Dot . Our next bit of shared humanity
- Intuitive,we run counterclockwise. Putting an end right to the beginnig and
rolling back toward the start, like an upside down river flowing up Toward its source. We track creativity, looking for it’s den, but the task is nothing
comparedto the joy of twisting your neck in a sideways dance • Counte
The editor’s note is a disclaimer This magazine was initially meant to be strictly about visual arts. Then, about half way through the making of magazine we got told by performance Nigel Rolfe that Art is not what we see, which indeed put us in difficult position. As a result and due to the flakiness both of the editor and the topic covered, we decided to play the over-used card of inclusion to drown the fish in water. Thus, this magazine will be dedicated to the exploration of all form of arts and humanities in a visual way. But because a master has to limit himself in order to reach his goal, we will keep it with the geographical area of Aberdeenshire. Neither objectively looking at art from the bird’s eye, neither immersing ourselves in the dirty work it requires, we will stand in the space between our ideals and reality.
content.
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[kən’tant] adj. happy, satisfied
This Is Performance Art.
The 2015 edition of TIPA, four years after the precedent festival which also took place in Aberdeen. Featuring artists: Sinéad O’Donnell, Nigel Rolfe, Wladyslaw Kazmierczak & Ewa Rybska. Currated by Nikki Milican.
In the artist’ den.
Photoreportage of stolen moments at Peacock Visual Art. Where creation happens, a place for inspiring people to get inspired.
Spilled Ideas.
Open notebooks. How having too many ideas is both a blessing and a struggle.
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Polaroids.
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A serie of pictures that does not show how cool your life is.
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This Is Performance Art. Four years after the first edition of This is Performance Art Festival, a new set of performances, workshops and conferences is back to the Granite City. Working closely with the students at Gray’s School of Art, international artists aimed at inspiring the next generation of Scottish creatives. During three days, the artists brought radical performances to life, asking the questions that too often are being ignored or pushed aside. Despite not bringing any clear answers, the weight of their work remains pending above our heads. Scrutinising Humanity - with its freedom and limitations - they brought us images of what we might look like as a society. Their representations, often anchored in actuality present us with more than conflictual ideas. Rather, they loudly paint our world though the eye of a mute observer.
The work of Sinéad O’Donnell explores the relation between personal identity and limitations. She embraces those and creates a dynamic of the slow. These restrictions are a core part of her work through which she distorts the social dimension of the female body. As a child diagnosed with dyslexia she express the fact that being dyslexic has followed her during her whole life. She reclaims this identity in her work through performance such as ‘Backward’, where she walks backwards across busy streets, leaving a sense of oddity to whoever sees her. She travelled extensively and most of her work was influenced by the period when she stayed in Eastern Europe especially in Serbia, Romania and Moldova. There, she moved away from sculpture and got involved in various art networks. She says of that period: ’At this time I had not travelled very much and I think being dyslexic, it was good being in a place where there wasn’t much English language. I had to learn to communicate through actions.’ There she also collaborated with artists for the first time and started to use her own body as a medium a communicating stories. At the time the wounds of war were still present. She decided to use her menstrual blood and include it in her practice as testimony of these wounds. ‘ I built a pregnancy cast made of my menstrual blood and I wore it from Belfast to Serbia, during the whole week and a half of performance, then back to Belfast. Nobody questioned it. When I think back, what was behind that work was a woman in a train station - no one could speak English - but she was able to tell me that her baby was taken out of her during the war. That triggered my past and the next year I decided to make the pregnancy cast. From the emotion I guess.’
Sinéad O’Donnell
Sinéad O’Donnell during her performance ‘erease Her history’ during TIPA ( his is Performance Art ) at Peackock Vsual Art. Above: opening of her performance during Tipa at Peackock visual art. Opposit from top to bottom: playing a musical box, marking her shoes and pouring water over her head.
Nigel Rolfe
“Artists make images and if your images are strong, they stick.�
Nigel Rolfe has spent this lifetime illustrating the struggle of our society though video, photography and performance. In his latest performance he sews together our reactions to the rise of extremism. The deliberate and slow movement of the artist made the fall of the chair more painful, both to the ear and to the sight. With caution, Nigel Rolfe walks around the chair leaving it behind him and starts filling a metal bucket with water. We know his love for buckets, one his favourite object. But this time, he perverts its use filing it to the top. The water remains seems to hesitate whether to overflow, adding up onto itself, rounding its shape over the top of the bucket before breaking loose. Going on to his knees first, then on to his side, the 70 year old man squirms on the floor pushing the bucket with his head. His hands are crossed over his chest as the water overflows to the regular hushes of his body. There is empathy in his work and I can almost feel the water running down my own neck. As if going through a list of surplices, he carries on; punctuated by overlapping noise of what seems to be a prayer.
“ Holy, holy, holy� His head inside a plate he blows chalk and the pressure on the audience increases, I can fill the estrangement in my lungs too. We are breathing the same air. Abandoning his dark shirt for a white one, he paints the stick and himself with red pigments. The colour cuts his face and back. Hands as if they were tied he closes his eyes. When the stick binding his body into shape is rejected to the floor another type of bondage takes place. Standing above white panels he write with a stick – as his to distance himself from the result of his actions words seemingly opposite, forcing the audience to see on paper the dissonant music we know too much. And indeed the audience is uncomfortable, confusion and interest mixing on faces. As I sit across the room I fail to understand the action as it happens. Only later when this artist left the room did I make the connection with the journalist James Foley. As much as I would like to understand the individual meaning of every element I fear they might be none. Instead I am left with the experience of shared suffering.
Wladyslaw Kazmierczak & Ewa Rybska
hide clenching on her knees to protect herself from what is coming. He continues, as if she was invisible then grabs from behind and forces her head inside a bucket of water place on the table. After this scene of violence, the video stops and only the slapping noise of the cameras remains. Once again they both stand but this time their hands are raised above their heads. Palms open Ewa Rybska spreads feathers across the room. Her make up has run down her and once again she stares in the eyes of the public.
In the mist of the refugee crisis and the insufficient response of the west came the images of Hungarian journalist László Petra, kicking a young girl and tripping a man as both of them where running from the police.
middle of the room acting as a fence, preventing them from getting close. It is clear fro their gesture though that the two are not equal, there is the hunter and the hunted, the strong and they weak. In each corner of the room camera creates blinding flashes of lights, firing like gunshots. As the rhythm accelerates the distance between them decreases, he is getting closer to her.
The same images opened the show of Wladyslaw Kazmierczak & Ewa Rybska at Tipa. While the video runs in the background, Ewa Rybska plants her eyes in each member of the audience, slowly, to reconnect us with the reality of the events that often Her fragility is highlighted by seem far away from our lives. the fact that they wear the same tight fitting tuxedo. They begin to follow each Only their conditions differ. other in circles, the table in the She run under the table and
This performance was the first live performance of the duo in four years. In statement thy expressed that ‘uncertainty, exhaustion and helplessness were at the core of their recent work. Both of them have curated and taken part in live performances festivals such as the Castle of imagination International Performance Art Festival taking places every year in Poland since 1993. In their practice, they question the notion of inequality and the hypocrisy of politics.
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Inside the artists’ den. The creative space at Peacock Visual Art changes as soon as the artists are gone. Do works of art have a life of their own or do they remain still, waiting to be woken up in the morning as the first person steps inside the studio? In this serie, we take a look at some of the work in progress by resident artists.
The lower print making workshop with facilities for etching and reliefprinting facilities.
Peacock Visual Art was founded in 1974 after an initiative of Arthur Watson. The goal was to provide the artists of the day with facilities for printmaking. From the start the artist marked their difference from the regular print industry, each artist controlled and directed all the different stages of production of the artwork. During the seventies and the eighties Peacock Visual Art continued to develop and expand their activities through collaborations with local artists. To this day the workshop continues to be a busy place with artist such as Ralph Steadman, Janice Kerbel or David Noonan.
Despite having many other projects across Scotland Janice Kerbel continues to work with Peacock Visual Art as a part of her project to be presented in the tramway of Glasgow. Her work has been shortlisted for the Tuner Prize. The exhibition ‘Work in Progress’ is presented throughout the month of November until the end of winter. The centre organise different workshop to encourage the different method of printing, from mono-screen printing to lino cutting.
It is often said - by me - that a white page can sooth the entangled mind.
Open notebooks.