The Realities

FABLE

Once upon a time there was a reality
With her own flock of sheep in real wool
And as the king's son came passing by
The sheep bleated Baaah! how pretty she is
The re the re the reality

Once upon a time there was a reality
Who never could get to sleep at night
And so her fairy godmother
Really took her by the hand
The re the re the reality

Once upon a time there was an old king
Who got very bored as he sat on his throne
His cloak slipped off into the evening
So then they gave him for a queen
The re the re the reality

CODA: Ity ity the rea
Ity ity the reality
The rea the rea
Ty ty The rea
Li
Ty The reality
Once upon a time there was THE REALITY

~ Louis Aragon 'Paris Peasant" 1926

The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow

Just got back from this symposium performance series in Plymouth, headed my Marina Abramović, who unfortunately didn't show up but was there via a Skype video chat feed. Though the event was fairly disorganised and revealed how insular the world of Live Art can be there were still some great highlights, including of course meeting interesting people.

The Royal William Yard was a stunning venue, housing most of the events and performances. There were six artist performing at the Slaugherhouse

Davide Balliano: sharpening a knife slowly and repeatedly while facing a corner where two large mirrors created a grouping of 4 identicals. A single lightbuld illuminated the space adn the sound was quite evocative. The piece was a bit cliche, in that its use of a man in black in a black cap in a dark corner became a certain character type that would immediately be evocative.

Snezana Golubović: who stood on a stage stepping into a series of shoes...

Eva and Franco Mattes: who recreated performances in Second Life. This was mostly interesting because I had never seen Second Life in action before.

Francesca Steele: created one of the more engaging and evocative works, a one to one piece where you stood on a stage with her while she took the gestures of professional body building next to you. As a body builder herself she has transformed her body and the work made me think of gaze, obsession and body image as well as nearness and personal space.

Bill Wroath: who was slated to perform at the Market in the centre of Plymouth was moved here due to an issue with the council and his work. He sewed a full pig corpse back together dressed as a butcher/medic while behind hime the numbers of pigs slaughtered in each country per year was projected across the wall. I enjoyed this work as I've been feeling that the ecological situation on this planet has been turning my vegetarianism into something more political which it never has been. Unfortunately most people absorbed the information and the proceeded to think it was funny to order pork at the pub, I suppose this is why the world isn't going to change any time soon....

The Market in Plymouth is an incredible space, looks like you are inside a giant pool. There is a unique culture there as well between the traders and buyers and I definitely sensed that the performances were generally an intrusion. One person working the event told me the last day "They hate us by now and can't wait for us to leave". This lack of integration with the general public was something that was a bit disappointing about the event in general but then again I suppose performance art may be one of the less accessible works as it is.

One exception was Ania Bas who performed as a working vendor, selling a variety of media information and possible instructions taped up and down her jacket. The last day I chose 'Chewing gum and people watching". She took me to her favourite spot and we talked about the market and the event, we easily picked out the skinny jean black clad art goers and the overweight, pasty shoppers. She told me about the shopkeepers and how engaging them brought varied responses. Though some were not interested, some where. I felt very happy that at least someone was bringing the work towards dialogue and integrating the actual existing culture of the site. One vendor bought one of her instructions for another, while a third was going to serve as witness...

For a full list of performers click here: Pigs

Seeing Marina on Skype in bed, blowing her nose and coughing was rather humanising. She said two interesting things, she explained the title. Performance artists are the pigs of today and their work in many ways needs to die in order to be consumed as ham. This gave the entire symposium a lens towards archiving and the issues surrounding performance documentation... She also said students always ask her about entering the art market and how to succeed, she explained that she spent 30 of her 40 years making performances unpaid. Though she recognised this wasn't fair she recommended to young artists to stay true to their work and to stay true to the context...

But by far the highlight of the weekend was Tehching Hsieh... That gets a post of its own...

Conversations with Tehching Hsieh

Chatting with Tehching was the highlight of the Symposium (see prior post). During his chat chaired by Adrian Heathfield, he talked about leaving Taiwan on a freight ship to Iran picking up oil en route to Philadelphia where he jumped ship. He spoke about how he had heard tow words in Taiwan 'conceptual happenings'. He had no idea what they meant or how they would be so seminal in his work. In the US as an illegal immigrant he spent 4 years in his studio doing no work. His studio was empty and he just sat their thinking. Then he had this idea, if I've been doing this 4 years why not one more? This was the first one year performance 1978-1979. He then completed 4 more and finished with a final 13 year piece where he would complete work but not present it publicly and basically disappeared. He emerged in 2000 and released a DVD of his work.
He was incredibly humble and genuine. I spoke to him after the event on the freezing cold pier in Plymouth. Tehching apologised for his English skills and said 'I am not as educated as everyone here'. I responded that he was genuine and that this was what people responded to, for he really received a loud applause. It was a welcome relief from an overly cerebral event!

I asked him if he ever had the impetus to make work... he responded 'whats impetus?'... i said need, want... he restated what he said earlier, that he already had his great ideas, that he had no more. and even if he did more it would become formulaic. He added that he also already stated as an art piece that he would not create any more work. And if he reneged on this then all his work would be a lie.

I love this man....

He also still lives in Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant) area of Brooklyn. Recently the grocer in his building was pistol-whipped and robbed. But he said he's been there for the last 12 years and he's never moving again...

Speaking with him reminded me of why I am an artist why I am drawn to what I do. There was such a strong spiritual sense in his work, my friend Debbie compared it to a form of Zen meditation. This is what makes great work, perhaps avoiding a paralyses by analyses and tapping into a deep well of energy that can exist in performance as in life...

Generation Y

Check out Yoani Sanchez blogging fro Cuba, even Obama answers her call for information....

"Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that start with or contain a "Y". Born in Cuba in the '70s and '80s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite, especially, Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who carry their "Y's" to read me and to write to me." ~Yoani Sanchez


http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

FrenchMottershead First UK solo exhibition

This exhibition is the first solo show by artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead and is the culmination of their two-year international SHOPS project bringing together a collection of intimate portraits of local shops and contemporary urban life.

21 Nov 2009 - 13 Feb 2010

Site Gallery

Frenchmottershead

Shops Project

Ice House Detroit

Gregory Holm and Matthew Radune plan to freeze one of Detroit's thousands of abandoned homes this winter, encasing it in ice to draw attention to foreclosures that have battered the region.

NPR article on the project

About this project

Project page, check out the roll-over images of urbanisation returning to prairie: http://icehousedetroit.blogspot.com/

The International Privacy Ranking

www.privacyinternation.org

Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress

In February 2008, the President of the French Republic, Nicholas Sarkozy, unsatisfied with the present state of statistical information about the economy and the society, asked, Joseph Stiglitz (President of the Commission), Amartya Sen (Advisor) and Jean Paul Fitoussi (Coordinator) to create a Commission, subsequently called “The Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress” (CMEPSP).
The report distinguishes between an assessment of current well-being and an assessment of sustainability, whether this can last over time. Current well-being has to do with both economic resources, such as income, and with non-economic aspects of peoples’ life (what they do and what they can do, how they feel, and the natural environment they live in). Whether these levels of well-being can be sustained over time depends on whether stocks of capital that matter for our lives (natural, physical, human, social) are passed on to future generations.
Another key message, and unifying theme of the report, is that the time is ripe for our measurement system to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s well-being.

Read it here

One & Other: Walking the Plinth

I have been really interested in Antony Gormley's piece happening at Trafalgar Square because it encompassed all the good things and bad things about working within a community context. For starters there's the shared authorship that creates a product that is difficult to critique from a historical perspective on aesthetics. From a material perspective this work seems like a departure for Gormley. I have read about how the work is boring, highlights mundanity, is patronising and so on... In many ways I don't totally disagree, but I was still drawn to the work as its a huge public art project about participation, and luckily I was able to stand in for someone who missed their flight from Belfast.
As I'm working on the Everyman concept for the next year, I thought this would be an interesting place to doing a small intervention, and what a venue. What I found ultimately remarkable was the spontaneous community that was developed in the street. I went on at 2am on a Thursday thus faced a large amount of drunken loitering and heckling which was great. I felt both empowered and vulnerable and thought this is exactly the risk Gormley has taken. It reminded me of working in the community garden in NYC and having all sorts of obscene interventions that added to the work. It's a healthy dose of reality that I would recommend to any skeptic of the work.
One interesting character in the real stage, the pavements below, was Captain John (you can see him at about 36:36 in the video link below). He was a plinther and had since returned daily becoming part of the routine there. One of the main questions people asked when I was up there was 'what does it mean?', and it was the first question posed to me when I got down... But I wonder, does it need to mean something?
Jenna went up as well at 1pm on Saturday to much more docile crowd of tourists and locals. Many people had no idea what the plinth project was at all, and it was great to overhear all the possible assumptions. I realise that the real work of One & Other was this spontaneous dialogue amongst strangers in the street. If you're just looking up at the plinth you're missing the real artwork....

Everyman Walks the Plinth Video

Images

One & Other is a live artwork by sculptor Antony Gormley.
2,400 participants representing every region of the UK each spend an hour alone on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square for 100 days and nights.

The Unavowable Community

The (first ever) Catalan Pavilion at the Venice biennale 'La Comunitat Incofessable' takes its title from Maurice Blanchot's 1983 book 'La Communauté inavouable' (The Unavowable Community), and from Blanchot's inquiry into the nature and possibility of community and interpreting communism as 'that which creates community'.

The project is divided into three parts: the exhibition taking Blanchot's reference to the library as a space for knowledge; the catalogue (with reprinted texts by Blanchot, as well as Jean Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, etc.) as well as essays and interviews related to the artists projects by Gerard Horta, Iris Dessler, Jacob Lillemose, Manuel Delgado amongst others) and a website which will host a vast archive around the notion of communality.

The thread between the three projects is the questioning of the single authorship, as the artists constantly appropriate preexistent materials (photographs, data...) and reconfigure new archives, new readings of these materials.

Curatorial Text

Prize for Art and Social Change

The Creative Time Summit: Revolutions in Public Practice provides an opportunity to consider the work of more than 35 international cultural producers whose practice engages the public sphere on questions of social justice.
Their approaches intend to not only reflect, but also act upon moments of historic change, breaking the traditional barriers between art, culture, and politics.
The conference will open on the evening of Friday, October 23 with the presentation of the first, inaugural Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, honoring an artist who has committed their life’s work to social change in powerful and productive ways. This prize is the first award of its kind, honoring impact and commitment over market trends. This year, the Prize will be given to The Yes Men

The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change is an annual $25,000 award named in honor of Mrs. Annenberg’s life-long dedication to supporting the artistic voice in our culture, and to the vital role of art in educating and expanding our cultural dialogue. The Yes Men agree their way into the fortified compounds of commerce, ask questions, and then smuggle out the stories of their hijinks to provide a public glimpse at the behind-the-scenes world of business. This legendary group of culture jammers is, through their longstanding practice of invading and subverting modes of corporate communication, at the forefront of a movement to produce substantive change in our world. They are well known for projects ranging from impersonating representatives of major corporations to the distribution of thousands of copies of a simulated edition of The New York Times featuring idealistic, progressive headlines.

Generosity is the New Political - Wysing Arts Centre

'Generosity is the new political' explores the complex and ambiguous concept of generosity. Rooted within a system that merits symbolic value over market worth, acts of generosity contradict the accepted notion of production and exchange.

Community-minded new commissions include a performance by the Freee Art Collective, who will ceremoniously rename Cambridge streets after 18th-century radical thinkers while dressed in period costume. ~ The Guardian