Artifact Magazine by xamelianox

ISSUE No. 1

CENTERING WOMEN IN ART

IEVA MISEVIČIŪTĖ

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DROOLING

KENYA (ROBINSON) MAKES SPACE FOR HERSELF

JANINE ANTONI

PISSES OFF OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

RÚRÍ

ICELAND’S NATIONAL TREASURE

SUMMER 2018

16. . . . . . .SIGNS OF PROTEST 18. . . . . . . . RADICAL IMAGES

14. . . . . . . . . . . . . GALLLERIES

26. . . . . . . . . JANINE ANTONI 36. . . . . . . . . IEVA MISCUIVITE 46. . . . . . KENYA (ROBINSON) 54. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RURI

64. . . . . . . . . . . . . LEIJA FARR 66. . . . . . . . . ERIN BAD HAND

68. . . . . . . . . . MIRANDA JULY

70. . . . . . . . . . . . . EVA HESSE 72. . . . . . . .DEGENERATE ART 74. . . . . . RADICAL PRESENCE 76. . . . 10 WHISPERING PINES

SUMMER 2018: THE PERFORMANCE ISSUE 5

ARTIFACT MAGAZINE

EDITOR &

IS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY.

ART DIRECTION

Artifact Magazine showcases selfidentifying women in art.

Amy Harrington EDITOR-AT-LARGE

ISSN 2378-2560 print

Jill Vartenigian

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Artifact Magazine c/o Amy Harrington PO Box 2828 Seattle hello@artifact.com Printed in Seattle, WA as a part of Seattle Central Creative Academy Graphic Design Program Magazine Class Fall 2017 Copyright Â© 2018 Artifact Magazine All rights reserved.

Anna Atiagina Justin Av Marahri Behrens Isabel Blue Natalya Brown Tricia Bui Kirk Damer Todd Dubrabradow Gigi Goldberg Dre Gordon Tracie Loo Tomoko Hasegawa Julia Kowalski Gillian Levine Xio Lugo Phil Manning Akiko Masker Julia Rundberg Amanda Welch Nina Wesler

SPRING 2018: THE PERFORMANCE ISSUE 7

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

‘‘Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.’’ — Zora Neale Hurston

It is with great pleasure that I introduce our inaugural issue of our quarterly publication, Artifact Magazine. Less than a year ago, this magazine started as a simple concept between friends who all felt the relentless sting of the patriarchy. As we struggle to make sense of current politics, we better understand the value of our community and the ways that it keeps us afloat. What better way to celebrate community than give it a voice? Fast forward to our press release on the steps of the Whitney, and the future’s never been more uncertain — or brighter. No stones were left unturned as our dedicated staff searched high and low to find self-identifying women who are putting themselves out there in the most vulnerable ways. We kick off our quarterly publication with performance art which is often overlooked in favor of more traditional forms of artistic expression. We hope to promote unity by connecting artists between generations. We have a lot to learn from each other. Artificial barriers and labels such as “Millenial,” or “GenX,” can be divisive in our quest to lift each other up in a man’s world. With each quarterly issue, we will focus on a specific discipline, with a mission of making that format of artistic expression more accessible. In closing, I leave you with an urgent reminder presented in the wisdom of Zora Neale Hurston, “Those that don’t got it, can’t show it. Those that got it, can’t hide it.”

2018 9.15

8.14

THE RETURN OF “CITY MAZE”

LAST ANDREW EDLIN SHOW

Opens September 15, Wall Works 39 Bruckner Blvd, The Bronx.

Closes August 14, Edlin Gallery, 134 Tenth Avenue, Manhattan.

The second of two shows dedicated to the work of Fashion Moda (1978 –1993), The Return of City Maze is a re-creation of one of the art space’s most popular installations: a cardboard maze installation by Jane Dickson and Crash (aka John Matos, founder of Wall Works), along with a host of other collaborators (including Daze and Judith Supine). City Maze was a place to be entered and explored, undergone and added to like the city itself, a warehouse of possibilities. Designed to engage the local children who came to Fashion Moda to hang out, it was a safe place for kids to go wild daily. For those who reflected on it, the Maze was a microcosm of the choices and confusion of the city, a rehearsal space in which to meet challenges and overcome obstacles, a place to leave your mark.

Andrew Edlin’s space in Chelsea — and the Bellwether Gallery space before it — was always a little awkward: an entryway followed by a hallway, then the proper gallery (which is small). But by the sheer number of shows I’ve seen there, I’ve developed an admitted attachment to it, and Edlin’s final show there puts it one of its best uses. The exhibition features directly-on-the-wall murals by seven artists, including a gorgeously enigmatic installation by Saya Woolfalk up front that stops you in your tracks on the street. But it’s Kevin Sampson’s piece in the back that swiftly steals the show; dense, frenetic, and razor sharp, the work is the most stunningly potent piece of political art I’ve seen in a long time.

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As the art world heads into summer hibernation, it’s your last chance to catch a number of shows before they close. When you finish all that art viewing, shake the seriousness out at an electronic music dance party, a festival celebrating the black soul of Brooklyn. — Jillian Steinhauer

10.14

8.13

PUSSY DON’T FAIL ME NOW

APERTURE ‘SUMMER OPEN’

Closes October 14, Rucker Gallery, 141 Attorney Street, Manhattan.

Closes August 13, Aperture Gallery, 54 W 27th Street, Manhattan.

This gem of a show features three artists who express their feminism in very different ways. Doreen Garner paints and embellishes found vessels — including an enema — so that they toe the line between blinged out and monstrous. Sophia Narrett turns the delicacies of embroidery and small-scale sculpture into blunt sexual fantasies. Kenya (Robinson) zeroes in on gender and race, dismantling the unending speeches

This year’s annual open-call exhibition at Aperture asks photographers to consider how their realities “echo the outlandish narratives of science fiction.” From over 500 submissions, the 24 projects represented this year reflect issues ranging from the ubiquity of technology in daily life to real estate development to capitalism and magic. The photographs show that perhaps real life can be stranger than science fiction.

SIGNS 12

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Art installation references US Army’s mass execution of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota in 1862

BY TIM NELSON Photos by Simon Moya-Smith

On a fence surrounding the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, hangs a sign of protest against the work “Scaffold” by artist Sam Durant. Walker Art Center executive director Olga Viso says she has talked with the artist behind the controversial sculpture “Scaffold” and they’re in agreement the sculpture should be dismantled in some manner. In a statement released Saturday afternoon, Viso said details of how and when will be determined by Traditional Spiritual Dakota Elders at a meeting scheduled with the Walker and artist Sam Durant on Wednesday. She said it will be done with the support of a mediator selected by the Elders. Viso’s statement reads in part, “Prompted by the outpouring of community feedback, the artist Sam Durant is open to many outcomes including the removal of the sculpture. He has told me, ‘It’s just wood and metal - nothing compared to the lives and histories of the Dakota people.’” Viso also said, “I regret the pain that this artwork has brought to the Dakota community and others.” Earlier Saturday, Minnesota’s Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community joined calls for the Walker Art Center to take down the controversial sculpture set to debut at the sculpture garden reopening. Durant’s 2012 sculpture “Scaffold” makes reference to “seven historical gallows that were used in U.S. state-sanctioned executions between 1859 and 2006,” according to Viso’s description on the museum’s website. One of those seven gallows is specific to Minnesota: the execution of 38 Dakota men during the Civil War in Mankato in 1862. A spokeswoman for the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux community said its members are descended from the same band to which the men executed in 1862 belonged. Some of the opposition to Sam Durant’s sculpture, “Scaffold,” included a menacing poster at the site of the installation and suggestions online that the work in the Walker Sculpture Garden should be burned down. Tim Nelson | MPR NewsnIn a statement, the SMSC said the Walker should have consulted ahead of time with Minnesota’s Dakota communities and other Native American communities in Minnesota before putting up the work. “The SMSC supports disassembling the scaffold exhibit until the Walker is able to fully engage with a diverse array of Native voices around this tragedy. This conversation is critical to making sure we show the respect due to the men who gave their lives and the Dakota communities they were a part of,” reads the statement. Activist Graci Horne announced the Walker Art Center had agreed to remove a controversial sculpture at a rally of about 100 opponents gathered near the musuem’s outdoor display on May 27, 2017. In an open letter, Viso, wrote that she regrets that she did not understand how the work would be received. “I should have engaged leaders in the Dakota and broader Native communities. I apologize for any pain that the sculpture elicits.”

OF PROTEST

Opposite: Native American Solidarity Committee, 1978. Above: National Committee to Defend Dessie Woods, Atlanta, 1970s.

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Two exhibitions in New York presenting the cultural and documentary history of protest that took place over the last forty years BY MICHAEL McCANN Over the past few months, protests have erupted across the country, filling streets and airports, town halls and city parks. As the Trump administration implements its nationalist agenda, the protests will surely grow and intensify. Commentators have likened the political strife to that of the 1960s, and express disbelief that the country has arrived at such a volatile state. This shock derives in part from the belief that, since then, this kind of unrest has been absent from American streets and politics, confined instead to election booths and the floor of Congress. As an alternative to this narrative, two exhibitions in New York are presenting the cultural and documentary history of protests, riots, and revolution that took place over the last forty years, from the election of Richard Nixon to the end of the century. “Finally Got the News: The Printed Legacy of the U.S. Radical Left, 1970–1979,” at Interference Archive, displays a collection of printed ephemera while “Whose Streets? Our Streets!: New York City, 1980–2000,” at the Bronx Documentary Center through March 5, presents photos of a city in tumult over race relations, the AIDS epidemic, and economic change. These exhibitions approach the historical specificity of their subjects through different mediums and contexts. But both remind us that conflict and protest are the common language of politics. In the 1970s, protesters who had weathered the Civil Rights and anti-war movements hardened into urban revolutionary groups that battled on long after the mass movements petered out. “Finally Got the News” presents a sampling of the printed ephemera these groups left behind. Posters, booklets, and newspapers cover the walls of the archive’s small gallery, displaying the distinct visual language that protest movements developed.

Some are large, colorful prints of anti-colonialism struggles elsewhere in the world, while others are stripped of images, mimicking the earnest graphic design of corporate instruction manuals or bulletins put out by public agencies. The show represents major currents in activism of the ‘70s: black liberation, Marxism, gay liberation, radical feminism, anti-imperialism, radical unionism, and indigenous struggles, as well as the various means used to deliver these messages, ranging from silkscreen to mimeograph. The well-worn imagery of the revolutionary left abounds-raised fists, AK-47s, Marx, Lenin, etc. but there are less familiar images and subjects as well, such as a bilingual journal on the Eritrean struggle for independence from Ethiopia or another on Northwestern fishing rights replete with an Inuit woodcut under the title. One beautiful purple-andgreen silkscreen print depicts an Angolan woman in traditional garb embracing a guerilla fighter in camouflage fatigues. It was produced by a print shop in San Francisco in solidarity with the struggle for national liberation in Angola. Some of the causes are distant or historically removed, like solidarity posters for the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa or against the dictatorship in Chile, while others feel painfully contemporary. One poster from 1973 calls for a demonstration in Manhattan against the acquittal of a white police officer on trial for killing Clifford Glover, a nine-year-old black boy. “Another police murder” is written across the top in careful script. Some of the material for the exhibition comes from the archive’s shelves but most is drawn from the private collection of Brad Duncan, who curated the show with the Interference team. Duncan has been collecting progressive and radical ephemera for

Right: Sylvia Plachy: Brooklyn, Under the Williamsburg Bridge, 1987. Opposite: A Luta Continua, date unknown, poster, San Francisco.

years, assembling his own archive in his West Philadelphia home. When I asked how he chose the materials to display, he said he “wanted to show that these movements, while each coming out of their own autonomous historical experience, were united by currents that were explicitly anti-capitalist and also explicitly revolutionary, in so much as they were for destroying the state and creating something new in its place.” Josh MacPhee, Jen Hoyer, and others from the Interference collective helped make sure that the materials displayed a diversity of aesthetic styles and mediums. “One key reflection that we hope visitors will take away,” Hoyer told me, “is how print publications were used as a tool for community organizing.” “Finally Got the News” takes its name from a 1970 documentary of the same name on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a group that successfully fused working-class politics with ideals of black liberation. Detroit features prominently in the show, in part because Duncan grew up there and in part because the city uniquely stood at the intersection of black urban life and powerful industrial unionism. It represented the New Left’s best hope for uniting identity and revolutionary class struggle. The revolution never materialized, however, and the disappearance of industrial jobs destroyed that avenue towards radical change just as surely as it destroyed the city of Detroit. The show’s overall presentation and its content form a sharp juxtaposition. The clean rows of uniformly sized photographs and the brilliant white matting enclose scenes brimming with unrest and surging bodies. Some of the images are familiar-people walking on sidewalks, holding signs, shouting at police officers-while others seem to come from another world. In one black-and-white photo a car burns in Washington Heights amid protests against the murder of an undocumented immigrant by the police in the early 1990s. In another, a squatter stands atop an overturned car in the Lower East Side, using it as a makeshift barricade to impede the police from evicting a squatted building. Major historic events, like the Tompkins Square Park Riot, are placed alongside simple, almost unremarkable moments of protest: a mother picketing a medical-waste incinerator or workers demanding better treatment at a restaurant in Chinatown. The

photographs show the everyday political life of the city. The photos, perhaps because of their documentary nature, also record a period of dramatic change. Even though the photos aren’t arranged in chronological order, you can follow the transformation of the city as the photos go from black-and-white to color. A kind of political gentrification is also on display as the images evolve from violent confrontations into more symbolic actions. Unlike Detroit, New York in the early ‘80s was starting what would become a frenzied resurrection, driven by the burgeoning financial sector and social engineering on the part of increasingly aggressive mayoral administrations. Another trans-formative current running through the show is the AIDS crisis. One photo in particular marks the importance of AIDS in shaping the political landscape of the city during those decades and also how it hovers in the background of the show. Different from the others, it is a photo by Sylvia Plachy from 1987, depicting an abandoned-looking building under the Williamsburg Bridge. “AIDS” is scrawled on its side in ghostly white paint. At the moment, for obvious reasons, there is a huge upsurge in shows and exhibitions on protests and social unrest. Even before the election of Trump and the ascent of his cabal of nativists, xenophobes, and nationalists, a powerful movement for black liberation emerged in response to police violence, which paralleled a growing radical critique of capitalism. In response, activists across the country are calling for resistance based in cities. As they mobilize, these movements are creating their own unique iconography and an incredible rate of photographic documentation, the subject of “Perpetual Revolution: The Image and Social Change,” an exhibition now on view at the International Center for Photography. This kind of historical representation is not the height of political activity but can form a historical and cultural grounding for those choosing to resist. In the years covered by these shows, people struggled, lost, fought, and occasionally won against powerful reactionary political and economic forces. The traces they left behind in print and photographs shed light on those eras and remind us that things have been as bad before, if not worse, and that resistance flourished nonetheless.

BY DOUGLAS DREISHPOON

Photography courtesy of Janine Antoni Some conversations never get beyond an introduction. Others endure, gaining momentum and interest as time goes on. I began a conversation with Janine Antoni in 2003, when she came to speak at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Over the past six years we have continued to converse about many matters, from specific projects to existential themes to more general topics. Born in Freeport, Bahamas, in 1964, Antoni moved to Florida in 1977 to attend boarding school, and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. Since then she has mounted major exhibitions throughout the U.S. and Europe and won prestigious awards (most notably a MacArthur Fellowship in 1998). Some of her earliest works — Gnaw (1992), Loving Care and Slumber (both 1993), for example — transformed daily rituals of eating, sleeping and washing into extreme acts: in Gnaw, chewing on two 600-pound cubes, one made of chocolate and the other of lard, until she was exhausted; in Loving Care, mopping a gallery floor with her hair saturated in dye; and in Slumber, sleeping on a bed in public, at night registering her brain waves on an electroencephalograph and, during the day, duplicating the patterns by weaving them into an expansive blanket. For To Draw a Line (2003), she tightrope-walked her way 8 feet off the ground along a 100-foot-long rope (which she made by hand) coiled around two giant steel reels and stretched taut; she eventually fell into a billowy heap of hemp. The one-time performance, which took place at Luhring Augustine, her New York gallery, required almost 16 months of intense preparation. Antoni sometimes takes years to conceive and execute her

installations, thriving on interdisciplinary research, and constantly developing new processes and methodologies. Striving to make her work accessible, she is nonetheless careful not to compromise its metaphorical complexity, balancing intimacy and universality, destruction and transformation. I met with Antoni at her Brooklyn studio on Apr. 28, 2009, as she was preparing for her exhibition “Up Against” at Luhring Augustine. In that and subsequent conversations, we talked about ritual and performance, motherhood, the notion of the witness, how to prime the creative process and what it means to think with the body. DOUGLAS DREISHPOON Let’s start with a flashback. I imagine you growing up on the pristine beaches of Freeport surrounded by sand and sky. And with this image comes another you mentioned in an earlier conversation but didn’t elaborate on, of you building sandcastles. Obviously, the Bahamas wasn’t a place with a lot of fine art. But there was, not to sound biblical, this primal material. As a metaphor for the performative art you eventually made, your childhood sandcastles seem significant. JANINE ANTONI There are three things that come to mind when I think about my sandcastle-making days. First there is my love for process. The ephemeral just comes with the territory. Second is the miniature, which I was obsessed with as a little girl. And I like the idea that one thing can stand for another: a shell, for example, can be a door. I see my daughter playing the

â&#x20AC;&#x153; My fantasy, like most, took me to an unlikely place.â&#x20AC;?

same imaginative games. Finally, you mention a primal material, which makes me think of Robert Smithson. I imagine that my relationship to materials is why I relate to him so much. I had a very sensuous, physical, visceral childhood. This influence is certainly reflected in my creative process, in some of the ideas and materials I gravitate to. We tend to internalize earlier experiences as memories that may resurface years later in some other form. Touch [a video produced in the Bahamas in 2002] is one of the few pieces that directly addresses my relationship to both the landscape and my childhood home. The video was filmed on the seashore in front of that home on the island of Grand Bahama. In it, I walk back and forth across a wire that is parallel to but slightly above the horizon. As I walk, the wire dips to touch the horizon. I balance there for a brief moment. This ocean’s horizon was what I looked out at through most of my childhood, and the image is deeply imprinted in my memory. I can still hear my mother saying, “Janine, you must go out and see the world, because this place that we come from is behind God’s back.” The horizon seemed to be the edge between our forgotten island and the world out there. I always thought of the horizon as a line that could not be pinpointed or in any way fixed; as you move toward it, it constantly recedes. I was drawn back to this impossible place. I wanted to walk along this line, which was essentially the line of my vision, the edge of my imagination. It reminds me of Courbet’s painting The Edge of the Sea at Palavas, in which the artist contemplates the ocean as he salutes it from the shoreline. The painting captures a sublime moment. A mere speck at the ocean’s edge, the human being seems dwarfed and insignificant, but also elevated and somehow enlightened. In Touch, rather than being dwarfed, I am a giant. I enter the frame like an apparition, walking along the horizon. I’m presently working on a piece that creates a similar scale shift, and which also happens to be triggered by a childhood memory. As a child in the Bahamas, I heard pirate stories that were more reality than fantasy. The islands were subject to bootlegging, blockade running, illegal immigration and drug trafficking. My brother told me stories about Anne Bonnet, an Irish-American woman who masqueraded as a male pirate in the Caribbean during the 18th century. One of the ways Bonnet deflected suspicion about her double identity was by using a ceramic apparatus that enabled her to urinate standing up. As a young girl, I was fascinated with the idea of Anne Bonnet’s device. Recently, I encountered commercially made objects designed exactly for this purpose that brought back this memory.

I couldn’t resist the complex implications of such an object. Like Anne Bonnet, I, too, wanted to live out the fantasy triggered by the use of this object. My fantasy, like most, took me to an unlikely place. Such is the unexpected journey of the unconscious. So here’s the leap: What if the apparatus for peeing while standing up was a gargoyle? And what if I actually cast this apparatus as a sculpture and used it to pee off of a landmark building in New York City? Gargoyles fascinate me, not only as hellish creatures but because they signify the mythical, shadow side of our psyche. There’s no consensus on the source of their grotesque configuration. They are functional, though, designed to disguise a funneling system that reroutes rainwater away from a building. I chose to sculpt a griffin gargoyle, which is a hybrid — a mythical composite of different animals. It occurred to me that to use my invented apparatus was to make myself into a hybrid, because as a woman my anatomy doesn’t enable me to pee standing up. The material you used in the sculpture was significant. Yes, the sculpture was cast in copper, calling to mind copper plumbing pipes as well as copper architectural details. The metal oxidized and changed color when it came into contact with my urine, so the object’s patina is a natural result of this action. By using the gargoyle in relationship to my body, I equate myself with the architecture. For, just as I have memories of being entertained by stories of the high seas, I also remember the Franciscan nuns in school telling me, “Your body is a temple.” I took the convergence of these memories literally. So you gained access to the Chrysler Building, where you had yourself photographed on the 61st floor peeing through the copper gargoyle. It was definitely a wild and exhausting session that took endless hours and a lot of patience on the part of everyone involved. The Chrysler Building acts as a pedestal for my exuberant gesture. It made me think of Yves Klein’s photograph Leap Into the Void[1960]. Maybe my attempt to confront the existential void is tempered by comic relief. Humor is useful because it exposes self-consciousness without pretension. It allows us to get closer to things that make us feel uncomfortable, such as our demons, our bodily fluids and our desire for power. We debated the pros and cons of humor in art at our panel at the 2007 College Art Association conference, where we were joined by Jeanne Silverthorne, Jane Hammond, Fred Tomaselli and Charles Long. Jane’s remark, that “it’s important for a woman to appear serious, so as to be taken seriously,” and Jeanne’s equally astute observation, that “humor is inherently political, anarchistic, and irreverent,” still feel right, as does “humor has never been a goal to side-step into.”

I agree with Jane. I was concerned at the beginning of my career, particularly given the extreme nature of my early works, about being taken seriously. I was consciously challenging art historical canons and engaging in cultural critique. It was my ’80s art school education coming through. But at the center of all of that seriousness, I would be licking a representation of myself in chocolate or something equally absurd. There was something consistent in the work, a kind of intentional misunderstanding. Contrary to most people’s perception of Gnaw, my interaction with huge cubes of chocolate and lard was a playful gesture. Which brings up the corporeal dimension of the work. You have said that when you moved from the Bahamas to Florida to attend school, you noticed that your body language was not the body language of someone raised in the United States. Has that translated into your work? Coming from the Caribbean Islands, I was painfully aware that, by American standards, I always get too close to other people. I really can’t make a point without touching someone. It’s a form of emphasis that transcends words. In the work it’s more extreme. I long for connection and see my objects as occupying the space between the viewer and myself. To be intimate with the object is to touch the viewer. It’s always a profound experience for me to sit down in the subway and feel the warmth of the person who sat there before me. Some people might be repelled, but for me, it’s really comforting that, on some basic level, we all produce warmth. I make art because it centers me in my body, and by doing so I hope to offer that experience to someone else. This direct physical experience is one of the rare things that art can offer in a culture of mediation. It’s through the body that I reach my unconscious — through dance, meditation and yoga. The body holds memory differently than the mind. Creativity is about unlocking memories within the body. It’s also about thinking with the body. I wonder sometimes whether our bodies are our own. If our bodies are made up of ancestral DNA, then memory could be vast, especially if our bodies recapitulate the genetic fabric of, say, our great-grandmothers. So when we speak about the unconscious, we should consider the collective unconscious and the memories we share when looking at an artwork, which could be the site of confluence between the artist and the viewer. Given that most of your performances happen in real time, control is relative and surprises inevitable. Sometimes I have to get out of the way. It’s beyond letting go of control. It’s about waiting and following one’s intuition.

The creative process is a mystery, something that seems to happen on the periphery of thought. When conceiving a work, I don’t try to home in on it too quickly. In fact, I do the opposite. I try to stay as open as possible for as long as I can. This state is full of potential, but it’s a terrifying place, too, because all I really want is for my ideas to solidify. I have so much doubt and fear, and yet the more I can just watch the unfolding with a light touch, the more the piece seems to make itself. At a certain unexpected point, something comes to the forefront. The work I’m making at the moment — a photographic series called “Inhabit” — is an example of the circuitous route my creative process often takes. It came to me first as a very simple image. I imagined that a spider had created its web between my legs. As I started to research the process of actualizing this image, things became complicated. Would a spider actually cooperate? How would I remain still in order to facilitate its weaving? After speaking with several entomologists, and learning about the extreme sensitivity of spiders to motion, I looked into getting a harness that would immobilize me. That led me to the world of harnesses, where I found a particular design that enabled me to be attached to a structure from many points on my torso. I realized that my body could be suspended in a way similar to a spider in its web. But I would need to build a cage around my legs in order to keep the spider in that particular area of my body. And it also became apparent that the spider would be too sensitive to build directly on my body due to body heat. It’s worth mentioning that, from the beginning, I equated the spider and its web with my daughter, and myself, the mother, with the support structure. Suddenly I thought of turning the spider’s cage into a doll’s house, as a way of incorporating the spider into the photograph. I now have an image that is a web within a web, a house within a house. After years of exploring your relationship to your original nuclear family, particularly to your mother, you now seem to be focusing on your own maternal role. You now have a daughter, who’s five. In my mind it is no leap to imagine the womb as primordial architecture. I’m structured so that I have room for another to dwell inside me: a quintessentially female experience. I was also thinking about the doll-house, with its open wings, in relation to the design of religious altarpieces, which can mirror church architecture. And one of the sources for “Inhabit” is the Madonna della Misericordia, or the Virgin of Mercy. In paintings, she is depicted as enveloping her followers in her mantle, creating a space that resembles the apse of a church. I intentionally create an ambiguous image that reflects the complex reality of motherhood, and

“ I long for connection”

“ I often imagine my body as a funnel through which the world is poured.”

I embrace the necessity of shape-shifting in order to fulfill this role. The elastic scale-shifting in the photograph acknowledges the mother’s required flexibility. She’s a ubiquitous presence, and yet her role requires a degree of withdrawal. A mother has to clear space for the development of the child’s imagination. This is a conscious desire, a willful decision: to be a point of stillness whose function is to nurture. In Inhabit I depict myself as half-hermit crab, because I’m carrying my house on my body, and half-spider, because I’m still at the center of the converging ropes. At the same time I want to be unclear about whether my body is suspended or ascending, entrapped or the structure of support. In the end, the substitution of the house for the skirt allows the mother to wear the family drama. Images that incorporate a house and a spider clearly evoke earlier works by Louise Bourgeois.

The installation of Tear at Luhring Augustine includes, just as it did in New Orleans, the video projection of my eye and the actual lead ball used in the demolition, but excludes what has been seen and hit. I intentionally create a gap at the center of the work. The viewer is left to consider whether the closing of the eye is an instinctive reaction against danger, or the willful avoidance of something one doesn’t want to see.

I’d be the first to admit that Bourgeois is a very strong influence on my work. When asked about the spider in her own work, Bourgeois said, “She is my mother.” Well, Louise is my art mother.

Janine Antoni’s exhibition “Up Against” is on view at Luhring Augustine in New York through Oct. 24. Douglas Dreishpoon is chief curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

Another recent work references the family. Yes. Another piece that is linked directly to my experience with my daughter is One Another, a photograph that captures her attempting to feed me through my belly button. She’s acting like an umbilical cord, returning me to my fetal memory. The photograph isn’t staged. I fell in love with her uncanny instinct and tender gesture of reciprocity. It’s like an image from a dream. You spoke earlier about the unconscious. There’s something I call the escape hatch. Every project needs one. It’s the one part of an installation that doesn’t a up. And that escape hatch leads to the unconscious. To liberate the unconscious might be to let go of the ego, or the notion of authorship. I always come back to the word “conduit,” because I feel like an open channel when I’m making art. I often imagine my body as a funnel through which the world is poured. And yet I always anticipate the audience at the other end of that funnel, because without them, half of the picture is missing. I need someone to fantasize about! My work occupies the territory between object, performance and relic. For each piece, I ask myself what the piece needs, how much I should tell and how much I should leave to the viewer’s imagination. With earlier projects, I spoke through the work in a very direct way, and I thought that was a generous gesture. Now, I’m more interested in leaving a space for the viewer’s imagination.

In Tear, which I initially proposed for the 2007 Venice Biennale and subsequently showed in New Orleans at the Prospect.1 Biennial [2008], I tried to tell the history of a wrecking ball through its surface. I did this by casting the wrecking ball in lead, a soft metal, and then using it to demolish a building. Unlike an industrial wrecking ball, the lead ball was vulnerable; each strike left it permanently scarred. The sound of the ball crashing against the building was synchronized with the blinking of my eyelid.

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“ I’m more interested in leaving a space for the viewer’s imagination.”

“ My work is really about studying myself. ”

IevaMisevičiūtė

Born and raised in the circus, Ieva Misevičiūtė cooks up some rare and extraordinary blends in her performances. She combines clowning with collective exorcism, improvised street dance with sexy butoh, and comedic animality with psychedelic academia. Once sidetracked by a master’s degree in political studies, she trained in various performance styles, practiced untamed street dance, and performed one-night stand-up at the sassiest level. Misevičiūtė studied the Japanese dance and movement form butoh, which is known for its “playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments.” She has since taken butoh to Slow Loris Youtube, philosophical pantomime, and beyond. Misevičiūtė’s major solo pieces have titles like Tongue PhD, Lord of Beef, and Nihilist News. With the latter she dove down into the New York City subway on the country’s coldest political day. Last September she presented Tongue PhD as a black-box theater production at The Kitchen, addressing all the hot stuff about new academia and showing how to learn drooling. Lord of Beef, performed at MoMA PS1 and Centre Pompidou, among other venues, is a series of impersonations of humans, nonhumans, objects, and ideas. This past January, she collaborated with painter Rita Ackermann on La vie en Rose, a performance at Hauser & Wirth, where they offered the audience an Ontological Deep Tissue Massage. This spring I hear Ieva is making very long arms and is training with rabid lords. When Ieva and I met a few years ago in New York City, we immediately hit it off, spending long days roaming the streets, talking, dancing, and eating carrots. Timidly, I have been following her shadow during some of her street performances, slipping from embarrassment into the greatest joy — on the beat. — Melanie Bonajo

Photography courtesy of Ieva Misevičiūtė

Melanie Bonajo You told me recently that you haven’t really been working. So what have you been doing? Ieva Misevičiūtė Ha! I am busy updating my methods right now. But in that sense I work all the time. My work is really about studying myself: my body, my psyche, my mind. Performing in a way is a test of how well I have studied myself. For example, Tongue PhD was about “vertical research,” accessing the knowledge archives that are stored as our deep cellular memory. I think that could be a new academia. Would you define this as a new period, like a period of reflection and renewed focus? How do you go through your days studying your body, and how is that different from before? The biggest change is that I moved away from the four hours of daily training that are typical to dancers. I am not as romantic as I used to be about the artistic process. According to the latest athletic research, dancers constantly over-exhaust their bodies and nervous systems. I’m just not into that lifestyle anymore. You see it with young dogs or cats; when they don’t know how to preserve their energy yet — they really go for it! (laughter) Older cats know better how much of themselves to use and when to rest. That’s where I’m at. I try to do everything in smaller portions of time but switch between things more often. It’s hard but it’s a dance. If there were an exercise for your new way of working, what would you offer as an instruction to me now? Is it like, “Put your finger out and move it really slowly through the air while you switch emotions every couple of seconds”? (laughter) Yes, that’s a good one. Switch between radically different modes every five seconds: emotional, object-oriented, seductive, aggressive, tender, etcetera. Do simple things, but do each one

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intensely and then change to another. I’ve been on the streets with you — for instance the boombox trip when you danced in the middle of Broadway, stopping traffic and making the pedestrians jam in with you. You connect to all people on the street from this joyful place of freedom and innocence. But I’m also interested in your introverted side and in your self-study. You seem to enter a mystical place through the body. Performing on the street to me feels like jumping off a cliff, where you have to free yourself from the opinions of other people. By the way, apropos of your question about working, last week I was performing in the Union Square subway station. I am interested in how you went from this intense practice of combining modern dance with butoh and with more academic gestures and actions to arrive in a space that seems more silent, even blank, where there is a different form of control. I am learning different qualities and adding new experiences to my previous training. It’s challenging for me to perform using a softer flow of energy, or to express only the most necessary parts of the act or movement. I’ve had to be a bit quiet to find that. I think I moved past the silent phase now. How did you experience performing before this transition? A few years ago, a good performance to me was like mad fireworks of actions shooting in unexpected directions, creating a pressure cooker environment where the brains of the performer and the audience got rewired. I was convinced that one had to be physically exhausted for it to be a good exchange. Honestly, I wonder if this is some Eastern European “hard work equals good work” paradigm. (laughter)

You saw the early version of Tongue PhD where I went into a state of trance during the show. In the later version, I added more humor, shortened the acts, and with the help of lights, music, and a perpetual shift in modes I tried to create a hallucinogenic environment for the audience instead of going into a trance myself. That “karmic cleansing of archetypes” of the earlier version didn’t make me happier or healthier. And why is that? In my experience, if such leaps are meant to happen, they will happen collectively. I probably should not put such an exaggerated humanitarian load onto myself. That is where I grew skeptical toward butoh — because in this line of work it is expected that you dedicate your performative efforts toward the collective transformation of habitual thinking and behaving. It seemed like you were sacrificing something for all of us. I think if a performer or a shaman goes into a state of trance, everyone present has to be supportive, it has to be a col-

“ I am not as romantic as I used to be about the artistic process.”

I mean we are living in this time of high stimulation, where the more expressive, assertive side, which is archetypically masculine, is pushed forward in almost everything. While the more internal, reflective, subtle, cyclical, patient, relational — the archetypically feminine side — still doesn’t have much space. In order to claim that space as a place of power within ourselves, and to practice it without fear of losing the grounding and the pragmatic side, is really one step further away from convention. For example, your Tongue PhD, to me, felt like a cultural catharsis. You were kind of cleaning the collective wound shared by all of us in that space by entering into a shared energy field. To me, it tapped into the field of ritual, in a good way.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153; I communicate in states of beingâ&#x20AC;?

lectively agreed-on journey. In contemporary theater, this is not the case. Also, every good shaman is first of all a clown. You lighten up the space and seduce participants by clowning. Once I noticed that butoh training was starting to erode my inner clown, I had to reroute immediately. Hallelujah. (laughter) Every religion that doesn’t have a sense of humor seems highly suspicious to me. I’m also a huge advocate of funny feminism and fighting for equal rights with a good sense of humor. Your aesthetics are often completely absurd and mock the cliché of beauty. Can you talk about how these aspects of clowning are integrated into your practice or your life? Generally, I have a hard time taking things seriously. I think there is a punch line to everything. If I start doing some sexy belly dance moves, I just know that in twenty seconds I will have to destroy them by sticking my tongue out and drooling. Yeah, humor and laughter to foster connection and collectivity are the ultimate form of rebellion. I think being a clown is a form of activism. Commenting on culture makes sense when your nose is two meters long or when your tongue sticks out for twenty minutes during a performance about academia.

Clowning is also the ultimate test for how much the audience is holding onto their dogmas. It’s the Alice in Wonderland strategy of the rabbit: you constantly lure the audience with the signifiers that they recognize so they go with you into those rabbit holes that are less recognizable. Once they get lost you again give them a few recognizable things so they can rest. For instance, I use moves that signify showmanship, like imitating Liza Minnelli’s arms in an open V while wearing an arm extension. Then I slide one of the arms down and begin to lean on it, gradually transforming into a shaking creature resembling a deer. It is important to keep in mind that I am a female performer. And why is that important? It’s where I find my power. I’ll give you an example. For one of my performances on the street, I used to wear a white suit. It has an obviously masculine look, right?For the last iteration of it, I decided to wear a red dress instead. And the program director who had invited me said, “You know, I really prefer the white suit. It was neutral and we could distance ourselves and watch you do a sequence of movements.” And I said, “Yeah, but then I wasn’t challenging any paradigms.” Moving like an insect with a Beyoncé butt shake, or a lizard with Michael Jackson skids, or

“It is important to keep in mind 34

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a drooling baby that moves like a measuring tool — the red dress definitely made it more awkward to fit all these identities into one body. The director agreed with me that it called more stereotypes into question.

To return to what you said earlier, why do you think there is so little or no humor in butoh?

To me, it is very basic — first and foremost, I am a woman and within that I shift between multiple identities. Occasionally, I am an artist or a dancer; other times I’m an insect, or a slow loris. For examples of a good type of feminism, we should organize tours to Sweden and go to the weightlifting rooms in the gyms. There you can see how different it feels to be around real feminist men! It just feels like you have space there. It’s hard to describe but I’ve never felt more equal than there. The men, of course, notice you are a woman and might flirt, but they will never patronize. No one helps you pull a weight off the rack. I don’t believe in substituting sex with creative work. They are definitely not related.

Are pleasure and fun a motivation for you?

Oh! No, it’s rather that there is a tendency to forget humor in the Western interpretation of butoh. Western metaphysics is based It shows just how much judgment there is for the ultrafeminine. on Christianity. There is a lot of black-and-white fundamentalism, I also feel that with all the identity politics and transgender whereas I’m not sure that butoh came from the same place. Buand gender-neutral discussions going on, this ultrafeminine toh training has a lot to do with endurance, with sustaining and side has been pushed to the background. I don’t identify overcoming physically and mentally difficult states. It’s called the much with it, but I think it’s not really fair to put it at the “dance of darkness.” For Christians, you know, pain is a virtue end of the line or outside the discourse. and they tend to lean toward masochism.

Yes. Pleasure should be a motivation for any work. I always admire the humor and lightness in the way you do your work. You can say many critical things about certain sensitive subjects while still talking in an inclusive way. This can be done, but there is always space for non-judgment and empathy, which are portals to the other person’s view. How do we establish empathy through doing things together that we enjoy, even though we are so different?

d that I am a female performer.” 35

I like the shadows and forbidden places, the hidden pockets of society. My questions about street culture, street dance, sex, rituals, and femininity cannot just be mine. I am a product of what’s around me. For me, these are essential parts of life: freedom of expression, joy, happiness, sex, and feminine seduction. When I realize that the simple act of dancing in the streets feels like jumping off a cliff, I suspect that my liberation from this fear must go beyond a personal victory. I’m moving toward eradicating more and more of these pockets of oppression within myself and, because my work is public, I share this process. I also think creativity is part of every person. What I love about these mass demonstrations happening on the streets everywhere at the moment — they are such a celebration of human inventiveness. It’s wonderful and it’s also a form of emancipation. Fake news, for instance, is helpful in learning to rely on yourself, first of all. Everybody wants to break free from something. Yeah, and everybody is a champion.

g kin ly a p m ’s tru ed o t s rt it t a ’ e t us o I s ssive an c a c ‘‘ I be m. S ggre ace t r a sp Ia ea a r o o g wh g m atin e in be ut cr f.’’ l o se ab y m for

Kenya (Robinson) is an artist, born in Landstuhl, Germany and raised in Gainesville, Florida, whose practice includes performance, sculpture, and installation. She received an MFA in Sculpture from Yale in 2013, and currently lives in NYC. Her work has been shown at the Museum of Modern Art, The Kitchen, The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and the 60 Wall Street Gallery of Deutsche Bank. She documents her work online on her Instagram account @kenya9. BRANDON STOSUY You received your MFA at Yale, and are a contemporary artist, but you are working outside the gallery system. It seems like you’ve found strategies for doing that. KENYA (ROBINSON) It’s been easy because I’m an outsider. I wish I could say I was forward thinking, but it was just a matter of necessity. As I felt my work get stronger, less and less opportunities arose to be in a group show or whatever. The last four shows I’ve been in are ones that I curated myself. I was a ghost curator. The first one was "Pussy Don’t Fail Me Now." It was a group show with folks I’d met at Skowhegan. We were talking, and it just seemed like a cool idea to make a show. A big turning point came when I was listening to all of these recordings from the Skowhegan archives. They were talks. One of the things people said that would repeat was: “Oh, we decided to make a show.”

That blew my mind because I could think of a it as a sculptural object: making a show. Not trying to “create this buzz or connect with this particular curator. I’m like, well if you make a show you don’t need to have this background in art history. You could construct it the way you would do any other kind of work. That gave me confidence to make something and understand that whether it was an article or an essay or a sound piece or a more traditional exhibition, I could be as present and participatory as I would be if I decided to make something in my studio. I’m in the process of writing my artist statement for 2017, and I realized this epiphany that I’ve come to with regards to my practice is a response to not having any real opportunities when I completed grad school. It was like nothing happened. When I say nothing happened, nothing happened. I couldn’t get a good job. It was just a lot of “no’s.” Part of it was understanding that sometimes that period after grad school is a little funny, but I also knew that there were people who were getting served by the machine. It wasn’t a matter of talent or good ideas, it was like they’d been chosen and that was it. I just had to decide: What was I going to do with that? I can’t stop making art because it’s truly who I am, so I started being more aggressive about creating a space for myself. Okay, nobody’s showing my work. Okay, well, I’m going to use Instagram as a platform for that. That way everybody’s going to know about my piece, “The White Man In My Pocket.”

It’s nuanced. We already know that a white artist has a lot more leeway with the kinds of work that they’re going to be supported in making. That kind of openness is not as available if you’re a black artist. There’s also a kind of quota system. It’s like… one, we need to be able to categorize this person. Two, once we find the person that fits in that category. I am determined to be a contrarian. I think about it, it’s like — are there any black women artists who are contrarians in the contemporary art scene? That are vocally contrarian and actually have some other things to support a more conceptual basis? I like that. I like that possibility. If I’m kind of prickly, I’m also very clear about what I want and how I want to operate. It’s all for a reason. It’s not just to support some ego. But I’m also someone who is very interested in service. I’m “thinking” about being a part of the “Out of Line” Series on the High Line this coming summer. Basically, I had a tantrum because I had no sense of why they chose me. I had no sense of what kind of efforts they were going to be making to make this happen. I sent some very typical bullet points, just as an overview, and the person I was working with basically cut and pasted my words, and I was like, no, that’s not why I sent those. Those were to hopefully connect with some ideas you already had if you wanted to do this project together. A lot of my job is convincing the people I’m working with that I want them to work, too. That I’m not just excited to have this opportunity, because I can create so many opportunities of my own, that I’m not impressed by that. I’m impressed by what happens when we work together because that’s where the magic happens.

Also, I applied to grad school without having a bachelor’s degree, so that was the crack of the door — like “Oh, wait a minute… They have all these rules, but they’re just suggestions really.” That planted the seed for that idea and then when I got a chance, through my relationship with Amanda McDonald Crowley, to go I keep on seeing that and I end up having to be pretty extreme to Bemis and be a resident, I was like, “Oh, well, yeah, sometimes in my communication of it because when I first tell people like, you have to apply for a residency, but sometimes you don’t.” That “Okay. I am adept at creating my own opportunities. I want this to was also another eye-opening experience, that because of my be a non-hierarchical relationship and I expect you are as invested other skills, it gave these institutional bodies another thing to as I am or what’s the point?” I think I’m pretty clear on that. Then kind of grab hold of to justify funding me being there. the next time we meet it’s like none of that is presented. Then I have to get crazy and be like, “Well if you don’t call me and we Around the same time, I participated in a small group don’t have a conversation about this, then you can forget about show at Rush Arts. The curator was largely hands-off, it. Fuck it!” Then we ended up having a really uncomfortable so that was a thing where I was like, “Well, maybe but ultimately productive conversation. Whether or not it ends I could hide behind somebody else while up happening, that’s not really what that was about. they take the credit, but I could also do all of this stuff myself. I could make it happen.”All When we do decide to work together, I feel like I’m not out here those things that came together have continued to on my own making this stuff and not having any real support. It inspire, just kind of pushing that envelope and… I care does feel like, “Oh, well, we’re going to give you this… You send about vastly different things now as opposed to when I us this budget, we send you this check.” It’s like, “No. That’s not first became a participant in the art world. how it’s going to work because you know your audience better than I do. You know what you’re trying to achieve as an institution You said when some people leave grad school, they’re the better than I do. But I know my work better than you do. If we join ones that are chosen. Why do certain people get chosen and forces we can make this work and this experience really fruitful.” certain people don’t? What’s the criteria?

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Do you think institutions giving money basically just want to hand the money off versus having to put more work into it? I think that was the endgame of having applications in the first place, because there are so many ways to know about artists, but if you actually choose the artist and something goes awry, or they do something that you don’t like, you can blame it on the selection panel. I think in many ways that’s very cowardly. Here you are ensconced in this institution that has support and you can’t take a risk? That seems fucked up. It seems like a real pimp-ho situation, and I’m not about it. It’s got to be consensual. What do people expect from you as a black woman who’s an artist? Do people have a preconceived idea of what kind of art you’re going to make? That I don’t showcase black figures in my work is problematic for a lot of people because they keep on saying, “black bodies,” and stuff, which is offensive to me. But that’s how the mainstream has positioned itself. I don’t even believe in Afrofuturism. I’m not going to co-sign to that when that’s a term coined by some white scholar. Why do I have to believe in that? On many West African instruments they have these things — these little doo-dads, basically — that they attach to things so

that when you play it, even if you’re a virtuoso, there’s always going to be this kind of hum that’s out of your control. That’s like the symbol of the divine. Is that Afrofuturism? Not to me. It really communicates something much bigger than that, but not only have white people coined the term and developed it as a discipline, but black people have cosigned it. If you are in the mindset of not co-signing that or always questioning it, you’re going to be kind of difficult to deal with. I think you’re going to be a problematic figure, even if you’re just really presenting a critical argument. Do you think there’s a way to change the art system as it is or is the way just to operate outside of it? Is it something that you think can actually be changed at this point or is it too complicated? I think that it’s always changing and we won’t know until… who knows? There are so many things that I get a chance to do because I am demanding, that I think are going to affect the future. I’ll give you an example. Doreen Garner and I do this radio show and we’ve been doing some live events. We were asked to present artist Q&As for four artists of which Doreen is one, showing at MoCADA currently. So I get the e-mail or whatever and I’m already seeing that the exhibitions coordinator is very young. I don’t really want to do stuff unless it’s going to push me,

challenge me, or create another platform for me to share the work, so I’m feeling like I don’t think he really knows enough. I can tell him, but that’s going to be a lot of work. First I said, I don’t want to do it. Doreen was like, “Put the gun down,” because I’m like, “Kill them all.” She’s like, “No, put the gun down.” That’s kind of what we say to each other when we’re ready to go off. It’s like, put the gun down it’s not worth it. So I got a chance to think about it and I was like, you know what, this is an opportunity to educate him, because I do have some experience. I can say, “Okay you need to make sure that you reach out to press people. Everything that you do should, in fact, be portfolio-worthy, because you don’t know how long you’re going to be at this place. I’m going to do the best job that I can. It’s going to be excellent, and I expect the same from you.” I don’t think anybody had ever said that to him. No one had ever said, I’m going to put in work and I expect you to put in work. Not just for my own ego, but because it’s going to be good for you, and it’s going to be better for the work. I think that’s one way of changing things. I guess one of my largest criticisms is this costume of altruism that a lot of institutions put on. I actually wish they would take it off sometimes, because the reality is that they have a very specific reason why they do the things that they do. Most often it’s not because they want to influence culture in a significant way. They just want to exist as a mechanism for creating wealth. I actually don’t have a judgement on that. I think there is a lot to be discussed. One time, Andrea Fraser came to speak when I was in school and she started crying at a certain point in her presentation. I was really kind of disgusted by it. I had written an article about white women crying and I was just kind of over it. I was telling my friend this on the phone and she’s like, “When did she cry?” I was telling her and she was like, “Oh my gosh. She cried at the same time when I saw her give that talk.” So of course after we’re able to have lunch, I called Andrea on it. I was like, “What do you think about the performativity of tears in connection with the fact that you’re a white woman?” She was like, “Oh, I don’t think it was a performance.” I was like, this is the kind of schizophrenia that is so damaging to real support and development of culture. It’s actually okay that you used that as a performance. So one time I tried it out because I’ve been developing a healthy sense of entitlement. One of the easiest ways for me to get there at the beginning was to be like, what would a white woman do? I would just do that and then shit would change. Crying in public was this thing that just culturally wasn’t part of my upbringing, but I’ve used it to great effect. I used it to great effect in dealing with a cell phone bill, and it was shocking. I just engaged that performativity with whoever was on the other end of the line and since I was performing, they were going to perform too. I think that’s a much more interesting conversation than trying to be in denial. I think that’s true in many conversations that could actually

“ One of my largest criticisms is this costume of altruism that a lot of institutions put on.”

change the course of how we utilize and create this art world. We could actually use a tool of authenticity to… I’m not saying that it would be any more equitable. I’m not saying that there’s still not going to be people chosen by a set of gatekeepers, but if the conversation veered toward authenticity, then other voices could get heard just by virtue of that act. Then another group could choose, a group that maybe doesn’t have the art history degree or the appointment at a museum or the dollars to collect million dollar pieces. I can’t put all my trust in somebody who doesn’t know how much a gallon of milk costs. Do you think as an artist, the process of going to school, getting an MFA and all of that, is useful because it teaches you the system and you have a community of other artists going through the same thing? Or do you think that at this point it’s not necessarily useful thing to get a degree? I flip flop on this one because my experience was so bad in terms of actually being at art school in the sculpture department. There were so many layers to it. It was almost comedic in nature, but that extreme really jump-started a new way of thinking for me. I feel like if I hadn’t gone to grad school, I would’ve been one of the chosen, because I would’ve probably been making the same work and I was kind of on that cusp. I’d had that article

in The New York Times and I’d had that performance at The Kitchen. I got the phone calls. It was like, “Okay, can you come by the studio? This is Kara Walker,” and you’re like “Whoa, this is amazing!” I certainly would’ve been beguiled by that because I didn’t know any better. But I had a real life experience and it was very extreme. Losing a parent and going through that at the same time was really extreme, but the scales fell off my eyes. It just didn’t make any sense for me to pretend like this was cool. It didn’t make any sense for me to pretend that somebody was smart and had a critical point of view when they didn’t. I don’t know if I would’ve gotten that without going to grad school, honestly. It took me out of the space of New York, number one. Number two, it reminded me that it was a corporate body. The only thing that I could compare it to was being in a work environment, with the kind of politics that would go on and how you’d have to protect yourself if somebody didn’t like you. I was able to have an experiential education, so I think that grad school can do that, but you could also find that in other spaces. I would caution anybody to be intentional about getting that knowledge, though. It’s almost like deciding to go to college. Like okay, you don’t have to go to college but you need to do something that requires some kind of commitment and where you don’t necessarily get a return on your investment right away. I think that’s a worthwhile exercise. If you go to Italy and learn to

make shoes, that could give you a taste of it. Then maybe you decide, “Okay, now I’m going to spend two years trying to start a business.” Having gone to Yale, I’m like, man, I’m glad I went because I had a very specific reason why I wanted to go to that particular place. I wasn’t even trying to play around and apply to a bunch of different places. I only applied to that one place. If you are apply to a bunch of places, you need to apply to the place that will pay you to go there. There’s no reason for you to pay. I can’t cosign that. I don’t think you should go into more debt. In the art world, success is often more important than seeing how things work and pushing back. Having the blinders removed makes it a more complicated thing. Do you think you can have success the way that you’re currently doing it? I think I gave you a little mention of that epiphany about like, “Oh, I thought I was going to be rich.” I really did. I really did. But I’m understanding that there are other things that are much more important to me. Not wanting to be rich gives me a lot more flexibility because I can’t be plied with that. I can’t be convinced to not speak up because I might not have this opportunity or whatever. I’m like, “Do you have the qualities that I’m trying to nurture in myself?” I’m trying to follow through with what I say I’m going to do. If I can’t do it, I want to be able to be transparent about that. It’s very difficult to build those kind of skills in the social world we live in unless you practice it and you have a mirror to it. There are plenty of other ways to get rich. I don’t want to live that kind of life. I think that defining success for yourself in real terms is important. BY BRANDON STOSUY Photography courtesy of Kenya (Robinson)

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RĂ&#x161;RĂ? was born in Reykjavik in 1951 where she is now living and doing an extraordinary kind of art. Looking at her works, it is easy to understand how art can be energy, in a way every human can use to recharge, like when you are lost in a natural environment. In her works everything does not have any kind of superstructures, just pure energy, emotive simplicity. In the same natural way our heart beats, our body breathes, and a waterfall makes a beautiful noise in our ears, her art lives. Reykjavik Boulevard is glad to introduce you this amazing artist whom art is a lifestyle.

CAROLINA GESTRI First of all, we are so curious to know how you started to make art. Do you have a personal story you can share about your beginnings?

the Skaftfell – Center for Visual Art, and the Baer Art Center, to name a few. For one to be able to go alone and to listen to the Nature can be very beneficial, that experience is however not restricted by any geographical boundaries.

RÚRÍ Like most artists I loved drawing and painting or coloring, from a very early age. It was more natural for me to express myself through drawing than through writing and at the age of 16 it was clear to me that art would be my future.

From your website we read that for you art is like a language to show yourself, so for you art is a media to reach the truth of human behavior. Is that correct?

You were born in Iceland. How was growing up (artistically) in this country? Do you think that there is a good place for an artist to study art and express his/her talent? Can you suggest us where to learn how to make art in Iceland?

The truth of human behavior is a pretty large subject! I have stated that for me art is philosophy, which is translated into form and colors. And also I have said that for me art is the language that I have chosen to express through.

I was lucky as there is a respect for the arts in my immediate family, but the opportunities to study were limited when I was growing up. One had to be really obsessed with art to have the energy to find the resources and to pursue the dream of becoming an artist. Today there are several possibilities in Iceland for studying art. But it is also very important to move outside one’s secure zone, and preferably to live abroad for a while, to get a distance from the home society, and review it from another perspective.

You make art with a lot of tools, like drawings, installations, performances, video, music. Why is it so?

Of course you did a lot of exhibitions in Iceland and you know very well the country. Where should you drive a foreign art addict to discover experimental artistic places? Can you suggest places good for emerging talents? Probably one would suggest the Living Art Museum, and the Kling & Bang Gallery, and then the small but lively show spaces, which are mostly run by young artists, like for instance Gallerí Öruggt Rými, or Skúrinn. The latter one has recently been “temporarily displaced”. For those who want to seek inspiration there are the possibilities of artist residencies in Iceland both in Reykjavík but also the Gullkistan at Laugarvatn, the Nes Artist Residency,

The art is philosophy, and one needs to discover or select the technique that best translates the concept of each idea. For some concepts performance is the best media, for others it may be artist´s book, or an installation. I find it important to stay as true to each concept as possible and that means to use the best means of translation into material that I can master. This has also meant that I need to be ready to continually educate myself, and to master new techniques, if the concept demands that. It is really hard to define performance art. What is your personal definition of this kind of art? Do you think that there are some messages that can be shown just with performing media? Performance art is different from two-dimensional art and three-dimensional art as it involves the fourth dimension: time. However what is most characteristic is that the performance usually involves the artist as an element of the art-expression, and that is probably the fundamental difference from the other two art forms. What I

Iceland’s National Treasure BY CAROLINA GESTRI

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found interesting when I began experimenting with performance art is that in a performance there is no inter-mediate state between the artist and the audience. The artwork is performed immediately before the audience, and in some cases there is even the element of direct interaction between the artist and members of the audience. The concept is not first translated into material and then later presented to the audience. There is also another aspect which I find very interesting, and that makes performance art very special, this is the often “immaterial aspect” of such artworks. And it is exactly this aspect that has made it charmingly tricky for the art market to handle such artworks! Can you explain to us your interesting project called “Vocal IV” in collaboration with Johann Johannsson? When I was invited to be the Sequences 2008 honorary artist, and to present a major performance, the idea was to create a new work in the Vocal series. The venue was the open court in the Reykjavík Art Museum – Hafnarhús. All the Vocal works (started in 2005) present a large video projection of a huge waterfall and multi channel audio. We asked Jóhann Jóhannson to join in and compose the audio/music part of the new work Vocal IV. The Vocal IV videos present some new elements with powerful sequences displaying electrical structures and the “drowning” of a waterfall. The atmosphere in Iceland was very strange in the weeks leading up to the festival, somehow unbalanced and insecure. The reason became evident when the economical collapse started, six days before the opening of the festival. Simultaneously the sponsors of the festival evaporated. Consequently we were forced to recompose the performance in those 6 days. A huge multi-layered projection of the waterfall filled the end of the court with the voice of the fall thundering in the space. At the side wall four tall men in black suits played electric guitars, performing in a very sober manner while their music altered between being lyrical to being quite aggressively mechanical and two percussionists played a steel sound-scape. Performing artists, wearing black suits, appeared on the balconies vocaliz-

“ In a performance, there is no intermediate state between the artist and the audience.”

ing dynamically, scaling from gentle humming to lamenting or shouting, and at one occasion marching towards the audience, splitting the crowd, while shouting at the top of their voices. The words expressed the global onslaught on water. What inspires you the most? Society, landscape, natural environment, current events? All of them, and also ethics inspires me. Human societies, nature, the Earth, these are several aspects of one large system. We, humans, live in symbioses with the Earth, we can not exist without it. As an artist, I observe, and then I reflect on what I observe and document this into artworks. What do you think about the artistic scenario nowadays? What is for you the mission of an artist in our contemporary society? What is your goal? It is a relief to hear someone still expecting artists to have a mission. In our contemporary society, one cannot but wonder whether anyone does have a mission anymore? For me, personal philosophy is about deepening our understanding of our existence, and the understanding of the connection to the Earth and the Universe. If an artist can hope to provoke awareness of these values, through art, then that seems to be a pretty good mission. Can you tell us something about your future projects? Well, I expect to continue observing and documenting. I am fortunate, and always have several projects going. I have new installations and works in the making, for instance the second part of the video work Reflections which will soon be loaded on a video-wall at Reykjavík Hotel Natura. The work is a tetralogy, the remaining two parts will follow later this year and in the next one. Also I am continuing working with the concept Future Cartography, some of these works have already been exhibited in four countries in Europe and will be exhibited in a solo exhibition in Copenhagen in a few months and possibly in US next year.

Photography courtesy of RURI

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Blood, oozing sap that stains the floors of the universe. When constellations are lungs, your whole life is a puzzle, a maze and maybe, you never solve it. I am from a country that knows my people as dark matter. I am from a mouthful of cancerous astronomy. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve leaked through our craters. Assigned Black mothers wombs as black holes, I know, what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to dance with oxygen.

To be on the edge of a skydive into endless pit. I know the taste of heat, bone and flesh converted into ash. Know how it feels to shine and then lose power, all in one second. America, we have lost the fuel in the stars of our flag. Have stolen the rockets to freedom, given my people a bowl of nothingness.

How do you expect us to bury stars that still want to glow? Rust their brightness with soil?

How do you put bullets into souls that are not done orbiting? Turn solid skull to gum.

I hold my breath, hold my stomach and watch stars get handpicked from the sky. Watch tears trickle down the corners of pitch black canvas. I swallow breath lost, lose the last of my innocence. I cannot keep watching beauty plummet. We are a universe hissing with funerals. Bodies that skydive into endless pit, nameless.

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by Erin Bad Hand Photo by Matika Wilbur

Fields spill past us, one by one, a patchwork blur of grays and browns while perched high on a heap of highway dirt, a large Golden angles her head sidelong, bearing through the girl in the front seat with the trenchant squint of an angry huntress We fly past scattered crosses groaning under weight of plastic flowers venerating lives not spoken enough of these descansos left for travelers meant to play morbid games who and how and when we reach the grousing pines of that forgotten valley, Wakpamni Lake sings out its suffering hungry for the lives of small ones that once sought refuge in its waters You tell me of the path you used to take where you and your cousins rode that eternal trail of boyhood in South Dakota, 1956 maybe And the girl in the front seat smiles for the next photograph asks more questions, squints her eyes for a closer look at what was never there before, but continues to grow, out from the late April mud still covered with the desperate ice of last winter How do we retrace the steps of a lifetime that occurred so long ago? The house on the hill is where I used to live, you say But she looks and there is no house Ah, that is where it used to be Driving all this time, silence broken by small, vital stories, up the hill and out through the valley’s gaping mouth (it has let us go without a fight) into the vast numbness of Nebraska past the little farm where you say with pointing lips — That is where my father used to work, on that little farm on the hill, picking potatoes

Erin Bad Hand is an Iyeska poet; Lakota, Eastern Cherokee and a myriad of others. She has been published in Chokecherries, The Sister Fund Newsletter, Taos Poetry Circus: The Nineties (2002), Fnews Magazine, and has a chapbook, And Then Everyone Can Rest…. (2002).

by Miranda July

I don’t remember the first time I did it, but I remember the first time I got caught. I was a freshman at U.C. Santa Cruz, the store was called Zanotto’s, the item was Neosporin. I took it out of its packaging, bent down as if to scratch my ankle, and then wedged the tube of triple-antibiotic ointment into my white ankle sock. When the guard grabbed my arm, I was so scared I peed on the floor. As we waited for the police to come, I had to watch a janitor clean up my pee with a mop. I was taken down to the station and formally arrested: fingerprints, mug shot — they really wanted to teach this nineteen-year-old, transparent-dress-wearing punk a lesson. The lesson I learned was that I was now legally an adult, so I didn’t have to worry that my parents would be called. I was free — even my crimes belonged to me alone. In time, I improved. I discovered that stealing required a loose, casual energy, a sort of oneness with the environment, like surfing or horse-whispering. And once I knew I could do it I felt strangely obliged to. I remember feeling guilty for not stealing, as though I were wasting money. After I dropped out of college and moved to Portland, Oregon, it became part of my livelihood. I stared at my shopping list like a stressed housewife, deliberating over which items to steal and which to buy with food stamps. My preferred purse was gigantic and discreetly rigid, like a suitcase. I packed it with blocks of cheese, loaves of bread, and lots of soy products, because I was a vegetarian. But it wasn’t just about the supermarket — the whole world was one giant heist. It goes without saying that I used magnets to reset the Kinko’s copy counters to zero, and carried scissors to cut alarm tags out of clothes. Everyone I knew did these things. I

say this not to excuse myself but just so you can visualize a legion of energetic, intelligent young lady criminals. Anytime anyone we knew flew into Portland, we urged her to buy luggage insurance and allow us to

groomer. I’d never been fired before. It was a lot like dropping out of school or being arrested. All of these institutions, in their crude, clumsy way, seemed to be saying, You don’t need us, we’ll never understand you, and it’s important for you not to want us to. I took the message to heart. I labored obsessively over creative pursuits they would never recognize, hurtling through systems and hierarchies as if nothing that already existed were relevant to me. I performed at colleges and scanned the room for what I could take. Even a box of chalk slipped into my pocket reassured me that I still had my freedom — the freedom to steal, to self-destruct. There was an exact moment when I decided to quit. I was sitting on a man’s lap and we had just determined that I was “his girl.” As we kissed, I thought, Well, I guess I have to stop stealing now. As if the idea of having a boyfriend, of being straight, required straightening out in other ways. I may have been looking for an excuse; I may have realized that I didn’t need to be a criminal to be an artist. Art itself could be the crime — could be scary and dangerous enough to shoulder my rebellion. After a while, I also stopped getting into physical fights, working in peepshows, bleaching my hair white, and wearing my tights over my shoes. Still, for a long time I thought my biggest heist was fooling everyone into believing that I was an upstanding citizen, a sweet girl. Then, just a few years ago, I realized that everyone feels secretly fraudulent. It’s the feeling of being an adult.

my crimes belonged to me alone steal her bag from the baggage carousel. The visiting friend then had to perform the role of the frantic claims reporter and was given a cut of the insurance money. Some friends were up for this; others thought it was an inhospitable thing to ask. My first employer in Portland was Goodwill, which, yes, is a charitable organization, and, no, I did not have any qualms about slipping books and clothes and knickknacks into my bag. Because what is money, anyway? It’s just a concept some asshole made up. I also put red “Sold” tags on large appliances and entire living-room sets, and felt magnanimous as my friends gleefully loaded up their vans. One day, a co-worker was admiring a pink blouse that had just come in. I encouraged her to take it, and when she wouldn’t I put the blouse in a Goodwill bag and ran out of the store calling, “Sir! Sir! You forgot your bag!” Then I stuffed it in the bushes. At closing time, I fished it out with a halfhearted “What’s this?” and handed it to my prim co-worker. Prim and ungrateful, as it turned out. I was called into the boss’s office the next morning; the pink shirt was on her desk. “The good news is we’re not going to press charges,” she said. I wept as I walked over the river to the place where my girlfriend worked as a dog

Michelle Lamy in Rick Owens shot by Rick in Abu Dhabi 2011

Miranda July, a film-maker, an artist, and a writer, is the author of three books, including, most recently, “The First Bad Man.”

At the Borderline of

Uncontrolla

bility

Six Lessons from EVA HESSE

Marcie Begleiter’s documentary on Eva Hesse is notable for its unexpectedly intimate look into the mind of a young sculptor. The film, which will be available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon on August 15, constructs an emotionally intense portrait of the German-born American artist through interviews and extensive archival research. Based on the recently published journals that Hesse kept throughout her life, the confessional quality of the script — voiced by Selma Blair with zany energy, sometimes dark, sometimes joyful — brings the artist startlingly close. The film’s efficacy of capturing her vibrant spirit is also what makes it so tragic. Hesse died from a brain tumor in 1970 at age thirty-four. Even in her short career, she was one of the first Post-Minimalist sculptors, destabilizing the rational systems and serial elements typical of Minimalism through her visceral use of thick rubbers, wrapped cords, and glistening plastic. Hesse’s life and art are deeply intertwined, especially given the widespread, though unproven, belief that she was poisoned by her cutting-edge art materials, synthetic plastics, polyester resins, and fiberglass. But the film avoids the maudlin trap of focusing on tragedy. And neither did Hesse: “Everything that happened to her, good or bad, empowered her,” her friend Rosie Goldman recounts in the film. The movie humanizes rather than idolizes Hesse. Countless images of work from her most productive period, between 1964 to 1970, are contextualized with narration taken directly from her diaries. While producing this work, Hesse wavered between anxious uncertainty and thrilling breakthroughs. Because of this frank view of her working practice, Eva Hesse offers useful lessons for the emotional reality of creative life.

Eva Hesse, ca. 1963. Photo Barbara Brown.

BY VANESSA THILL

Be stubborn.

At sixteen, Hesse showed up to the New York office of Seventeen magazine, landing an internship just because of “the gall of coming up there,” as she wrote in her diary. She moved boldly against the expectations for a woman in the 1950s. In a letter to her father, teenage Hesse declared her intentions to become an artist: “Daddy I want to do more than just exist, to live happily contented with a home, children, to do the same chores every day.” She fiercely sought success defined on her own terms. As a student at Yale, Hesse committed to a rebellious method: “I will abandon restrictions and curbs imposed on myself, I will paint against every rule!”

Doubt is human.

“I am almost too anxious for every moment and future moment,” Hesse scribbled in 1960. The film demonstrates how Hesse’s anxiety was a strength as much as a debilitation, mining her notebooks for her trove of complex feeling as she pushed herself further into unknown territory. In a letter to her friend Sol LeWitt, Hesse wrote, “I fluctuate between working at the confusion or non-working at the confusion, and when not actually at work I nevertheless struggle with the ideas.” After coiling scraps of rope into her paintings she wrote, “I sit now after two days of working on a dumb thing, which is three dimensional, and I should go on with it. But I don’t know where I belong, so I give it up again.” These tentative experiments became the foundation for a new kind of art.

ou can leave. And Y you can come back.

People thought Hesse was crazy to leave New York for Germany in 1964. Along with her then-husband Tom Doyle, Hesse moved to a small town for fifteen months, setting up their shared studio in a former textile factory. She was uncertain about the direction of her work. “I might just have to believe in me more before working can mean something to me,” she wrote. By the end of the year, Hesse had developed a physical approach that critic Lucy Lippard calls “surrealist.” These new works, which often featured bright colors and rope swirling up and off the picture plane, were a total departure. When she returned to New York, Hesse brought her idiosyncratic style to the Minimalist scene, and caught the attention of artists, gallerists, and the press.

Play.

Play is what unlocked material truth for Hesse. She enjoyed experimenting with raw materials before determining how to use them. One to-do list pictured in the film reads “rent, play with hardware, titles.” The hardware in question was often sourced from what Sylvia Plimack Mangold remembers as the “wonderland of materials” on Canal Street. “The closest I come to that now is Home Depot,” Mangold jokes. As Lippard reminisces, she would “sit with her materials like they were a creature.”

Nothing is off-limits.

Key influences for Hesse came from other disciplines. Her first sculpture was a prop for a 1963 Happening at George Segal’s farm: a chain of people danced in a huge fabric tube she made while Yvonne Rainer threw apples off a barn roof. Richard Serra remembers those moments and the well of “ideas coming from dance” that also deeply inspired him. In the 1960s sculpture was pushed into new frontiers as chemists developed synthetic materials. Hesse joined Experiments in Art and Technology in 1967, a group cofounded by Robert Rauschenberg that brought scientists and artists into conversation. Through this group, she learned about new polymers, enabling her to invent techniques.

Get dirty and go big.

The documentary does not do much to dispel the story that toxic resin killed Hesse. “Her tumor was far too large to even think that the small amount of exposure she had gave her that brain tumor,” says her plastics technician Doug Jones. But Hesse’s enthusiasm for experimenting with new materials is anything but a cautionary tale. Up until the last moments of her life, her work kept transforming, occupying what Whitney Museum curator Elisabeth Sussman calls “the borderline of uncontrollability.” Her ambition in scale is what enabled her to “stand her ground” and make such major artistic statements. Today, much of the rubber has crumbled and the resin yellowed, but Hesse’s spirit lives.

New Show Conjures Dystopian Future

BY MICHAEL UPCHURCH It’s not every Seattle couple that keeps a towering, fur-lined throne in their living room. But Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl, co-artistic directors of Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE), aren’t exactly your average Seattle couple. For 16 years, they’ve been cooking up extravagant mythopoeic visions in their modest home on the outskirts of Fremont. That throne, it turns out, is a prop from their latest multimedia venture, “Predator Songstress,” running Dec. 3–6 at On the Boards. The key question raised in “Predator Songstress” is whether, in a surveillance society, there’s some way for the watched to turn the tables on the watchers. Is it possible for the interrogated to become the interrogators, or for the voiceless to find a voice? The show began, as most DAE shows begin, as an intuitive glimmer in Nishimura’s mind. The character she envisioned, whom she describes as a “dictator,” winds up channeling other people’s voices, taking “dictation” from them, even when she has no voice of her own. The catch: In the totalitarian society she inhabits, it’s illegal for citizens to share the stories of their lives. When this oppressive regime robs her of her voice, she goes into rebellion mode, trying to collect stories and broadcast them by sending out interrogators of her own to ask fellow citizens how they “lost their voice and haven’t been able to regain it.” In re-appropriating the tools of totalitarianism for personal liberation, Kohl explains, she starts to gain a taste for dictatorial power. In the meantime, her brother (Seattle dancer Douglas Ridings) is forced to collaborate with the powers that be to work his way into a position where he can rescue her. The show is as concerned with the siblings’ much-tested relationship as with issues of power and disenfranchisement among those who have, or don’t have, a voice in their society. “They struggle to hang on to this very delicate, very vulnerable, fragile love,” Nishimura says. “Something goes wrong, of course, and their love temporarily becomes broken and dysfunctional.” “Predator Songstress” is couched in fairy-tale and magical-realist terms, served up as a two-hour, audio-visual-dance spectacle. But it has its roots in her

and Kohl’s workaday personal experience. As a Japanese citizen, Nishimura periodically has to check in with Homeland Security when renewing her permanent residency papers, a routine that can’t help but highlight an individual’s sense of smallness in the presence of authority. And during a recent trip to London, she and Kohl were startled by how omnipresent security cameras were throughout the city. With questions of surveillance and national security back in the headlines after this month’s attacks in Paris and Beirut, “Predator Songstress” may touch more of a nerve than its creators intended. On the technical front, the show encompasses more text and video than any other DAE production. It’s far more interactive than traditional DAE shows. Nishimura, Ridings and four musicians (Kohl, DAE assistant music director Benjamin Marx, violinist-vocalist Paris Hurley and singer Okanamodé) are the only live performers in the show. However, they have plenty of company in the videos projected on a 33-by-9-foot screen hanging above them, and on smaller mobile screens below. The video, shot in Washington and Oregon, features familiar faces from Seattle’s theater and dance scene: Sheri Brown, Paul Budraitis, Pol Rosenthal, Alan Sutherland, Christian Swenson and over a dozen others. Sequences filmed at the cooling towers of the abandoned Satsop Nuclear Plant, between Olympia and Aberdeen, look particularly spectacular. There’s also a live-video component that will include faces from the audience. In the hour before curtain, Nishimura will be in the lobby asking theater arrivals about the joy and heartbreak in their lives. Their answers will be turned into lyrics for the musical score of each evening’s performance.

Photography by Steven Miller Degenerate Art Ensemble: ‘Predator Songstress’ 8 p.m. Dec. 3–5, 5 p.m. Dec. 6., On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., Seattle; $20-$25 (206-217-9888 or ontheboards.org).

Black

Performance

BY BRIAN KARL

Radical Presence, a survey of African American performance art curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, has come to San Francisco.1 The featured works are all distillations and/or documents of performances that have ended up in, or have been adapted for, a gallery setting; an exceptionally robust program of related live performances runs concurrently. The earliest work is Pond (1962) by Fluxus cofounder Benjamin Patterson.2 The most recent pieces date from 2015, several of them created or re-created for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ iteration of the show. The exhibition presents a substantial and striking set of takes on race in both the art world and society more generally. These are serious matters. That said, many of the artists adopt playful, even lighthearted approaches, often forcing visitor engagement through destabilizing strategies. “Playfulness” thus becomes a tactic akin to that of the tricksters and shamans who perform criticality in so many cultures — either in intense moments of crisis or in a more ongoing fashion. It is also similar to how masters of Zen and jujitsu trip up potentially worthy students as wake-up calls or as lessons to combat placid acceptance of the status quo. Teaching and learning are threads running in and around much of the work. Lucid examples include Mlle. Bourgeoise Noire Goes to the New Museum (1981), Lorraine O’Grady’s photographic series documenting performances that point to the awkward realities of what is socially valued. O’Grady’s Art is... (1983), also included, captures a self-initiated parade through city streets

hrrngtn.com/artifact

where she literally held a picture frame up to the “ordinary” found individuals, objects and events. The majority of the projects, and the lessons they impart, are far from conservative in their methodologies, but rather involve various degrees of acting out. These are small but deliberately provocative affairs: bodies engaged in intimate, agnostic dramas and comic maneuvers, or making a spectacle of themselves and others through behaviors that would ordinarily seem absurd. Effective examples include an untitled performance (originally 2012, now 2015) in which Tameka Norris applied blood to a wall directly from her self-cut tongue. Beyond the witnessed, documented, or imagined image of her body’s abject form awkwardly addressing the drawing surface, her expression of pain speaks to the limited tools that might be (un)available beyond her body, either technologically or in terms of a larger culture whose value system structures restrictions and expectations, from the rigidities of education to the canons of fine art. Another highlight is Senga Nengudi’s semi-biomorphic sculptural forms made of sand and pantyhose titled R.S.V.P. (1975–77) and the photographic documentation of her Performance Piece (1978), which shows the choreographer-artist restrained by taut, stretched nylon. Both works point to issues of gender, given the contorted female forms of the artist and the other performers, and of course the iconic female-body-constraining product of modern industrial society. The residue of Nengudi’s original per-

Contemporary

formative actions (photographs and static sculptures) resonates particularly strongly with the original performances, and offers vitally physical testimony to the motivating force behind her ideas. The “leftovers” (plywood, newspaper, a toilet seat, and other miscellaneous items) from Pope.L’s 2015 reenactment of Eating the Wall Street Journal (2000) also go far in representing the work’s concepts. So too does a video of the original two-hour performance, in which Pope.L, clad only in a white jockstrap and sitting on a toilet, consumed — or attempted to — the iconic newspaper of (a predominantly white) business and finance culture. All the sounds and smells and sense are obviously much more palpable in the live performance, where condiments such as ketchup are the prelude and part of the aftermath of chewing and spitting up. But the messiness certainly also remains in the litter that is present in the installation. The urgent need to collect and re-present this work — not in a static archive but in a living arena — stems from the continuing conditions of marginalization, oppression, and worse that black people have suffered over so many generations, from the Middle Passage to the present moment. The examples of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray, not to mention the racially motivated mass attack recently perpetrated at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, make this clear. That black lives are vulnerable in so many ways is demonstrated as well in the exhibition’s inclusion of Dave McKenzie’s video

Art

Edward and Me (2000), an idiosyncratic DIY reenactment of the film Fight Club in which the protagonist appears to be endlessly beaten up by some unseen force. One additional underlying theme is the ongoing political and social necessity of endurance. This is physically enacted in many of the performances, in which real (black) bodies are put to absurd, even extreme, purpose or abuse. Yet beyond abjection, endurance can lead to deflection and confrontation, even hope. Jacolby Satterwhite’s videos Reifying Desire 2 (2011), Reifying Desire 3 (2012), and Reifying Desire 6 (2014) feature stunning blends of shape-shifting bodies, thumping music, and digitally rendered backgrounds. Despite the many effects, the artist’s body really is present and — as Cassel Oliver’s title puts it — on the line.

Martha Jackson Jarvis, photo courtesy of the artist Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art is on view at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, in San Francisco, through October 11, 2015.

WHISPERING PINES A ONE-ACT OPERA BY ARTIST SHANA MOULTON BY KAREEM ESTEFAN Before Shana Moulton and the three musicians who narrate Whis- narcissism of incessant healing and grooming is masked as a pering Pines 10 took the stage at The Kitchen, digital displays of heroic journey to wellness, for which seclusion is a necessary step. domestic objects faced the audience from the screen. Computer Whispering Pines 10 explores such a self-conscious existence graphics of feminine figures, moons, and peacocks: these New from outside its subject. Cynthia does not express feelings or Age symbols are the prominent characters of the Whispering thoughts, but experiences them through the cliché-ridden lyrics of Pines series. They belong to Cynthia, Moulton’s hypochondriac Hallett and Press. Her body’s movements are proven ineffectual in alter ego, but they overpower her. In ten videos since 2002, the the face of green screen technology: she tries to adjust the objects Whispering Pines series has illustrated the tensions residing in in her living room, but they fly away behind her back. Flailing her the self-help doctrines cherished by a class of Californians: be- arms, facing the screen, or rubbing herself nervously, Cynthia tween consumerism and transcendentalism, environmentalism looks small, diminished by her virtual environment. Everything and digitalism, myth and cliché, and, most profoundly, a rooted assails her. Her cures are always ailments too. A powder labeled collective unconscious and a solipsism lost in the present. “Eno” arrives with a jingle from Press — eno no me — that spells Whispering Pines 10 playfully demonstrates Cynthia’s loss of out the self-erasure inherent in self-enhancement. power to chic ideologies of self-empowerment, as Moulton’s Moulton and the musicians cast Cynthia’s predicament in an character, mute, is subsumed by a digital video backdrop and ambience of kitsch, and structure Whispering Pines 10 as a 24kitschy pop librettos penned by Nick Hallett, who performs hour cycle. The performance opens and closes at 6:20 AM, to alongside Shelley Burgon and Daisy Press. The three video the cheesy sounds of a motivational song, as Cynthia begins to screens present an idyllic home: on the left, a skylight reveals stretch her body. If the ironic tenor of the music and the limited the evergreen trees above Cynthia’s bed; in center, her living expression of Moulton’s movements can be grating, the piece room assembles objects that suggest unity between nature remains rewarding for the mythic images created between the and civilization through the ages; to the right, a close-up of her performance and the multimedia environment. bedside table indicates that she is well-medicated. Hallett’s lyrics Piercing a placid fantasy sequence towards the end of the motivate Cynthia to seize the day or to persevere in the face of performance, Cynthia’s digital body is shattered; her limbs and loss and pain. At one point, he gently calls her back from fantasy organs float across the screen behind her. Soon afterwards, Apby cooing, “you are needed back home to save the human race.” ple’s default desktop background (“Aurora”) fills the screen and The irony of the melodramatic lyric is apparent, as Cynthia a band-aid opens at the center, drawing Cynthia’s body parts doesn’t encounter — or even G-chat — another human in this towards it. Two avatars of Cynthia as a sphinx enter to the left and performance. Her day begins with dusting household objects right of the band-aid, and a password box appears. As Cynthia and consists of solitary activities like exercise, self-monitoring, attempts to guess the password, she kneels below a looming and fantasy. In this routine, social experience is limited to the screen that displays a healing object, a potent feminine archetype, (doubly mediated) transmission of other humans as models for and a familiar, corporate representation of the cosmos. Here is living: while dancing, Moulton watches a video of dancers on Whispering Pines 10 at its strongest: an allegorical image that a flat-screen TV pictured on the screen behind her. The pained entwines a hypochondriac’s many anxieties.

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Photo courtesy of Shana Moulton

ARTIFACT Magazine showcases self-identifying women in art

26. . . . . . . . . . JANINE ANTONI 36. . . . . . . . .IEVA MISEVIČIŪTĖ 46. . . . . . . KENYA (ROBINSON) 54. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .RÚRÍ 64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . LEIJA FARR 66. . . . . . . . . . ERIN BAD HAND 68. . . . . . . . . . . MIRANDA JULY 70. . . . . . . . . . . . . . EVA HESSE

$16.00 US ISBN 2378-2560

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