Performance Assessment

Unity of World Religions

1. Spatial Changes: I liked the scale of our piece - that is, the size of the projections and thrown "spot" light. I think the environment we had to work with and install these elements into however, left much to be desired (as an understatement). Given a more controlled environment, mainly as far as lighting is concerned, would have vastly improved the piece, and possibly made its intention more evident. (Though I do think however, that a piece such as this requires either some prior knowledge, or explanation after the fact, for the viewers to fully understand the message being conveyed.)

2. Placement of the Audience: The placement and movement of the audience in our piece went as intended, but given our more controlled environment I think some tweaking would be required in order to coax the same type of movement, since ideally the audience would not so obviously see the sources of light and therefore why they should move in a particular direction.

3. Use of Sound: Use of sound was considered for our piece, and the sounds made by the audience were not an intended element (though we knew inevitable) of the work. I was a little afraid the use of sound could easily detract from the visual elements. If used as an effective compliment to the visual aspects of the piece, and not as an independent element, the use of sound could probably be very effective.

assessment of your performance

1. What spatial changes would you make when performing your perfromance again?

2. How would you change the placement of the audience in your perfromance?

3. How would you reconsider the use of sound in your work?

Week 4: The Performance Moment

The reading begins by presenting the beginnings of the controversy concerning the immediacy of live performance versus the stillness and permanence of photography. At first the two seem completely incompatible, and some artists would argue that this still holds true. While I certainly don’t think the still image outright replaces the performance, its existence is still essential to our understanding and remembrance of performances of the past. Many artists realized this fact, and as a result now use photography extensively and in many different ways in creating and documenting their performances. For some photography even becomes their central concern in their work. Hayley Newman in particular explores the relationship between performance and photographic documentation by creating photos of performances she did not actually execute. In doing so, she causes questioning of the importance of the actual performance to its documentation. These photographs make the viewer ask how much of a difference there is between her work and the photos of the 60’s and 70’s when there is no viewing experience to refer back to.

http://www.mattsgallery.org/artists/newman/exhibition-1.php

Camera/Action: Performance and Photography

Artist such as Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic, and Vito Acconci use Black and White photographs to document a specific time in their performance. Doing this allows them to write their own history of the piece. Some believe that using to photographs to document a performance piece this is surrendering to the post-modern belief and loosing all the originality that the piece once had. I feel that this statement is completely untrue. The world we currently live in is full of technology and it seems only right that the mediums that are used in the art world should develop with it. This benefit to these photographs documenting the performance is that the photograph viewer is then able to write their own history to the piece. Chris Burden uses photograph in some of his pieces for this exact purpose. The majority of his performances deal with the psychological experience of danger, pain, and physical risks. One of his performances known as “Shoot” consists of a friend shooting him in the arm with a rifle. He pushes his body to extremes to get his point across to the viewer. At the time this was become a popular style of performance. Another piece was entitled “747” is a piece where Burden went to the Los Angeles International Airport and fired a gun at a plane in the middle of take off. The performance is only documented with a photograph of Chris with his gun pointed toward the plane in the sky. This can be interpreted as an artist doing whatever it takes to get to the top or even a play on the horror of death and destruction which would go along with the theme of a lot of his previous work.

http://www.ubu.com/film/burden.html

http://www.orbit.zkm.de/?q=node/73

Camera/Action: Performance and Photography

There is so much to address and consider in using photography and/or video as documentation of live performance that the entire issue becomes controversial. I think many people realize that photographic stills of a sequence of actions cannot possibly express a performance in its entirety, but tends to strive for representation of significant or representational moments. Videos can perhaps give a more complete visual and auditory experience than what photographs can offer. However, it is still lacking in the experience of the physical body being in the space that is offered to the audience. Just as Hayley Newman suggests with her "documents," documentation can be easily fabricated to look as if a performance occurred. Fabrication through video is an odd topic because the performer is still required to perform a cohesive and continuous performance instead of freezing in a moment of it. So what happens when audience participation and reaction is faked in the documentation? It's easy to say that our methods of documentation are not sufficient, but without it, who would ever know what has been conducted and explored already? No one should suggest that images and audio recreate a performance, but act as supplements along with words to describe it. This allows others to refer back to these performances and build on pre-existing concepts, advancing art in different directions, as it is inevitable.
Chris Burden is an artist originating from the early 70's whose idea of performance art involves purposeful danger to oneself, kind of like a stunt. Except stunts usually involve entertaining the audience at the expense of the stunts person while Chris Burden does not aim to entertain the audience, but to focus on the imminent danger and pain itself and revoke emotion from the audience. His performances are unnecessarily tortuous and masochistic.
Here's a link containing short descriptions of performances done by Chris Burden:
http://www.virtualvenice.info/visual/burden.htm
Also, in the second half of this page, there's a cool picture of Chris Burden's Doorway to Heaven where he pushed live wires into his chest and a painful image of him crawling on his belly over broken glass with his hands bound:
http://www.geocities.com/bakija6/artists.html

Performance and Photography

It has been argued that recordings of performance art lose the meaning of the work. However, I believe, (and it has become less valid of an argument since the 60s and 70s) that photography and videography have a definitive place in performance art. It is true many artists' work is not carried over well into a recorded form. Many of these artists, however, will record the work anyway as a means of distribution and for the artists' own records, so long as the original performance is not compromised. Other artists use recorded mediums as their primary and final form of presentation. Artists like Vito Aconcci, Barbara Probst and Jenima Stehli create most of their work in a studio or otherwise privately contrived setting and record it as stills or video. The recorded evidence is the work, and one of its advantages is that the artists has the option of removing some of the serendipity from a piece by re-performing, and the work can much more easily be manipulated to seem more or less believable to the viewer.

Barbara Probst is particularly interesting in this right. Her works involve the photographing of the same subject, scene, or action, from multiple angles at once with more than one camera. The images often are independent of one another in style, angle, composition, etc. and could stand alone as singular photographs. But, they are inherently tied together in their subject, and therefore work strongly as a group.

http://www.artnet.com/Artists/ArtistHomePage.aspx?artist_id=423838881&page_tab=Artworks_for_sale
http://www.murrayguy.com/barbaraprobst/main.html

Camera/Action

This article discusses the disagreements between artists about photography and performance. Performance artists are all about live interaction, and taking still photos of a live action doesn’t seem right to a lot of them. It has been said many times that photographs take away from the authenticity of art, and that is true, if the picture is of a painting or sculpture, however, is the picture is of a performance or the actual picture itself is the art, I think it is fine. Sure, video would be a better choice for documenting a live performance, rather than a few still shots, and better still than no documentation at all. If artists perform and by protesting against commercialism, do not document their performance, it will be lost and a waste of time. The article uses Dennis Oppenheim’s quote “to stretch the limits of what can be done and to show others that art isn’t just making objects to put into galleries,” to support not using photography with performance. Oppenheim is right, but he probably doesn’t realize that [graphic] art is on everything from cereal boxes to vodka bottles, and those things never make it into the galleries. The main problem with cameras in performance art seems to be that people act differently than they normally would when the cameramen show up. The obvious solution to this problem would be to have a hidden camera (video camera) on the scene. I think this would fix all of the inhibitions and objections performance artists have towards the camera.
Artists who do not perform in front of an audience, but only through photography, have a much different situation. They do not have to deal with crowds, only the people looking at the printed pictures. One such artist is Tseng Kwong Chi, who, for example, would dress up as Mao, the Chinese communist leader, and poses in front of American landmarks. The series was called “The Improbable Pilgrim.” ->> http://www.munatseng.org/tsengkwongchi.htm

Photography and Performance Art

Photography plays an important role in performance art. Whether it is the presence or lack of photography in a performance piece, it still affects the perception and the viewers. Photography is beneficial for artists to use when documenting their pieces, however, not all artists feel it is necessary. Earlier artists believed that the direct experience of the work was most important and did not feel the need for, in what they believed was, “commercializing” their work. It wasn’t until about the mid 20th century that artists really utilized and expanded the use of photography in performance art.

Personally, I think that photography can be very helpful to performance art, especially when the artist is not performing in front of an audience. It can really add something to the performance. It can capture any second in time. However, I believe it should be used when appropriate. Video can also be a very beneficial form of documenting a piece, and photography shouldn’t be the only option.

Vito Acconci and his documentation of one piece:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2D71531F93AA35751C0A9679C8B63

Photography and Performance Art

The reading was about the purpose and effects of photography on performance art. It questioned if photography was as effective as experiencing the work or not. Even if it was not, the photograph expands the audience beyond those who were lucky enough to be in its presence. If not for video, photographs is still one of the most effective way to present a past performance to at least as proof that it did indeed happen.

I thought the article was interesting because of the concepts behind documentation. For example, would performance art even be considered art if it happened before the camera was invented? Even then, they would only have words and eyewitness accounts of said performance and its concept would have of had less of an impact.

I found it slightly surprising that Zhang Huan was included in the list of artists because I actually went to an exhibit of his last semester in NYC. His work was compelling in photographic form, but I found it more effective through video.
http://www.zhanghuan.com/

photoshop made brilliant

Camera/Action: Performance & Photography

This article presents the importance of the collaboration between photography and performance art. Although, it was not always accepted many performance artists relied on the medium of photography to document their work. Photography also allowed these artists to present their works to a much larger audience then was present at their original performance. Furthermore, the article implies the need for an association between live performance and photography, by presenting the notion that performance artists should embrace the photographic style of conceptual artists. Photography and performance art are really not as different as once believed, for they both rely on the viewer to make the piece come to life.
An example of one artist who choose to make photography a main focus of her work was Barbara Probst.
http://www.gfineartdc.com/probst.htm