Gen Doy
< from a comment posted below at https://foscofornio.blogspot.com/2023/03/opening-thoughts-march-22nd.html>
here is a link to a vimeo piece performed to the camera, which is the audience. https://vimeo.com/585910420 it's called "a conversation about art", where i have a conversation with myself about why make art in a world full of awful events and problems. It also makes reference to the idea of "two brains", one in the skull and one in the gut. Having a "gut feeling" about something is something quite visceral and i wondered if after that feeling the brain then tries to decipher and understand what the "gut feeling" means. Is art more about "gut feelings" than brain feelings?
I like this image and the synchronicity of your open mouth echoing your stomach's open mouth- to me, the visceral fear and nerves that making performance art in particular evoke are incredibly intense- I always try to write down my experience as soon as possible after a performance, as those physical sensations ebb away and you are left in an anti climactic daze, where indeed you question why you give your energy to such actions, in a world full of problems as you say. After a few weeks of distance from the action it starts to make more sense I find!
ReplyDeleteI am an artist and for me the art of the intestines is important and the art of intuition is important. In turn, in the late 1990s, a few clever curators and politicians introduced brain art. Rational art dealing with political issues. Gut art has been devalued. Brain art was funded by grants and pretended to be solving social problems lol. This unfortunate situation of art has been going on since documenta IX in Kassel, i.e. since 1997. We have to take it away from the politicians after all.
DeleteThanks for these interesting comments both of you. I think the idea of writing down thoughts and analysis after the performance or as soon as possible after is a good one. I am usually very nervous and when people speak to me afterwards i am either fairly inarticulate or even lost for words and i really agree with the anti-climactic daze state of mind being strongly present. in the days preceding the performance i ask myself why am i putting myself through this ? i love the research, the construction of the work, getting props, writing texts and songs but the actual experience is nerve-wracking, and then of course there is the "will it make any difference?" I did once do a performance with a friend, Johnny Rogerson, where we both acted as politicians wearing dark suits etc and we sang extracts of speeches by Hillary Clinton and Hilary Benn (speeches in favour of bombing somewhere in the Middle East, Syria i think, where ISIS had a stronghold). We sang in a variety of modes, pop, Baroque opera, medieval religious music, a lullaby, a WW2 patriotic big-band song etc but always the same extracts from the political speeches in favour of bombing. The audience sat in total silence for ages afterwards and i thought "this is a failure" but no...it turned out they were dumbstruck and very moved and thoughtful. About an hour later someone came and told me they had been profoundly affected by what we had performed. None of the words were ours. We just made people think about the meanings of them by making them strange and singing them instead of "speeching" them. I learned a lot from this and my collaborator but because i didn't write a proper assessment, report or whatever lots of the lessons faded over time. When i was a student i used to do that and gradually i stopped. So i think i should start writing down what i learnt from performing again.
ReplyDeleteOn the gut/brain thing i feel we need both, but the balance of both will vary according to the performer, the way they use their physical engagement in embodying the performance, interaction with the audience and other factors. i should think about all these things more. it's so hard to picture how the audience are experiencing me when i perform. When i see a video of me it does help me think about improvements or changes to the performance, but it still doesn't equate to how i experienced the performance myself. Also i can never forget my brain and concentrate only on my body as i am constantly remembering the script, or how i'm playing the accordion if i'm using it . It's a constant to-ing and fro-ing of mind and body really.
Aldo has just asked us for some thoughts on the self, selfhood, consciousness and representation...enough for many books and artworks in these issues but here goes. I feel that if I am performing, whether for a "staged" photograph or a performance, it's useful to consider this dialectically...ie. I am at the same time me and not-me. I am thinking and feeling as a person performing, I know who I am in that moment, and (mostly) what I am doing, but to the audience I am presenting someone different...I'm someone being watched and analysed through the prism of each person in the audience's own experiences,thoughts and artistic preferences. So I suppose in that still image or in a live performance I am an evolving construct of my own and the audience's consciousness.....but also in some performances, the performer can change selves eg. by putting on make up, removing or adding props and items of costume, speaking in different voices, foreign languages. This could be seen as removing skins of an onion to reveal the "true self" of the performer, but I feel it's more likely that this notion of the true self has something essential and fixed about it which doesn't really correspond to the changing nature of the self/selves, the element of change and discovery in process of performing and making, and perceptions of of the audience who may identify with the performer in some ways but not others, or the audience may see the performer as other, as someone they really can't identify with at all.
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