WITH/IN
April 14, 15, & 17 2016 The Kallick Family Gallery Pitzer College Claremont, CA
Curated by Lekha Jandhyala
Featuring: Rebecca Bruno Yann Novak Roksana Pirouzmand & Lara Salmon
INTRODUCTION Empathy is based on the fragile premise of concurrence. When it occurs, either between two or collectively in a crowd, empathy links self and other to engage in the most profound dialogue known in life. Yet, empathy has neither sound, nor shape nor form. How then do we know this reality? The springboard to this question originates from a number of previous interests of mine. The first being curatorial practice, space activation, and relational aesthetics, the second being new media art- namely performance art, installation, and dance, and lastly, the shifting of my own cultural and ideological boundaries over the past four years here at Pitzer College. Considered conjunctionally, these interests led to the question: Who holds power when experiencing art - is it the Art work? Artist? Viewer? The answer to which at some point or other led to "empathy", a recurring concept that seemingly encapsulates the connection made between artwork (or artist) and viewer. WITH/IN is a three-day exhibition that highlights the type of push-pull interactions between Artist, Artwork and Audience. Considering empathy as feeling in union with someone rather than a static acknowledgement, each artist engages with a circuited experience and feeling that takes place both internally and externally which consequently led to the show’s name. WITH/IN examines feeling WITH a person or artwork, and IN, or inside, another person or artist. Featuring Rebecca Bruno, Yann Novak, Roksana Pirouzmand, and Lara Salmon the works in WITH/IN diverged in medium, content, and possibility, but all considered the initiation and negotiation that empathetic relationships require through subjective interaction. Ranging from a moving room to live performance (body art), from video installation to immersive sound and projection installation, the four projects in WITH/IN highlighted some of the most exciting contemporary practice. The definition of empathy, upon which numerous sociological and intercultural studies 1 were conducted, is “feeling in one self the feelings of others” . Initially, this definition perplexed me. Was empathy feeling the same exact feelings as the other person? Was it a complete or partial transference of feeling from person A to person B? Alternatively, The Oxford Dictionary defines empathy as, “The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary created by Douglas Harper, the word empathy was created in 1908, modeled on German Einfühlung (from ein "in" + Fühlung "feeling"), which was coined in 1858 by German philosopher Rudolf Lotze as a translation of Greek empatheia "passion, state of emotion," or, en "in" + pathos "feeling." Considering the inter-reliant role of empathy, my project drew from my interest on the dialogue and exchange between artist-practitioner and audience. How does empathy figure into the reception of art and meaning derived from the art? Or, when an artist makes his or her work, does the consideration of the eventual viewer equate to empathy? Rebecca Bruno, is a dance artist based in Los Angeles whose work addresses our perception of time, space, and relatedness through the body. For WITH/IN Bruno’s two video works, “Ice Study” (2016) and “Water Study” (2016), were the first works in which Bruno herself did not perform. Instead, she is behind the camera. In “Water Study,” a single woman dressed in black in a dark wood floor space, slides, glides, and jerks seamlessly across the floor and through the space. Embodying water, her aquatic aggressive and smooth movements oscillate between rapidity and slowness. Bruno’s camera movement, reminiscent of a home-video hand-held recording as it suddenly zooms in and out of the shot, constructs Bruno as clearly present. One can easily place himself or herself in the walking-motion of Bruno who holds the camera. Thus, two forms of spectatorship are established in “Water Study,” one between Bruno and the dancer, and another between viewer and dancer. Her second work, “Ice Study,” on the other hand, remains in a fixed shot of a hand holding a block of ice for the duration of 34
minutes- the time it takes forthe ice to completely melt. A visceral feeling of cold enters the viewer as the human hand numbly holds the ice as it melts. Towards the end of the video, a second hand enters the shot and holds the ice-holder’s hand (which is empty since the ice is completely melted). The transfer of heat from one hand to the ice-holders hand, or inversely, is a beautiful example of the transference of feeling from one person to another. Both “Water Study” and “Ice Study” create what Rosalind Krauss describes as a sense of a collapsed 2 present , where the immediacy of the video’s subject material to viewer is precisely direct. Considering the intersubjectivity as viewer and as artist/recorder of the video one may “feel in one self the feelings of others.” Unlike the other three works that incorporate the human body in distinctive ways, Yann Novak’s work unites viewers with intangible experience rather than corporeal awareness. Novak, an LA based sound and visual artist, explores how sound, light and space can act as catalysts to focus our awareness on the present moment and alter our perception of time. “Rolling” (2016) is an audiovisual installation composed of synthesized sound, projected light and a field recording that draws inspiration from the empathogenic effects produced by MDMA. Yellow, pastel green, white, and gold light, envelop the sitter or sitters together. Encapsulating the viewer, the sound and color in “Rolling” ebbs and flows in intensity and in unison echoing the surges of empathy experienced with the flood of serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine (Novak). Novak’s work transfixes you to pause, to pause to unite yourself with artwork. Feeling becomes physical through the vibrations of sound and saturated surface. Through an ethereal approach, Novak, who is influenced by Terence Mckenna’s words “the felt presence of 3 direct experience,” focuses on singular moments and experience . “Stick Piece” (2016), performed twice by Lara Salmon, a Studio Art graduate from CGU, is a direct nod to Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece.” Also influenced by Marina Abramović’s performance “Rhythm 0” (1974), for “Stick Piece” Salmon enters the gallery completely slathered in peanut butter and honey. After inviting viewer’s to begin the sticking process by writing, “Stick anything to me” on the wall beside her, Salmon remains in position for a 1-hour period, periodically quarter-turning clock-wise. As a former life-drawing student, I have reflected on what it is to be human, beyond physical confines, as an intangible entity. Regarding Salmon’s nudity, I draw from bell hooks’ essay, “marginality as site of resistance” in which hooks describes how the acceptance of one’s self as “Other” makes one’s body a site of resistance that can enter and meet communities of liberators. By taking ownership of one’s body, one becomes a site of possibility in the entire universe. During the conceptualization of the performance and later in our interview, Salmon emphasized that she is giving permission to the audience to do what they want with the mere instruction of sticking anything to her, which brings me to my next point. “A society can be more than one thing without suffering 4 censorship” . Every student and visitor is entitled to his or her own perspective on art and creation. First, by belonging to a private academic institution, at an art reception, with both professional and emerging artists, the audience was highly tailored and less of just any old public. Set in a liberal arts college environment, “Stick Piece” is already primarily serving an audience that is intellectually stimulated and engaged, and arguably more open to nudity. Students want to learn an expose themselves to artistic experiences. Both Salmon’s and Roksana Pirouzmand’s works emphasize audience participation where only audience interaction activates their pieces. Pirouzmand is a multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. She is originally from Yazd, Iran and is currently attending the California Institute of the Arts, where she is working towards her Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art. Her installation and performance, “Moving Room” (2016) is an 8 ft. x 12 ft. moving wood and fabric structure on tracked wheels. Viewers enter into one side of the structure where
they face a fixed wall. Once inside, the structure either condenses the viewer into a smaller space where the viewer can choose to push back out to expand the space they are standing inside. The push-pull interaction between the viewer(s) and Pirouzmand, who is on the other side of the fixed wall, is like a lyrical conversation. “Moving Room” does two important things: 1) it functions only when the viewer activates the structure by entering the space (this is further elaborated when the viewer also pushes the structure and 2) fosters interaction between people who share the space inside the structure as they are forced to gather closer as the room gets smaller. In her essay, ”Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism,” Rosalind Krauss writes, “We know, for instance, that configured within the parapsychological sense of the word 'medium' is the image of a human receiver (and sender) of communications arising from an invisible source. Contained in this definition is the notion that the human conduit exists in a particular relation to the message, which is one of temporal concurrence. Thus, when Freud lectures on the phenomenon of telepathic dreams, he tells his audience that the fact insisted upon by reports of such matters is that the dreams occur at the same time as the actual (but invariably distant) event” 5. If one were to consider Krauss’s “sender” and “receiver” to be empathizer and the other - empathy occurs when a cooperative and concurrent effect takes place- the empathizer attends to the other person’s needs, and conversely, the other person welcomes the empathizer’s concern. I apply this idea to all reception of artwork- as a plane that exists through sender (artist)-medium-and receiver (viewer). Considering the sender to receiver current, Salmon and Pirouzmand’s work involve the audience directly and neither expects a positive human relationship to come about. In Bruno and Salmon’s work, the body becomes that of a framework of culture and interpretation as an object and/or belonging to the artist. In Pirouzmand and Novak’s work, the physical body is visually absent but human relation is theoretically considered. Contemplating Nicolas Bourriaud’s definition of relational aesthetics as, “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space,” as applicable to all art and reception of it, my goal was to let WITH/IN collapse public and private realms to reveal the entanglements within 6 ourselves, with one another, with art and artist . Conclusively, the purpose of WITH/IN was not to consummate whether empathy is or is not achievable through art, but rather to allow for audiences to determine if empathy can be nurtured through creative practice. Inviting the outside in and vice versa, WITH/IN considers the inter and intra dependencies of empathy amongst individuals as practiced by Los Angeles area contemporary artists. Lekha Jandhyala PZ’16, Curator
1 Strayer, J., & Eisenberg, N. (1987). Empathy viewed in context. In N.Eisenberg & J. Strayer (Eds.), Empathy and its development: 389–398. 2,5 Krauss, Rosalind. “Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism”. October 1 (1976): 51–64. 3 In his lecture, “Eros and the Eschaton” given on March 25, 1994 in the Kane Hall at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. 4 Wilson, Fred, and Ivan Karp. "CONSTRUCTING THE SPECTACLE OF CULTURE IN MUSEUMS." Ed. Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson, and Sandy Nairne. Thinking about Exhibitions (1996): 186. 6 Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Leses Du Réel (2002): 113.
REBECCA BRUNO
Water Study, 2016
Ice Study, 2016
ARTIST INTERVIEW: REBECCA BRUNO Tuesday, April 26, 2016 Total interview time: 1:00:23 (20-minute excerpt)
RB: I think there are certain degrees of relatedness that can happen through art making. You were talking about the international artist, I find myself interested in the way beliefs and ideology manifest the body or affect the body or move the body. That relationship. And the way we find divisions or boundaries prescribed in our bodies. “Ice Study” and “Water Study” are part of a project looking at the Kotel or the Western Wall and the Old City in Jerusalem and the religious and gender boundaries present in this part of the world. The other side of this project has to do with our environment, earthly elements, and our physical relationship to the globe. The exercise for Samantha* in “Water Study,” is to, as realistic or not or attainable or not, is to embody the various dynamics of water. To study the molecular transformations of water and attempt to bring them into the body in a kind of empathic or visceral way. Your mom was saying that she saw war and a body being gunned down. When you work with a human being as your material it’s fascinating because we are complex territories full of personal and ancestral histories, psychologies, and experiences. [*Samantha Mohr is the performer featured in “Water Study”.] LJ: I love Rosalind Krauss‘s discussion of self-encapsulation, especially with water study the way you were moving around Samantha, we were in the position of you. It’s true, you connect to the movements in different ways, you read them differently depending on your own subjective experience. Especially because being in the position of recorder through your lens was so direct. It’s a human body and the very hand held motion of the camera really pulls you in. Did you think the relationship between “Water Study” and “Ice Study” was successful in the way it was installed? RB: I liked the relationship. Their proximity, that they were facing each other, and the weight of their box monitors and pedestals. It takes Samantha 5 or 6 times to go through the choreographed piece in the same time it takes a cube of ice to melt in her hand. Doing and non-doing in conversation. LJ: I didn’t notice this till later in “Ice Study” but is the hand that comes in at the end of the video someone else’s hand? RB: Yes, that’s my hand. LJ: Wow okay yeah the contrasts that can were drawn between the two works are so many! In “Water Study” it feels like there is this distance between the recorder (you) and Samantha since your own body never enters the shot. In a way, the viewer, who assumes your role as recorder, can not get completely through to Samantha even though you make the recording so close to her. Whereas in “Ice Study” there is ultimately another hand that physically transfers its heat to the cold hand with touch and grasp. RB: Yeah, there is something very scientific, magnified, investigative. Like looking at Samantha under a microscope, and the proximity of the camera to her, perhaps that creates a sense of distance. LJ: I’d like to talk about the corporeality of the two works. It is the human form. There’s empathy that’s defined by feeling, emotion, but there is also physical empathy and I feel that was what is so visceral in your work. You play mind games, one is not touching the ice but you feel the cold in your hand as you’re watching it.
RB. I wonder about the relationship between the bodily experience and our emotions and what we feel and also our imagination. I think that’s why I connected to the various images your mom found in this work. My experience is that these are all linked. LJ: How long have you learned dance or been involved with movement? RB: I was 3 when I started dancing. I started in Creative Movement at a community center and then I participated in jazz, hip-hop, and modern dance classes. In high school I realized that if I wanted to continue professionally I needed to be trained in ballet so I tried to acquire that knowledge in high school and college. LJ: I’m interested in how a classical training can somehow limit ones movement because it is so rigid and form oriented. I am a Bharatanatyam trained dancer, which I would say is equivalent to Ballet in terms of being a classical style with strict form and correct posture. And although I have danced for 16 years I find it hard to let go of the rigidity and stiffness when trying to adapt to more loose casual forms of dance. You say you started with Creative Movement and I feel like that allows for much more flexibility and adaptability to different styles. RB: Absolutely. I did everything I could to tighten up and conform to the language of classical ballet. My concern with this now is the degree of restriction we feel in our bodies in general – that we might feel consciously or not that there is a right and wrong way to move. In the new work that I’m making with Samantha we’re spending hours in the studio to allow our bodies to move with very little direction. The exercise can be as simple as having your eyes closed and being on the ground and moving for an hour. And the kind of experiences that we go through in feeling alone, or boredom, or the pressure to be or feel interesting or innovative or beautiful or whatever, to have to sit with that and sort of affirm continually that the presence of the body is enough. I like something Yann has said. That the movement of body is just as much of a phenomenon as the vibration of sound. LJ: So you’re in the studio with Samantha as you do these exercises, does your relationship to your body change when you’re with another person in the room. Have you and Samantha worked together now for a while? RB: Yes, and that helps but every kind of constellation is different so if I am alone in the studio or if I am with Samantha and she is moving or if we are moving together and there’s another person present (or in the other room) it’s a constant negotiation and shift of dynamic. One of the reasons we are practicing so much is to see if we can maintain a certain kind of focus in a variety of scenarios. LJ: Focus like telepathy? RB: A way of being alone together. A way of being with ourselves in the same space. LJ: Yann and I were talking about Terence McKenna’s concept of novelty in which the degree with which you connect with the present fluctuates in the present moment and that this present is the most precious moment in your current existence. When you click with your internal and external.
RB: When you’re here. That’s sort of when a performance goes well. And our sense of time and our relationship to the past and present and how we either feel great distance from it or obsessed with it or just acknowledging that it’s here. LJ: Like when we’re enjoying ourselves and an hour can fly by versus when we’re bored and time moves slower. RB: That’s a trippy part of practicing with Samantha- the hour disappears. We’re calling our work at the Fraser Gallery “we are inseparable there is no time” LJ: What happens when you create shows that are outside conventional gallery spaces as you do with homeLA? RB: It changes it can totally make you bend and change the way that you work. I just did a project at the Velaslavasay Panorama. Every space sort of asks for something different. LJ: What is the structure of homeLA? RB: When I am invited by a homeowner or renter or resident to work with them in their home I visit and according to the space, their story, what’s possible in terms of a rehearsal period, I then invite a group of artists grounded in dance but could also be working with sound, theater, visual art, multimedia to make responsive works. The artists work in the space together for a period of time developing new works in response to the home. So, it’s slightly collaborative, they’re working sort of independently and having their own personal response but we share space in order to do that. Then it culminates in a performance, which is different every time depending on what everyone has developed. LJ: It’s very collaborative. In a way you’re a curator! RB: Uhm... I’m an inviter and encourager. LJ: A facilitator? RB: Facilitator! There we go. LJ: Is the aim of homeLA to develop relationships between the artists and the space or also with the homeowners? RB: I think relationships build in a number of ways. Some artists have met new collaborators, some artists have found their practice altered in some way that is interesting to them, some respond to space in a new way. Some hosts have collaborated with artists and perform. Many types of relationships are formed.
YANN NOVAK
Rolling, 2016
ARTIST INTERVIEW: YANN NOVAK Friday, April 22, 2016 Total interview time: 1:44:56 (20-minute excerpt)
LJ: Who are you and can you describe your practice? YN: My name is Yann Novak. I am a sound and visual artist. I've been making work for about 10-15 years now. My practice for the most part revolves around sound. It’s the element of my work that I spend the most time on and am most happy working with. LJ: In “Rolling” there are two clear elements, sound and light. Since your practice mainly revolves around sound, do you begin a project by first working on the sound element? YN: It depends on either the opportunity or the outcome I’m going for. When I sit down in the studio there are either two reasons I’m making work. Either I have an idea, where I see how that idea unfolds, or I have a have a specific opportunity that dictates what I will start with- whether it's a performance, installation or what not. Sometimes I’ll be working on all three at the same time. Often times if I'm working with light, with video, or with color, altering the lights of a given space will come first because that part of my practice is very easy for me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m more confident with it or if I’m more casual with it. When I’m working with sound it’s much more of a labored process. I like to set up situations where it’s not ideal to make sound or there's always going to be some sort of learning process in someway. I started working with field recordings because I liked that the sound source was grounded in the real world. But, I also like that it wasn't a synthesizer; that I wasn't put in a situation where I could make any sound I wanted to. Because to me, without limitations, things feel really pointless. So when I first started doing this, I got all these software synthesizers and thought wow I can make any sound I want but why would I make ANY of them? And so working with field recordings gave me the opportunity to record a section of time from a place or a variety of sources. The length of the recording was the length of the piece and so that would dictate the composition of the piece. So if it were an hour recording it would be an hour piece and if 20 minutes in let’s say a car alarm went off or something, that is an event that happens in the score and I would have to deal with it. LJ: So you build off the field recording using the “organicness” of the field recording and then add synthetic elements? YN: Well originally I wasn’t even doing anything synthesized. It was the field recording that would get processed using reverb or delay or distortions. So I would make multiple versions of the same recording, which would b e processed and manipulated in different way. Then I would move between each version and that would be my kind of artistic input into the piece. So how I manipulate the recording depends on the types of sounds that are in the piece originally. LJ: Do you work by section in each recording? YN: I create a library in a sense. So I take the recording, am listening to it in real-time and manipulating it. When I get it to a place I like I flatten it, save it, and then start the process over and over and over again until I have enough or more than enough that I feel comfortable working with. That’s when I start combining them in a more linear fashion and see how lay together and how they sit together. I think installation is the place I’m most happy working with because it makes most sense with what I'm trying to achieve. I’ll do performance work and I’ll do recordings that come out on CDs but for me the installation work is what
really makes the most sense because I've always had this idea of not wanting the audience to experience a start or end to the piece. I want it to already exist so that their proximity to it dictates the start and end within their own experience. So by walking into the space they start the sound experience. LJ: When you create a score do you think about a continuous engagement factor or periodic engaging elements so that no matter who walks in they’ll be “engaged” to stay so to say? YN: Thinking about it that way is too linear or narrative. I love video art but one of my biggest pet peeves with some video work is when you’re walking into the gallery and the video is playing at some point and there is some loop or even title slide or credit slide that immediately to me says, this is narrative. Suddenly the audience is faced with: Is what I experienced a valid experience? Do I need to sit through this entire thing? The situation that video sets up is distinct to media work that is not to static artwork. If you walk into a painting or photography show you dictate how much time you spend with each work. For my work, even if time based, I'm more interested in it being experience-based. I want to give the audience the agency they have with a painting to say okay 5 minutes is enough for me even though you may know someone who wants 20 minutes. Both experiences are valid. LJ: I love that about your work and I think that's what is unique to you and also contrasts from the other 3 works in the show. Different artists’ have different intentions and it is cool to distinguish between when a work dictates the experience and when the viewer ultimately dictates the experience. Your work seems to heavily emphasize the individual that goes in there and what they want to gain from their own experience of the work. You’re thinking about the work, independently, but the work is only truly activated when a person chooses when they want to start or stop their experience. YN: Exactly, a description I use is a really beautiful air conditioner or all the fans in my house now. You walk in and they're already doing what they do. The sound that they create is changing the experience of the space and although they are on, they create a new layer of quietness. Working with sound offered me the ability to alter space and perception not visually. It’s this thing that has to be discovered. LJ: Your example of the air conditioner and fans reminds me of a quote in Jonathan Sterne’s Sound Studies Reader. “Space is not just a container nor just a context for action. It is generative and always in flux, as are our perceptions of it.” YN: That’s really nice. It reminds me of Terence McKenna, the ethnobotanist who had that kooky idea of psychedelic drugs in relation to our evolution. He talked about this great theory of what he called “novelty.” I fully believe it. We talked about this when we first met but he gave me the perfect description of what my current goal is: “the felt presence of direct experience.” So, he talked about how this exact moment in time and space is the most important for each individual because it’s the one we are actually experiencing. So this tangible experience is what we should be striving to experience and enjoy and explore. Anytime we feel bad about the past, or wishing about the future, or worrying about someone else’s reality, we become disenfranchised with our self. He also had the idea that not every moment in time and space is the same. Conventionally, we are taught that our experience of time and space is actually fixed but how we are experiencing changes. But McKenna says that how we experience can be more or less novel and that time itself is fluctuating. The pattern to this world is
YN cont.: not this linear thing. Everything is ebbing and flowing because of something else. So, why can’t our ability to pull enjoyment from an experience or the amount of progress we make socially or politically also be fluctuating on some continuum we can’t see or can’t fathom? LJ: This reminds me of Edgar Heap of Birds notion of time taking place in a spiral instead of the Western notion of time, which takes place in a straight line. On a line the start and end of the line remain farthest apart from each other but when the line becomes a spiral, the start and end point of the spiral end up much closer in space- the past can be understood as much closer. And so those moments in the past or future, or the novelty of those moments, is much closer than how you would think about it otherwise. YN: Yes, novelty as in a specialness, some sort of intangible quality or enhancement to some moments and not others. We’re designed to be little pattern-recognizing machines but I prefer to live in a more “novel” world, in a world that I can believe has some quality to reality that is unpredictable. Like for some reason this is a connection being made right now. To me, I don’t like to ascribe any sort of one reasoning for such an experience. I see novelty as one more way to be present in our own existence. I like to think that there’s some underlying current to reality that we are somehow experiencing together such as when we walk through an exhibition together or experience something together. LJ: So I feel like we’re kind of talking about empathy… can you define it in your own words and maybe relate it to “Rolling" or your practice in general? YN: I try to have a very egoless practice so for me empathy presents itself in my constant struggle to not make artwork that is all about me. It's about setting up parameters for someone else to experience something. So making work that is open enough that the setting is right for an experience to happen for the audience. At the same time, talking about ego, I then have to relinquish enough control to be okay with the fact that I won't know if it was successful in the way that I would like it to be because for me to try and extract that information from the audience would feed my ego and would distract from the experience of theirs. It’s about trying to make artwork that is a selfless act. Maybe it’s my kind of sway towards the ideas of Buddhist philosophy of suffering- that life is suffering, that just as we can have these positive or negative weeks there's also this underlying hardship to living life and being the one species that knows that our time on this planet is limited. So empathy comes into my work as I try to recognize that shared hardship and try to use my art as a catalyst to take the weight off for a little bit. To make a situation where someone can forget about their worries from the past or stop hoping for a better future and just be content in the moment and be present for however long they can stop to experience the work.
ROKSANA PIROUZMAND
Moving Room, 2016
Artist declined interview.
LARA SALMON
Stick Piece, 2016
ARTIST INTERVIEW: LARA SALMON Wednesday, April 20, 2016 Total interview time: 1:00:26 (20-minute excerpt)
LJ: So, first off, can you introduce yourself and your practice? LS: I’m Lara and I’m an artist based in LA for now and I do mostly performance art. LJ: How do you work, can you describe your process? LS: For performance a lot of times I’ll start with a beginning of an idea, and then I’ll try something out, and refine it. Or, since I’ve been in grad school, I’ll talk to faculty about it a lot of times they’ll make me consider questions that I wouldn’t have otherwise. For “Stick Piece,” you were kind of that, you helped me flesh it out before it happened. [LJ: It was fun.] It was really fun. So, a lot of time I’ll start with a vision or a visual and then work on it. But, I also don’t like to directly practice the performance. I like the element of finding out as it’s happening. That keeps it really live for the audience and that keeps the risk real. Recently, I’ve been building a more object-making practice based off a performance. So I’ll use photographs from the performance or photos from other performative acts as raw material to create, to cut, to sew, to create photographic objects or installations. My performances speak a language of body, culture, and identity, and the objects do too but I try to get away from them just being documentation. I try to let them do their own thing. LJ: When you say “body, culture, and identity” I feel like each of those elements were brought about in “Stick Piece,” that it was such a reflection of the type of people that were in the audience. Even though you were the one performing and the piece centered on you as the main figure, the audience was still controlling themselves. Like when one person began the sticking process, others felt more comfortable to follow. The sort-of control also happened when people took turns to place items on you. You performance so much about how the audience participated in it. This was your first audience partipatory piece, do you think future pieces will be more audience participatory/interactive after doing this performance? LS: Definitely, not exclusively, but it’s definitely opened an interesting window for me and I think Pitzer was a good place to start because I think the students there and the ones that came were very respectful and conscientious and so it was a good first experience because that probably won’t always be the case. LJ: Yeah. Professor Ma, my advisor and my mentor here at Pitzer was very careful to encourage me to think through the choreography and control of your piece since there was so much unknown about how the audience would behave. If you choose to do more audience interactive works are you ready for whatever could happen to you? I feel like Abramović is ready for anything. Like even in “The Artist is Present”(2010) she seemed quite unfazed by the types of people that came through… but I guess she was more trustful since she had security right there. LS: Her piece “rhythm 0” – that’s what really inspired me too. Where she had her objects out, she had a gun, a bullet, and razors and the audience-- they cut her and they sucked her blood! And I know her work is very…. she does that to her self, but it’s very different to do that to someone else. LJ: To another human body! In that piece she was wearing clothing, right? Because I feel like a lot changes when there is a completely bare form in front of you. Actually I think that’s
partially why people reacted so gently with you because they were coming in contact with skin, your skin. Straight up no barrier between their touch and you. I had an interesting conversation with a young man who chose not to stick anything to you because he felt like it would impose on your vulnerability. Yet on the other hand, every person that came up to you were very respectfully and artfully placing their objects on you, as if they were adorning a goddess. Can you talk about those dynamics? LS: Women seemed a lot more comfortable. There were more women putting things on me. Everyone was really respectful. But to be honest I would have liked to be pushed a little. I was giving them permission but, for example, no one really put anything on my breasts or my other area. I guess Day 1 one of my friends put a coupon on my lower area. LJ: But maybe that was because of her already established close relationship to you that made her more comfortable? But yeah like I said before, I think your performance was a reflection of the type of people here at Pitzer. Especially for the people who participated in the performance, there seemed to be an overall respect for the nude form. General acceptance of it, rather than a sexualization of it, maybe that’s why those parts were ignored but maybe not. Maybe it was fear or shyness? Who knows? LS: That’s interesting. In my undergrad I was in a big co-op and Pitzer reminds me of that culture with murals everywhere and a 21st century hippie ideal that is very comfortable with nudity. I think it was my naked experiences in undergrad like naked study sessions, that makes nakedness not a big deal for me. I feel like Pitzer-student’s acceptance of nakedness is understandable. It’s not the same at CGU though and I’m certain it won’t be the same if I perform this in LA. LJ: Yeah definitely, so we kind of dove straight into the discussion of your performance. Can we talk about Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” in relationship to your performance or we can start with Abramović. I know that these two women right off the bat influenced your work when you first told me what you wanted to do for the show. LS: I feel like right now we’re in an interesting place in the art world where I feel like art used to build on itself and really talk to itself but I feel like now artists are making a lot of work that is in the moment and not necessarily paying attention to the history of their work. And so for me, guilty as charged I’m part of that too, but this was the first piece that I made that very directly paid homage to the female performance artists that came before me and that I know they shaped the way my work is seen now. So I hope in a way I am paying respect and also continuing, in my own practice, the conversation they have started. But also in thinking about Yoko Ono's and Abramović’s performances made me think about vulnerability through audience participation and the artist’s control. Most of Abramović’s pieces with Ulay were definitely about the audience reaction and a lot of the times she is addressing the audience but the audience is controlling their performance, like in “Imponderabilia" (1977). Both Yoko Ono and Abramović also influenced me by watching documentation of their performances. In my performances I don't usually directly engage with the audience so seeing how they also allowed audience participation without necessarily talking directly to the audience influenced me. There’s socially engaged art, which is often about conversation with the audience, which then becomes part of the art. But Ono and
Abramović are doing performance that has audience participation but they're still not completely acknowledging the audience. They’re just letting the audience do things to them. So that was really inspirational to me as a method of having audience participation but still letting it be my performance. Which is also what I’m more comfortable with right now as opposed to talking and direct conversation and things like that. LJ: So I want to hear your thoughts regarding the first vs. second performance. I feel like your method and approach to the second performance was so strong! It’s like you had a clearer idea of what sort of engagement you wanted with the audience. It was like an awareness of the audience but through this extremely stable independent conscientiousness, your own inner element. LS: I think the first day, to be honest, I think that it was a lot of my close friends and that made it really different for me. It was nice to have their support and enthusiasm but it made it harder for me. There wasn't the same tension as Day 2. Knowing them so well it was hard for me to not acknowledge them, you know kind of smile or something. But on the second day there was a bigger audience and I didn't know so many of them. And also, we had reflected on the first day and you gave me constructive feedback, which was really good. Also my head was shaved. I felt like PeanutButterPowerWoman. LJ: You so were! So now, lets talk about empathy. How would you define it? LS: For me empathy is trying your hardest to understand someone else's situation without judgment but also knowing that you will never fully understand because we can't do that for each other. For my art, my performances, I am pushing my body to these newfound limits. And a lot of times I think that automatically brings about empathy, especially for my female viewers looking at seminude work. I also think that seeing certain products in such excess associated with the body also brings up physical empathy. But all in all, I’m choosing to do these things to my body. You can feel a level of understanding. I think that performance has this capability in its immediacy and in the fact that we are live bodies in the same room to really bring that level of empathy out. I thought the audience participation would amplify the empathy element. It would be more back and forth because I would be in tuned to how they were feeling because I was directly asking them to be part of piece. LJ: Proximity is a huge part of that. I think that although our bodies are different you are also a human body. Which heightens that empathetic energy. LS: I think it was also empathy on both ends because of the risk involved. Like it was a risk for me to be there in just peanut butter in honey and it was a risk for them to approach me. It was empathy but it was also a reciprocal trust. LJ: Definitely, I mean I think most people consider nakedness an ultimate vulnerability. There’s this sort of embarrassment factor in it or something. LS: Yeah, I mean I think about that a lot in my work. For me I just want to be a body and I don’t want “nakedness” to trump the work. Obviously I understand all the politics, being a woman, having a culturally ideal body. I want to be able to do naked performance art and not have the nakedness be the first point of the conversation. I mean look we didn’t get to this till this late in the interview! There’s a professor and I were talking about the difference
between nudity and nakedness. Like, nudity is prettier, refined, culturally accepted whereas nakedness is more animalistic. I prefer nakedness. LJ: Yeah I noticed you would always use the word naked where as I would always use the word nude since it was in the context of art. So, last question, what would you tell a 21-22-year-old art major about to graduate from college? LS: Always keep investigating your own practice. If you're making yourself happy with your art and you're interested in the way that you're going then at least you're happy with your work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot express enough thanks to my professors and mentors for their continued support and brilliance. Professor Ming-Yuen S. Ma (Professor of Media Studies) for challenging me to produce with both utmost intention and theoretical integrity. Professor Bill Anthes (Professor of Art History) for guiding me since Day 1 at Pitzer. Ciara Ennis (Director/Curator of Pitzer Campus Galleries) for being my role-model this last year and continually encouraging and inspring me. Professor Tarrah Krajnack (Professor of Art) for allowing me to experiment which specifically led to my Fall Studio Art Senior Seminar Final Project- the curation of a hypothetical exhibition “Marginalia” (it set me up perfectly for this). My completion of this exhibition could not have been accomplished without the support of IMS Staff: Stephanie Hutin (for all my pop-ins and all the cool artists you introduce me too!) , Eddie Gonzales (for tech help) and Elizabeth Affuso (for introducing me to Media Studies). The success of the exhibition was based on the support and presence of Professors of Art, Tim Berg and Sarah Gilbert and Professor Carina Johnson (Professor of History). The Kallick Gallery was transformed beautifully solely because of the one and only Angelica Perez, Pitzer's Gallery Preparator. Thank you for dealing with all my particularities and making the exhibition look perfect. You are amazing at what you do and I learned so much about the installation process because of you. Much gratitude to Emma Stolarksi (PZ’18), who captured and edited the images for this catalogue and Genna Kules (PZ’18) who video-recorded the three exhibition days. Thank you to Brooke Atha and Lynda Casey at Pitzer Duplicating for working with me to print this catalogue. The production of WITH/IN was partially funded by the Intercollegiate Media Studies of the Claremont Colleges, Pitzer College Art Collective, Pitzer College Research Fund, and CALARTS. Love to Mom and Dad (my sun and moon), Dakshin, Wil, Aditya, and Maha (my boys) and Anupama and Kali (my girls). Finally, Rebecca, Yann, Roksana and Lara, I am eternally grateful to you for giving me this opportunity and for sharing your wisdom with me.
EXHIBITION CHECK-LIST REBECCA BRUNO Water Study, 2016 Color HD video on RGB monitor 05:27 Ice Study, 2016 Color HD video on RGB monitor 33:55 YANN NOVAK Rolling, 2016 1in HD projection & stereo sound Dimensions variable 16:00, endless loop ROKSANA PIROUZMAND Moving Room, 2016 Performance & Installation 8 ft x 12 ft x 7 ft 120:00 LARA SALMON Stick Piece, 2016 Performance Dimensions Variable 60:00
Photography by Emma Stolarski Layout by Lekha Jandhyala