trying to do) for my soundscape project!!! This is so useful!

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Rhythm 5 (1974) by Marina Abramović

I’ve been a fan of Abramović since reading articles about her pieces in secondary school. Rhythm 0 and Rhythm 10 are shocking for different reasons, not least of all their results – but personally I find her account of Rhythm 5 the most visceral.

I construct a five-pointed star (made of wood and wood chips soaked in 100 litres of petrol).

I set fire to the star.

I walk around it.

I cut my hair and throw the clumps into each point of the star.

I cut my toe-nails and throw the clippings into each point of the star.

I walk into the star and lie down on the empty surface.

Lying down, I fail to notice that the flames have used up all the oxygen.

I lose consciousness.

The viewers do not notice, because I am supine. When a flame touches my leg and I still show no reaction, two viewers come into the star and carry me out of it.

I am confronted with my physical limitations, the performance is cut short. Afterwards I wonder how I can use my body – conscious and otherwise – without disrupting the performance.

She provides insights into the ascetic life of performance artists:

“I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself,” Marina says, “but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it. It goes back to them in a different way. This is why people in the audience often cry or become angry or whatever. A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.”

The zone that Abramović enters when she undertakes “a long-durational performance” is perhaps the defining aspect of her art, yet it remains an ambiguous and hard-to-define element in her work. In the months leading up to the Moma show, she underwent a training programme devised by Nasa, the American space programme. “Physically, mentally, I have to prepare myself for a feat of endurance. I became a vegetarian, I did deep meditation, I cleansed myself. I train the body and the mind. I learn to eat certain foods so that I don’t have to go to the toilet for seven hours. I learn to sleep in short bursts at night. This is very hard: sleep, wake, drink, pee, exercise, sleep, wake and on and on. So even the not-performing is intense.”

The sitting-still, she says, was the worst part and choosing a wooden chair without armrests her biggest mistake. “This one detail makes it hellish. The shoulders sag, the arms swell, the pain starts to increase. Then the ribs are going into the organs. I had an incredible amount of physical pain and even some out-of-body experiences where the pain just vanishes, but always it comes back. In the end, it comes down to pure dedication and discipline.”

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During my research, I also stumbled across this extremely controversial piece:

Art School Stole My Virginity (2014) by Clayton Pettet

Clayton David Pettet, a 19-year-old from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, garnered attention when he outlined his plan to have sex with an anonymous male partner in front of art gallery crowds. The project, dubbed “Art School Stole My Virginity,” was inspired by his experience as a 16-year-old student questioning the cultural significance of virginity.

“When all my peers at school were losing their Virginity it was incredibly hard for me to ask why I was still a Virgin and why it meant so much to the people all around me,” Pettet writes on his tumblr. “My piece isn’t a statement as much as it is a question. The whole aspect of Virginity was incredibly emotional for me and has been ever since.”

Pettet previously described virginity as an “abstract” idea built up by modern society. Male virginity, in his opinion, is even more abstract, given the fact that there is no breaking of the hymen. In an interview with The Daily Star, he expressed hope that the loss of his own virginity would “stimulate interesting debate and questions regarding the subject.”

Huffington Post (emphasis mine)

According to this article, what it sounds like is different from what actually happened.

Dazed Digital: You were never going to actually have sex, were you?

Clayton Pettet: No. I’ve always said I didn’t believe in virginity, so it kind of defeats the point if I’d actually lost my virginity for my art show! It was always about me stealing the word ‘virginity’, rather than having it stolen from me. That’s why I pushed the date back about 75 times. Because of the press the piece got, galleries assumed I was going to trick them and do what everyone thought I was going to do. But I’m not going to give what everyone wants, it’s not the point. 

DD: Don’t you think people expect this to be, well, you losing your virginity?

Clayton Pettet: It’s not wrongly expected, but I’ve always said in interviews there’s this partner I’ve never identified. I think if people were expecting something else, it shows what they really wanted. They didn’t want an art piece, they wanted to see me have sex. If they came for the art, they wouldn’t be as disappointed – they’d know there were things to read between the lines for.

But even what he actually did – I’m just thinking, whoa. I’m nineteen too, and I don’t think I could ever do something like this and have my name on it. It’s definitely subversive.

And this one…

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Excellences & Perfections: Performing for the Camera by Amalia Ulman

Photos: A woman made controversial performance art out of her popular “sexy selfies”

In 2014, Amalia Ulman began posting photos to her Instagram account chronicling a luxe, stereotypically feminine life in Los Angeles.

As the weeks passed, Ulman’s Instagrammed life morphed slowly from softly-lit roses and sexy mirror selfies to something darker. She appeared to have had a breast augmentation. She posed with a gun. She posted videos of herself distraught and weeping to an audience that has grown to more than 94,000 followers.

Then the photos turned back to shopping, yoga, and healthy brunches, before ending with a shot of her in a man’s arms.

The photos were of Ulman, and at the same time not of her at all. Ulman is a concept artist. The 186 photos were part of a series, Excellences and Perfections, that examines femininity and the authenticity of the lives we document on social media.

“Some gallery I was showing with freaked out and was like, ‘You have to stop doing this, because people don’t take you seriously anymore,’” Ulman told the Telegraph.

In the filtered images, Ulman’s life was quite literally golden, with selfies that evoke the wide-eyed gaze of a Vermeer subject. Her now critically-acclaimed project took aim at the assumptions such photos carry.

“With Excellences and Perfections, people got so mad at me for using fiction,” Ulman told Interview Magazine. “That was the main critique: ‘It wasn’t the truth? How dare you! You lied to people!’ Well, that’s because you should learn that everyone is lying online.”

“The idea was to experiment with fiction online using the language of the internet,” she explains, “rather than trying to adapt old media to the internet, as has been done with mini-series on YouTube. The cadence and rhythm were totally different.”

“Everything was scripted,” explains Ulman, who grew up in Asturias in north-west Spain. “I spent a month researching the whole thing. There was a beginning, a climax and an end. I dyed my hair. I changed my wardrobe. I was acting: it wasn’t me.”

“It’s more than a satire,” she explains. “I wanted to prove that femininity is a construction, and not something biological or inherent to any woman. Women understood the performance much faster than men. They were like, ‘We get it – and it’s very funny.’ ” What was the joke? “The joke was admitting how much work goes into being a woman and how being a woman is not a natural thing. It’s something you learn.”

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Hmm. Ulman’s piece certainly opened my mind – I didn’t consider using social media for performance art. All of these pieces have shown me that creating performance art is about observing ordinary things and taking them and using them and pushing them to their limits. That includes the body. I don’t have a ‘boundary-transgressing’ social cause in mind nor do I feel like doing permanent damage to my body, though. Audience interaction seems like a fascinating path to pursue. I’ll have to think harder about this, collect more inspiration.

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