Wednesday, 14 May 2008
An essay on Paul Harrison and John wood
John Wood and Paul Harrison- The Odd Couple
Claire Doherty
Estragon: What shall we do now?
Vladimir: While Waiting.
Estragon: While Waiting.
(Silence)
Vladimir: We could do our exercises.
Estragon:Our movements.
Vladimir: Our elevations.
Estragon: Our relaxations.
Vladimir: Our elongations.
Estragon: Our relaxations.
Vladimir: To warm us up.
Estragon: To calm us down.
Vladimir: Off we go.
(Vladimir hops on one foot to the other. Estragon imitates him.)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot[1]
Are Wood and Harrison alter-egos for Estragon and Vladimir, Beckett’s existentialist anti-heroes condemned to wait for Godot? Are their ‘elevations’, ‘relaxations’ and ‘elongations’ similarly marking time, one small death after another? Certainly their procedures share the same apparent futility of Beckett’s piece of Absurdist theatre. They are baffling, inconclusive, yet deeply compelling. Enacting a series of choreographed experiments in silence, within the frame of a white void, Wood and Harrison remove themselves from time and place. Narrative is strictly contained within the parameters of each exercise and becomes cyclic, like the fate of Beckett’s protagonists, as each climax or denouement is replayed on a continuous loop. The artists assume random parts. They are victim and conspirator. They are stooge and hoaxer. They are the odd couple.
The comparison with Beckett is widely appreciated by admirers of Wood and Harrison’s work[2]. Having developed their practice collaboratively since 1993, it would appear that their brand of physical theatre has changed little in essence over the past nine years. For example, Table (1993), a video work produced after graduating from art school in Bath, shows them jumping together onto a trestle table and trying to stay on board whilst minimising wobble. It bears a close resemblance to the mutual dependence and agility required in the recent Semi-Circle (2001). But just as each of the works produced for the exhibition Twenty Six (Drawing and Falling Things) required an elaborate process of refining from sketches, storyboarding, set-design, rehearsal to post-production, so too the bristling co-dependency in Table has been heightened for Semi-Circle. The sculptural quality of the object onto which they climb has been perfected and their gestures and facial expressions, attire and timing have been fine-tuned through numerous exercises, so that only that which is absolutely necessary remains. It is this precise economy of means, this significant absence, which links them directly to Beckett.
To many viewers, they are not just Estragon and Vladimir, however, but rather the everyman double-act. (“At this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us[3].”) They share the self-parody of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They bring to mind the slapstick partnerships of early 20th century film and music hall. They epitomise the, “if at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again,” tactics of Keaton, Laurel and Hardy. Now and again they even venture into the mutually treacherous territory of Hope and Crosby, Morecambe and Wise. As members of this slapstick lineage, their physical comedy requires them to be masters of timing, uninhibited by potential danger and most significantly, poker faced.
The immediate impact of watching a Wood and Harrison video work (no single sequence lasts longer than three minutes – Jo to confirm!) is without doubt the physical nature of their endeavours – the ways in which their individual (or joint) uniform presence addresses each given obstacle. Gravity is the constant against which their bodies and/or objects are variously hurled, pulled, squashed and dropped. One could apply to their work a recent comparison of artist Bruce Nauman and Samuel Beckett, “(their work) is held or called by the ground. In both artists’ work, gravity exerts its pull everywhere, though not always visibly. As with all human beings, the ground-ward tug effects or exerts (as an accidental by-product) shapeliness, grace and balance, even as it deforms those things, pulling them into disorganisation, flatness or comic indistinction[4].”
Similarities can certainly be drawn between Wood and Harrison’s obsessive/compulsive behaviour with that of Nauman. In particular, video and audio documentation of his studio-based performances of the late 1960s[5]. Nauman described his art-making process as, “I was trying to see if I could make art […] that was just there all at once. Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down[6].” (The spirit of slapstick once again.) It is this apparent effortlessness that belies a complex pre-production process in Wood and Harrison’s practice. Extraneous detail is stripped away, leaving the bare bones of each occurrence – Door Marking Floor, Box Test, Breeze Block, Ladder, Handle/Rope (it does what it says on the tin).
Wood and Harrison’s geometric drawings bear a close resemblance to Nauman’s pencil studies for performances such as Untitled (Study for Slow Angle Walk) (1968-69)[7]. John and Paul, the double-act – like Nauman the iconic conceptual artist – begin to disappear in these sketches. What remains is a sequence of arrows and rudimentary stick figures. Yet, cast as art objects in their own right, rather than preparatory studies, these drawings begin to give us an insight into the rationale behind Wood and Harrison’s work, beyond the superficial similarities to comedy double-acts. They are animated hieroglyphs, premonitions of premeditated accidents in space and time. As one moves from one screen to the next in Twenty-Six (Drawing and Falling Things), the characteristics of the individual (whether Wood or Harrison), as in the drawings, become less important. It is here that their work departs from Nauman’s performance pieces and crucially from the self-representational work of their contemporaries.
In this new body of work, the artists have distilled the movements of slapstick, coaxing the viewer with a nod to familiar comic scenarios. They have then erased extraneous detail so that the viewer is drawn to observe the monitor as a consistent two-dimensional surface on which they set in motion a series of three-dimensional actions. Wood and Harrison’s works are not documentations of performances, but rather single screen investigations in time and space. They are drawings. They are sculpture. They are paintings. They are theatre entirely without spectacle. They are certainly about the relationship between two figures, but also between those odd couples of form and line, perception and perspective, the body and the void. Each scenario is a small death, an inconclusive ending, that achieves a moment of at which as Nauman hoped, “art is there all at once” and then it is lost…until the next time.
Notes
fn1. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot in The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber & Faber, London and Boston, 1990, p. 11.
fn2. See for example, Charles Esche, ‘Nohow On’, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Film and Video Umbrella minigraph, ellipsis, London, 2000, pp. 7-15
fn3. Estragon in Waiting for Godot, op. cit. p. 13
fn4. Steven Connor, ‘Shifting Ground’, Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman, 2000, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, pp. 80-7. Their touring exhibition Obstacle Course and Other Works (1999) was perhaps the site at which this aspect of the work became most apparent.
fn5. See Bruce Nauman, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, in particular Gijs van Tuyl, ‘Human Condition/Human Body’, pp. 60-75, Marcia Tucker, ‘PheNAUMANology’, pp. 82-87 and Willoughby Sharp, ‘Interview with Bruce Nauman’, pp. 88-97.
fn6. Bruce Nauman, 1987 in Willoughby Sharp, op. cit.
fn7. Also known as Beckett Walk Diagram
Bibliographical Information:
Originally published in John Wood & Paul Harrison, Chisenhale, 2002
Claire Doherty
Estragon: What shall we do now?
Vladimir: While Waiting.
Estragon: While Waiting.
(Silence)
Vladimir: We could do our exercises.
Estragon:Our movements.
Vladimir: Our elevations.
Estragon: Our relaxations.
Vladimir: Our elongations.
Estragon: Our relaxations.
Vladimir: To warm us up.
Estragon: To calm us down.
Vladimir: Off we go.
(Vladimir hops on one foot to the other. Estragon imitates him.)
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot[1]
Are Wood and Harrison alter-egos for Estragon and Vladimir, Beckett’s existentialist anti-heroes condemned to wait for Godot? Are their ‘elevations’, ‘relaxations’ and ‘elongations’ similarly marking time, one small death after another? Certainly their procedures share the same apparent futility of Beckett’s piece of Absurdist theatre. They are baffling, inconclusive, yet deeply compelling. Enacting a series of choreographed experiments in silence, within the frame of a white void, Wood and Harrison remove themselves from time and place. Narrative is strictly contained within the parameters of each exercise and becomes cyclic, like the fate of Beckett’s protagonists, as each climax or denouement is replayed on a continuous loop. The artists assume random parts. They are victim and conspirator. They are stooge and hoaxer. They are the odd couple.
The comparison with Beckett is widely appreciated by admirers of Wood and Harrison’s work[2]. Having developed their practice collaboratively since 1993, it would appear that their brand of physical theatre has changed little in essence over the past nine years. For example, Table (1993), a video work produced after graduating from art school in Bath, shows them jumping together onto a trestle table and trying to stay on board whilst minimising wobble. It bears a close resemblance to the mutual dependence and agility required in the recent Semi-Circle (2001). But just as each of the works produced for the exhibition Twenty Six (Drawing and Falling Things) required an elaborate process of refining from sketches, storyboarding, set-design, rehearsal to post-production, so too the bristling co-dependency in Table has been heightened for Semi-Circle. The sculptural quality of the object onto which they climb has been perfected and their gestures and facial expressions, attire and timing have been fine-tuned through numerous exercises, so that only that which is absolutely necessary remains. It is this precise economy of means, this significant absence, which links them directly to Beckett.
To many viewers, they are not just Estragon and Vladimir, however, but rather the everyman double-act. (“At this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us[3].”) They share the self-parody of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They bring to mind the slapstick partnerships of early 20th century film and music hall. They epitomise the, “if at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again,” tactics of Keaton, Laurel and Hardy. Now and again they even venture into the mutually treacherous territory of Hope and Crosby, Morecambe and Wise. As members of this slapstick lineage, their physical comedy requires them to be masters of timing, uninhibited by potential danger and most significantly, poker faced.
The immediate impact of watching a Wood and Harrison video work (no single sequence lasts longer than three minutes – Jo to confirm!) is without doubt the physical nature of their endeavours – the ways in which their individual (or joint) uniform presence addresses each given obstacle. Gravity is the constant against which their bodies and/or objects are variously hurled, pulled, squashed and dropped. One could apply to their work a recent comparison of artist Bruce Nauman and Samuel Beckett, “(their work) is held or called by the ground. In both artists’ work, gravity exerts its pull everywhere, though not always visibly. As with all human beings, the ground-ward tug effects or exerts (as an accidental by-product) shapeliness, grace and balance, even as it deforms those things, pulling them into disorganisation, flatness or comic indistinction[4].”
Similarities can certainly be drawn between Wood and Harrison’s obsessive/compulsive behaviour with that of Nauman. In particular, video and audio documentation of his studio-based performances of the late 1960s[5]. Nauman described his art-making process as, “I was trying to see if I could make art […] that was just there all at once. Like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat. Or better, like getting hit in the back of the neck. You never see it coming; it just knocks you down[6].” (The spirit of slapstick once again.) It is this apparent effortlessness that belies a complex pre-production process in Wood and Harrison’s practice. Extraneous detail is stripped away, leaving the bare bones of each occurrence – Door Marking Floor, Box Test, Breeze Block, Ladder, Handle/Rope (it does what it says on the tin).
Wood and Harrison’s geometric drawings bear a close resemblance to Nauman’s pencil studies for performances such as Untitled (Study for Slow Angle Walk) (1968-69)[7]. John and Paul, the double-act – like Nauman the iconic conceptual artist – begin to disappear in these sketches. What remains is a sequence of arrows and rudimentary stick figures. Yet, cast as art objects in their own right, rather than preparatory studies, these drawings begin to give us an insight into the rationale behind Wood and Harrison’s work, beyond the superficial similarities to comedy double-acts. They are animated hieroglyphs, premonitions of premeditated accidents in space and time. As one moves from one screen to the next in Twenty-Six (Drawing and Falling Things), the characteristics of the individual (whether Wood or Harrison), as in the drawings, become less important. It is here that their work departs from Nauman’s performance pieces and crucially from the self-representational work of their contemporaries.
In this new body of work, the artists have distilled the movements of slapstick, coaxing the viewer with a nod to familiar comic scenarios. They have then erased extraneous detail so that the viewer is drawn to observe the monitor as a consistent two-dimensional surface on which they set in motion a series of three-dimensional actions. Wood and Harrison’s works are not documentations of performances, but rather single screen investigations in time and space. They are drawings. They are sculpture. They are paintings. They are theatre entirely without spectacle. They are certainly about the relationship between two figures, but also between those odd couples of form and line, perception and perspective, the body and the void. Each scenario is a small death, an inconclusive ending, that achieves a moment of at which as Nauman hoped, “art is there all at once” and then it is lost…until the next time.
Notes
fn1. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot in The Complete Dramatic Works, Faber & Faber, London and Boston, 1990, p. 11.
fn2. See for example, Charles Esche, ‘Nohow On’, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Film and Video Umbrella minigraph, ellipsis, London, 2000, pp. 7-15
fn3. Estragon in Waiting for Godot, op. cit. p. 13
fn4. Steven Connor, ‘Shifting Ground’, Samuel Beckett, Bruce Nauman, 2000, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, pp. 80-7. Their touring exhibition Obstacle Course and Other Works (1999) was perhaps the site at which this aspect of the work became most apparent.
fn5. See Bruce Nauman, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London, 1998, in particular Gijs van Tuyl, ‘Human Condition/Human Body’, pp. 60-75, Marcia Tucker, ‘PheNAUMANology’, pp. 82-87 and Willoughby Sharp, ‘Interview with Bruce Nauman’, pp. 88-97.
fn6. Bruce Nauman, 1987 in Willoughby Sharp, op. cit.
fn7. Also known as Beckett Walk Diagram
Bibliographical Information:
Originally published in John Wood & Paul Harrison, Chisenhale, 2002
John Wood and Paul Harrison
The twenty-six works, which varied in duration from twenty seconds to three minutes, featured either Wood or Harrison performing a series of simple, deadpan gestures, using a range of objects - from doors to life jackets, chairs to platforms and boats to breeze blocks. These performative packages used the human body as a tool for exploring rhythm, synergy and spatial boundaries.
John Wood and Paul Harrison have been making collaborative video work since 1993. Their practice operates across the realms of performance, sculpture, installation and dance, and simultaneously alludes to the worlds of the comic and the cartoon. At the same time, their work essentially becomes research; their specialisation is the size, scale and movement of the body in relation to architectural environments, which the artists typically construct themselves.
John Wood and Paul Harrison have been making collaborative video work since 1993. Their practice operates across the realms of performance, sculpture, installation and dance, and simultaneously alludes to the worlds of the comic and the cartoon. At the same time, their work essentially becomes research; their specialisation is the size, scale and movement of the body in relation to architectural environments, which the artists typically construct themselves.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
john balessari text
His work often attempts to point out irony in contemporary art theory and practices or reduce it to absurdity. His art has been featured in more than 120 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe.
Arbitrary games
Baldessari has expressed that his interest in language comes from its similarities in structure to games, as both operate by an arbitrary and mandatory system of rules. In this spirit, many of his works are sequences showing attempts at accomplishing an arbitrary goal, such as Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square, in which the artist attempted to do just that, photographing the results, and eventually selecting the "best out of 36 tries", with 36 being the determining number just because that is the standard number of shots on a roll of film.
Pointing
Much of Baldessari's work involves pointing, in which he tells the viewer not only what to look at but how to make selections and comparisons, often simply for the sake of doing so. Baldessari critiques formalist assessments of art in a segment from his video How We Do Art Now, entitled "Examining Three 8d Nails", in which he gives obsessive attention to minute details of the nails, such as how much rust they have, or descriptive qualities such as which appears "cooler, more distant, less important" than the others.
Baldessari's Commissioned Paintings series took the idea of pointing literally, after he read a criticism of conceptual art that claimed it was nothing more than pointing. Beginning with photos of a hand pointing at various objects, Baldessari then hired amateur yet technically adept artists to paint the pictures. He then added a caption "A painting by [painter's name]" to each finished painting. In this instance, he has been likened to a choreographer, directing the action while having no direct hand in it, and these paintings are typically read as questioning the idea of artistic authorship. The amateur artists have been analogized to sign painters in this series, chosen for their pedestrian methods that were indifferent to what was being painted.
"If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art."
Arbitrary games
Baldessari has expressed that his interest in language comes from its similarities in structure to games, as both operate by an arbitrary and mandatory system of rules. In this spirit, many of his works are sequences showing attempts at accomplishing an arbitrary goal, such as Throwing 4 Balls in the Air to Get a Square, in which the artist attempted to do just that, photographing the results, and eventually selecting the "best out of 36 tries", with 36 being the determining number just because that is the standard number of shots on a roll of film.
Pointing
Much of Baldessari's work involves pointing, in which he tells the viewer not only what to look at but how to make selections and comparisons, often simply for the sake of doing so. Baldessari critiques formalist assessments of art in a segment from his video How We Do Art Now, entitled "Examining Three 8d Nails", in which he gives obsessive attention to minute details of the nails, such as how much rust they have, or descriptive qualities such as which appears "cooler, more distant, less important" than the others.
Baldessari's Commissioned Paintings series took the idea of pointing literally, after he read a criticism of conceptual art that claimed it was nothing more than pointing. Beginning with photos of a hand pointing at various objects, Baldessari then hired amateur yet technically adept artists to paint the pictures. He then added a caption "A painting by [painter's name]" to each finished painting. In this instance, he has been likened to a choreographer, directing the action while having no direct hand in it, and these paintings are typically read as questioning the idea of artistic authorship. The amateur artists have been analogized to sign painters in this series, chosen for their pedestrian methods that were indifferent to what was being painted.
"If I saw the art around me that I liked, then I wouldn’t do art."
Active for over three decades, she has recently begun to describe herself as the “grandmother of performance art.”
Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
“Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” (Kaplan, 9)
WORKS
Rhythm 10, 1973
Abramovic performed the Russian game involving stabbing knifes between each of her fingers to create a rhythm. The sounds of this action was recorded and then played back . During this action each time her fingers were cut, one of ten knifes was swapped. Recording of the sounds were made and then the action was replicated with the same mistakes.
Rhythm 0, 1974
To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.” (Daneri, 29; and 30).
Death self
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
From November 9 through November 15, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces, seven consecutive nights of performances in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda from 5 PM to 12 AM.
Since the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always served as her subject and medium, and the parameters of her early works were determined by her endurance. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for transformation. With Seven Easy Pieces Abramović reenacts seminal performance works by her peers dating from the 1960s and ’70s. The project is premised on the fact that little documentation exists for most performances from this critical early period; one often has to rely upon testimonies from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given piece. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibility of redoing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
November 9, 5 PM to 12 AM
Bruce Nauman, Body Pressure (1974). Nauman constructed a false wall nearly identical in size to an existing wall behind it. A pink poster with black typeface invited visitors to perform their own action by pressing against the wall.
November 10, 5 PM to 12 AM
Vito Acconci, Seedbed (1972). Acconci occupied the space under a false floor, masturbating and speaking through a microphone to visitors walking above in an attempt to establish an “intimate” connection with them.
November 11, 5 PM to 12 AM
VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969). Wearing pants with the crotch removed, EXPORT walked through an art cinema, offering the spectators visual contact with a real female body. Walking up and down the aisles, she challenged the audience to look at reality instead of passively enjoying images of women on the screen.
November 12, 5 PM to 12 AM
Gina Pane, The Conditioning, first action of Self-Portrait(s) (1973). Pane lay on a metal bed above lit candles for approximately thirty minutes. Her sufferiing was apparent to the audience, who witnessed her wringing her hands in pain.
November 13, 5 PM to 12 AM
Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965). With his head covered in honey and gold leaf, Beuys cradled a dead hare, showing it pictures on the wall and whispering to it. He wore an iron sole on his right foot and a felt sole on his left.
November 14, 5 PM to 12 AM
Marina Abramović, Lips of Thomas (1975, Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck). Abramović ate a kilogram of honey and drank a liter of red wine out of a glass. She broke the glass with her hand, incised a star in her stomach with a razor blade, and then whipped herself until she “no longer felt pain.” She lay down on an ice cross while a space heater suspended above caused her to bleed more profusely.
November 15, 5 PM to 12 AM
Marina Abramović, Entering the Other Side (2005). Abramović premieres a new performance created specifically for this project.
Abramović's work explores the relationship between performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind.
“Once you enter into the performance state you can push your body to do things you absolutely could never normally do.” (Kaplan, 9)
WORKS
Rhythm 10, 1973
Abramovic performed the Russian game involving stabbing knifes between each of her fingers to create a rhythm. The sounds of this action was recorded and then played back . During this action each time her fingers were cut, one of ten knifes was swapped. Recording of the sounds were made and then the action was replicated with the same mistakes.
Rhythm 0, 1974
To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her.
Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions.
Initially, members of the audience reacted with caution and modesty, but as time passed (and the artist remained impassive) several people began to act quite aggressively. As Abramović described it later:
“The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.” (Daneri, 29; and 30).
Death self
To create this “Death self,” the two performers devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took in each other’s exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen. Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide. This personal piece explored the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.
From November 9 through November 15, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents Marina Abramović: Seven Easy Pieces, seven consecutive nights of performances in the Frank Lloyd Wright rotunda from 5 PM to 12 AM.
Since the early 1970s, Marina Abramović has pioneered the use of performance as a visual art form. The body has always served as her subject and medium, and the parameters of her early works were determined by her endurance. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for transformation. With Seven Easy Pieces Abramović reenacts seminal performance works by her peers dating from the 1960s and ’70s. The project is premised on the fact that little documentation exists for most performances from this critical early period; one often has to rely upon testimonies from witnesses or photographs that show only portions of any given piece. Seven Easy Pieces examines the possibility of redoing and preserving an art form that is, by nature, ephemeral.
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
November 9, 5 PM to 12 AM
Bruce Nauman, Body Pressure (1974). Nauman constructed a false wall nearly identical in size to an existing wall behind it. A pink poster with black typeface invited visitors to perform their own action by pressing against the wall.
November 10, 5 PM to 12 AM
Vito Acconci, Seedbed (1972). Acconci occupied the space under a false floor, masturbating and speaking through a microphone to visitors walking above in an attempt to establish an “intimate” connection with them.
November 11, 5 PM to 12 AM
VALIE EXPORT, Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969). Wearing pants with the crotch removed, EXPORT walked through an art cinema, offering the spectators visual contact with a real female body. Walking up and down the aisles, she challenged the audience to look at reality instead of passively enjoying images of women on the screen.
November 12, 5 PM to 12 AM
Gina Pane, The Conditioning, first action of Self-Portrait(s) (1973). Pane lay on a metal bed above lit candles for approximately thirty minutes. Her sufferiing was apparent to the audience, who witnessed her wringing her hands in pain.
November 13, 5 PM to 12 AM
Joseph Beuys, How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965). With his head covered in honey and gold leaf, Beuys cradled a dead hare, showing it pictures on the wall and whispering to it. He wore an iron sole on his right foot and a felt sole on his left.
November 14, 5 PM to 12 AM
Marina Abramović, Lips of Thomas (1975, Galerie Krinzinger, Innsbruck). Abramović ate a kilogram of honey and drank a liter of red wine out of a glass. She broke the glass with her hand, incised a star in her stomach with a razor blade, and then whipped herself until she “no longer felt pain.” She lay down on an ice cross while a space heater suspended above caused her to bleed more profusely.
November 15, 5 PM to 12 AM
Marina Abramović, Entering the Other Side (2005). Abramović premieres a new performance created specifically for this project.
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