For the convenience of the reader all dates are in reverse so that the blog reads from start to finish. All actual dates are written within each post.

Stelarc

After being allocated Stelarc as a solo performer I started research. What was immediately interesting were the images that came up when entering his name into the search engine.

Figure 1: Ear On Arm. Photographer: N. Sellars

The above image is a surgically constructed ear grown from cells and placed under the skin on Stelarcs arm. Eventually anyone from around the world will be able to listen through this ear once it is connected to the internet via bluetooth. Alongside disfiguring the human body, Stelarc has also done multiple ‘suspensions’ which involve piercing his skin with metal hooks and hanging in the air. Over 25 of these suspension events have taken place since the 70’s. In 2012 Stelarc did a 15 minute long spinning suspension above an Ear On Arm sculpture. This video can be seen below.

Figure 2: Ear On Arm Suspension. Photographer: C. Oyarce

Stelarc claims that he extends his body through performance, he refers to the body as an object for physical and technical experiment. Stelarc also believes that the body is ‘obsolete’ meaning it is in no longer in use. Perhaps this means that whilst we may take our bodies for granted on a day to day basis Stelarc likes to challenge this and put it to use, which he believes we have stopped doing. Interestingly Stelarc does not seen himself as the ‘art work’ and states that he only uses his body as it would be difficult to convince somebody else to use their body for such experiments and performances. The question that I think is open for interpretation is whether Stelarc’s end products are performances or experiments  or perhaps both? Stelarc has referred to his suspension performances as being structured but not scripted, much like an experiment. In many of his videos he also refers to his work as experiments. Perhaps an experiment can also be a performance. I think this question can only be answered using peoples personal opinions.

Posted – Jan 25th 2013

Figure 1:

Oyarce, C (2012) Ear On Arm Suspension, Melbourne, Australia.
Accessed January 2013 online at: http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/14/3261078/meat-metal-and-code-stelarcs-alternate-anatomical-architectures

Figure 2:

Sellars, Nick (2009) Ear on Arm, Australia.
Accessed January 2013 online at: http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/14/3261078/meat-metal-and-code-stelarcs-alternate-anatomical-architectures

Video:

Stelarc, (2012) Earn on Arm Suspension, Melbourne, Australia.
Accessed online January 2013 at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHagdSBATM

In and out of lessons we have been developing monologue pieces. At first I found this difficult as I don’t have any major events in my life that I could talk about, and anything I could talk about I’d rather keep to myself. However when watching Spalding Gray’s Swimming To Cambodia (1987.) I started to come up with a few ideas. The reason I found Spalding Gray so interesting was because he was speaking about countries that were completely new to me and I was interested to learn about the countries he was speaking about as well as his stories whilst being there. Therefore I decided that for my monologue I was going to speak about my holiday to Egypt. The fact that I enjoyed this holiday so much helped me put emotion into what I was saying and to develop a story line. The ‘fear of the unknown’ played a big part in my monologue as whilst I was in Egypt many things happened that I could not have anticipated at all. Following this the main focus of my monologue was the following story…

“Day 5, 45 degrees. After an hours bus journey in this weather we arrived at a small building with two men waiting outside to welcome us all. Next we were all signing a piece of paper which I thought nothing of on which we had to give all our details in case any thing happened to us. After this we all received a scarf, I wasn’t even going to pretend that I knew how to put this around my head but I knew I was already slighting scared by this point as the idea of it being 45 degrees and my head being wrapped in a scarf, and then a helmet to go over this didn’t fill me with confidence. However, I was so excited about quad biking over the desert that I went along with it anyway. Being typical Emma as soon as I got onto the quad bike I got a rush of negative thoughts such as ‘I’ve never even driven a car or a quad bike, what if I can’t do it, what if I fall off’.’ Anyway, we soon got going and to my delight is was so fun and easy. The only part I didn’t enjoy was the boiling hot air blowing from the quad bike onto my leg but I just ignored this as much as I could. After biking through a desert for 45 minutes we stopped for a break, here I went to drink some of my water which of course had gone warm by this point so I just left it. Next thing I knew the girl who was right near my had almost fainted, I saw this as a bit of an over reaction and didn’t think it was THAT hot that somebody would faint. A few minutes after saying this I suddenly started to see black and tried to grab hold of my brother as I couldn’t get my words out properly, he turned out to not be very useful and thought I was just falling over. Next thing I knew I had pretty much fallen on to him and two men quickly ran towards me and then (and I don’t remember how) I ended up by the tree near the bikes and the men threw water into my face which, being warm water, did not really help. After this I took a seat and started to feel a bit better but had to jump on the back of the mans quad bike so he could drive me to where we were going. Once I got there I had a bottle of cold water and took a seat. It was so interesting to see that in the middle of a desert was an open hut with blankets on the floor and tables and a little BBQ type thing where people made food, the fact that people lived here amazed me. Here we all took a seat and after everyone asking me if I was okay we finally all got some food and some form of Egyptian tea. After hearing stories of what Egyptian family life was like it was time to go on a camel ride. A few people decided they weren’t going to do this, much to everyone’s surprise I could not wait! I had only ever ridden on a camel once and that was the first day of my holiday where we had been told to sit on the camel for a photo and then before we knew it the men had the camel up and were talking us for a walk on it down the beach, after this they demanded money off us even though we had not asked them for a camel ride. This all happened on the beach where we were staying, it’s safe to say we avoiding going here for the rest of the holiday as we did not pay them. Anyway, when we all got to the camels I was excited knowing that these people would not try and get money out of us afterwards. I of course had to get the naughty camel of the group that would just not behave itself, and not stand up. Once half the group were already a quarter of the way across the desert my camel finally decided to stand up and we got going.  Of course it wasn’t very far until the camel decided it was going to stop and kick around, meaning I had to hold on very tight. After the camel ride had finished we all got off. Just as I got off the camel in front of me that was still standing decided it was going to sit right where I was stood and budge me out of the way. Despite all this I had had a really fun day. The quad bike ride back was a little scary as I did not want the same thing to happen, however this was avoided by only taking a 15 minute route. One thing I learnt from this was to keep my mouth shut when I think people are over reacting as you end up looking stupid when it happens to you too!”

This type of monologue theatre is something I don’t really always enjoy watching and certainly do not enjoy performing myself. I understand it is called ‘solo’ performance but I think this type of performance demands a lot of attention and you need to be really good to keep the attention of the audience for the whole piece.

Posted on – 8th February 2013

Works Cited:

Gray, Spalding (1987) Swimming to Cambodia, New York.

Following my idea of having half the audience with headphones and half the audience with eye masks I set out to find some videos I could use where the sound did not match the action in the video. This turned out to be much more difficult then what I thought.

Here are a few I found:

Video 1: True resistant test by Olympic athletes, Trojan condom manufactures

I thought this video was a good example of something you would not be able to guess the full content of unless you could see AND hear it, which no audience member would be able to. Even if just watching the video without being able to hear it you would not be able to guess what is going on. To test this I tried it out on my housemates, one could jut see the video and one could just hear, neither of them were able to guess correctly what was being advertised.

Video 2: CadburyUK Crispello advert (2013)

When trying out this video with my housemate the one with just sight thought that the advert was about a brother and sister which is very very far from the truth! The person wearing headphones had absolutely no idea.

I have tried to research into performances which were similar to mine, the results were somewhat minimal. Amy Taubin’s Double Occupancy (1976) interested me, she gave her audience the option to stay and watch her or to got o the adjacent room to listen to her. Those who chose to watch her only saw her whispering into a microphone so quietly that they could not hear her. This idea is similar to mine in that the audience can only see or hear the performance and not both.

I will continue further research into videos that I can use for my performance.

Works cited:

Video 2:

CadburyUK, (2013) Cadbury Crispello – A Lovely Little Naughtiness, England
Accessed online March 2013 at:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf_aOlhjSJw

Taubin, Amy (1976) Double Occupancy found in:
Carroll, Noel (1979) Amy Taubin: The Solo Self, The Drama Review: TDR Vol.23 No.1 Autoperformance Issue pp.51-58, USA: MIT Press

Video 1:

Trojan condom manufactures (2012) True resistant test by Olympic athletes, AKA: For sport lovers / Don’t try this at home, Published by Trojan condom manufactures, London, England.
Accessed online March 2013 at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oedba4wqlcs

Posted on – March 8th 2013

Figure 1: Mel Brimfield, This is Performance Art, 2011, C-print, edition 1.

Many of us could have experienced performance art at some point or another and not even have been aware. Performance art can take place in  any location at all. It could involve many people or just one, or sometimes nobody at all. It can be very complicated, or can be something as simple as a person standing on the same spot for a period of time, doing absolutely nothing. The reason I love performance art is because to me it is undefinable and it’s extremely difficult to determine when a performance crosses the line from performance to performance art.

Figure 2: Performance artists in Jubilee Gardens.

Taken by Adrian Pingstone in November 2004.

The above image is another classic example of performance art that we see everywhere and yet have probably never classed as ‘performance art’. Figure one and two both show how a whole performance can be captured and understood in one photo when it comes to performance art. Another thing that interests me is the amount of skill needed to something so little as standing completely motionless for long periods of time like shown in figure two. Drawing from my own experience of when I performed in a commedia dell’arte piece in which we had to stay frozen for over half an hour and were only allowed to move once it got to our turn to act I know how much you need to use your muscles to stay still for such a long time, whilst it make look effortless it takes a lot of work and commitment to pull off, I don’t feel like this is something which is appreciated enough when viewing this kind of work.

One person who I feel has truly mastered Marina Abramovic, my personal favourite of her work being The Artist is Present(2010) A 736-hour and 30-minute piece which spanned over a month and a half where Marina would sit in a chair in the MoMa museum at a table and sit completely motionless while spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.

“Spectators stare on in anticipation but of course Abramovic does nothing. In return, participants cry, scowl and smile. Sometimes all in quick succession. But mostly, they cry. “

-Karimah Ashadu, Art/Design, ‘The Artist is Present’: Marina Abramovic.

Figure 3: A spectator reacting to sitting opposite Abramovic.

One of my favourite moments is when Abramovic’s ex partner and co actor of many years sat opposite her and they were reunited. Even though she stayed motionless throughout the most part of this performance, their hands still reached over the table for each other, it was a very touching moment. The fact that Marina, although almost motionless can provoke such emotion from people as shown above is what I like about this piece of work, it shows that in this case, less is definitely more.

Figure 4: Marina Abramavic and Ulay, reunited.

Works cited:

Figure three and four:

Akers, Matthew (2012) Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present [DVD] New York.
Accessed online April 2013 at: http://karimahashadu.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-artist-is-present-marina-abramovic.html

Figure one:

Brimfield, Mel (20111) This is Performance Art, First edition, released for Ceri Hand Gallery, London, England
Accessed April 2013 Online at: http://membership.contemporaryartsociety.org/archive/talk-a-short-history-of-performance-art/attachment/belles-4/

Figure two:

Pingstone, Adrian (2004) Performance Artists in Jubilee Gardens, released for public domain, London, England
Accessed April 2013 online at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Performance.art.london.arp.500pix.jpg

 Posted on – 19th April 2013

I started to think about writing a word for 8 minutes, and then I turned my attention to the amount of time that my performance was going to run for, 8 minutes. I started to think about what happened around the word minute by minute. I found a few things including this photo;

Figure 1: 20 Things That Happen Every Minute [Infographic] (2009)

I planned on somehow incorporating some of the above facts in my performance, I just wasn’t quite sure how yet. One idea I had had was writing the word change really slow over the space of 8 minutes then after this showing what had changed around the word in that 8 minutes. I like this idea however, I thought it was to obvious and that the audience would be able to guess what was going on, which didn’t follow my original idea of wanting something which made no sense.

Works Cited:

‘Fancylad’ (2009) 20 Things that happen in one minute.
Accessed online April 2013 at: http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=45981