This page is meant as a platform for others (and myself) to follow my investigation into performance art. Read, listen and look around, check out what I'm up to and learn to love it or hate it... just be sure to find something interesting and feed me with comments!
I'm late I'm late I'm late... but what else is new right?
As I've fallen behind in my "part A" of researching the history of performance art and as a result have lost some steam I thought I'd start this week off with a quick stroll down featured-artist lane with a look at artist Carolee Schneemann. Born 1939 in Fox Chase, Pennsylvania Schneemann is known for mixing various kinds of media, most notably painting, performance and film. The themes most explored in her work by far are sexuality, taboo, and the body. For example, Schneeman often used her cat as a performer in her pieces. The cat would act as an observer, unfazed by the human interaction around it. Below is Carolee Schneemann's "Fuses", a film, collage, painting, performance sequence of the artist and her partner composer James Tenney (with the silent observer "Kitch" the cat).
So, my next question is, does Carolee Schneemann want us to be like Kitch the cat? I'm certain that Kitch is there to expose our taboos, to expose the vast difference between his reaction to sexuality and ours. Kitch isn't shocked, or disgusted, or turned on, or angered by what's happening in front of him, our feelings about the piece is obviously very different. Is Schneeman asserting that Kitch's reaction is more appropriate or healthy than ours? Or is she just asking us to recognize our own reaction??
The first "current" performance artist I would like to start thinking about this week is Vito Acconci. Born in New York (1940) Acconci began exploring art first through poetry but felt that the genre was too restricted, and eventually turned towards performance art. Playing with the ideas of private space versus public space and the connection between performer or artist and the audience Acconci's work has manifested itself in videos as well as live performances. He hoped to "define [his] body in space, find a ground for [him]self, an alternate ground for the page ground [he] had as a poet."
Some of Acconci's most famous pieces include the public performance Seedbed (which Marina Ambramovic later reenacted in her work "Seven Easy Pieces") and also the video performance Undertone. This week I'm going to think about both of them. Below I'm posting a video excerpt from Undertone as well as the written directions for the performance of Seedbed (pictured in top right corner).
Seedbed “Room A: Activated on Wednesday and Saturday The room is activated by my presence underground, underfoot – by my movement from point to point under the ramp. The goal of my activity is the production of seed – the scattering of my seed throughout the underground area. (My aim to concentrate on my goal, to be totally enclosed within my goal.) The means to this goal is private sexual activity. (My attempt is to maintain the activity throughout the day, so that a maximum of seed is produced; my aim is to have constant contact with my body so that a maximum of seed is produced; my aim is to have constant contact with my body so that an effect from my body is carried outside.) My aids are the visitors to the gallery -- in my seclusion, I can have private Images of them, talk to myself about them: my fantasies about them can excite me, enthuse me to sustain – to resume – my private sexual activity. (The seed ‘planted’ on the floor, then, is a joint result of my performance and theirs.)”
Masturbation!! It's foreign to most of us that this completely private act could ever be made so public. Yet, in both of these pieces Acconci blurs the line between fantasy and reality and also between private and public space. In Seedbed Acconci physically masturbates beneath the floorboards of a ramp and the "audience" in the gallery can hear his words (essentially his fantasies about them walking above him) over loudspeakers. The audience (however unwilling they may be) become just as much of a subject within the art as Acconci himself is. In Undertones Acconci forces the viewer to become part of his fantasy, drawing us into his head and asking us to visualize for ourselves the things he's saying.
The seed Acconci produces during Seedbed and the joint fantasy that is created during Undertones both seem to be products of Acconci's performances that rely fully on audience participation. So this leaves me wondering: Can there be performance art without audience? And is this the same for other art forms? I'm pretty sure theater productions can (and probably have) been performed in the absence of audience. If nobody bought tickets to a broadway show it would still go on and still be considered a broadway show. The same for concerts, operas, paintings, sculptures... they can exist in the absence of an audience. This, I think, is where performance art differs.
If Acconci was laying beneath the floorboards in a closed gallery masturbating would this be a work of art or just self gratification? If Acconci had recorded Undertones and chosen not to make it available to audiences or had spoken to himself rather than the viewer during the video would it still be art or would it constitute a home movie? If Acconci had recorded Undertones and distributed but it was never watched by somebody is it still art? Or does, in the case of performance art, the art necessitate audience participation? Can we ever just look at performance art or just think about it, or are we forced (knowingly or not, willingly or not) to become part of the art itself?
I would argue that in order for both Seedbed and Undertones to "work" the audience has to be engaged and forced to take part. Any other thoughts??
In my ideal world where everything runs in one-week long segments I had planned to be done with my initial phase of investigation into the history of performance art, and thus done investigating Futurism as of today. Well, guess what!? I'm not. I somehow got the idea that I should read every Futurist Manifesto that I could get my hands on and as a result I've read the chapter on Futurism from Roselee Goldberg's book "Performance Art" and have also read the following:
The Futurist Manifesto
Manifesto of the Futurist Painters
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Painting
Technical Manifesto of Futurist Sculpture
Manifesto of Futurist Musicians
Futurist Manifesto of Lust
Rather than give you a summary of each of these (which you could get if you read them as they're all quite short) I think it would be more useful to express what I think I might know about Futurism.
It seems that Futurists were very much interested in the modern, the industrial, the anti-academic, and anti-traditional. A theme that I find in each of these manifestos (that Goldberg has also hinted at) is the idea that the old is not necessarily bad, but that by attempting to imitate the traditional "good art" we desecrate it. In the words of Boccioni we "prostitute" artistic geniuses by attempting to reproduce them. Expressed strongly in all of these Manifestos and performances is an admiration for war and destruction. Also Futurists were completely unconcerned with appreciation of their art (although they were still concerned with audience reaction, just in a different way). For instance, Marinetti wrote a manifesto on "The Pleasure of being booed" claiming that an artist must, in a sense, "hate the audience". A happy audience was considered by Futurists an audience of "stupid voyeurs", who were probably looking at traditional art by artists who had merely imitated the masters.
Technically, these ideas manifest themselves in artwork. In painting and sculpture the idea of a "subject" was highly criticized and fixed moments were seen as impractical and not worth reproduction. A person is never actually still when you're painting them or creating a sculpture in their likeness. They are constantly moving and blending with their surroundings. Nothing is ever one color, but tints and shades of a color. Sculpture especially played with lines between main "subjects" and their surroundings. According to Boccioni "no one can deny any longer that one object continues at the point another begins, and that everything surrounding our body... intersects it and divides it into sections by forming an arabesque of curves and straight lines." Similar concepts can be seen in Carlos Carra's painting Man On Horse (Below)
Boccioni's sculpture Unique forms of continuity in Space (above) is another example of Futurist art that played with the lines between object, subject, and it's background/space.
Since I'm extending my mini-investigation into Futurism as the roots of Performance Art I will spend next week finishing the Futurist Manifestos that I can find (hints as to any I haven't listed would be greatly appreciated) and trying to look especially into music, dance, and theater in Futurism. The manifestos I will be reading in this next week will include:
The Art of Noise
The Painting of Sounds, Noises, and Smells
The Futurist Reconstruction of the Universe
War the World's Only Hygiene
The Futurist Cinema
A Slap in the Face of Public Taste
The Futurist Universe
Abstract Cinema- Chromatic Music
Destruction of Syntax- Imagination without strings- Words-in-Freedom
By next wednesday I hope to have a better idea of what Futurism is via these manifestos and also to have an updated "reading list" that includes all things I have read thus far. To accompany my "better idea" about Futurism I hope to have either a short paper (more put together than a blog entry) or some other means of putting together and expressing my thoughts about futurism beyond these entries.
Also (as promised) I will be including in this weekly blog an update about a more "current" performance artist that I'm interested in (bio, work, ideas, etc). This week our "featured artist" if you will, will be Vito Acconci. Look for a post on him before this weekend!!
"The best thing about the term 'performance artist' is that it includes just about everything you might want to do" -Laurie Anderson
Anderson's statement definitely isn't the easiest place to start getting intimate with performance art. But nonetheless it's probably the truest way to define it. As a brand new patron of this scene I'm coming at performance art (past and present) with the full zeal of the convert that I am. As of now everything interests me and most of it blows my mind. I'm assuming that as I push harder I'll find something more specific than that but for now it is what it is; I'm passionately in love with performance art and I want to know it see it feel it as much as I can.
Since I'm interested in the roots of performance art and want to know where it came from but I can't keep my greedy hands off of what's happening in the current movement I'm going to study both simultaneously. Think going home to meet the family but discretely (or indiscreetly) making out in the bathroom.
My plan is to psuedo-systematically move through the artistic-literary-social movements that eventually spawned what we now know as Performance Art, starting with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's publication of "The Futurist Manifesto" in 1909 and then moving into constructivism, Dada and Surrealism. Eventually I'll end up in the realm of "Living Art" and then it just gets messier from there.
I know this sounds like a history class but trust me that's not nearly all (remember the bathroom). While admittedly only dabbling in each of these movements I'll be jumping head first into performance art; what it is now, what it was then, how its changed, who I like, what I don't etc.
What you can expect from this blog is A) summaries of what I've been feeling out about the roots and evolution of pre-performance art movements as well as B) links, photos and videos of pieces/artists that I'm obsessing over at the moment. Part A will be chronological and systematic while part B will be a gigantic wonderful mess of everything I find mesmerizing about performance art. My own interpretations and reflections of pieces I've seen (online, in print or in person) will also play a huge part in all of this.
Now, I'm sure you're wondering what I want from you... Whether you're a fellow SMC colleague (faculty friends you count too!) or you've stumbled onto this blog and it interests/enrages you, PLEASE COMMENT! Argue with me, extol me, challenge me, suggest artists, annoy me, anything as long as it communicates what you think/feel about what you're experiencing here.
Are we on the same page here? Assuming so, I'll leave you with one of the pieces that started this whole investigation for me. Here is Chris Burden's 1973 piece "Through the Night Softly"
