#install-action

NAPE (2013) Nathan Walker

6 Hour Durational Installaction. Commissioned and first performed at ]Performance s p a c e[, London as part of 'In Conversation'.

17th August 2013, London.

Brian Connolly is a multi-media artist who's works often relate to 'place' or context. He employs a wide range of artistic processes, including Performance, Public Sculpture, Installation Art, and collaborative projects. Originator of the term Install-action.

Interviewed by Nathan Walker following a 4 hour durational performance at Performance Space, London as part of their series 'performanc e x c h a n g e'.

Nathan Walker: Yesterday I was asking you about the origins of the term 'install-action' and you were saying that it was sometime in the 90's, or earlier, that you started to use the term in relation to you own performance work?

Brian Connolly: That's right. It came about through a few works I had made where, through the performance ritual, I was creating an installed space, a very complex visual space. Often I was filling these particular spaces, in early cases I was using Ultra Violet light, dark spaces and more or less sewing white thread between the walls of the spaces, also involving other objects. Like a matrix or network of threads which were illuminated by the UV light. I was lifting an atlas, for example, from a table by sewing the threads through the atlas, and the tension of the threads lifted the atlas up in time so it was suspended in space. Sometimes illuminated by a little reading light and hanging jam jars on the other ends of the string and sometimes using real trees. I placed images in the jars which were illuminated with a candle. So there was a different set of lights, UV - which is almost invisible but very blueish, the candle light - which was very warm, and then the book light - which is often a very cold light. Often I was referring to history, the jam jar images often referred to Irish history or warfare depending on the context, situation or event. This was to do with oppositions where you have two opposing factions at either ends of the threads, sometimes the trees were involved as signifiers of cultural differences or roots of history in some way. The dynamics of the threads in the space creating a tension between two objects. There are various works but in one I used an external tree and the wind was moving the branches and the threads were moving and on the other end I had stones and they were lifting off the floor and dropping. These were very different works in some cases but more or less related through aspects of history that in some way were intrinsically linked and the space would become one large matrix. At the ends of a lot of these performances I would have added stones to the threads and the stones would have little dress hooks on them and so would travel on the threads like meteorites through the space, and they created so much more weight or tension that the trees started to fall over or move or shift. These installations would evolve over two days or 6 hours or 8 hours, long durational work.

NW: Were audiences able to visit the installation after the install-action or between times when you were performing in the space, like an exhibition?

BC: People came in as I was performing so the space was growing and the installation would be left at the end as an exhibition. Sometimes I broke the threads as well, depending on the history of the references I wanted to make, using fire. For example at Span2 [London 2001] I burnt the threads.   

NW: When you say Atlas are you referring to a book or a large fold-out map?

BC: The actual book and I drilled holes through particular pages to do with global or political strife and in some ways I was linking those places to the particular situation in which I was performing. For example in China I referred to Chinese history or in Ireland it was maybe to do with the nationalist and loyalist histories, how one cause has an effect somewhere else in history. The threads were used as a symbolic form and the matrix was all interconnected.

NW: The combination of the two words 'installation' and 'action' make install-action, I'm interested in the use of the term 'action' as a word that is often used in performance art to differentiate formal and content specific concerns. The term also has connections with 'direct action' and protest and your talking already about historical and political conflicts, is the word 'action' something that you would use independent from install-action to describe your work?

BC: Loosely, perhaps. I would not often use term 'action' as part of my own practice, maybe something in the street I would call an 'action'. But the only times I would define a work by the term 'action' was perhaps a place specific - to make a point - for example there was a project where 'Occupy Space' were in Belfast and I asked BBeyond to do a performance as part of or related to that. For me, the piece I made was more of an action in relation to Occupy Space, but I wouldn't often use the term when talking about my work. Even though a lot of the practice outside of the install-action would be in public, in market stalls etc. But I would still call those Market Stall Performance. I don't know why, I think the root of the combination of the two words for me came out of looking at the work of other artists and the wording specifically related to something Artur Tajbar made which he called 'Orient Action' [ORIENT-AkCJA].

NW: and is that a play on the word 'orient' or 'orientation' ?

BC: Oxidant and Orient - the west and the east. I liked the combination of the physical and visual words. Not necessarily relating it to his work, but more that combination through language. The idea of installation as work in performance was closer to what Alastair MacLennan was doing as 'Acutations'. To me, my position in practice terms would be closer to that.

NW: So there is a differentiation between 'actuation' and 'install-action' but maybe they're not too far apart?

BC: I think they're not far apart in form and I could link it more closely with Alastair's work in his way of performing within situations with elaborate materials and set ups...

NW: ...and building environments and embodying or inhabiting the environment?

BC: For me I was definitely building the space within the performance.

NW: So the task of the performance was building the space?

BC: Thats where the combination came

NW: So install-action isn't a pre-installed space?

BC: No, that's the logic for me of the word. You know, I would have the ingredients, like a cook, there would be visible ingredients from the very start, but the actuation being the activity of the performance...The ritual act of the performance built the space. Which makes sense of the ingredients, and makes sense of the idea in time. And it was done in such a way that as time went on, audiences coming in for 10 or 15 mins could infer or understand how the performance/installation might unfold so there's a sense of the possible repetition there but watching for 20 mins you could see how the whole event might unfold. The endings, however, were always something that would not be visible if you weren't there.

NW: Did you also had an idea about what would happen in the space prior to the performance or were you finding it live, through performing?

BC: There are occasions where there were real surprises, like I mentioned the tree moving. This was a performance in an old metal agricultural shed and someone had shot holes in the wall and I really liked the light coming through the holes, and I decided to use the threads placing them through the holes to the tree outside. The tree passed over a fire pit which people used to sit around. So there was a tree and fire pit and the metal shed and inside there was a metal frame already and a metal roof and I dropped the threads down to the ground. The movement of the tree outside meant that the objects were hopping and moving up and down, like a strange kind of piano movement.

NW: Do you think in an install-action, the installation is also 'performing' as well as the body of the artist activating it?

BC: Yes, it is an active agent, in that particular work with the treads, as they become more elaborate and the tension grows through the matrix, things shift, the tree inside the space starts to move because of the weight, so little adjustments at one end effect something else. So you find that there would be a movement or a shift and by adding stones into the work the whole work is shown to be a connected matrix. So the installation by that nature, in that piece, is an active agent and more so as it develops.

NW: You've already mentioned Alastair MacLennan's work, are there other artists that you would associate with the term install-action, perhaps even if they don't use the term?

BC: A lot of people are working with similar processes, but for me, I keep going back to Alastair…

NW: ...Well he has a long history of working through similar ideas and using similar processes. For me that's a clear root of the term. Also for me some of Brian Catling's works use installed space in a similar way.

BC: I've seen people do things, in Poland and other places, where there is sometimes very little performative action but the space is particularly important in relation to the imagery and that could be close to it.

NW: I think there's an idea that performance artists come from visual art backgrounds in sculpture or painting and so instead of producing the work in isolation and showing the end product they perform the creation of the work as the work. And now we see a lot of performance artists using objects in their work, in fact that is the dominant form, and so its interesting to see artists arrange the objects and install them but that wouldn't necessarily be an install-action?

BC: No, that's right. Well my direct root if I trace it back, I worked as a sculptor all through college and only really came to performance later. I had been making installations and sometimes the nature of the installation meant that I had to work in public in the gallery for two weeks, they were so elaborate that they weren't possible before openings etc. So I found myself, in a few instances, working for two weeks in a gallery almost like a resident artist, making these very refined delicate objects which could only be done in time. And that experience was the root for me, because I found it very interesting being visible to the public and audiences looking at what I was doing and I became conscious of the activity of the creative process in the public arena, plus there were conversations and I really enjoyed those experiences. That's the root I came to performance through starting, exactly as you said. to think of the process as readable and not just as a means to an end. That there could be metaphor or symbolism or mythology or a set of ritual acts that could create meaning and viewed to be readable.

NW: and also that what you were doing was a task?

BC: Yes, well Yesterday* I was working with a set of principles, not rules but principles to see how they unfold.

NW: Because I came from a performance background in theatre, I'm interested in certain kinds of training and I'm using that term very loosely. Since you found yourself in a position of performing the act of installing work did you then, after that point, begin to think about your body and a kind of performance mode and are you interested in that?

BC: Interesting question, and something I've thought about what my position would be in relation to that. In install-actions if I'm talking about that strand of work I would see it very much as a task or the ritual or process, so in a sense I become a functionary performer in that process, and hopefully making evident the ideas. Some of my other performances were probably much more about the relationship to others or how objects are used to evoke an image, for example. But I conceptually decide on strategies or structures and how an idea would work and less about myself. I don't necessarily think that I want to have a presence, and often I will avoid the 'spotlight' or avoid the central performer role and I think thats because I came to performance the way that I have. So I would often take a side position or a peripheral activity or parallel activity.

NW: Well it seems almost like in install-actions there is a parallel activity, there is both the performing of the task and parallel to that task is the creation of an environment. It seems that you saying one is more dominant than the other. Have you ever working with other people to enable the install-action as part of the performance?

BC: No I can't think of an instance of that...

NW: ...as we are talking I wonder if Black Market International might think install-action applies to there work.

BC: Yes definitely in Glasgow (2007) at the Tramway. I performed one day in that work and I would have thought of that experience as working in an installed space.

NW: Also maybe Andre Stitt's 'Trace Displaced' performances as an install-action, it's a term he has used to describe trace.

BC: Yes, well I did perform at Trace and that was a very different performance, a one-off, I've never repeated it. and that was almost an install-action. I gave everyone in the audience a card and a role in the room and it was up to them to decide whether or not to do the performance. I set up a games room or a war room reflective of society and people were playing Monopoly or Risk and people building Airfix and someones was mending a plate, some were learning magic tricks or paint by numbers, other people were making reportage of the event by recording. Others were taking notes, someone was blowing up black balloons, someone was digging a hole in the floor with a hammer and chisel. So the whole performance was a strange series of tasks. I called myself the 'fat controller' and wore a business suit and read the financial times and negotiated people changing jobs and giving them beers etc. It was a microcosm of a national identity in one room. To me that was also an install-action and the result of that was that everyone put something from the room into a time capsule and we buried it in the space in the hole in the floor. so its still there. and I would call that an install-action even though i wasn't the active agent but it was definitely a one-off collaborative work, specifically because of that space.

NW: Do you think install-actions can happen outside of buildings so in public spaces as well?

BC: Yes I did one in Limerick, so it was outside, between trees, with a similar matrix. I evolved the space in the same way between trees. and in the end I broke all the threads and took the atlas which was burning and took it into a fountain with me. So that was an outdoor install-action.

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"Bundle"

Turn your body in adequate movement like appearing / disappearing light of a lighthouse. Use for light a simple flame (candle/petrol) and some glasstools /prisms (magnifying glass, bottom of a glass-bottle) to enlarge light for long distance. 

Recitate while turning your body all notes in the dictionnary listed under "bundle".

If you are reading the following note, 

scream loud (like against a strong wind):