Week 1 - Furturism and Performance Art

The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism

I found this reading interesting, though to really get a sense of what the message was in this text, I had to "bring it back to earth" somewhat. Marinetti and the founders of futurism are extreme romantics and a revolutionaries, however there's nothing wrong with that. I think a great deal of their beliefs stemmed from the time they lived in. A time when technology was reaching the masses and affecting everyday life on a consumer level, rather than during the industrial revolution, when technology affected manufacturing, which trickled down to the consumer level. This phenomenon was, and has since been continually re-shaping culture and communication in every aspect - contemporary art (that of the past century+ or so) strongly reflects this. The manifesto's loathing of the museum and classical art humored me, but I disagree with how violently the feeling was to disregard it entirely and perpetually. On the other hand, I suppose to truly start an art movement requires than a "distaste" for the status quo.

http://www.cjromer.com/essays/future.html


Performance art: (some) theory and (selected) practice at the end of this century

This reading struck a little closer to home for me. I particularly liked and entertained Wilson's juxtaposition of theatre and performance art - "'The willful suspension of disbelief'" versus the "real-ness" of performance art. I also like her concise description of what defines performance art (which was exactly what I have interpreted it to mean) - art that occurs, and is about the experience rather than it's product or lasting effects afterward (of which there are often none). Still, I can't help posing this argument: as badly as say, the futurists, wished to eliminate all previous forms of art, performance art is so ephemeral that its audience is often very limited. The documentation of this art however - the physical evidence that these events actually came to fruition - are almost exclusively visually based (video, photographs, etc). To me, (and maybe I am poorly explaining myself), this returns us to the roots of what made "classical" or visual art so incredibly influential and timeless and loved, for hundreds and thousands of years. Word of mouth or text or visual accounts by witness are simply not enough, especially in our time, to reach the large audiences necessary to "change the world" as the futurist and performance art ideals so dearly aspire to.

Or maybe I am simply not well versed enough in this art form and its makers, and many do in fact value the documentation of their work, once completed. In any event, how much of this art form would we as college students be able to grasp and use in our own work, if not for said documentation?

http://www.theatrelibrary.org/links/Collections.html


Interview with Allan Kaprow

Kaprow takes an approach to performance art that in my mind falls a little more in line with my previous argument. He was at one time a painter, and has no desire to refute the art form. Rather, he wishes to take things simply a step further than in the past. I feel this sort of belief, and the art that likely stems from it, would be much more easily accepted by the masses and/or the "authorities" of the art world (if there really is such a thing anymore?). Unfortunately, I can't escape the inherent strangeness often present in this genre.

http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/18-happenings-in-6-parts/