Although I am not much familiar with the mechanisms behind
performance art, when I went to the current exhibits at Los Angeles
Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), I could see the many ways how the artists employed
performance to make art. I think they are great for anyone interested in
learning more about performance art. And even if you are not interested, they
still show you about the many ways you can enhance any work of art through
performance.
*Spoiler Alert* *Nudity Alert*
The first exhibit, Capsize,
by Tad Beck and Jennifer Locke, was technically not merely performance; it was more
graphic art. The performances had been captured before-hand via film, and
played again on a loop at the exhibit. One performance was actually carried out
during the opening, recorded, and played on a loop at the front gallery for the
rest of the week. Beck acknowledged that his art was not so much performance,
as it was the way performance was captured.
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| the bubble pictures |
For example, in the bubble pictures, the elements in the
pictures were captured in a surreal manner, jumbled up like a Rubik’s Cube.
The water took up most of the area, and through the blurry background you could
make out the figure of a nude male. It is only through the tiny bubble in the
centre that you can see a defining shape. This is certainly something that would
be hard to pull off with the performance medium alone.
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| the guy on the stool |
On the other side of the exhibit were pictures of a man in
various positions on a stool. The way this man was captured on film, in the
air, probably in the act of some flailing motion, but captured in an extremely
still frame, made the viewer contemplate whether he was in motion or not. This
balance again plays on the medium of performance art.
The other pieces were two pairs of videos projected onto
opposite walls of the gallery, with the two videos from each pair synchronized
with its partner and projected next to each other. The videos captured a
similar topsy-turvy performance, but this time the videos were shot through opposite
angles. However, they still retained a common focal point, and were placed next
to each other based on this focal point. This created an extremely vivid
contrast, one that struck me powerfully.
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the seated bald guy looking at himself in the projection.
in the back you can see the paired projections. |
The live performance capture that took place on the Thursday
opening comprised a nude male sitting on a high stool (which he climbed and
descended using a white, fetishy swing) that was placed in a black, rubber boat,
and being doused in glue by the artists, who were clad in white coats (the
whole room was white; so was the glue, which became transparent as it dried
up). He then sat there for three hours, being turned around on the stool 180
degrees every half-hour. He was being captured through a video camera from the
ceiling, and you could see the video in the front gallery, projected here as
well from the ceiling onto the floor. It was like a replica, except that there
was no literal performance taking place in the front gallery. All this time,
spectators could go the back micro-lounge and see the performance take place
through a glass panel. Although the next day the model/artist said he did not intend
for this, he was shivering and twitching by the end of his performance. I think
it actually served to bring out the themes better, especially those of sexuality
and (probably) erotic sadism.
I would like to add here that the thought behind the way the
gallery space was used was also a new thing for me. I had never thought that so
much time went into the perfect placement of each work to achieve harmony and
the greatest effect on the spectator. The walls of the front gallery were
completely covered by 5 giant projections. The empty space was used for hanging
still pictures. The ambience created by the sound of the water made one feel
like in a different world, as if experiencing the performance first-hand. The
way that the artists made use of the unique dimensions and shapes of the
gallery space was like a part of the art itself. For example, Beck and Locke
decided to use the central pillar in the micro-lounge for the swing, and use
the area next to it for the boat. The curator for this show was Marjorie
Vecchio.
This environmental effect was especially more prominent in
the next exhibit that was synchronously going on in another room separated by a
heavy, black curtain made by Kim. In this exhibit, called Now he’s out in public and everyone can see, Natalie Bookchin
created an 18 channel video using excerpts from videos collected from around
the world through the internet, of random vlogger’s comments on scandals
involving African-American men. The different layers were not put into one
video, however. Each layer was put on 18 separate television screens scattered
throughout the dark room. So, if you entered, you would suddenly be turned
around by one TV person saying “HE IS BLACK!”, then, in perfect sync, another
would light up with someone saying “I am not racist, but...”. So many different
patterns were explored in this way, with sometimes many screens working together
to say similar things, or just one screen saying something weird or sanctimonious,
or sometimes the whole room would go dark, silently begging for reflection. In
general, this presentation in such an empty environment, combatted with the room’s
irregular, yet harmonious, saturation with so many voices through different
senses like audio and video, made one feel like in a different world. The irony
here is that this is the world we are
living in.
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| stills of the different vloggers. |
While one spectator came out of the exhibit after five minutes
feeling disoriented, I felt that the longer you stood there, the better you
could connect the dots about societal attitudes and changes.
After viewing this exhibit, I was thinking about how much of
contemporary art these days includes performance. Maybe this is similar to how
rhetoric is used in all mediums to call for interactive engagement.
Apart from these two exhibits, there is also the exhibit
from last week’s Staalplaat Soundsystem
performance and Margie Livingston’s Twenty
Gallons up at LACE.
More information here.
Photographs taken from the LACE website for education purposes.
