Performance Art

Performance Art Science and liberal arts 3 // Semester 3

by Rujuta Thakurdesai // M.Des. 2016 // Graphic Design

Science and liberal arts 3 // Semester 3

by Rujuta Thakurdesai // M.Des. 2016 // Graphic Design

Marina and Ulay performing “Aaaa� as part of their experimental performance series.

Performance Art Thump!

There is a loud sound from the next room.. and a “thud” following it. Another one, and another one... with an interval of a few minutes. Breaking the silence of the otherwise silent space and echoing through the large room with tall ceiling.

On entering the room you see a corner covered in red and something is placed in front of it. There is a man with this object.

As you move closer, you realize that it’s a canon. The person is loading the cannon mechanically and firing it at certain intervals.

The thing that it’s firing is going and hitting the wall corner and creating this massive mess of red goop.

And they tell you that it’s an art installation!

“What does it mean to exist in space? The answer is in the spectator. Without your involvement as a viewer, there is no story.”

Anish Kapoor

This was my first ever encounter with performance art.

In January of 2011 I visited an Anish Kapoor exhibition in Mumbai.

I still can’t say if I liked it or not but it certainly made me question my existing (very little) understanding of art.

“Performance Arts” and not Performing arts is a form of expression which resides in space and time. Yes it is a vague explanation which sounds exactly like performing arts. But this type of art, basically evolving from other visual arts can be described as an event that could not be repeated, captured or purchased. Unlike performing art it is rarely created for the sole purpose of viewer’s entertainment or to exhibit a skill but to often challenge the audience to think in new and unconventional ways, break conventions of traditional arts, and break down conventional ideas about “what art is”.

Performance art is based only on an intent and behaves like a spontaneous action or an experiment, where the audience and even the performer rarely know how the “event” is going to progress and yield what kind of final results. This uncertainty of narrative and un-rehearsed nature of performance sets it apart from performing arts like dance, theatre etc.

Originating from ancient traditions of civilizations like Greek, Latin American and Asian the clear roots of the art movement can be traced to futurism and Dadaism in Europe post world war 2 when artists started questioning the conventional art and began to develop their thoughts away from the current static materials and mediums of paintings and sculptures. They started playing with the boundaries of the two realms, “art” and “real life”. Expressing a concept through the human body as the medium became the core principal of Performance art.

Anish Kapoor’s canonball installation.

This more and more meant that the performance was not just visual, it was involving all the senses of the being like sound, smell, sometimes touch as well and it was all temporal. Once it is over you are just left with the memory of it. It was the first time where the viewer was the part of the art and art making process itself (directly or indirectly). May it be the painting of Jackson Pollock where the canvas became the arena for the artist for the gaze of the viewers or the “Cut piece” experiment by Yoko Ono where the viewers by taking action were involved in the creation of the performance.

It is not possible to define the characteristics of this type of art as it is fluid and has close resemblance and hence fuzzy boundaries with other type of art and acts. Performance art borrows from Visual arts performing arts and other things which are not related to art in a conventional sense like day to day activities, rituals etc. It is truly an intermedia and interdisciplinary art style that brought together artists from various fields to create something all encompassing.

The movement takes many forms as a political reaction to democratizing the art throughout its evolution.

Joseph Beuys “Everyone is an artist and the social designer of the future.”

While on my exchange semester in Berlin I got an opportunity to visit an exhibit showcasing the work of Joseph Beuys at Hamburger Bahnhoff, Berlin.

The seemingly incomplete display of blackboards and wooden stands scattered on the floor made me dismiss this installation immediately.

The documentation films of Beuys’s performances see that someone was doing something, some pre-planned activity, there were a lot of spectators some fascinated, some confused. The performer was going about the task at hand (placing a ladder somewhere in a large room and climbing on it) mundanely. I was thoroughly confused, I knew it was a performance but had no idea of its intent or even what was happening on the screen.

Performance art is ideally to be experienced in person, being completely submerged in the experience. The video was just documentation. When I read more about Beuys I learned about his views to use art for the betterment of the society and how this conviction led Beuys to push the boundaries of established art forms to include human action. Through his performances or ‘Actions’, Beuys encouraged audiences to incorporate his political and social messages into their everyday lives. He even called his performances “anthropological art”.

The Performance videos were being played in the small dark audio-visual rooms of the museum. I sat in for a few... they were long and not a lot happened over the time I was there. I could undrstand that things were being done deliberately and the spectators were curiously watching the performer going about their tasks but I was left utterly confused overall with questions like what are they doing and why? Maybe that was the intent !

Beuys being an artist and pedagogue worked towards creating a social understanding about art and educating people through the art he created.

The performance wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt (How to explain pictures to a dead hare) was the high point of Beuys’ development of a broadened definition of art.

In this performance Beuys used various symbolisms trying to discover the relation between the human the nature and the divine. The performance was used as a trigger to involve the people in this thought that the artist had. This was one of the pioneering performances from that era.

Later we can see East Germany artist being actively involved in the “Intermedia” performances as well. In the time of German Democratic Republic a lot of artists made political performances against the state’s cultural protocols and the artistic freedom. Bauhaus, Dessau and Dresden academy of fine arts were playing an important role in blurring of institutional and experimental borders. During this time the performances became more as a political reaction and movements like human and civil rights, feminism.

Marina performing “Rhythm 0” and audience cutting her clothes off and cutting her with blade as a part of the performance.

“An art made of trust vulnerability and connection”

Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović’s art pushes the boundary between audience and artist in pursuit of heightened consciousness and personal change.

In her performance “Rhythm 0” she gave complete control to the audience to do whatever with her treating her like an object of no self conscious or feelings. People in these unusual scenarios acted variedly from giving her flowers to actually cutting her with blades. As an artist it was a fight with all the fears for her and told a lot about people’s psyche.

In the groundbreaking 2010 work, “The Artist Is Present,” she just sat in a chair facing her audience, for eight hours a day gazing into a stranger’s eyes and letting them gaze into hers. She explained that it was a dialogue, with all the distractions of word etiquette, rules gone they both in that moment were deeply connected. People found this slightly uncomfortable experience extremely moving. Some people cried, some broke down in front of her and some offered her gifts.

“Nothing happens if you always do things the same way,” she says. “My method is to do things I’m afraid of, the things I don’t know, to go to territory that nobody’s ever been” You can’t be afraid of feeling discomfort if you want to grow.

A change in the mundane a disturbance in the usual can cause the stimulus to think, to question. The art can be disruptive; it can be unsettling to make you feel the emotions you would never notice otherwise. Another work by Marina named “Balkan Baroque” is an example of this feeling of utmost discomfort, where she sat on a pile of bloody cow bones trying to clean the blood off of them. It was a reaction piece for the ongoing Balkan wars and the concept of war in general. By the end of it the artist herself was covered in blood, devastated by the horrible smell and frustrated with the futile efforts of cleaning the blood and all this was the part of the performance (not just the end result).

Marina performing at MoMA “The Artist is Present” as Ulay (her expartner) paid a surprise visit.

Performance art is where the artist invites us to be the art to create something together. He places the creative power in the hands of each person involved and takes the experience of the art as close to real life as all your senses are living the experience. You are completely drowned in this ocean of a new concept and not just admiring the view from the shores. I think this is one of the most impactful ways to use art as a tool for social change and has potential to make a lot of difference if tried in the Indian context as we struggle today with traditions, technology and the rapidly changing world around us. Our thoughts and stories can become experiences that compel people to be uncomfortable and to think.

ReferencesTed talk- The rise of performance art | Glenn Lowry | TEDxAthens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6EeJVL0KZs The Case for Performance Art | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmMTKdUAokM Ted Talk- An art made of trust vulnerability and connection Marina Abramović https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4so_Z9a_u0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HVOCay10m8 An Introduction to Performance Art | Tate Shots https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/josephbeuys-actions-vitrines-environments/joseph-beuys-actions.

The art story https://www.theartstory.org/movement-performance-art.htm Wikipedia Performance arts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art Watershed https://www.watershed.co.uk/whatson/8254/beuys Post - Performing the Subject, Claiming Space: Performance Art in 1980s East Germany By Sara Blaylock http://post.at.moma.org/content_ items/1035-performing-the-subject-claiming-space-performance-art-in1980s-east-germany Prepared Guitar Joseph Beuys - Transformer http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com/2015/04/joseph-beuys-transformer. html

Echo Morgan performing “hair clligraphy”