VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK

By Aisha Ryannon Pagnes

Conversations between ART WEEK writer Aisha Ryannon Pagnes and artists and co-curators of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016.

Photograph © Claudia Popovici.

In order of appearance:

(LSC): Leisa Shelton-Campbell

(JK): Julius Kaiser

(ADR): Alexander Del Re

(ARP): Aisha Ryannon Pagnes

(K): Kyrahm

(NF): Nicola Fornoni

(DQ): Douglas Quin

(SW): Susanne Weins

(SV): Sašo Vollmaier

(HC): Helen Cole

(LC): Lorne Covington

(JM): James McAllister

(PRS): Preach R Sun

(JE): Jeannette Ehlers

(NB): Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro

The gift, or the awful burden of the artist is that they see details in the world and they see their implications and that is what they bring into the space; we all walked passed that old woman, we all walked past that box on the ground by that old woman, we all walked passed. But they can’t because of the dynamic of that person and how they relate to the very fact that people were walking past and they have to do something with it. But we were all there. I don’t think they can present anything different, they are just presenting rather than ignoring. (LSC)

The difference between manifesting and showing is getting to the heart. (JK)

And by mediating between ideas and people you are in a position where you can open a question, but I doubt we can provide an answer; I am not convinced that I have any solution to the problem. (ADR)

How do you think this can be misinterpreted? (ARP)

These topics are so fragile that anything is enough to cause misunderstanding. (K)

When something is taken out of context and put into an anonymous realm

it is everyone’s to play with and assume a context for. (LSC)

It is not that complex, in fact, it is very simple… (NF)

Disconnect the brain and connect the heart.

And it is that idea of being alive, and maybe it is as simple as that. (DQ)

There was a very strong need to express movement. It is there that I felt the most alive.

This feeling of where life is… (SW)

But the reality is that when I close the door I close myself. So this is what I need to learn, how to live this quality outside... (SV)

What is this quality?

It’s curiosity… This is what I am looking for, not just for others but also in my Self.

Believing in human creativity… all this aggression, all these suppressed feelings exist because we are creative creatures… so he welcomed aggression, to ask what’s behind this, what’s unread and to transfer this aggression into the voice, into movement, dance; to focus on each person’s expression as a creative source… and express this… this fragility… and suddenly all these colours… but you have to go through all those true personal states, you really have to go into your guts and feel this pain to find a true voice, something which is meaningful… (SW)

I was always connected to the voice through my family… more so with my father.

There were nine children in the family and I think singing was also a way to survive.

They would sing together to get emotionally stronger,

so this tradition I remember because they kept it, till now.

For me performance is almost like surviving. It is going to a deep process of… almost of death… and surviving this… many fears… (SV)

Sašo Vollmaier and Susanne Weins. Photograph © Lorenza Cini.

It is the cornerstone of art, because art for art’s sake is so tautologically irrelevant, it is very easy to produce, it is a comfort zone for many artists. I need some challenge and the challenge involves the other, it involves failure, in many ways, because in performance you are not supposed to have everything under control and do exactly as you thought you would, I don’t believe in that kind of practice. (ADR)

Knots were forming and I wasn’t able to disentangle them. I wasn’t able to make a homogeneous wig: it was full of knots. It was all a process of becoming and I wanted to let myself be transported by a continuous and unpredictable flow.

I found myself within the situation and I wasn’t trying to govern it,

I let my Self be moved, I surrendered.

When I am performing I am in a therapeutic level. I do try to transform something from its negative to its positive through actions towards the public.(NF) Even though we are not using performance art as therapy, we are not supposed to, we are not qualified to, it has some therapeutic aspects to it at some levels and I am aware that I am using it in my own personal life. You are using your body not only as a tool, but as a terrain, as a battlefield and addressing phobias is a good way to be aware of the body, because you become aware of its fragility. (ADR)

It dealt with an aspect of loss. (HC)

It is part of life… Tied to the gestural action, to the preciousness your feel of yourself, or a body, or a relationship, or an experience lived personally. Art needs to make you identify with what it wants to say, with the mind, with the spirit and heart. (NF)

How much more marvellous and essential, of synthesis, direct, a punch to the stomach, no filters. (JK)

It is just an ongoing investigation (ADR) of addressing things that our minds have problems with: it touches you at a visceral level, and that is a way of getting people to think about it. (DQ)

It is an open exercise in dealing with difficulties, especially when you are dealing with something that can be really difficult to perceive, it’s a good exercise for understanding other people’s perception, too.

Many times we forget about what the audience perceives or what they want to perceive, and sometimes it is interesting to work with things that are difficult to perceive for the audience, too, because there is always someone in the audience that can do that and others that can’t. Many of the things I address come from my daily experience, and how the understanding of one another can be faulty in many ways or incomplete, and I feel the need of addressing these issues, maybe just to provide some other perspective. And sometimes that change of perspective can be very useful for an audience, to see something that they haven’t seen before. Art is a communication tool really. It is a form that can create ways of communicating with each other, in unexpected ways, complex ways, lots of ways. If there is no communication I think performance art would be empty. Performance art creates a temporary situation in which people can be real but disconnected from reality, and that breaks some of the barriers people have. (ADR)

It’s about place. You are bringing everybody together in that place and giving to them a way to interact with one another in a way they never have before. Really creating a new kind of space. (LC)

It’s a different language. (JK)

So then you realise that it is a common language, which maybe has something to do with a collective common imaginary. (K)

I think it is the only language that enables you to express your Self with authenticity and without added filters. I had a necessity of extreme truth in terms of my own personal life, and through art I found the way to express my Self without suffering. The moment I live the creative experience I feel like I am living in the right dimension.

Everything recomposes in equilibrium, harmoniously. (K)

It can lead to failure, but failure isn’t failure if you think of it in terms of growth. (ADR)

James McAllister. Photograph © Edward Smith.

I wanted to work with people, to be in touch with people…

I studied human beings, and this was so interesting. Our task was to study, to see what the problems are… we had to learn how to see, to look at people, to learn what they could have.

I see the strength of people. I see the strength of the body… loosing blood while keeping concentration… how strong the body is... So then I wondered:

“What is the most fragile?”

And then I thought: “Yes... relations... society, how to cope for example with strains, with this energy…

This is the most fragile… relations... what we try to do really is to strengthen relationships.” (SW) And to rediscover ourselves socially, not in places of worship, socialising or business transactions, but a shared art making creates a safe space to discover each other potential— an inward turning of outward creative energies. (DQ)

It gives space to more direct relationships, as opposed to the daily mundanity, which is based a lot on the flattening of conversations, flattening of time, which always runs short anyway, so then here your are giving your Self, your time, you go back to a way of relating that is normal, before or beyond contemporaneity.

It gives space to be able to accept that which I went through with the energy that the public gives back. This freedom from negativity I find it to be an experiential exchange of love. (NF)

I wanted to use something that is personal and social at the same time, almost anyone has some sort of phobia.( ADR)

But the necessity doesn’t lie in needing to talk about one’s Self, but to express the message, which in us is entrusted. Revealing one’s Self, revealing one’s own fragility somehow gives you strength because not hiding your own discomfort which in any case you are constantly afraid of it being revealed, gives you awareness... And awareness is everything. (K)

When we release something, we lose this sense of judgment. (SV)

Seeing their emotion, the trembling of their voices… their breath even, under the gaze of the public. (K)

You are tackling immaterial fragile relationships… And because you need to engage the audience somewhat directly, fragility has to be seen… but what happens if you don’t see anything, if you just perceive something. For some people that perception can be interesting but for some people it does nothing, that too can happen. (ADR)

I don’t know how far it goes once it leaves the room… (LC)

OK so what’s for dinner? (DQ)

Douglas Quin and Lorne Covington. Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh.

I know that things that touched me deeply in my life I still remember and have coloured my perspective, so hopefully what happens when they leave the room, who knows, you touch them in some sort of way. (LC)

It is my strong belief that something very special can happen between people, where you have to be very present both as an audience and as an artist, and there is something about our world that kind of prevents you from doing that; a lot of the time we build up resistance to that and I think performance is one of those strategies we can employ to break down the border, to 

Feel. Again. Together. (HC)

In Ecce (H)omo (by Kyrahm) there is a woman in the second room.

She is listening to her partner’s tapes:

Love messages.

She was with her for 23 year.

You are there with her, your back to the wall, facing this woman’s profound love.

So I am showing you this sentiment, and this can be far more effective than a debate on the meaning of love (and the violation of human rights when societal structures neglect this on the basis of categorisations.) (ARP) Therefore, at a certain point art and activism meet and it is this, being able to use effective ways and enable the public to reach the same conclusions, vehicled by a different language, that of the heart that enabled this connection, between everyone. (K)

It is based on the simple biology of osmosis, you have a concentration of saline solution and a membrane and a concentration of lower saline solution, and what happens is the salt passes through the membrane, it is what happens in our cells, the salt passes through the membrane until the concentration of salinity are equal, that is what I think is I’m trying to look at.

I aspire to creating some sort mechanism where the flow of information in between the artist and the witness is kind of equal, where there is as much coming one way as there is the other, so what I tried to make was a series of apertures through which things would flow in both directions, in a more or less restricted way. (JM)

An encounter between people. (K)

You have this range of intensity of what you can exchange, so the value of that transaction really depends on how much you are willing to put into it. (ARP)

The creation of a link between my Self and the other,

how am I reflected in the other and how they are reflected in me. (ADR)

Sometimes, situations confront you with yourself, in whichever way and then you realise that you have a lot to work on… and the connecting link here is this recognised belief that everything is so fragile, and that we are not perfect, and that we need to connect, and we need to share, and we need to understand one another. (ARP)

Confrontation requires a great effort. (K)

some people were eager to discuss this

some people didn’t want to address it at all

and some people even rejected it. (ADR)

No matter what you feel, the very fact that you won’t understand it, that you want to reject it...

It is already too late because I planted a seed in you. (PRS)

Leisa Shelton-Campbell and Marilyn Arsem. Photograph © Claudia Popovici.

Art is a peaceful rebellion. (NF)

A form of resistance.

There are various forms of resistance. (JK)

There is no attention to the individual, which could be a universe of its own, categorical to nothing. I could even choose to be a completely transparent being, indefinable, that daily morphs its own gender, its own identity, this too can exist...

Yet convictions of what society expects from you, that perform a function, can at some point become very strong shackles of social control and to live the experience of deconstructing and re-inventing who you are (K) has to do with self-determination: I define myself based on what I feel, not based on what is imposed on me.

And the political act is that to show one’s Self for who you are, and the language of performance art is that of the body, which in any case is true to itself. A person is born with a body, like we all do and this body is ‘described’ based on notions of gender. Human society has prerequisites, it has rules; that everything should return to a gender binary. (JK) There is no acknowledgment of the various infinite shades of identity. (K) Society still expects a boy or a girl. (JK)

A society still highly patriarchal, catholically conditioned and controlled, and it shows through these issues. (K)

It has to do with the amount of differences that each individual is being exposed to – culturally, mentally, religiously spiritually; suddenly everything enters your sphere of how the other lives and it can be threatening because we are so basic, we are so simple and we need comfort, we need stability and the moment it is disrupted you instil this sense of fear; it takes a lot of self-deconstruction to be able to realise what is the faulty key in the system, in relationships, in society, but in order to do that you have to present a model or to inspire a means of communication that is uncharted, and to see it objectively

and that is really difficult because you are also part of it. (ADR)

Artivism if you may. (K)

Activism has a lot to do with reclaiming.

A neglected right that I reclaim, so most often there is a contraposition where these situations create conflicts and internal ones, too, because what I see in the world, my partner sees differently, and so you create a conflict based on differences.

The dynamic of the message is something else, and the main difference here is that in art there is no counterattack. There is feeling, there is enabling a condition to be felt, and that may just as well bring people closer, despite their clashing ideologies. Activism is frequently tied to the contrast in ideologies; in art ideologies don’t reign, there is the human experience, there is life, there is death, there is sickness, there is joy, there is love, there is suffering.

But this suffering, I try to share... there is sharing, yes, so it is a different approach that tends to shorten gaps, or perhaps even widen them, at an emotive level, because effectively I can distance myself from a strong emotion, but it is a peaceful reaction. (JK)

So rather than just talking about statistics or climate change as a political problem or an issue, I think it is important to appeal to people’s senses and emotions rather than just their intellect, so people can hear and not just be overwhelmed by data of how quickly the ice is melting or what have you…

So, what does it sound like?... (DQ)

Is that a voice? Is that the wind? (LC)

How do we relate?

We relate to one another through sight, through sound, through touch…

Alexander Del Re. Photograph © Edward Smith.

So I think the sensory engagement is a very important part of the message rather than just a data dump where people can feel overwhelmed and a bit helpless.

It becomes art as a social interaction.

The ultimate goal for us, is self-awareness but also awareness of what’s out there. (DQ)

So with all this raising of awareness, the need to communicate these ideas (because art in a way is just another tool for communication) everyone is craving answers, everyone is craving solutions, so what should an audience go home with? (ADR)

That human voices are part of a fabric of many voices. (DQ)

As an artist you can provide possibilities, ideas, or questions that can be tackled differently, and I you can rethink possibilities but I don’t think there is a solution that I can provide. (ADR)

Part of the contract of the piece is how you relate to each other and not just to the work. People then become aware of their own behaviour, and aware of other people, and that is the key for us. That you become more self-aware but also more aware of other people.

That it’s not just me, I, we, it’s us.

That dynamic is really beautiful, and people get it when they start paying attention. (DQ)

That difference of active engagement. So this is about layers of responsibility, of people’s desire to engage to take time, to go in and say “oh yep, got it” or to chose to go in and have a relationship and bid your time and to make the transaction, which some people really did, and when you see it all there, you get this really clear representation of humans.

Here we all are, here it all is. The levels with which we transact our relationships.

And that is very telling. (LSC)

An ongoing investigation of human relations. (ADR)

Bianca Bonaldi and Nicola Fornoni. Photograph © Catarina Ragg.

And now when I see people talking about progress, in my personal experience we have not progressed at all. So for me the issue of race in America is something that I experience first hand, so when I hear people philosophise or talk about these issues from this hypothetical or statistical point of view, and not understanding the experience and how it plays out, it sometimes infuriates me.

If we can postulate that human beings are free by nature, but that freedom requires a moral and intellectual responsibility, and if we live in a society where so many of us are struggling and starving while so few have so much, then what I do know is that this society is not free. So if someone says that we are scared of freedom, it means we are scared to fighting against something, because if we reach humanity that means that people won’t be in prisons, people won’t be starving, we’d be taking care of each other. I don’t know what freedom is, but I think that is what it would look like, maybe it is utopian. I think we are in a pre-revolutionary phase now, and unfortunately that’s where a lot of people don’t like me because I describe myself as an anarchist and an active nihilist. I believe that you have to burn down in order to rebuild. First and foremost, we have to organise.

I think the poor have to organise, the black have to organise around the globe, and I think everyone else will organise around, and that is why I use blackness as a political means to activate revolution. But I don’t think we would want to do that because we are constricted or tied down or bound by need, so we need things to look like this, we need our cars, we need our nice clothes, we need our bars, we need to sit in big comfort, so that is why I think the brilliance of capitalism and globalisation is that it has us conditioned, and that is how we remain slaves, so it might seem impossible, and it is impossible if we think it is impossible. We are scared of being failures, it is this conditioning, fear of being ostracised. “What do you mean you don’t have this or that?” So I think it is that condition where in essence we are perpetuating our own slavery. (PRS)

Even failure is a good thing to experience, but of course it is difficult to embrace failure, you are not supposed to, that is the problem. (ADR)

What is not freedom –

That we live like this is not freedom. We have to crush the blocks, all of them, and I think they reflect issues of sexuality, race, religion, culture, we have to question everything; all these things that we don’t want to question, all these institutions, they have to be challenged, so how far do we want to go? I am hopeful about younger generations, but at the same time

I don’t think they will be as radical; it is difficult for white children to free themselves from privilege. It’s always our responsibility to be vigilant and to stand up against the powers. And I think that to co-opt and to be a part of the system, takes over at a certain point because it is called responsibility, it is called adulthood, there are many ways to try to get the youth to change their minds. So I think it is always a thing that when people are young they are radical, they are standing for the date, they believe in freedom, they believe in these things and it is not fair to blame them, it happens with every generation. It is hard to break free.

It is hard for anybody to standalone.

And hear people talk about you and call you crazy.

I think generally humans want to love each other, or they try, but I think there is a flaw in humanity. (PRS)

And art is a tool, a social weapon. (NF)

Preach R Sun and ORLAN. Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh.

I have encountered racism many times. Maybe more subtly, but still I experience racism every day, since the structure of our society is racist. It might not be personal to me, but still the whole structure of the society influences me as well. The stronger you are in your own history, the stronger you will seem. They listen to you because they see that there is a connection, they might not understand that but they see that something is there. I don’t expect people to do it overnight, it takes time, I’m still trying to decolonize myself, I’m not there at all and it is an ongoing thing because it is so rooted in our structures, deep into ourselves, it takes a long time, I wonder if it will be in my lifetime… and that is what I’m trying to do,

I hope that it can have an impact, that it can help people see alternatives and to move on in different directions. I am also educating myself all the time; so it is a long journey, not tiring at all, but there is a lot of work to do, for myself but also for the community as well, for the nation. (JE)

What does it mean to decolonise? (ARP)

It’s a matter of choices, its a matter of possibilities, it is a long-term work, you can’t really do it like this, I don’t know what the future will look like but I just hope that my work and what we are all doing here, is capable of changing the mindset of people, so we can have a future with more equality. It doesn’t have to be this way, the society is a structure, it is a European structure, the way it looks now. There are so many other pre-Columbian societies that looked different, not that I want us to go back to being in the jungle, but the mindset and the perception of the world could be very different, and still we could evolve and move forward in new ways. So that is what I’m trying to do, that my work will at least inspire people to think outside the box. And now we are having so much gender talk, and we are trying to give voice to so many different perceptions of what it is to be a human being.

Life is so full of nuances,

and why don’t we allow them to be there, why don’t we allow all these voices to be heard, but that is the structure that we live in, and that is the colonial structure, that it has to be one way, but the colonial structure that is in power of the world is just a structure, it could be different, it could be another structure. (JE)

It has to do with our education and the history taught across the spectrum globally is or has been authoritarian in some way. The artist’s voice is a way to deconstruct that, to say that there are histories out there and they should be prominent too. It doesn’t mean that if it is written in a history book that it is OK, because it has been published, because, the first thing that people say is “I didn’t hear that, where did you find that information, I didn’t read that.” So then that makes my story not a part of history. The thing is, you have to go on with this conversation. People throw it at you like a spit in the face, “OK I have you now and I am going to make you converse with me, I am going to make you learn how to talk…” Because a lot of people are afraid of their own memory. I see this in Germany, in Berlin, there hasn’t been this exercise of memory, they had to deal with so much since WWII, and so only specific things have been put there... Because it is too much, so there hasn’t been this exercise of memory. It should not be about victimisation, it should be about empowering all communities and being aware of it.

So the first thing that happens is that there is rejection…

Three months later the same person calls me and says,

I’ve been thinking about it…

I see it this way now.

That is history right there, I don’t need to publish it in a book. That is my reality, your reality, our reality, and that is real. I don’t need Sarkozy to tell me that Africa hasn’t entered history yet. You know? Come on… So it is very necessary.

So first I’m telling you the story you know, I’m only speaking in words, but the performance, that says everything because it transcends all of it. I don’t even need to speak, and you understand it and it’s you. It’s not about me huh. It’s about you, you are decolonizing your own body your own mind, your own history and this takes a lifetime… It is not just nine months, it is your whole life. (NB)

Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro and Jeannette Ehlers. Photograph © Claudia Popovici.

I’ve been thinking about this question for many years, especially when I am addressing these very sensitive and important issues, which are really relevant in some contexts. So I started to rethink some of the projects that I had based on that, also given the feedback that arose from the interactions which was so relevant that it changed the whole project. So I decided to use it as a tool, because I didn’t want to impose some idea, criteria or vision onto another human being without incorporating the feedback of other people’s point of view. (ADR) My responsibility is to keep doing what I do, and keep revealing and manifesting this cultural narrative and to educate myself so that I can be here and be here the way that I want to be, but I think it is everybody’s responsibility to educate themselves, to know where we are coming from, and to open up and get out of this colonial narrative and structure. Especially for white people it is really necessary to let go of this narrative and listen to those other voices, because there is so much to learn. Because most of the time this whole history is seen as a burden of the black people and not of whites, but it is actually a burden of the whites, too. It is so necessary for whites to let go of this structure. (JE)

I believe that responsibility never ends. Because you are an artist, you are a person, a citizen, you are fundamentally a human being, and so it is an ethical matter, and ethic doesn’t have an off switch, it is something that I carry with me constantly. It is a constant questioning of whether you are behaving in an ethical way, and of course we are humans, so we make mistakes, we even do things which we are ashamed of, otherwise the world would be a different world. And I think that paying attention, if we are able to do so, if you are able to live with the same intensity you live a performance or a theatrical act, even the most mundane aspects of human life when it comes to relationships and respect, you will have a richer life, a beauty not of aesthetics but a beauty of fulfilment that can give meaning to your life. (JK)

The responsibility of the individual is to rebel, no matter what.

What happens in a slave society, is that people don’t understand the power of the individual voice and the responsibility of this individual voice. Under these oppressed positions the way it is designed is that we are dependent upon the very system that is suppressing us, and this is why I compare racial slavery to capitalism. What they replaced with slavery (via capitalism) is something far more nefarious and far more oppressive, which is need. So we feel like we need this situation, because we have this idea of capitalism, we fetishise the Dollar, or the Euro or whatever, so our relationship to money is that we need money to live and that’s not the case. Money is a piece of paper, so our lives are invested in pieces of paper that we feel conditioned to strive for, when in fact if everyone said “Fuck this, this piece of paper doesn’t mean anything” then the system would fall, it would stop; but we fetishise, and we are taught that. So I think that the individual’s job is to see through and to sacrifice themselves, and I think that we don’t understand is that no matter how many of us want to just live our lives and be safe and secure, in order to get free you have to sacrifice, you have to be willing to die for it, because no one is going to give it to you, because the thing that we don’t understand in this capitalistic situation is that it is spreading throughout the world and it is predatory. It is designed to just crush the poor. That’s not democracy, that’s not freedom by any stretch of the imagination. So we are free no more than free-range chickens; you place animals on the farm and you just let them roam, but you are waiting to fatten them up for the slaughter house, like cows. You just put grass there and they won’t leave, you don’t even need to put fences up – and that is where we are, circumscribed by need. This is what we have to break out of, this idea that we need this way of life. Because what we don’t seem to understand is that, in fact, it’s this reality that is actually poisoning us all.

So what you are starting to see now is that there are these pockets or groups of indigenous people in different areas and I feel they all have power, and share equal responsibility (as human beings) in this struggle. For example, Native Americans are fighting to protect the land. We all have a responsibility to stand and fight with them. The strength and struggle of black people (black people have always been known around the globe as the sufferers of racial and systematic oppression) is to stand and fight to abolish the oppressive system of white supremacy – I’m specifically speaking to the construct of race and the economic institution of capitalism, and I feel that if the rest of the world identified with the black struggle then we could all come together, but so often people think that the black struggle is anti-whiteness, as opposed to looking at it like: if poor people oppressed everywhere saw what was happening to black people is inevitably happening to all of us, then you could connect. So I use blackness as a means to liberate.

Yes, first and foremost my goal is to try and liberate my own people, to wake up my people, but at the same time if black people in general are the key to everyone’s liberation, people see it, because we were the ones that were on the first row of oppression, so we saw it. So if you see that and you align with that then we start building, once you build though – and that is the thing that we don’t understand is that inevitably  the enemy is going to reveal itself to you, and they are not going to give it up without a fight – but if we build together we outnumber them. But we are too scared of seeing that; if we build together the rich, the powerful, the status quo, they cannot withstand such an onslaught. But we will have to be willing to die, so I think the only way that this is going to end unfortunately is in revolution. You are talking about nations that hold power through war, so they are not going to give it up, but I think that as long as people stay afraid and say, well we have to honour the civil society, then we are always going to be enslaved. And the richer slaves too, and that’s what they don’t understand, because this is not the nature of our humanity. Our nature as human beings is freedom. We are the manifestation of freedom, so if we are not living free we are all slaves. But the rich don’t care about being slaves, they don’t care about the environment, they don’t care about women’s rights, they don’t care about equal rights for everybody. They care about their rights, and so they will do anything to hold on to that. So the responsibility of the individual is to rebel, so in my work I’m always calling up “Wake up slaves, why don’t you rebel!”

That’s what I think the responsibility of the artist is, to use that power to change the perspectives of people – even if it is difficult and also “to reflect the society.” As an artist, you can’t just go around entertaining. You have this gift, you have this power, you have this voice, so it is your responsibility to stand. And I think that artists right now in the world are the last that can stand, that can say something and change things, but I don’t think it is going to happen as long as art is cloistered away in galleries… (for consumerism), so it’s a reflection of the very society that we are living in, because the artist is so enslaved by the idea of capitalisms. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen is when I look at art in galleries cause it reminds me of animals in zoos, cause the power is taken out of it. It is like the bear over the hearth, the hunter kills the beast and the head is its trophy, so I think art kind of lives in that situation where the artists are thirsty and feel like “Oh I have to work, I have to eat and my value, my validation relies in the capitalist who buys.” So we are traded, we are commodified and our works are as objects. So I don’t think that is radical, the responsibility of the artist is to take it to the street, is to find new ways to disrupt this, to find new ways of revolutionise the society around them, and yes that can be taken the wrong way, it's like saying “What good is it to reason with slaves about freedom,” and when you talk about the phenomenology of reason – we have the gift but we are not reasoning, we are not living free, and we are okay being slaves; that's not freedom.

And some people think that doing something in the streets isn't going to change anything; there are many layers to revolutionary struggle and we have to connect the dots. The artist has a role in social change and activism but unfortunately many artists think of themselves as “I'm an artist and not an activist.”

And that’s a problem, that we aren't dealing with politics. I don't even care about being accepted in the performance art community, that's just accidental. I don't even like the term art, so I feel that the artist's responsibility is to wake up and to radicalise society, and you have to radicalise and revolutionise the minds first so the society around us has to be awake. If you’re not awake and if you're not pushing them to be awake, then they are not going to do anything. So I think the artist can do that, but then we have to be able to connect everybody. We have the responsibility of the farmer, the teacher, of the educator, everyone has a role but we have to see that and connect in order to build something of “whatever your passion is it should be the tool for your liberation.” (PRS)

And journeying through life based on a desire you had during childhood is a process of liberation. (K)

And it is easy for the white person to say it is universal.

So if I’m black, and I’m talking about these issues, but you are stuck on my blackness, my black perspective, does that not make it universal, or does it mean that you just don’t have the ability to allow yourself to go through the blackness to see your Self, this affects me too…

I can only free me and that is responsibility of the individual, I cannot free you. But what I can do is set an example and spark something in you where you say: “You know what, I’m going to free myself, too.” Then we can work together, but I can’t free everybody, I can’t do that, because many people will be like: “Yeah, I want to get free, too” but it’s easier for people to stay in a group, but people standing in a group sometimes do it for different reasons, because its fashionable, its cool… And they essentially become co-opted because what a lot of these people are looking for, is acceptance and validation through what they claim they are trying to fight against. So the responsibility is to go on a journey and to find what is liberation, what is freedom, so they have to find it for themselves, and they have to try to fight to get there. And ultimately I feel that people are not going to go that far.

Radical is dealing with the root, eradicating the root. (PRS)

Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh.

I think one of the good tests you can have as an artist is the perception of the audience, because the audience can sense what is real, what is truth and not in a very instinctive way, and I think the audience is the best way to measure that because as humans we can sense this directly. (ADR)

It is easy to absorb a small amount and walk on and look at the next thing, particularly at an exhibition, but I think, generally, an audience member actually wants more than that. They want a really substantial…. really they want is a transformative experience that they very rarely get, so they don’t expect it. (JM)

It’s like with any artistic experience, you have to be open; if you come with pre-judgment then you will leave with nothing. But if you come in with an open heart then you can have a great experience, regardless of who you are.

It’s about being present and paying attention. It is so undervalued, and that is all you can ask really:

A moment of presence.

We’ve been very interested in the idea of being present and of having agency; being aware that you are changing things. On a simple level it is just being aware of your place in the world. And from the artistic context here, just being aware that you are changing things, as we are always changing things. (DQ)

You are moving in the world and the world is responding to you. (LC)

And if you close your eyes and listen, it is a completely different experience. (ARP)

In this very moment of human history you need something else, you need to create questions rather than saying: “This is the solution, don’t worry, don’t confront.” I don’t want the piss the audience off but I want to create something with the audience that can be disturbing or complex or whatever, but the audience has to resolve some situation, or else it means nothing. It is very easy to see some traditional performances where the body is doing some actions, and the actions are created well, beautifully, and that is it. Then you’ve had a beautiful experience, not to say that it is not needed, you need that too, it is part of life, but it is not the only thing you need. (ADR) That is the sort of transformation of art in our times, it serves as a social conversation for a way of being in the world. (DQ)

The privilege of being an artist is of having this vocation and being able to reach people with this. (NF)

So how do you use your privilege, how do you check your privilege, how do you really challenge yourself?

Really put your privilege where your mouth is.

If you care, really do the work,

by being very open and honest with yourself,

really take the time to look at what is around you (PRS)

to encourage… the most beautiful part here:

how people are adapting, the way people are looking, with curiosity, with respect, with so much humanity. This is the most beautiful aspect of the whole VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK.

It is a little social island of where relationships can strengthen… (SW)

And so what it is enabling are these layers of people becoming better people. (LSC)

There is a lot of cooperation between all involved, no matter their social role within the project and that is a model that is so inspiring… If you can just take a fragment of the message and transpose that into daily life, I think the purpose has been fulfilled. It’s not about the works that are being shown, but about the understanding that is elicited in the viewers… (ARP) There are trapped doors into alternative worlds, in the end it’s about these incredible bodies, rubbing up against each other, and what meanings we make together, and I think artistic work of all kinds creates the opportunities for that, which means that I’m on the lookout for these special encounters because I believe they do come between us all the time… (HC)

Kyrahm and Julius Kaiser. Photograph © Alexander Harbaugh.

Breath, life, the meaning of breath, losing the breath, fragile body,

Breath is really the one thing that makes us the most

Fragile and it is the first to the last thing we’ll ever do as humans.

And when that last breath comes (JM)

It is an exhalation (LSC)

My job is

To plant seeds (PRS)

An interview by Elena Coco, III Venice International Performance Art Week, December 2016

Cypriot artist Christina Georgiou participated at the III VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, as part of co-curated live section of “THE DREAM OF ANTIGONE :: Performance Art In Greece Between The Seventies And Today” by Francesco Kiais – G.A.P. | Gathering Around Performance.

For three days and three hours each day, she performed “Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love.” The piece sees Georgiou standing in the centre of the room, her face covered by her hair that is connected by extensions to the roots of a tree attached to the ceiling. She wears a long dark dress, which extends towards the wall in front of her. She stands like a sculpture on a pile of bricks, fated to crumble day by day. She pushes single bricks with her feet, and the visitors take fallen bricks and offer them to her. When she cannot push the bricks away anymore because she is surrounded by too many, people take them directly from the podium beneath her feet. After being offering a brick, she scratches it with a metal brush, and either blows or brushes the dust away. She repeats these actions until the pile gets less, she is lowered and her face becomes completely visible, her feet touch the floor. Surrounded by the wreckage of the former pile, she moves and turns, searching for eye contact with the visitors.

Christina Georgiou, Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love. III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016. Photograph © Monika Sobczak

Elena: When your performance ended, you threw the brush away and stood motionless with closed eyes in the middle of the space. Someone of the visitors gave you the last brick – I noticed a smile on your face, and you held the brick close to your chest. An unexpected act. What caused this response? Can I ask you what you felt in that very moment?

Christina: That moment was truly precious for me. I felt a clear impulse that the performance had made its circle and reached completion – and I embraced this impulse with my action of letting go off anything I was holding in my hands, while giving lightness to my own body, and I closed my eyes just to feel for some moments this letting go. Letting go off the brush that I held for three days, letting go off the action of brushing the bricks, letting go off the performance itself. And suddenly I felt the presence of someone approaching me, placing another brick in my hand… I spontaneously and honestly smiled because I immediately felt that the energy and the intention of this person was a very positive and clear one: he asked me to move on, to go on with the performance. And I realised that even when I decide to give a kind of “closure” to my action, from the moment on that I myself had invited the visitors to be part of the work, I should accept their initiation or impulse to occur, whatever that is. On the other hand it is my choice if I accept this “invitation” or not. This is the reason why I smiled and placed the brick on my chest close to my heart – I felt thankful for this gesture and the lesson it gave to me.

E: I have written a short introduction or summery of your performance, of what the audience would have seen. Do you want to add something to my description? Maybe your point of view, what you have seen from your position or perspective?

C: I can only describe what I have “seen” from my position, as I am sure that every person in the room had a different and unique experience in relation to the action. During the performance, my eyes were covered most of the time and my vision was limited, but nevertheless this enabled me to stay focused and concentrated even more, while sharpening the other senses in order to take in feelings, movements, sounds and other events by the people in the audience. I received a great empathy and respect from the viewers toward me and my action. I could sense their immediate response each time I asked them through the gesture to place a brick in my hand. I could also feel their instantaneous observation and quest to take action when I was trying to remove the bricks with my legs from the pile below. All these elements formed a wonderful interaction, an action and response through mutual concentration on and around the performance piece, while creating a relationship between the myself, the performer, and the others, the visitors.

E: For you, what is the meaning of the final wreckage that surrounded you?

C: The wreckage that was constantly being formed and took its final form in the conclusion of my action, we can say it was a result of the repetitive action, but we should not see it only as a result of the action as it is also an action on its own. The repetition of the action was building something up and throughout this repetition the image of the action was constantly changing, until it had reached its transformation. Therefore action and image are interlinked, and they take place at the same time. So what I am suggesting here is to examine the action as being one with the image, which is created in this particular time and space. In addition, removing one brick at a time under my feet and brushing that brick in order for it to become dust, is itself an action of transformation that enabled me to uncover my face, and consequently envision and connect with what exists around me. Hence, once more, action and image are one.

E: With the performance you transform the space into a poetic image. Are there artists whose work influenced you for this aspect?

C: I personally find inspiration from my own self through my spiritual journey. I find that the Self is an unlimited, never ending and revealing source of inspiration and I realised that even when I used to get my inspiration from other sources, I was still leaning towards what comes from within.

E: In which way does Antigone’s Dream: Action of Love insert itself in the tradition of the artists’ dream that preceded you, and why do you think it is still important to keep this “dream” alive in the society in which we are living in today?

C: The myth of Antigone describes the story of a woman who had the courage to defy the commands and rules of a controlling dominion, and who follow her own ethics and values in order to make her actions, whatever the consequences. I see this as an action of love, because Antigone’s decision and action was an opposition of fear, and therefore a position of love. I personally recognise myself in Antigone and I also recognise in her all the people who position themselves in love and draw their decisions from love. I also see in Antigone the quality of being true to oneself and take the responsibility of one’s actions instead of allowing oneself to be under the control of an other. And this enables the opportunity to find freedom in everything that is lived and everything that life is. I believe that performance art and art in general is being used as a tool for creating worlds of freedom. In the same way, in my performance Antigone’s Dream: Actions of Love I endeavoured to bring up the idea that the process of “slavery to freedom” can be made by our own choices, if these are linked or not with the presence and/or intervention of others. Finally the “dream” is shaped by our decisions and choices, and that by positioning ourselves in love, instead of in fear, our life is being shaped accordingly. This is how we can keep the dream alive; whatever this “dream” is for each one of us.

Text by Jasmin Schaitl

All images © Alexander Harbaugh | Marcel Sparmann, Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung (2016) Performance by Marcel Sparmann

Reflecting and interpreting Marcel Sparmann’s performance Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung (2016), forced me to rethink again and again where to begin and how to write this text. It is particularly difficult, as the performance itself deals with the opening and breaking of established norms and structures of performance. Hence in my opinion, common patterns and structures of analysis and writing about performance art can hardly be applied here, at least compared to the other texts that I wrote for the Venice International Performance Art Week 2016.

This occasion unexpectedly provides me with the possibility to work with text as a structure. Text that also consists of established norms and patterns, which are expected to exist for the proper understanding of the text’s content. I am trying to experiment here with this. Just as the performance was an experiment to break up its inherent structure during and through the performance itself, this text is an experiment to work within a structure, which un-structures established patterns.

Imagine a book, a physical book, containing an essay or novel. At the very beginning of this book there is the preface. This preface or foreword gives an introduction into what the further content will be about, a first glimpse.

Now imagine a performance space in the huge hallway of a Venetian Palazzo, with high ceilings and a crystal chandelier. The "stage" is still in the process of being set. A person connects strings from a clothes hanger to a wooden door, another person precisely positions a shirt on the ground, another (or the same?) person positions and re-positions a table with wine glasses on top of it. People are talking with each other, and someone is giving instructions.

As the preface of the book gives the introduction into what will happen in the novel, in the same way these three people set up the stage for the performance to follow.

During the set-up, the artist Marcel Sparmann speaks to the seated and waiting audience: "This is not yet part of the performance, we are still preparing. We thought we’ll have twenty more minutes to prepare." How does this statement let us observe what is going to happen next? Are the sentences maybe already part of the performance, or is it an honest expression of the artist? In how far does this statement question the role of preparation, and the necessity of a structure of or frame for the performance?

Looking at the preface of the above-mentioned novel, as well as at the described action of preparing the space for the performance, it seems that both imply the same role: both facilitate that which will follow. At the same time, it is not essential to read a preface to understand a story (in the case of a novel), nor is it necessary to witness a set-up to understand a performance.

By exposing the audience to this ongoing process of setting up, Sparmann undoes the structure of the performance itself. He presents parts, which are usually not visible but are the base for all that follows. Making this part visible means to break the structure from within.

In an interview after the performance, Marcel Sparmann explained his intention of the piece by comparing it with the action of throwing a book onto a table and observing on which page it would fall open. His performance does not start on the first page, but the audience enters during the preface, somewhere in the middle of the introduction.

When the preface is finished, or in other terms: when the set-up is finished, the "actual" performance starts with the artist positioning himself on a specific spot on the set space, coming to stillness.

The final set-up of the space consists of four main areas: first and most prominent is a simple, wooden table with a number of wine glasses on it. The glasses are individually prepared with matches and a transparent cover. The next area consists of thin, white threads attached individually on a wooden door and leading to two wooden clothes hangers on the floor. The third area is composed of a small electric stove plate with a pot of water. Sparmann begins in the fourth area on the wall, lying on the back with his head resting on a shirt on the ground. His neck is bent backwards to face the audience, his feet are up against the wall.

      - Each of these sections may tell their own story. And the narration of these stories is realised automatically in the audience's heads, without the performer even having to "do" anything. -

        Marcel Sparmann starts with a choreographed movement, in which he gradually and in slow motion transitions from lying on the floor next to the wall to standing up straight in front of the table. This slow pace continues while he picks up the wine glasses, lifting them all up at the same time by embracing them. First gently and slowly, and then increasingly with pressure until some glasses break and finally fall on the ground.

As the first glass drops, something essential is changing: within the piece, the artist, and the audience. After more broken and fallen glasses, Sparmann drops all remaining glasses down with the gesture of opening his arms. This choreographed movement is again stopped abruptly by addressing the audience: Sparmann says that he doesn’t know how to continue, and asks how "we" should continue. He proposes two possibilities from which to choose: "…To continue in this 'pathetic' way, or to change to something else."

The artist resigns from being the person in charge of decision, and the relation between artist and audience as well as the unpredictable connection between objects and artist become the actual focus of the performance.

In Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung, there is a correlation between the degree of involvement of the audience and the visibility of the structure of the performance. While the observers are being forced out of their comfort zone of being passive witnesses, they are being pushed into a situation where they are asked to be in control of the course of things.

This situation lays open the structure of control, on which a performance is normally built on, it breaks it and makes this breaking the actual content of the performance.

After establishing a rhythm, which is commonly expected to be continued, the frame and the structure of the performance are being unclosed. By interrupting the established rhythm through dropping the glasses and addressing the audience, Sparmann un-frames the actual performance and provides a glimpse onto the structure of the performance itself.

The paradox here is that to break something means to have it constructed before. In the case of this performance it means that to lay open and break with its own structure, we have to see its construction before. Witnessing the set-up envisions the existence of the constructional structure. The finalisation of the construction is the starting point for its own deconstruction.

The question "How should we continue this performance?" is being repeatedly asked by Sparmann during the performance. No one answers, nor takes control over the next steps. Maybe it is for this reason that the artist insists: leaving the space in a confused manner, coming back, asking again while executing actions with the available objects and materials, never leading towards or resolving into something, leaving again, and addressing the audience again.

His continuously repeated questions as well as his undefined decision-making provide for space to reflect about the question of what had to happen to even arrive at a point of asking such questions?

And thinking a step further, we might even ask whether the question "How to continue?" doesn’t actually lead to the question "How did we end up here in first place?"

Das Brot der Luft... eine leicht-sinnige Annäherung might therewith raise an awareness for the necessity of critical reflection with/towards/about the world we are living in. Does this world facilitate the questioning of ourselves, of how we arrived where we are now? And where are we then/now? In which structure are we at the current moment? And rather than asking about how to continue, shouldn’t we first ask ourselves what made us become who we are, and where we are? 

Text by Jasmin Schaitl

Image © Alexander Harbaugh | Ivana Ranisavljević, I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

LAYERS IN THE NOW Ivana Ranisavljević (Serbia) "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you" (2015)

Ivana Ranisavljević is one of the young artists of the co-curated section of the Venice International Performance Art Week 2016, BELGRADE PERFORMANCE ART SCENE - ONE INSIGHT, a project by Galeria G12 HUB, Belgrade. Ranisavljević presented two durational performances on two consecutive days: I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you (2015) and Am I (2016) on the second day.

In her first performance we find the artist sitting on the ground, dressed in a white, long skirt covering the white-stoned floor. Two heater-lights are filling the room with soft, warm red light. Ranisavljević carves the four mantras "I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you" in Serbian language into her torso, which results in covering the white fabric and her hands with blood. Over the course of three hours, she continuously repeats the mantras in english, while facing the audience, sitting on the floor.

The performance is inspired by and referring to the ritual for reconciliation and forgiveness of the old Hawaiian practice Ho'oponopono. 

Her precision in not only pronouncing the words as words, but as something more meaningful, is transmitted through her strong presence in the moment. Instead of emptying the words through repetition, they are getting loaded each time they are spoken out, again and again.

Image © Claudia-Andreea Popovici | Ivana Ranisavljević, I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

The modest state the artist is in feels like an offer to the audience to experience these mantras together, to give an opportunity to internalise the honest meaning of these words. Her calmness and lack of expression offers the audience to look deeper inside of her, to feel the power of the words, to feel a fullness of her words; and is inviting the audience to just be in the moment with her. Possibly knowing that not everybody is able or willing, nor time allows to follow her into this deeper understanding of the mantras.

And what her mantras – expressed with such dedication – induce, is to propose that everything one experiences is one’s own responsibility. The problem does not lie in our external realm, but in how we perceive and react towards this/our external reality. And this requires that if one wants to change this reality, we have to change ourselves, first from the inside.

Image © Alexander Harbaugh | Ivana Ranisavljević, I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Through carving the mantras onto her skin, not only the words she is speaking out loud, but also the inside of her body gets filled with this intention of knowing about and addressing self-responsibility.

Therefore Ranisavljević seems to set an example of taking this responsibility for her action, for her being, and shares it with the audience through offering this ritual, this time, and the required space for it.

"Am I" (2015)

In her performance Am I, Ivana Ranisavljević sits facing the audience, with printed panels containing the articles of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights hanging behind her on the wall. Through the reflection of the mirror set at an angle on the table in front of her, she reads the articles of the Declaration out loud and one by one. Progressively she sews her lips together, until she is unable to continue speaking. She remains sitting still in front of the Declaration for the rest of the performance.

In this text, I would like to focus only on the layer and the consequences that the mirror creates.

Images © Lorenza Cini | Ivana Ranisavljević, Am I. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Through the attempt to read the reflection in the mirror, the artist is standing in her own way, blocking her sight through her own body. She has to continuously reposition herself in front of the mirror to be able to see the words behind her.

The mirror pretends to be needed to read or to see the text, because it seems easier to read what is in front of you, instead of turning around. But in this case, it makes reading more difficult, and takes away the coherence of the text. It shows the confusion between dependency and necessity, due to comfort.

This is leading to the consequence that the mirror provokes: primarily revealing the process, as well as creating a separation between seeing and understanding. It seems as if the performer was going through the process of deciphering first letters, then words, and finally sentences. The meaning of the words and sentences get lost continuously because each word is separated from the text context.

Image © Lorenza Cini | Ivana Ranisavljević, Am I. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Looking at both performances of Ivana Ranisavljević there is one common objective that the artist is pursuing: to show the responsibility of each individual.

In I love you. I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you it is the offer to the audience to internalise and incorporate the mantras, to repeatedly renew the meaning of the words, which might help to reflect the observer’s own role in creating attitudes towards everyday life. The second performance Am I proposes to look at self-made layers that make our lives more difficult. Both performances lay open a situation which is real, but which we might be able to change. The starting point is within ourselves.

EXHAUSTING THE BODY WHILST CLEARING THE MIND Sara Kostić (Serbia)

Voice (2016)

Sara Kostić uses the stairways of Palazzo Mora as her performance ground, covering the space between the first and second floor by occupying and re-empowering this "non-space". For nearly three hours, Kostić continuously runs up and down the stone stairways. Her tight and flesh coloured clothes and running shoes place the focus on her body and the physical movement of stepping.

Image © Claudia-Andreea Popovici | Sara Kostić, Voice. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

For three hours she continues running up and down the stairs, as fast as her energy and fitness allow her. Over time, her body has to cope with the increasing exhaustion that slow down her movement and make it more tense, difficult and painful.

Through this physical effort her breath turns deeper and louder, presenting her physical exhaustion also in an audible sense. The commitment to the physically demanding task is showing its results on body and movement. Not only through the breath but also through sweat, the exhaustion becomes visible on her clothes.

The continuation and repetition of one action allows for the space and time to observe a process, which exposes the ability and fragility of a body. It is a body that follows the power of the mind, where the first signs of exhaustion can be overpowered through dedication to the moment and the decision to continue. The mind and the body become separate, making the action one and the mental state of the artist another factor. The performance shows that the mind might take over the body and continue what conventionally would have already stopped.

Image © Lorenza Cini | Sara Kostić, Voice. Performance in occasion of the III Venice International Performance Art Week 2016

Text by Francesco Kiais

© All photographs by: Monika Sobczak | Zai Kuning, Loosing oneself to be with it and taken away by it. 2nd Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

Elements of visual orientation

At the centre of the large rectangular perimeter of Palazzo Mora's main hall, Singapore-based artist Zai Kuning has suspended an oval and smooth stone, at a short distance from the ground, half enmeshed in the net of a thick red wire, stretched in the space between the high ceiling and the floor.

Two boards of clear solid wood, lie on the ground not far from the suspended stone. Stuck into the wooden boards, four heavy knives. A small wooden bowl is placed under the stone and contains a smoking coal of plant material. Another wooden bowl, containing water, is placed on the side of one of the boards. On the floor lies a curved bamboo stick.

Limit and Release (Abandonment)

Zai Kuning marks paths of crossing, continuously passing from one side to the other of the stone. He plays with knives, hits them one with another and throws them down to stick into the wood, as if they were a natural extension of his gestures, as if he threw farther the limits of his acting, thinking and feeling.

He sprinkles the boards with water, makes turn the suspended stone around itself: the rotation axis of our emotional and sensorial space, brought outside of us, now runs along the red line, turning with the stone and repeating a cosmic phenomenon: the dance of planets and galaxies around themselves.

Zai stops, and emits a sound with his eyes closed, involving the whole body in this sound emission. It is a cry, or a recall, pushed from the belly through the chest, in the mouth. Even the hands and arms participate to push this lament, creating the fragile and unstable figure of a frail flourish.

The strength of the sound exceeds the fragility of the figure, which sways like a leaf in the wind, in front of the inexorable gravity of the stone, beside the weight of the objects. The abandoning/release of the self is underway. The liberating distance from the self is taken. Now, the person Zai is no longer in the presence of a limit: he becomes the happening and the crossing of it.

On the other side is the heart of our fears, the face of our temporary nature. It is an exorcism, for those who are witnessing. It is an experience of the limit with the latest metamorphosis, for the one who guides us in this journey.

Zai gives another rotation boost to the stone. The galaxies go on in their timeless dance.

Thirst and memory

The shamanic exorcism is related to the human metamorphosis in the scenery of a universe, which we no longer know how to philosophically embrace, and which we must again recognise starting from our physical limits, from our sensory boundaries, for to be able to comprehend it again.

The starting point of this performance is the moving in the proximity of an absence. It is a missed person, whose disappearance causes a sudden awareness of our being present, of being present "without".

These gestures made in proximity of an absence, make us consider that you're not present only for yourself. That there is no life without an end. That you must lovingly take the burden of responsibility of a memory, of a life, to give value also to your own presence in the world.

Life is thirst for the present, for the presence and for the presences. The audience itself is a gathering of presences. The present itself is a set of presences. Here is the performance space, here is the meaning of the ritual, here is where Zai, the shaman, leads us.

The form and the experience / The form is the experience

For those who stopped at the superficial aspect of this performance, the sacral ritualistic appearance in the traditional sense, expressed by Kuning in its full force, has definitely prevailed.

And this is natural, because the superficial appearance is actually by itself a vehicle full of meanings. It is language, carrier of content and generator of sense. It is metaphysical and physical extension of a way of thinking, of expressed and generated reality. It is a gesture deeply rooted in an archaic tradition.

But Zai does not exhibit the form in itself. It is our gaze that aestheticises the on-going lived drama. That which Zai offers in a radically archaic way, is the eloquence of gestures matured over centuries, which give a name to pain, absence, detachment, abandonment. The shamanic gesture does not mean to recite, it means to experience.

Wind between the leaves

The choice of tradition and the choice of transgression, in relation to the linguistic and formal conformism of the present, are equivalent, as breaking elements. Because today tradition does not mean cultural continuity but, on the contrary, memory of a path broken by an overwhelming and homologating cultural model.

In his last poem written in Friulian dialect, Pasolini urges the young Phaedrus with these words: "defend, conserve, pray,"1 namely: discover the substance in the forms of your own culture and defend it, preserve it through regenerating it. Give new meaning to the sacred, in a broader philosophical sense, in its humanistic matrix devoid of any god. Perform acts of faith toward our fragility and imperfection, to understand our limits and give back their beauty.

The transgressor/caretaker Zai, indicates the way toward a small temple, -as the transgressor/caretaker Pasolini, or like other transgressors/caretakers did in their turn-, and that is called, Person, Memory, Sharing. It is a place that is many places, an ensemble of basic needs that form the basis of every communitarian process and any language.

The question, then, is to be able to practice everyone's own identity, which is the bearer of a language that gains value in the comparison with other identities and languages. We have to express ourselves in different languages, dialects soaked with universality. We must cradle the idea of the Babel, in which we live, and that invites us to live in the difference. We must gather ourselves in rituals that celebrate this substance, being together and understand also from others how we perceive and interpret the world.

Defend, protect, pray. As in the case of the nomads, who Zai has approached in one of his projects,2 or in the case of the people who had to leave their land after a catastrophe,3 the temple, the school, the square, the law, all are within the individuals themselves, and move with them. Zai finds and creates small momentary communities, he finds us and he leaves us, like wind passing through the leaves.

NOTES

1 - Defend, conserve, pray: from "Greetings and good wishes", the last poem written in Friulian dialect by Pier Paolo Pasolini (In: The new youth, Einaudi, 1975).

2 - Zai Kuning has stayed years with the Orang Laut, nomadic indigenous fishermen living in the Riau Archipelago for his on-going research.

Text by Sandrine Schaefer 

Liminality is frequently understood as being neither here nor there, an in between state that allows room for the ambiguous to take precedent. In the realm of anthropology, the liminal, also known as the marginal state, signifies the middle or transitional period endured in a ritual or rite of passage. The term has increasingly been used to attempt to describe the indescribable in performance art. Simultaneously, many performance artists strive to engage and explore liminality through their work. Within the context of the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, where the ritual body was named as part of the exhibition's theme, the liminal state was evoked in several live works, but most noticeably explored by two long durational pieces that unfolded throughout the week.    

  © photo by: Monika Sobczak | Vela Phelan, En Ti Confio. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

When encountering Boston-based artist Vela Phelan’s En Ti Confio, one enters a space that is illuminated by projector light emanating from a corner of the room. The images moving through the projection are pulsing with black and white shapes and pixels. The image of a statue on a television is one of the only recognizable forms coming through this intentionally skewed transmission. Objects, predominantly technological devices moving towards obsolescence, (tape recorders, record players, etc.) await action as they line the space where the wall meets the floor.  In front of the projection, an altar has been constructed on the floor. On top of the altar is a small bust similar to that which is seen in the projection. Carefully composed on the walls are a variety of black objects: a feathered headdress, bandanas, black plastic bags, etc. Most notably, several towels are hung throughout the space that bear the image of the infamous drug trafficker, Juaquin El Chapo Guzman. Some towels have been imprinted with an image of Jesus Malverde, a Mexican Saint who in life stole from the rich to give to the poor. Both of their eyes have been blacked out with lines of black fur. This visual treatment of these portraits simultaneously references abduction posters, while pointing to the physical resemblance between these two men.  

During the ART WEEK’s panel, Commemoration - Rites, Rituals and Daily Matters, Phelan points out the similarities in the faces of these two figures in Mexican culture and describes his fascination with them. Phelan explains that Jesus Malverde's body was left to rot in the street when he died because of his thievery, yet 100 years later, he has been resurrected into Sainthood and celebrated for taking from the rich to give to the poor. Through this story, Phelan suggests, that El Chapo, named the most powerful drug trafficker in the world and undisputed murderer, could one day, like Jesus Malverde, become a “Saintly Sinner.” This notion of the Saintly Sinner evokes liminality, as Malverde is suspended in an in-between state, his character is neither good nor bad. El Chapo is treated similarly in En Ti Confio. In the space that Phelan describes as a “video altar action,” El Chapo is not painted as a villain, but sits alongside Malverde to be contemplated within the realm of the liminal.

Phelan’s actions within the space also flirted with liminality. The actions were often spontaneous and unconfined by the times designated by the exhibition’s program. Many of the actions occurred when Phelan felt compelled to do something, creating an air of chance around the piece.  When Phelan did activate the space with his body, the actions always felt in service to the installation, in service to the “video altar.” Phelan stood with his fingers outstretched behind the altar on the ground. He walked around the space spraying rum from a cleaning bottle. He sat in a chair facing the altar and the projection in the corner. The modesty of these actions allowed the objects in the room to speak louder than the artist’s own body.

  © photo by: Monika Sobczak | Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston, Let Liminal Loose. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

Nestled between 2 rooms on the first floor of Palazzo Mora, a rotting fish is nestled between the feet of Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston, collaborating artists from Northern Ireland. The artists hold onto one another as they balance the fish’s dead weight between their feet and drag the fish across the floor. They are dressed similarly, wearing solid black that exposes their bare feet and bare heads. They are clearly individuals, but in this space, operating as a single being. This is pronounced by the shadow cast on the wall that makes it appear as if there is, in fact, only one body engaging in this action. In another action, MacLennan and Johnston stand back-to-back, palms face up, and heads pointed upwards. They each balance a single tissue on their face that gently captures minute vibrations produced by their breath. There are moments when this breath appears to be one breath, MacLennan and Johnston’s torsos expanding and contracting in unison. These slippages from two beings into one are common occurrences in this 5-day piece, titled Let Liminal Loose. 

In the influential essay, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage,” anthropologist, Victor Turner focuses on rites of passage practiced in several societies to examine the “sociocultural properties of the liminal state.”[1]  In order to talk through these properties, Turner uses the term the “transitional being” to identify individuals enduring the liminal state. Turner states that during the liminal period, “the transitional being, passes through a realm that has few to none of the attributes of the past or coming state.”[2] This realm that Turner speaks of can be felt in Let Liminal Loose, and therefore, transforms MacLennan and Johnston into transitional beings, and at times, a single transitional being. Although it is clear that MacLennan and Johnston have taken great care in developing Let Liminal Loose, it is also apparent that the artists remain open to explore what arises in the present moment. By protecting this open space, the artists succeed in the intention put forth in their artist statement, “to keep each situation direct and without contrivance.”

Exploring this realm where qualities of the past and coming state are unknown, is not only reserved for MacLennan and Johnston. Witnesses to their work are also suspended in this state of unknowing. Upon entering the room on one day, Johnston precariously holds lit candles in her mouth beneath a heavy wooden table that is precariously balanced on one log.  Meanwhile MacLennan drips hot wax onto the surface of the table. Various objects are scattered throughout the room (socks, trash, feathers, a box of tissues, branches, etc.) The space is filled with a constant state of action. On another day, Johnston and MacLennan are encountered, standing forehead-to-forehead. Their movements are modest and at times invisible to many viewers passing through the room. Nothing else is in the space except for a single flower petal between their feet. For the witness, there is no way of knowing what will occur from moment to moment, day to day. This unpredictability not only conjures the sensation that one is truly engulfed by the liminal, but also requires the audience to experience the work with heightened awareness. 

The way that time operates in the work is also responsible for requiring heightened and active witnessing. In this room, time is in a perpetual state of slowing and shifting. In one of the early days of the piece, the artists move the table across the space. The pace begins in a way that is congruent with MacLennan’s methodical wandering. Then, Johnston pulls and pushes the table abruptly. This is followed by the artists adjusting to a shared pace. Because the artists have created and protected a space where time unfolds in a way that is both unexpected and unforeseen, this action does not feel aggressive, nor disruptive. The action creates a necessary shift that makes visible Johnston and MacLennan’s understanding of how time lives in one another’s bodies. It is nearly impossible for witnesses to these actions not to consider their own physical time-consciousness. MacLennan and Johnston’s treatment of time, both with one another and with the audience, maintains a space that invites one of the most fascinating qualities of Let Liminal Loose: the creation of the perpetual encounter.

One of the most compelling images of the performance begins when Johnston places a log on her chest and attempts to balance it between the weight of her own body and the wall. The log repeatedly falls. MacLennan notices this struggle, takes the log and places it to his own chest.  Johnston stands, faces MacLennan and releases her weight into the log.  As they stand balancing against one another, the log quite literally, becomes a conduit between MacLennan and Johnston’s bodies. What is so profound about this action is that it is an encounter that can only be realized through a series of encounters. The action requires MacLennan’s ability to step outside of his own action to acknowledge Johnston’s desire, and Johnston’s openness to accept his proposal to adjust the action. This image of transfer and translation recurs throughout Let Liminal Loose and results in creating a perpetual state of encountering that invites an opportunity to contemplate the complexity of human relationships with space, time, and one another. 

[1]  Victor Turner, Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage, The Symbolic Analysis of Ritual, (Cornell Univesity,1967), 94. 

 Text by Sandrine Schaefer

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Wen Yau, Wish You Were Here. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

      When an artist undertakes an action blindfolded, it undoubtedly  makes them vulnerable to their audience. Although the removal of a sense allows the audience to experience a heightened empathic response towards an artist, the blindfold offers a far more complex experience. While blindfolded, an artist’s personal history with an action is exposed. If there is an immediate confidence while engaging in an action, we can assume that the action is one that they are familiar with. If there is hesitation, witnesses can assume that the action has been previously unexplored by the artist. When an artist is without sight, what is made visible, is the artist’s understanding of time, mediated through the chosen action. 

Installed in a room on the 3rd floor of Palazzo Mora the phrase “I want real universal suffrage” has been repeatedly and methodically written in Chinese on half of the walls. In this piece titled, Wish You Were Here, Hong Kong artist Wen Yau is crouched on the floor, blindfolded with the national flag of the People’s Republic of China and wearing a t-shirt that reads “I Heart HK.” Wen Yau continues to repeatedly write the phrase in charcoal on the other half of the space without the sense of sight. Over the duration of approximately 4 hours, the writing not only fills the walls, but also spills onto the floor. 

“I want real universal suffrage” is a phrase often used in protests of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in which Wen Yau is an active member. Upon Wen Yau’s arrival in Venice to create Wish You Were Here for the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, police cleared the site that the movement had occupied in Hong Kong for the past 3 months. Being disconnected from her community during such an important time resulted in Wen Yau being moved to tears while performing this blindfolded action. As she wrote, Wen Yau allowed her witnesses insight into her relationship to the phrase and the power it holds for her. 

The duality between the phrase written in an orderly manner next to the chaotic scrawling produced during Wen Yau’s blindfolded action furthers the complexity of the performance as it foreshadowed the piece’s ending.  Several days later, Wish You Were Here was continued when Wen Yau returned to Hong Kong. In the final action of the performance, Wen Yau walks blindfolded, around the government buildings once occupied by protesters.  As she traverses this location, she secretly writes “I want real universal suffrage” in places along her path. This action that was live streamed at the ART WEEK contextualizes Wish You Were Here in a way that otherwise could get lost in the magnitude of the exhibition. Through this action, the audience is reminded that although exhibitions like VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEKK and performance art festivals prioritize the gathering of artists from around the world to share work, these artists must return to the places from which they come to continue their practice. Wen Yau endures the action of blindfolded writing in one space, yet never abandons the space that has inspired this action.  The action cannot exist in Palazzo Mora or the former occupy site alone.  These contexts must be linked through Wen Yau’s own body for the piece to be fully realized. 

It is through this choice that Wish You Were Here serves as a refreshing example of the lineage that performance art shares with activism. The piece is made for an art-educated audience, protesters, and the public, and therefore, erases the boundaries between what is demarcated as "art action" and actions of the everyday. Furthermore, the blindfold illuminates the challenges of operating within the safety of an art-designated space vs. operating amongst an unknowing audience. 

  © photo by: Monika Sobczak | Alice Vogler, Liability of body. Language of liability. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

    The blindfold also ignited dialogue around everyday actions in the final action of Boston-based artist Alice Vogler’s Liability of body. Language of liability. With ease and confidence, Vogler sits blindfolded on top of a plinth and fluctuates between repeatedly injecting her arms with needles and dropping small cards that depict life size images of the needles that she is using for injection. Even to the witnesses who do not know that Vogler is a Type 1 Diabetic, diagnosed in childhood, they can recognize that this action is so familiar to the artist that she can even do it with her eyes closed.

On the first day of the 2-day piece, Vogler sits at a table that holds a mountain of white sugar. She methodically fills empty pill capsules to make placebos for pre-made pill bottles that are also placed on the table. The bottles contain labels like “optimism,” “luck,” “fascination,” and “more time”. As she fills each bottle her demeanor changes and it becomes apparent that she is infusing each pill with an essence of the word written on the bottle. In this action, Vogler wears a mask and gloves. Not only does this create a physical barrier between Vogler and the audience, she also refrains from making eye contact or engaging with those who enter her space. 

This changes dramatically in the second day of the performance upon the audience’s entrance into the space. Each audience member is greeted by an assistant and required to sign a waiver and release of liability. This form states that the undersigned knowingly assumes the responsibility of all risks and that they will not hold anyone affiliated with the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK responsible for any injury, disability or even death that could occur in the witnessing of the work. Those who refuse to sign the waiver are asked to leave. 

Once the form has been signed, the audience must navigate thousands of clear marbles that are pooling on the floor. As Vogler stands in front of another plinth that holds a large glass bowl containing the marbles, she dips her face into the bowl, takes a mouthful, and spits them onto the ground. This repeated action is unpredictable. Sometimes she spits the marbles one by one, sometimes she simply opens her mouth and allows the weight of the marbles to send them tumbling to the floor. Sometimes the spitting is gentle. Other times, she spits aggressively and the marbles bounce across the floor, hitting the legs of audience members. 

Like much of Vogler’s work, Liability of body. Language of liability is rooted in chance and choice and passively invites interaction. As Vogler spits marbles, another plinth presents the pill bottles that Vogler filled during the previous day alongside a bottle of water, a glass, and a cloth. As Vogler moves into her blindfolded action of injection, she lays out a paper explaining the side effects of sugar. The audience is never told to ingest the pills, simply offered a choice by positioning and suggestion. The majority of the audience ignore this subtle invitation until the moment that Vogler blindfolds herself. Once the artist’s eyes are covered people pool, like the marbles, around the pills and ingest. As this situation unfolds, witnesses also move close to Vogler’s body. Some photograph her, some observe her form, the needles and the cards at an intimate proximity. Regardless of the differences in how the interactions take shape, what is consistent, is that Vogler has created an experience that allows space for the audience to witness in ways that encourage collaborative viewing in which we all assume responsibility for our individual and collective safety.

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Marilyn Arsem, Marking Time. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

Collective and nuanced witnessing is also called upon in Boston-based artist Marilyn Arsem’s Marking Time. Over 7 days, Marking Time spans 24 hours in which Arsem explores the seen and the unseen, the living and dead. Installed in a room are two black chairs, one that holds a bundle of black fabric that emits a faint aroma of rose to those who get close enough. The room contains a constant and soft ticking of a clock. This causes many to become mindful of their own pace upon entering the room. In the beginning hours of the piece, Arsem stands with her back to the chairs and stares out of a window, she also dressed in black. As she watches what is happening outside of the building, her breath is captured on the surface of the glass and illuminates smudges previously placed on the pane. This is a subtle acknowledgement of the space’s history. The curious thing about encountering a body in front of, or behind glass, is that the observer is required to navigate their own reflection. Arsem’s choice to engage with this aspect of the architecture sets the tone for the next 7 days. Marking Time is about reflection and invites the audience to explore their own relationships to time and ways in which it is marked in its passing.

As Arsem peers out the window, an insect flies by and catches her eye.  Her curiosity ignites the curiosity of the others in the room. This is the first of many invitations for the audience to engage in a way that is unique within a traditional performance context. Some viewers stand and peer out other windows while others peak through a closet in the space that is slightly ajar. Many also occupy a close proximity to Arsem’s body. Her actions are modest and she often sits and stands in places in the room where the audience is gathered. In these moments, Arsem is not recognizable to all as “the performer.” This invisibility is shattered in the moments when Arsem looks around the room, engaging each person in eye contact. This tension between looking and being looked at continues to gain intensity throughout the weeklong duration of the piece. On the second day of Marking Time, Arsem introduces another black cloth and engages in various actions that include her covering and uncovering her body. In these variations of seeing and inviting herself to be seen, the cloth provides a similar function as the blindfold. Arsem’s actions with the cloth make her vulnerable, invite the audience to engage, and position time as the primary concept of the work, rather than something that is consequence or bi-product. 

Throughout the week, Arsem creates an evolving relationship with the cloth, the chairs, and the black bundle that sits on one chair. In the final days of Marking Time, Arsem reveals that the bundle contains stones. This is not revealed, however, until Arsem has engaged in an action of holding the bundle in her arms for an hour. In this provocative image of an enduring body, Arsem’s body visibly breaks down. Her limbs tremble softly as it becomes apparent that this mysterious bundle contains substantial weight.  This image adds an immense gravity to the actions that follow. 

In the final hour of the piece, Arsem lies on the ground, covered by her cloth. The stones have been hidden once again, under the other cloth that has been removed from the chair and gathered on the ground in a way that resembles another covered human body. Because Arsem made several artistic choices that positioned the audience alongside her, many chose to endure the full 7 days of Marking Time. These witnesses wear their personal investment in the piece in their body language and facial expressions.  Some lay on the cold ground with the two forms. Many cry silently. While Arsem offers her own covered body next to the visual suggestion of another, she is present, yet simultaneously she embodies the past and inevitable future of death that unifies us all. 

Text by Sandrine Schaefer

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Benjamin Sebastian, 3 Cycles of Otherness. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

My body trembles with a rush of adrenaline as the walls and floor begin to vibrate with sound. Next to a drum set, Benjamin Sebastian stands wearing a black t-shirt, a cock ring, freshly tattooed blood lines that read “FROCIO” (faggot in Italian), and a thick rope that connects a pair of large antlers to Sebastian’s anus. As the drummer (Alessio Breda) wails on the drums, Sebastian screams the word “WOLF” repeatedly while facing a wall where the word is written upside-down. His voice is at full capacity, yet muffled by the drums. Beneath, a scanner and computer are positioned on the floor. Color images of Sebastian’s scanned body litter the space. As the drumming drowns Sebastian’s voice, it also infiltrates the other long durational works happening inside the chambers of Palazzo Mora. This action is in stark contrast to the quiet constant sound that has endured throughout the week’s long durational works and causes the audience to swarm and disseminate. 

WOLF, a word significant in gay bear culture, is also FLOW, written backwards. This reads not only as a testimony for fluid identity, but also serves as an indication of the accumulating time-structure of the piece. 3 Cycles of Otherness uses unrelenting repetition to prioritize fragmentation as it unfolds over the duration of 3 hours for 3 days. This can be read through Sebastian’s use of sound that overwhelms and aggressively shifts the witnessing behaviors of the audience. As soon as the drumming starts, the witnesses in other parts of the building come to see what is happening.  Many who are already gathered in Sebastian’s room leave because the sound is so loud. Some cover their own ears, furthering the action of muffling. Fragmentation becomes even clearer in the other 2 actions of the piece. Sebastion offers his skin to a tattoo artist (Marco Gazzato) who repeatedly tattoos his body with a word often used as a derogatory slur. Through the repetition, the word FROCIO, like the word WOLF, shifts through various meanings. Sebastian follows this action by  pressing parts of his body onto the surface of the scanner. What is captured by the scan is then printed and scattered on the floor. 

We witness the accumulation of these three actions through the medium of Sebastian’s body: the images of his form mediated by the scanner that are in a state of gathering on the ground, the loss of Sebastian’s voice, and the word FROCIO, presented on the surface of his skin, simultaneously in a state of fading and becoming. All of these actions prioritize a body that is fragmented by the time structure, as each action is precisely divided during each hour of the performance.

   © photo by: Monika Sobczak | Bean, (m)other / the untitled (II). Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

In the same room, another 3-day piece was created earlier in the week by Sebastian’s collaborator, Bean. This piece, titled, (m)other / the untitled (II) served as a precursor to 3 Cycles of Otherness. Working with mantra and accumulating sound produced from the body that is then captured and mediated by recorded loops, Bean’s actions also invite sound to escape into the chambers of the space. On the 2nd day of (m)other, Bean’s body is positioned on the ground in a kneeling position, her head touching the ground. She repeats what sounds like the word “MASTER” over and over as she slowly moves into a standing and reaching gesture, pulling a black dress over her head. As her body expands, the word transforms from “MASTER” to “MASTOW” to “MYSTYLE,” etc. This process is recorded then played through speakers while she engages in other actions. This is played at a volume similar to the volume of Bean’s own chanting voice, complexifying the relationship between technology and human scale.  

The disconnection of the voice from the body is the most powerful use of the fragmented body in (m)other / the untitled (II), although Bean uses other strategies to create accumulating fragments. Bean wears custom-made gold nipple shields in the shape of stag antlers that are attached to her nude body with a thin chain. From afar, the jewelrey creates the illusion that Bean’s body is cut where the chain hits her skin. This serves as a constant visual reminder of the fragmented body. Throughout all of the actions, Bean’s is illuminated by a large projection spanning 2 full walls of a breast being manipulated to produce milk. As the audience gathers along the walls, their collective form appears to be showered by the fluid. 

(m)other / the untitled (II) oscillates between an acknowledgement of the surface body and the internal body, both through this larger than life projection and also in one of the most compelling actions of the piece. The center of the room is filled with old wooden laths. While crouching on the ground, Bean fills her mouth with a paste then sticks a piece of wood into her mouth while attempting to maintain eye contact with a member of the audience. Many look away from her after a few seconds, yet Bean remains in position until the paste has cured, at which point, she slowly releases the form from her mouth. The image could easily be equated with the voiceless/ silenced female body, yet Bean’s choice to engage with the audience in this way, turns this archetype on its head. The action acknowledges the time that it takes something to solidify and asks individuals in the audience to sit with the tensions that arise in this time. 

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Sarah-Jane Norman, Bone Library. Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

  Sarah-Jane Norman’s Bone Library works with fragmentation of bodies that are human, animal, and ghost. Upon entering Bone Library, the audience is confronted with an oppressive odor emitting from ground bone. As one navigates through plastic walls, they see tables filled with bone fragments from hoofed animals that are overrunning Norman’s homeland. In a takeaway text included as part of the piece, one learns about what Norman describes as the catastrophic impact that sheep and cattle farming has on the Australian environment, endangering native animals and compromising the conditions necessary for the growth of native plants. On the tables one can see that each bone has been carefully inscribed with a word from an Indigenous Australian language that has been classified as extinct. In this exercise in archiving, Norman engages in an action of resuscitating a “dead” language while asking the audience to collectively take on this responsibility with her. 

The smell of the room is so strong that it is difficult to spend time inside, yet Bone Library can be viewed from the third floor of Palazzo Mora. This point of view is ideal as it offers a view of the entirety of the space and the scale of the project and the impact it had on the audience over its 7-day duration. In the closing ceremony of Bone Library on the final day of VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, Norman offers the audience to take temporary custody of these bones. The room is packed with people eager to assist Norman in fully realizing this work. The ceremony begins with a “Welcome to Country,” a tradition where an elder gives a blessing before a cultural gathering in Australia. After Norman reads a letter written by an elder to offer this blessing, she invites the audience to choose a bone. Each bone is carefully wrapped and handed to each person with a certificate. By offering the bones into the care of people from across the globe, fragments of Aboriginal language are both scattered and preserved.  This action echoes what is stated in Norman’s words of welcome during the closing ceremony, “a language can never really die when there is someone left to utter it.”

The artists performing in the live exhibit select one favourite work amongst the permanent installation.

Zhang Huan's To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond

(Video of the Performance, 1997)

selected by Andrigo & Aliprandi

"This performance and poetic image is very interesting because it addresses that our natural environment needs our participation in order to help us: that we are all part of nature. It talks about the relationship and interaction between humans and landscape in an aesthetically compelling way which is beautiful to watch."

Zhang Huan, To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond. Performance, Beijing, China (1997). Courtesy of Zhang Huan Studio.

Zhang Huan makes art about the human condition. From his early, radical art performances to his more recent, large-scale sculpture and paintings made of temple ash inspired by his devotion to Buddhism, Zhang has set himself the ambitious task of plumbing the universal aspects of human nature. His work first came to prominence in the early 1990s for his performances involving nudity, endurance and pain. Some of this art was extreme, even by western standards, and often crossed the boundaries of acceptable public taste. In 12 M², a 1994 performance at Beijing's East Village, the artist covered his body in fish oil and honey and then sat motionless in a putrid public toilet, about 12 meters square in size, for an hour, allowing flies and insects to cover his body in protest at the living conditions.

Further socially-attuned performances followed. In To Raise the Water Level in a Fishpond (1997) he invited a group of itinerant workers -referred to colloquially in Chinese as a 'floating population' because they exist outside of the official government work unit structure- to wade into a fish pond to raise the level of the water through their shared body mass. Captured in photographs, the artist's performance gave weight and voice to this silent and invisible community.

"I invited about forty participants, recent migrants to the city who had come to work in Beijing from other parts of China. They were construction workers, fishermen and laborers, all from the bottom of society. They stood around in the pond and then I walked in it. At first, they stood in a line in the middle to separate the pond into two parts. Then they all walked freely, until the point of the performance arrived, which was to raise the water level. Then they stood still. In the Chinese tradition, fish is the symbol of sex while water is the source of life. This work expresses, in fact, one kind of understanding and explanation of water. That the water in the pond was raised one meter higher is an action of no avail."

by Lissi Sánchez

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini | installation shot, Zhang Huan (left), Rong Rong (middle) and Tehching Hsieh (right)

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Terry Smith in collaboration with Marita Isobel Solberg, The Foundling. Venice International Performance Art Week at Ca'Pesaro - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia (2014)

text by Karla Horvat Crnogaj

red rover red rover may I cross over?

only if you are wearing white

maybe if you are wearing red

not if you are wearing black

If you are filming scenes in a street, with only the legs of the passersby in the frame, the only faces that you are going to see are the ones from the children. Until you spot the child, the choice of the framing is puzzling for the observer, who then gets caught in the expression of a boy who is being led through busy city streets. These scenes followed the quoted verses, both projected on a museum’s ancient walls, starts the multi disciplinary performance The Foundling of the British artist Terry Smith in a special event of the ART WEEK held at Ca'Pesaro - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia. Sequences of music, video text and live performance overlap each other in a seemingly hermetic correlations, until those, just as the framing of the first video sequence, starts to make sense, as the member of the audience follow hints made of words, sounds and images that lead him through the layered story of the lost and the cast out.

In a play of modern and historical, from classical music scores to electronically induced rhythms, over images of modern night scenes of cities and historically burdened sites, to disturbing undertones of awaiting peril in children’s plays, Smith forms a tale of Dickensian presentation of the vulnerability of childhood, and children’s exposure to determination by their social context.

The abandoned child in the title is also a reference to the Foundling Museum (the work was primarily commissioned in a form of a video and sound installation by Gill Hedley for the Foundling Museum’s contemporary art program), institution dedicated to the history of The Foundling Hospital, founded in 1741 in London by the philanthropist Thomas Coram. The word hospital in its name indicates not medical services, but rather the offered hospitality for abandoned children. The play with the terms of lost and found woven into the structure of the performance is also an allegory of the birth tokens a lot of the abandoned children were left with – to leave the parent the insurance that they can later identify their child, if they ever look out for him. It is almost like an office for lost and found things, Terry told me afterwards, with an obvious acknowledgment of the tragic content of the chosen metaphor.

The performance, he also points out, is much about collaboration. The video images projected on three walls are accompanied by musical scores of Atari Mauri, live musical performance of two Italian musicians, Giorgio de Battisti and Mauro Sambo on violin and saxophone, the Norwegian singer Marita Isobel Solberg, as well as a live performance of two young performers, Micaela Leonardi and Samanta Cinquini, who developed a performance within the performance, titled Mirror, Mirror in which they face each other in a series of movements resembling children in play, like the Red Rover verse that introduced the performance are rooted in the British 19th-century children's group game.

As the images alter in the video, the sounds coming from the speakers change to a rhythmic score. The forest, the theme of the new chapter of the performance introduced with images of tree branches and roots, looms over the performers and the audience as the dark forbidden place that calls out to be explored but hides unnamed dangers. The two performers circle around the room, showing to the audience the most loathed sign of the childhood – an index finger that is waving left and right, the movement that forbids.

Underlined with sounds resembling a pouring rain, the title of the next chapter appears, “Cross Bones,” the original name for a burial ground in south London, called the “Single Woman's churchyard“ in historical documents dating from the 16th century, where “the single woman” is a euphemism for prostitutes, and which was by the end of the 18th century used as a cemetery for the poor. A plaque is placed on the cemetery stating that locals have created a memorial shrine, with the inscription “The Outcast dead R.I.P.,“ and the graveyard gates are decorated with messages, ribbons, flowers and other tokens, shown in a slideshow of photographs taken by night, while the eerie vocals of Marita Isobel Solberg sing the story of a lost girl in a snow, which is looking for home, “waiting for her mother caring and warm.“

London finds its counterpart in the performance in Venice – these are the birth towns of two musicians, Handel and Vivaldi, whose scores Smith deconstructs in his work. Handel himself was also closely connected to the Foundling hospital, where he used to perform annual benefit concerts. Venice, the birth place of Vivaldi, is introduced to the performance with night scenes from mostly empty streets and bridges, accompanied with deep-bassed roaring coming from the speakers and the dance of the violin and saxophone sounds, bouncing from the walls, among the enchanted audience.

When I grow rich say the bells of Shoreditch

The images of another part of London, mentioned in a popular nursery rhyme and a children's singing game announce the last chapter, bearing the name of a neighbourhood, whose original name after a legend was "Shore's Ditch", after the mistress of Edward IV, Jane Shore, who allegedly died or has been buried in a ditch around that area. The social component of this chapter is illustrated in the text written and recited by Mel Gooding, art critic, writer and exhibition organizer – “The poor and the drunkards curse every night, and their children are to misery born.“

Although for a moment prophesying the arrival of a modern Orpheus – “The blackening city has cleaned up its act somewhat, but up from the underground arrives one with a guitar or a bagpipe, with a song in his throat and hope in his heart.“ Gooding still soon returns to a more ominous tone that characterizes the overall atmosphere of the performance, abridging to the audience member the last hope for a more optimistic, or at least cathartic closure. Quoting the burial song from Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, sung by two boys over the dead body of another boy, he echoes the central motif of the Terry Smith's work:

Golden lads and lasses must like chimney-sweepers come to dust.

Those are the found and those are the lost.

Terry Smith, The Foundling (2014) 

December 18, 2014

Venice International Performance Art Week at Ca'Pesaro - Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia

The artists performing in the live exhibit select one favourite work amongst the permanent installation.

Vito Acconci's Indirect Approaches

(Video, 1973)

 selected by Regina José Galindo

  "I feel a profound admiration for the Performance Art done in the 70's, and so I have really enjoyed being able to watch the entire cut or original version of certain classic videos works, as they are usually exhibited as assemblages or edited fragments. I am interested, especially during times of chaos, in looking back at our past: it becomes crucial at these moments to reflect through history.

My favourite video of the permanent installation is that of Vito Acconci, during which he approaches the camera and whispers; it is wonderful. The entire atmosphere of the work has brought me back to that past time. 

I have to mention that I have felt a little thrown back by the extreme aesthetical manipulation of other documented works. I believe that the documentation of an art work should aim at a certain nudity that conveys its original essence- we shouldn't feel scared and tend towards post-commercialization of an art work. In my eyes, the artistic action constitutes the core; the rest is mere documentation and should thus be treated to convey the original work. For example, Alain Arias-Misson's The Public Poems presentation is too manipulated, in my opinion."

 © photo by: Samanta Cinquini | Vito Acconci, Indirect Approaches (1973)

  The influential, provocative and often radical art-making practices of Vito Acconci have earned him international recognition. Acconci has been a vital presence in contemporary art since the late 1960s; his confrontational and ultimately political works have evolved from writing through conceptual art, bodyworks, performance, film, video, multimedia installation and architectural sculpture. Since the late 1980s he has focused on architecture and design projects.

In the 1970s, Acconci produced a body of conceptual, performance-based video works that retain an astonishing originality and force more than thirty years later. Seminal works such as Theme Song  (1973) and The Red Tapes (1976) are among the major early works in the medium. Raw, crudely executed, and powerfully direct, Acconci's psychodramatic videos enforce an intensive dialogue between the artist and viewer, the body and the self, public and private, subject and object, absence and presence. Acconci used video as a vehicle for an intimate expression of self through the other, exploiting both the inherent immediacy and mediation of the technology.

In his video performances, the body is a site for a physical and psychological search for self, with language as the catalyst. Video is equated with the close-up, an intimate theatrical space for face-to-face confessionals and actions. Intensely personal, often to the point of exhibitionism, Acconci's stream-of-consciousness monologues and performative acts, documented in real time by a fixed camera, chronicle the insertion of the private self into the public sphere. 

Early tapes, including Pryings (1971) and Remote Control (1971), are body-based exercises in which controlled performance situations are used to explore the dynamics of interaction through self-concentration or manipulation. Increasingly psychological and language-based in their expressions of self, works such as Indirect Approaches (1973) and Theme Song (1973) are charged, one-on-one confrontations with the other as "you." Implicating the viewer as witness, voyeur, or accomplice, Acconci assumes a manipulative stance in aggressive or seductive encounters with the spectator, whose presence is integral to the works. Video allows him to undertake a rigorous examination of the "I" through the process of forming an intensely intimate yet mediated relation between artist and other.

Vito Acconci was born in the Bronx, New York in 1940. His work has been widely shown internationally, in one-person exhibitions at the Sonnabend Gallery, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, among many others. His work has also been shown in numerous group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale; Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Documentas 5, 6, and 7, Kassel, Germany; several Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial Exhibitions, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Kunstverein and Kunsthaus, Hamburg, Germany. Among his numerous awards are grants from the American Academy in Rome; Berlin Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst; Guggenheim Foundation; New York State Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Acconci Studio's architectural projects have included the United Bamboo Store, Tokyo, Japan; the Schacter Gallery, New York, and the artificial Mur Island, Graz, Austria, among others.

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Jill McDermid, Woman on a Cross (2014)

In lontananza compare una bianca visione che lentamente si muove sulla superficie lagunare. Solo il rumore dell’acqua interrompe il religioso silenzio, scandendo la nostra attesa e dando vita alla cerimonia surrealista. Onde lievi accompagnano la venuta, mentre occhi incuriositi ne seguono i movimenti. Con lentezza graduale la figura dell'artista americana Jill McDermid si conduce verso il pubblico, mentre un bagliore ne evidenzia i contorni: bianco è il suo vestito con drappeggi di pizzo.

Sempre più stretti si fanno gli spettatori all’arrivo della sposa. Con difficoltà sale sul pontile, i movimenti sono intralciati dal lungo drappo. Prima sale la croce, poi anche la donna. Si prepara per il cammino, faticosamente si carica il peso della croce in spalla. Trova a fatica il giusto appoggio per la costruzione lignea, aggrappandosi alla stessa in un movimento forzato e contorto. Il viso si trasforma in una maschera di strazio e sofferenza, ma allo stesso tempo procede tenacemente la figura continuando il percorso.

Il pubblico si fa sagoma ondeggiante al passare della croce. Ruvido è il suo raschiare sul suolo, prima sulla superficie in legno del pontile, poi sulla pavimentazione pietrosa della calle. Il grigio strascico della veste insegue lento l’estremità strisciante, facendosi inseguire dalla lenta processione. Contrastante è la figura femminile, paragonata al Cristo portatore della croce. Religiosa è l’immagine che vediamo, ma paradossalmente ed inusuale.

Istanti di interruzione accompagnano l’entrata nel giardino del palazzo. Sospiri di attesa esplodono tra gli spettatori, fissi sui movimenti ingombranti della donna. Procede il suo viaggio all’interno del cortile, salendo le scale come una statua in disfacimento. Pesanti sono i movimenti verso l’alto. Come una visione si staglia davanti ai nostri occhi la bianca figura, appoggiandosi sfinita alla croce verticale.

Un corpo senza vesti ora scende la scalinata a ritroso, cercando nel giardino l’albero del peccato. Accerchiata dal pubblico, la donna resta intrappolata nei propri pensieri, procedendo con movimenti calmi. Distesa a terra tiene gli occhi semi aperti, ancora ansimante dopo la corsa disperata.

Un altro varco è disegnato dal passaggio della donna di ritorno verso il proprio fardello ligneo. Mani tremanti ricoprono nuovamente il suo corpo vestendolo di un bianco candore ed è ancora una pesante salita ad attendere la donna turbata. Vibranti sono i suoi movimenti, sospinti da una forza interiore.

L’arrivo è il grande salone principale. Ancora nuda è la figura distesa a terra, rannicchiata sopra la croce. Il vestito voluttuoso le sta accanto, abbandonato e privato del significato matrimoniale, come rifiutato per la seconda volta. Qualche istante di pausa e la donna è di nuovo in piedi, bisognosa dello spettatore che l’accerchia. Le sue mani calde si avvicinano ad altre mani, altri visi, continuando a richiedere attenzione e cura, per colmare il vuoto, ricercare l’altro creando una relazione. Lenti sono i movimenti a piedi nudi, mentre i suoi occhi, le sue mani e le sue braccia catturano veloci istanti tattili. Quante mani, quanti occhi, quanti contatti, quanti legami, ma il ciclo ora termina, ma l’azione della donna ancora non si è conclusa.

Un’altra salita aspetta le sue braccia stanche, sempre più tremanti. La veste chiara ricopre ancora il suo corpo, accompagnando il cammino verso il secondo piano, come se la figura della sposa fosse strettamente collegata al simbolo della croce. Sempre più ansimante è il suo respiro, e il viso paonazzo si fa specchio del suo sforzo crescente.

La processione sta per avere fine, la croce ancora una volta è appoggiata in verticale, abbandonata con soddisfazione sul terrazzo del palazzo. Definitivamente spogliata, la donna lega alla croce la veste matrimoniale, la quale ricade disegnando onde voluttuose di raso e pizzo. La densa notte accompagna l’azione, quando braccia spalancate invocano l’infinito stellato, cercando risposte nel buio infinito.

testo di Chiara Dalla Rosa

Jill McDermid, Woman on a Cross (2014)

17 Dicembre, 2014 

Venice International Performance Art Week

jill McDermid

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini | Round Table: Perceptions of Womanhood in Performance Art

testo di Isotta Esposito

Un cerchio, o un ovale, che s'intrecciano tra i sentieri della femminilità, le figure chiuse, e poi aperte, al dialogo della tavola rotonda Perceptions of Womanhood in Performance Art della VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2014, di mercoledì 17 dicembre dalle ore 11.00 alle 13.00 presso Palazzo Michiel, sede d'incontro tra gli artisti ed il pubblico coinvolti durante la settimana performativa. Protagoniste del dibattito, che ha lasciato spazio al confronto in sala, Marilyn Arsem (Boston), Bean (Londra), Barbara Campbell (Sydney), moderate da Sandrine Schaefer (Boston).

Protagonisti del dibattito, in realtà, tutti gli esseri umani, perché quando si entra nell'ottica viva di un corpo che si astrae dalla realtà per diventare reale nell'arte, fruendone come veicolo naturale, si è prima di tutto esseri nel tempo presente dell'azione, in un luogo totale dell'atto. La femminilità non ne trascende, l'essere donna nemmeno. Dietro al termine "Womanhood" sono due i concetti che si annoverano nella traduzione in lingua italiana, - Femminilità ed -Essere Donna, in quanto tale, in quanto corpo presente, in quanto appartenente ad un'identità, in quanto appartenente al tutto. Barbara Campbell ha detto: "Quando mi hanno chiesto di parlare di -Womanhood non ho riconosciuto subito la parola, ho pensato - di che cosa andremo a parlare-?" Bean ha focalizzato l'attenzione al concetto all'interno della Performance Art, dicendo "Quando penso a me stessa come donna, non penso al mio genere, ma a che cosa fa il mio essere donna per l'arte, quindi la risposta sta nell'Arte", e Marilyn Arsem ha riportato l'attenzione al concetto di "Womanhood", "Quando si guarda in faccia il femminismo bisogna capire che ci troviamo molto lontani da quel momento storico/linguistico, la lingua è cambiata, ma il concetto, però, resta. Noi, quindi, che cosa facciamo? Questa è la femminilità e l'essere donna che dovremmo affrontare".

Il corpo, poi, ha iniziato ad essere il concept della tavola rotonda, 4 donne impegnate a guardarlo come immagine di solidarietà, provando a sviscerarlo nelle loro azioni performative. Barbara Campbell, parlando della sua performance Galatea (del 1996, portata anche alla VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK 2014), ha detto: "Ho cercato di rendere le persone scomode, di arrivare ad aver bisogno di spiegazioni, per farlo mi sono posta le domande - Che cosa devo fare a Venezia? Chi sono io? Qual è il mio intento? - e ho pensato che fosse quello di prendere e portare qualcosa all'altro, da un gesto ad una storia. Ho cercato di capire la complessità di questa storia, e il ruolo che stavo facendo era quello di mediatrice, cercare un'altra proposta. Ho voluto essere più italiana possibile, esaltando uno stereotipo, evidenziando l'uso del trucco, mettendomi lo smalto, ponendo comunque un rischio per me come donna e performer, nella scelta dell'immagine".

Bean ha proseguito il dibattito analizzando la sua figura di essere donna all'interno del lavoro, cercando di definirne la sua femminilità, attraverso il rispetto di se stessa, "Sono qualcosa che voglio rispettare, la femminilità la vivo anche con frustrazione, con un approccio aggressivo, perché fin dall'infanzia c'è qualcosa da combattere, qualcosa di veramente agonizzante" e a questo Marilyn Arsem, ermeticamente, ha aggiunto "Io li vedo come corpi mancanti", mentre Barbara Campbell ha focalizzato l'attenzione sul seno materno della performance di Bean (m)other (2014), ringraziandola "La maternità, l'angolo, il petto, il disgusto del latte che scende... tutte immagini per cui ti ringrazio". A questo Bean si è collegata parlando del suono performativo incluso in (m)other ed alla sua ricerca lavorativa, dicendo: "Non so se il sound fosse davvero importante o no, credo sia una mia politica ora, quella di non stare attaccata alle cose. E' un flusso continuo, per me si tratta di vivere e produrre nel flusso, senza pensare al suono e al resto, posso fuggirne" e Marilyn Arsem ha immediatamente aggiunto "Ma noi no!", Bean "E' vero", lo spettatore non fugge dal suono della performance, anche se la madre performativa lo fa. 

Il tempo è stato un altro aspetto trattato dalle 4 donne, tempo come necessità e come flusso passato-futuro, che viene vissuto nel presente, Barbara Campbell: "Quanto a lungo si può produrre un'anima?", e Bean ha trovato pace nella sua durational performance, "Ho avuto il tempo per esplorare le cose, i materiali, la ricerca, le azioni, lavorando a lungo, mi sono goduta il mio tempo, perché poi nella vita reale magari non ne ho così; il resto del mio tempo è dedicato al lavoro e ai bambini. Mi piace stare dentro alla performance, dentro al tempo". Marilyn Arsem: "Uso il tempo in una maniera particolare, devo trovare un modo per vivere in quel tempo, penso a quante volte lo perdiamo, lo attendiamo, ne abbiamo troppo, o troppo poco? Dentro a Marking Time (2014) ho vissuto il tempo come un'immagine di catene attorno a me, l'orologio a volte mi sembrava rotto perché tutto scorreva lentamente, altre volte invece andava velocissimo. Dobbiamo concentrarci sul lusso del tempo. Cerco di iniziare da ciò che ho lasciato alle spalle, ieri, le decisioni, e sto nel momento attuale, come esserci, e non è facile". Il problema del tempo, del genere, del pensare, delle teorie, dell'uguaglianza, del vivere le cose, un pubblico assetato di affrontare il femminismo, ne esce dissetato dalla femminilità e dall'essere donne. Un pubblico che si interroga tra l'essere o no femminista, e trova sottile pace ironica nell'intervento di una donna presente in sala: "Io non mi definisco vegetariana, perché a volte mangio un po' di carne, non mi definisco fumatrice, perché ogni tanto ho voglia di una sigaretta, non capisco quindi la domanda se io possa essere o no femminista, credo che abbia la stessa risposta, in ogni caso sento la mia femminilità e il mio essere donna."

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini | Sandrine Schaefer, moderator of the Round Table: Perceptions of Womanhood in Performance Art

The artists performing in the live exhibit select one favourite work amongst the permanent installation.

El Siluetazo (as part of Videoplay: Cuerpos en Disidencias)

Photographs and video works curated by Silvio de Gracia

selected by Enrique Ježik 

"I found it very difficult to choose just one work from the permanent exhibition as a preferred one. I like many particular works for a variety of reasons, amongst them, for example, Richard Serra's sculptural gesture included in the television movie Identification by Gerry Schum (1970), or the long term performances by Tehching Hsieh. However, I tend to appreciate more the works that deal with heavy political issues, like those of Artur Barrio or Regina José Galindo. Or El Siluetazo, an Argentinean artistic demonstration against the oblivion that the dictatorship was trying to impose on the kidnaped or detained by the state- then tortured, killed, disappeared. 

This work is very important in the visual history of Human Rights struggle in Argentina. However, I find that the way in which it is presented here is unclear and inaccurate, for it doesn't entirely transmit its impact on society. El Siluetazo was a project initiated by three artists, Guillermo Kexel, Julio Flores and Ricardo Aguerreberry, who wanted to give presence to the missing and disappeared by the state by drawing 30.000 silhouettes. They started the project as an anonymous movement, encouraging students and members from the Human Rights organizations to draw human, live size silhouettes and paste them on the streets of Buenos Aires, as if the bodies of the disappeared would come back. But something happened that expanded the idea: people started writing the names of their missing relatives on the silhouettes, and so giving an individual, personal presence to them. It was a massive reaction. A transformation occurred as the drawings became representations of individual persons. This action blew the impact and political messages to its peak, channeling the pain and rage of the Argentinians by actually bringing the identity of their missing beloved ones to the day light."

© photo by: Monika Sobczak | Martin Renteria, Erosion - Entropic Action (2014) Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

text by Karla Horvat Crnogaj

Imagine a combination between a straitjacket and climbing gear strapped to a body. It is a person in the world – the environment partly equips us, partly expects from us to conquer always new mountains. And ties us at the same time, pulling us to opposite directions, making it impossible for us to choose our own path. 

If looked at only from one side, the scene of the performance shows a body pulled by a diagonally positioned rope. But as the other half of the scene contains another equally diagonal rope, the resulting movement of the body is vertical instead of a diagonal shift through the space. The ropes – which can be seen as forces that navigate us – do not posses their own will, the direction in which they pull the body is influenced by weights, and other people inhabit the same space as the central figure of the performance. They put the ties on the body that gets moved around, they pull the weights and even puncture them, to let the intestines, silver white sand, flow out and reduce the strength that holds the performer’s body in the air.

Once the performer gets hold of solid ground, his ability to resist to the forces that move him increases. He pulls the ropes on his own until he is able to free himself from the ties, and in that moment he gains the possibility to control other bodies. He chooses a dummy to put in his place, a plush monster that can do about his new imposed situation as much as the performer could until that moment – nothing. Victoriously, the performer lets the dummy fly up, and fall down helplessly, with a bang on the floor.

To soothe us from our own restricted position of mere observers of a scene of deliberation of the performer and his enslavement of another body, the assistants hand out paper bags filled with the entrails of the weight bags. They scoop the spilled white sand with their hands and give them to the audience, who reaches out to receive their own portion of the weight of the world.

I put my hand in the paper bag, thinking of the erotic pleasure of Jeunet's Amélie. But the sand that lays in there is smooth and cold. Without any emotion or empathy.

Martin Renteria, Erosion - Entropic Action (2014)

December 17, 2014

Venice International Performance Art Week

The artists performing in the live exhibit select one favourite work amongst the permanent installation.

 Inder Salim's  We are all Women's issues (2003)

(Earth.Territory.Music. Work overview in photography and text, 2000-2014)

Selected by Melissa García Aguirre

"In all sincerity, I chose this piece because it documents a male addressing women’s issues. I am very moved by his gesture, and it has made me further reflect on gender limits." 

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini |  Inder Salim, Earth.Territory.Music. (2000-2014) Exhibition view at the Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

Born in Kashmir in the early 1960’s, Inder Salim has been producing conceptual and performance-based work in India for over 25 years. An interdisciplinary artist, he mixes poetry, photography, video, Internet interfaces and bodily interventions to push cultural boundaries and aesthetic norms. He is one of the mentors of the City-as-Studio program at Sarai/CSDS and is presently organizing Harkat@Sarai, a series of open-ended performance art events.

In 2010 he organized Art Karavan International, an international event that traveled through nine cities in the north, with 30 participants from India and abroad. Salim initially came up with the idea of working and developing new processes with artists and non-artists during this event. How do we make sense of the act that makes a performance? How do acts grow within the performer and around the performance? These are the questions that inspire Salim to conduct his periodical workshops, which result in site-specific works aimed at evolving imaginative processes open to the people.

Salim has foregrounded the role of art as activism in India. His work emphasizes society’s injustices and comments on the social environment that the artist encounters in his country. The artist intends the viewer to become acutely aware of how one’s surroundings function on a daily basis, and often places himself in the role of a humble servant to protest against inequality. In his performance We are all Women’s issues (2003), he wore the sentence painted on the back of his coat during a public intervention.

The documentation of this performance is part of a comprehensive work overview which includes a selection of some of Salim’s most striking activities in the last decade.

by Lissi Sánchez

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini |  Inder Salim, Earth.Territory.Music. (2000-2014) Exhibition view of the Venice International Performance Art Week

The artists performing in the live exhibit select one favourite work amongst the permanent installation.

Sigalit Landau's Barbed Hula (video, 1999)

and

Paul Wong's in ten sity (single channel edit of the live video performance, 1978)

Selected by Benjamin Seabastian

"I have chosen two works as I feel that they both, in dialogue with each other, speak of why they are integral to the over all representation of this exhibition (Venice International Performance Art Week) and performance/body/action art as a medium and history. I chose these two works for the particular bodies presented within the frame of the documentation (Asian and Female) as to highlight the mediums innate political potential to give voice to marginalized bodies. Both works see bodies impacted by oppressive constraint and/or casual/insipid violence. Finally, I chose more than one work as there is always more than one story/history and this treasured medium is the most dynamic of political tools to continually reiterate this often willfully ignored fact. "

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini | Paul Wong´s in ten sity (single channel edit of the live video performance, 1978) Exhibition view at the Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

© photo by: Samanta Cinquini | Sigalit Landau, Barbed Hula (video, 1999) Exhibition view at the Venice International Performance Art Week 2014

Barbed Hula features Sigalit Landau standing naked on an Israeli beach between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, dancing the hula with a hoop made of barbed wire. The work oscillates between profanity, with her playful swinging of the hoop, and religion insofar as the artist’s performance refers to ritual, flagellation and self-sacrifice. As in many of her video, installation, performance and sculpture works, the artist is concerned here with the deformation of the self, also against the backdrop of the current political situation in Israel. With this in mind, Barbed Hula also acquires a socio–political dimension through the implications of the border conflicts between Israel and Palestine symbolized by the barbed wire and juxtaposed with the vulnerability of the human body.

"This act of desensitization - spinning a hula hoop of barbed wire - I performed at sunrise on a southern beach of Tel-Aviv, where fishermen and old people come to start their day and exercise. The beach is the only calm and natural border Israel has. Danger is generated from history into life and into the body. In this video loop I am performing a hula belly dance. This is a personal and senso-political act concerned with invisible, sub-skin borders, surrounding the body actively and endlessly. All my work relates, in one way or another, to a loss of orientation. The pain here is escaped by the speed of the act, and the fact that the spikes of the barbed wire are mostly turned outwards."

Born 1969 in Jerusalem, Sigalit Landau studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (where she earned a BFA in 1993). She took part in an exchange programme at Cooper Union School of Art, New York, from 1990 to 1994. She currently lives in Tel Aviv. Since 1995, she has had many solo and group exhibitions in many international venues, such as the MoMA in New York, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

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in ten sity has been described as an endurance piece, a statement of emotional and physical intensity, a visual and vocal expression of a vein of thought and strain of energy. In the making of this work, Paul Wong climbed into the space and for 25 minutes, he bounced off the walls to the lyrics of The Avengers, Patti Smith and The Sex Pistols. According to a newspaper account, the performance culminated in an unscheduled near riot on the part of the audience who threw objects, and then themselves, into the space in an attempt to both reinforce and interrupt Wong’s statement of emotional and physical intensity.

"For the audience who viewed Wong’s performance at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the disturbance created by Wong’s bodily expression was both compelling and emotionally moving. The Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition space was staged with a four walled cube, 8'x8' which was padded internally. The four walls and the open ceiling were monitored by video cameras. Wong entered the gallery, climbed a ladder and disappeared into the blue cube. Personally I was very uneasy about the work at this time. Knowing that Fletcher was a close friend of Wong's who had only months before committed suicide, I felt perhaps Wong would attempt his own cathartic self-mutilation as we all watched. As Wong’s slow pacing and wall assaulting became more intense the audience picked up the momentum of his energies. The intensity of the performance became overpowering. Not knowing how far Wong has planned his own movements, one began to wonder if he was indeed going to bash himself into unconsciousness as some observers had predicted. The whole scene took on the aura of prize fight and we were watching dumb and stunned into a bank of monitors, hoping for a KO. 
- Arthur Perry, Vanguard Magazine,1979

Paul Wong (1954, British Columbia) is a Canadian multimedia artist. An award-winning artist, curator, and organizer of public interventions since the mid-1970s, Wong is known for his engagement with issues of race, sex, and death. His work varies from conceptual performances to narratives, meshing video, photography, installation, and performance with Chinese-Canadian cultural perspectives.