Scoring Performa

Ultimately speculative, a score lies inbetween action and object, performance and document; it is a singular record of action past and a call to future performances.

The Writing Live community will devise a notational system that integrates spatial, physical, sound, gestural, historical, critical, object-based, witness statements and other key elements of each Performa09 work into text. Each text produced from this score will be a sympathetic critical response of an individual work seen at Performa09. Each writer will necessarily use the system in a different way; writers may also devise their own scores for documentation. Texts will be uploaded onto the Writing Live website during Performa09.

When seen together the scores will be a collection of critical responses to the work at Performa09, and highlight textual characteristics of the Writing Live score.

Workshop 1 will be about collaboratively devising this system for writing Performa09.

Writing Live home
Writing Live is…
Diary
The Community
Writing Machine
Writing Encounter

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Some Notes on Liveness, Chapter Four

By PETER WALSH

Some Notes on Liveness, Chapter Four Dec 9 web

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Rachel Lois Clapham and Kenny Aquiles Ulloa G-Chat

kenny and rachel lois gchat

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Live Responses to Kabir Carter at the Bronx Museum.

Live Responses to Kabir Carter

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Lost Astronaut. A Conversation.

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

Lost Astronaut. A conversation

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Deborah Hay, “If I Sing to You”

Notes from Rehearsal

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

Deborah Hay

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Stuart Sherman. Poetry in Motion [Just so]

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

A score for a future performance that has already happened.

A script for transforming objects before your eyes.

AND

A series of 3 minute spectacles on a black tabletop.

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SPECTACLE 9 (Duct tape, Kazoo and cards)
face camera; rip black duct tape into a strip [just so]; deal 5 playing cards onto duct tape; face up; wrap duct tape around head (including cards); unwrap duct tape from head and place on table; remove cards and place on table in a circle; place plastic palm tree, plastic mouse, toy car, fake nose and plastic teddy bear on cards [just so]; take pocket watch on chain from red shirt inside pocket [just so]; wrap duct tape around pocket watch; leave pocket watch hanging from red shirt inside pocket; take Kazoo from right shirt pocket [just so]; play Kazoo (one note) ; touch Kazoo on each playing card [just so]; face camera; the end.

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Nothing up the sleeve. Small, deliberate, scripted gestures that are not finished. Nothing up the sleeve, but things are definitely on the move, objects are in motion. Things are in progress (they are failing, contingent). Learning is happening, happening is happening. Nothing up the sleeve. But lots of sleight of hand. This is not a performance. This is not a spectacle. Nothing up the sleeve. It’s all real, but magic does happen.

Nothing up the sleeve. Just a black TV dinner table and some joke-shop props. All no bigger than just so, all with an unfamiliar uniformity, a certain sense.

Nothing up the sleeve. Always in the same dark red cotton shirt, black jeans and scuffed white trainers, the same receding hairline.

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Spectacle 4 (LP cover, cassette and stick)
face camera ; pick up white LP sleeve from floor; place it on the table [just so]; pick up 2 pieces of card (square, black and white with hole in the middle); place the pieces of card on the table [just so]; pick up 2 pieces of wood ( circular, black and white, with hole in the middle); place on table [just so]; skewer LP sleeve cover, card and wood onto black stick via holes in the middle; play cassette recorder ; face camera; [sound starts]; spin first wooden circle around stick; [sound ends]; throw first wooden circle on floor; face camera; [sound starts] ; spin second wooden circle around stick; [sound ends] ; throw second wooden circle on floor; face camera; change cassette over to side B [just so]; repeat as above until only LP sleeve left on stick; face camera; snap stick into half length position [just so]; remove LP sleeve from stick; show LP sleeve (including LP inside) to camera, emphasizing hole in middle; place LP (including LP inside) on floor; take cassette out of cassette player; spin cassette around stick (via hole in middle); throw cassette on floor; place stick on table [just so]; face camera; the end

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Meanwhile, there is no sense of time passing. The spectacles could all have been filmed back to back or on the same day. It seems impossible that this should have been the case, but not unlikely.

There are no diversions, no fancy footwork. It’s all about the objects, the tabletop. The loudest sound in the space is the hum of the video camera recording the quiet. An occasional clank when something is placed on the table.

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Spectacle 12 (fake nose, yellow bulb and paper plate)
face camera; pick up fake nose and yellow light-bulb from floor; place them on table [just so] ;
pick up paper plate from floor; place it on table [just so]; lift fake nose up to real nose level, bring it to real nose; put fake nose on real nose [just so]; face camera; lift up front of paper plate; put yellow light-bulb under it, [just so]; look to camera; say ACHOO ; pick up paper plate on yellow light-bulb; remove yellow light-bulb and place on top of plate [just so]; lie newspaper over plate and yellow light-bulb; look to camera; remove newspaper and pick up bulb; circle bulb around head, finishing in a circular movement around fake nose; say ACHOO
place yellow light-bulb on table, [just so]; face camera; the end.

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The camera swings from face [real], nose [fake], from the paper plate to the scuffed white trainers and back to the yellow light bulb. The camera woman is not sure what to focus on, what is happening next, what is significant what is not. Everything is.

The end

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Black Girls #6

Response to Performa09 Grand Finale

By KENNY ULLOA

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Black Girls #5

Response to Performa09 Grand Finale

By KENNY ULLOA

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Black Girls #4

Response to Performa09 Grand Finale

By KENNY ULLOA

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Some Notes on Liveness, Chapter Three

By PETER WALSH

Some Notes on Liveness, Chapter Three Nov 23

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speculation/response
(notes for Performa09 Writing Live Panel, 5pm 11/21, Performa Hub)

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

Score:

1. writing fellows’ work
2. writing on/as performance
3. writing as an approach (rather than a reflection)
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2. Writing on/as performance: text as non-prop based, as an entity separate from. (For instance, as a work in response, in the same way that succeeding generations of artists make work in response, or one artist makes work in response to another—text works in this fashion. It also works in all sorts of other ways, but this is the one I’m most interested in—as a separate historical moment, not a document historicizing another historical moment.)

speculation: Language is an independent form.
response: yes but

speculation: I am tired of both language as a prop to visual art, and visual art as a prop to language. See: show catalogue, monograph. See: literary journal.
response: ok but

speculation: It is possible to create new forms of language to interact with new forms of art. In fact, old forms of language are ill-suited to new forms of art.

speculation: The act of making a document of any kind is critical.
response: This includes making a representation, though is by no means limited to.
speculation: A representation is always a critical document.
response: A representation is a kind of response.
speculation: A representation is a new work.
response: A response of any kind is a new work, and can be recorded and evaluated by the same means used in its production, ad infinitum.

speculation:

3. Writing as an approach:

speculation: The experience of writing everything happening during a performance is inherently different, and more critical, than the traditional (absorptive) stance of an audience member.

speculation: If I know I am going to write something about the performance later, the performance is already altered. (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, pop interpretation (2 properties can’t be simultaneously measured, where position is performance and speed it interpretation))

response: Don’t we always enter as a full subjectivity, regardless of how we name the act of being an audience?

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HaySoundImage

Image of the sound from Deborah Hay’s dance If I Sing to You, dress rehearsal, 11/16, Baryshnikov Arts Center

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

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Notes from Mike Kelley, Day is Done Judson Church Dance, 11/18, 8pm

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

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Wangechi Mutu
Saatchi and Saatchi

By KENNY ULLOA

http://www.wikihow.com/Climb-a-Tree-With-No-Branches
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Gina Performa Updates

By RYAN TRACY

NEW VIDEO:
NOV 6

NEW AUDIO:
NOV 6

NEW IMAGES:
NOV 13-14
NOV 12-17

ARTIER FAGGIER REALNESS

CENTRAL REALNESS

CHESSA REALNESS

DUNKIN REALNESS

HOMO REALNESS

LACES REALNESS

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“Picturing Performa, Part Four”

Cell Phone Photos by PETER WALSH

Nikhil Chopra interviewed by Eungie Joo, Performa Hub, November 11th, 2009, 12:00pm.

Deborah Hay, If I Sing to You, Baryshnikov Arts Center, November 16th, 2009, 7:30pm.

Yvonne Rainer, Spiraling Down, Baryshnikov Arts Center, November 16th, 2009, 8:30pm.

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DVDS DVDS DVDS DVDS DVDS DVDS DVDS DVDS

By KENNY ULLOA

Lecture

Terence Koh

National Arts Club

15 Gramercy Park South

Thursday, November 19 8:00pm

I have hired 3 wonderful Senegalese men to help me in the making of pirated DVDs of Terence Kohs Brooklyn Museum Performace.

This is the DVD cover made by Abdoulaye Ndiaye, a 19 year old graphic design student who is attending Inter-Boro College.

I will be selling the DVDs for $5 each at the lecture. All proceeds go to Abdoulaye’s art supplies.

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HOW TO MAKE AN ART REVIEW

By KENNY ULLOA

STEP 1: What you will need

1.) A ball point pen

2.) Paper (preferably moleskine, muji, self-made)

3.) Fundamental Art History Education

4.) 3 Eggs

5.) Skillet

6.) Optional Ingredients (meats, unmeats)

STEP 2: Preparing

1.) Carry mints for those treasured close encounters (Hello networking opportunity!)

2.) Practice deadpan in front of mirror

3.) Rehearse wordy one liners to quickly describe your post show experience ( “She sang the love of danger while simultaneously engaging the viewer with arresting images of bull feces”)

4.) Wear current trendy pieces, if not available stick to the classic ‘all black’

5.) Break the eggs and place them in your bowl. Add milk, if desired, to make the eggs fluffy.

6.) Whisk Eggs, Cut up all of your meats, unmeats you will be putting in your omelet.

STEP 3: Start Cooking

1.) Make sure meticulous notes are taken (or at least pretend)

2.) Always look immersed in what’s happening / Keep a steady and squinty thoughtful pose

3.) If attending performance, avoid unspoken faux pas such as checking the time, text messaging, or smiling with all teeth

4.) Make a mental note of the movement, artist, and era this work is referencing or reacting to

5.) Turn Stove to medium/high – Coat Skillet with oil or spray

6.) Add Eggs, meat, and unmeats.

7.) With your spatula, push the egg from the outer edge of the skillet toward the center. This allows the runny egg on top to spread out to open skillet space and cook.

Quick Tip! : Don’t forget to silently judge everyone around you!

STEP 4: Chow time!

1.) If attending a performance, try not to exit before someone in a higher position than you

2.) When discussing work, carefully listen to others while pointing out every conceptual hole in their opinions as if correcting an undergrads term paper ( eg.“ yeah completely agree with you on that matter, however don’t you mean Post-Raphaelite? ”)

3.) Proper art etiquette requires a 2-4 block rule before you can verbally trash the work

4.) Try not to enjoy these things, even if viewing a something that elicits joy.

5.) With your spatula, carefully fold the other side of the eggs over so that it covers the ingredients and makes a semi-circle. (it’s easy once you get the hang of it!)

6.) Let cook for 30 seconds to one minute.

STEP 5: Types of omelets

1.) Make sure to write sympathetic and carefully constructed analysis featuring carefully selected art historical notes (it’s easy once you get the hang of it!)

2.) Avoid sounding too academic or trite. Make sure to properly balance the Art Historian and pedestrian inside of you.

3.) The Denver omelet, AKA the Western omelet. A very basic, yet scrumptious blend of diced ham, onions and bell peppers. Cheese is optional.

Quick Tip! : lavish self-expression ? ( bad! ), topical/culturally relevant ? ( good!), contemporary and personal ? ( double good! )

4.) The Spanish omelet. A little bit of prep work will be involved for this one. Fried potatoes and finely diced onions are the main ingredients. Garlic and cheese are optional.

5.) An interesting type of omelet is the frittata. A frittata is an Italian style omelet that is partially cooked on a skillet, then placed in the oven leaving it open-faced. There are many variations of frittatas, but the basic ingredients include meats and unmeats.

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Black Girls #3

By KENNY ULLOA

Performance, War, Politics and Eroticism

Feminine Futures

Italian Cultural Institute

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Omer Fast (Untitled)

Abrons Art Centre, 12 November 2009

(Second performance of 4, running from 11 to 14 November 2009)

A Performa 09 Commission with Artis Contemporary Israeli Fund)

By MARY PATERSON

So, tell me about the first time you saw her.

This place looks domestic and familiar. There are armchairs and flower arrangements and coffee mugs, but it’s not a real home. It’s the set for a daytime TV show, a study in blandness plated up for the audience; a backing track to a song you’ve known all your life.

She was beautiful.

I might recognise the backing track, but if asked, I could only remember the melody. Here, the melody is sung as a solo, but it requires two people on stage. One to tell a story, and the other to listen. The performance is a relay race, with the narrative passed from storyteller to listener, to storyteller to listener. It’s the same narrative each time, but always told by a different person, and always told as if it happened to them.

The first time I saw her I thought, I must get to know this person; you could say that I pursued her. We spent time together, going for long walks through the city, reading each other’s books, staying up late in the night to talk about religion and philosophy. I tried to convert her to my way of thinking, to share my ideas. But she wouldn’t change for anyone. She was fiercely independent, and that’s what drew me to her.

This ownership is the melody. This telling in the first person, this simple set up that claims, ‘it happened to me.’ This is the note that floats unexpectedly from the rhythm of the format.

After a few months, our intense friendship turned into something else. We became lovers.

The reason we all tune in; the real amidst the mediation; the place where sound bites come from.

And it was wonderful.

I watch as the story is retold, and bits of the tellers’ personalities get stuck to it. It’s not enough to say the story takes on a life of its own; it takes on the life of the person telling it, and it retains the lives of the people who’ve told it before. It’s a stream of words spilling from the narrator’s mouth, as well as a collective memory, suspended between the audience and the stage.

But she was a journalist. She covered news stories all around the world, and she had a passion for the truth. She was brave and fearless, and as a result she wanted to go to Iraq. It was the beginning of the current war, and Iraq was probably the most dangerous country in the world. That’s what I told her before she went but of course, that made her want to go there even more.

I think this collective memory, this shared ownership that is inflated by the ownership of the individual who’s speaking, is what makes the audience laugh. As one of the storytellers says, ‘this is not a funny story.’

‘Why are you laughing?’ says a well dressed woman in her forties or fifties, who’s fingers flex and unflex as if they’re releasing words like punches.

She wasn’t embedded, like so many other journalists. She was living in Baghdad, the ‘real’ Baghdad, as she would say, and not in the Green Zone. She was shopping in the markets, walking in the streets, talking to the people. These markets were being bombed and there was fighting in the streets and the news channels were full of danger and casualties, so I was sick with worry. I couldn’t sleep. I loved her, and I wanted her to come home.

I find myself thinking on behalf of the people telling stories. Absorbed by their authenticity, I imagine the experience is one of my own. Even through the mediation of the TV set, the studio audience, the cameramen and producers making signals off stage. Even through the facts as they get lost between storytellers, or perhaps because of all these things.

We spoke often. Often, I would call her in the evening and she would tell me about her life over there in the desert – about the piece she was working on, the story, the angle. But as I recall it now, I can remember the tautness in her voice and the distance on the line. I assumed she was scared, just as I was. So I wanted to be strong; I laughed and told jokes; I was brave and brusque and I tried to keep her spirits up.

And so the audience laughs when one of the characters on stage gets something wrong, or embellishes what we already know. The man who sets a wedding in a water park. The woman who says the protagonist is gay. The laughter signals a break, a cathartic release from the burden of truth and a shiver of fear that the whole charade will collapse. If laughter always follows truth, then the truth this laughter follows is that none of this is truthful anymore. The facts are fading away, the melody is becoming fainter.

One day I called and a man answered the phone.

‘Who’s this?’ I said.

‘It’s Don,’ the man’s voice said.

‘Who’s Don?’ I said.

‘I think she’d better tell you that.’

Does it matter if the woman was called Jill or Janet? If it ends with kidnap or gunshots? As old details melt into new ones, they all become the conditions for telling a story, but they are not the story itself.

There was a long wait and a crackle, and then I heard her voice. She told me that she had fallen in love with Don. I could barely understand what she was saying. They had met somehow, her and Don. She had always been attracted to men like him. I should have known, she said, that she and I would never last. She hoped I could be happy for them. She hoped I would know that she still loved me. But this was it, this was over, and this was the way she was telling me.

There are only seven types of story, or so they say; they are always being retold. They always will be.

I carried on calling for a while. I was in love. What was I going to do? I couldn’t stop thinking about her. In a way, nothing had changed. I could pretend that nothing had changed.

The visual background for this storytelling is so markedly un-particular, that it looks like itself and away from itself at once. Two chairs, two mugs, two plant pots. This TV set is a design for a home, and this theatre is a design for a TV set. There is a skull nestled into the plastic leaves of each flower arrangement. A memento mori, and a design feature. The signs on the side of the stage say, ‘Applaud’ and light up when it’s time for the audience to start clapping. The signs are applause, and the mute symbols for it.

One day she told me that she and Don were going to get married.

But the factual background for this relay race is made up of elements that are markedly particular, linked to each individual. The storytellers tug at their sleeves, cross and uncross their legs, refer to photos only they’ve seen and speak with conviction about the order of events.

I didn’t understand then, and I still don’t now. She said she had to convert to Islam. It was for her own protection. Something to do with their safety, their bodily safety. It was safer for them to stick together, she said, and so they were going to get married. She even invited me to the wedding. Or it could have been him – I’m not sure. Sometimes he picked up the phone and I had to speak to him instead. I couldn’t stand the sound of his voice.

I believe it when he says he read Thomas Aquinas, but I know it has no bearing on the shared narrative that by now, by listening, I part own. It only has a bearing on my belief.

Can you believe it – they asked me to the wedding! I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I couldn’t go. I obviously didn’t go. The wedding was in Iraq. I think it was at an oasis. I tried to do something different on the day. I made an effort not to know what day it was.

Which is to say, it does not only have a bearing on my belief, but it simply and purely and fully makes me believe.

But it didn’t work, whatever she thought about safety.

And then it disappears; the belief is what I remember.

It didn’t work, because she was killed shortly after. They don’t know what happened to the body. Her body was never found. But she disappeared. Just like she had been disappearing all along, into the desert.

I missed the first storyteller on stage. After the show I hear two people talking in the toilet. They say that, while the subsequent people were actors, the first storyteller was telling the truth. They say they find it strange that this story, the origin story, was used for an art project.

I don’t know what happened to her. I still sometimes think I might pick up the phone and hear her voice on the other end, telling me about her plans; giving me an explanation. I don’t even know what her married name was.

Do they think that ‘art’ is the wrong place for this story? Does the double mediation – the mediation of the TV show format, which is mediated again as art – elevate it to myth, or relegate it to cliché? I find out later that the last listener on stage was the woman with whom the story had begun.

I don’t even know the name of the woman who died.

She smiles awkwardly as Gore Vidal weaves an amusing narrative, now transformed and authenticated by his charisma and celebrity. When he finishes nobody knows what to do. The two faces on stage stare at each other, smiling with pursed lips. Eventually the artist interrupts them and reminds them to leave the set.

I don’t know anything.

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Yeondoo Jung Makes a Movie*

By PATRICIA MILDER

: Film still from Yeondoo Jung’s Documentary Nostalgia, 2008. Photo courtesy of the artist.

I interviewed Yeondoo Jung the other day and he was wearing a cashmere shirt in a deep maroon. His pants were a slightly faded version of the same color. I always like it when people wear all one color. I think it represents a high level of commitment.

Jung’s father threw an ashtray at him when he said he wanted to be an artist. It was a heavy crystal ashtray. I’m pretty sure from the context of the story he told that the ashtray was clean. Regardless, it seems it was really a symbolic gesture because the object didn’t actually hit Jung and probably was never intended to.

Jung Senior was a pharmacist in Korea until he chose to retire due to changes in the country’s medical licensing policies. Although he was trained in Western pharmaceuticals and went to medical school, Yeondoo’s father used his extensive knowledge of Chinese herbs to create and combine medicines intended to treat the overarching cause of an individual’s affliction, rather than just the isolated symptoms.

Western medicine tends to ignore the fact that human beings are fully integrated entities. Korea Westernized its healthcare industry five years ago, separating diagnoses and treatment as well as pharmaceutical and herbal medications. There is no longer a legal place for sophisticated, creative approaches to healing that cross these imposed delineations.

Yeondoo Jung might not have followed his father’s wishes that he go to medical school, but his work is inspired by his father’s attitude that it is one’s approach and the way one looks at things that matter, not a loyalty to pure form that is important. This attitude is shared by a lot of artists who work across mediums, but Yeondoo Jung also happens to be quite technically accomplished (in sculpture, video, photography and performance installation). His work, topically, deals with fantasy, belief and disbelief in film and in life; he is especially inspired by old Hollywood studio musicals with their painted backdrops and obviously constructed sets.

Before I talked to Yeondoo, I heard from a mutual friend that he was really “into” Elvis. I didn’t really know what that meant. Was it some hipster affectation?

Actually, Jung is quite sincere about his love for the singer, having started his extensive Elvis Pressley record collection at age 15. His ultimate fantasy is to get a big red Cadillac and drive down to what he referred to as “Graceland Palace.” When I suggested that he film the journey and make a piece about it, he looked at me a little funny. Art is very important to him of course, but we’re talking about his personal Elvis fantasy here, which clearly isn’t something he wants to frame or demystify. In fact, in general Jung has no interest in cold, hard truth. His work is made up of a sparkle-eyed attitude of pure admiration. He looks lovingly at a bygone era before green screen technology and computer animation, where the best fantasies still have their seams showing.

*Yeondoo Jung presents Cinemagician, a Performa Commission, Thursday Nov 19^th and Friday Nov 20^that Asia Society.

: Yeondoo Jung, Location #24 (122cm x 153cm c-print) from Locations series 2007, Photo courtesy of the artist

Index of Related Performa Events:

Yeondoo Jung on William Kentridge’s I Am Not Me, The Horse is Not Mine (Cedar Lake Ballet, Monday and Tuesday Nov. 9^th and 10^th), “He’s doing the performance himself and I’m the person behind the camera. William Kentridge has such a great characters and he makes such serious gestures turn into such a humorous result. I really love this duality that he’s playing with, and language. He has a great talent also as a performer. Myself, I’m just enjoying. I just want to share the experience with the audience rather than I can do something. I enjoy doing something and I want you to enjoy it together with me, rather than I am great and I want to show you something.”

Emma Hart and Drew Benedict: Untitled Performances (Light Industry, 220 36^th Street, 5^th Floor, Brooklyn, Tuesday November 17^th, 7:30pm.) Although they do so on a much smaller scale than Jung, Hart and Benedict use live feed video projections, which brings the audience into their experience as artists and creators. The idea of performance that Jung expressly aims for – the “sympathetic” experience – is the real experience of Hart’s and Benedict’s non-narrative presentation of old time technology-inspired actions. In both cases (Jung and Hart/Benedict), the artist “performs” an action that creates an ephemeral object or theater based work that must be experienced in real time. The artist/performer plays the role of technician and director in visible space. We acknowledge their working actions instead of hiding them and therefore label the work “performance.”

Darius Miksys: Artist’s Parent’s Meeting is upcoming at e-flux, 41 Essex Street, Saturday, November 21, 2:00pm. Here, a group of parents of artists will discuss, with Miksys, where artists come from. “Is it a matter of choice to become an artist? Do people make artists believe they are artists, or do artists make people believe the same?” And so on.

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Some Notes on Liveness, Part Two

by PETER WALSH

Some Notes on Liveness, Part Two

: “Cutting and pasting at Dexter Sinister’s Blank SL8 space for The First/Last Newspaper. Photo: Peter Walsh”

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KABIR CARTER IS NOT A DJ

By KENNY ULLOA

Something about clubs that drive me wild (dancing not caveman-ing).

I’m in love with the idea of getting a fanciful group of people in one spot, selecting a set of precise sounds and just letting everyone go crazy.

There a lot of people out however who do not like to get crazy.

This creates a schism within the club environment.

There are hot places to be, and then there are cold places to be.

The hotter the place, the harder it is to reside within that space.

Before you know it your area is suddenly teeming with universally annoying ‘normies’ as I’d like to call them (eg. fat girls, guys with collard shirts, the ‘urban’ crowd)

This begets a newer, smaller space, with harsher entrance rules ( No Fitted Caps, Sneakers, Jeans).

A man next to a bigger man stands at the door with a clipboard in his hand.

“Are you on the list?” he asks a small group of jumpy 20 somethings.

The bigger man waves the girls in. They smile and walk past the crimson lines that divide those drinking bubbly and those who’ll remain outside the parameter.

Inside there’s a man with a soundboard and vinyl records, indirectly controlling your night.

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A response to ‘Drifts and Traps’ by Kabir Carter
Bronx Museum of Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx
Sunday November 15, 2pm

By MARY PATERSON

Notes written on:
Monday November 16, 10am
Sunday November 15, approximately 4.30pm – 5.15 pm
Sunday November 15, approximately 3pm

This is the place. This is it here, now. Rumble of the subway train. Stand clear of the closing doors, in the voice of a circus barker. Screaming on the tracks. There is a man who has a seven second memory. Once a great conductor, he lost his memory at the height of his career. Now he sits in a room watching the light move across the carpet and every seven seconds he writes in the diary he finds: “This is me. This is me, now.” Tourists counting on their fingers. Shouting over the slow groan of the subway train. Looking at each other through sunglasses. Smiling beneath the black void.

There are seven men. Three standing, three sitting. Six men. Now two standing, three sitting, one has left. They walk with a swagger, kicking one leg out with every other step. They wear dark colours and baseball caps. They’re all eating something. One of the men starts dancing and the others are pointing animatedly at something out of view. They are all sitting on the low wall in the middle of the road. It’s a bus stop. They have their backs to me and they’re two stories down. They don’t know I’m here, standing in the window of the Bronx Museum. Watching. They throw their arms up and down. They punch the sky and gesture with their chins. The silhouette of a leafless tree stands rigid beside them, leaning away from them towards the pavement. They are in the middle of the road, in a sliver of pavement between two pieces of tarmac. The road says XING XING.

Screech. Shatter. Clang. Screech. I am in a window the shape of a playing card, a watch tower, a person. Tall and thin, it points me in a direction I don’t want to look in. The room screeches around me. Industrial machines slicing their mechanics, grinding their own cogs, eating themselves.

The Grand Concourse is clean and wide with newly planted trees and newly pointed cobble stones. A sign hanging from the lampposts says, ‘The Grand Concourse: Celebrating 100 years’, above a picture of a Victorian street.

The memorial is visible through the next window. That’s why the men have gathered. There is a small ring of flowers round a tree and a single candle. The sun is setting over the Bronx. Red and orange stripes fill the sky. Red and orange reflected in the lights of street cars and shop signs. Deli. Nails.

A plane flies soundlessly through the sunset. Red stop signs flash. Flash. Flash.

Sound hisses to a stop. Sound is braking, breaking.

Muffled voices. Shards of untuned radio.

A man reading the numbers on a bank note, reading to a fire exit. Echo. Rumbles. Someone cries. A man and a woman in smart dress, Sunday dress. They make a slow parade down the street, deep in conversation. Casting four long shadows between them, stretching between the street lamps. Echo, like a cave. All the men have disappeared from the view from one window. They surround the tree with candles. The lights of the museum spill out onto two tourists with backpacks, talking on cell phones on the sidewalk, looking round at the scenery.

Tinny sounds of an iPod. Tish Tish Repetitious.

Indigo blue sky. Echo. Pulsing sounds like waves. Pulsing sounds like a background rhythm, like the rumble of the city. Street lights reflected in people’s windows, making the glass curve like shiny, sightless eyes. The street lamps hanging in the darkness outside, inside my reflected silhouette in the window.

The sound becomes something felt. Electronic speech pounding through. Something spoken to me and in me. Pairs of young men in hoods walk past, quickly. Watching. The tree outside the window has plastic bags stuck in its spiny branches. Swinging gently in the wind. Glass shatters. Electronic insects rub their legs together. Squeaking. Commiserating. Shatter Smash Hiss. Fizz. Apartments for Rent. A moment of quietness like catching a breath. A red exit sign hangs in the red streaks of the darkening sky. Red brake lights reflect in the eyes of buildings. A sound so loud it keeps you alive.

Imagine if the city fell silent for one second; two, three. Imagine the wave of calm and stillness. Imagine all you would get done. Imagine the lengths you would go to to ease it on, to twist every moment of quiet from the sounds you didn’t hear. Imagine stopping for one moment; two, three. Imagine the relief you would feel when it started again. Footstep on stone. Radio static. Voices speaking words you don’t understand. Imagine hearing the noise to wait for the silence. Imagine feeling the silence as you wait for the noise.

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4/X: Pictures Collection

By TYLER COBURN

Coburn_WritingLive_16Nov09.pdf

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Ideal Viewer

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

Einat Amir’s Ideal Viewer at Scaramouche uses the artist’s alleged own failed romantic relationship with an ex- boyfriend as a score for a series of structured yet improvisatory encounters with gallery visitors. The exhibition includes Ryan Andes as narrator or interpreter of the break-up story, Melia Smith as ‘the crying woman’ (Einat) and Yoav Levin as ‘the handsome Israeli ex-boyfriend’. What results is a troubling story in which notions of authorship, agency, fact and fiction are played with. Rachel Lois Clapham (RLC) caught up with Yoav Levin (YL) in Chelsea to get his side of the story.

RLC- What exactly was your relationship with the Einat Amir, what are the circumstances around the break-up?

YL – Einat and I used to date a while ago when I was in the Isreali Navy. I was an officer and she was my secretary. We dated for 6 months and eventually I broke up with her because she became a little mental for me. I didn’t realize at the time but she filmed us having sex, doing things in the heat of the moment in my chambers at the military base. Later on she used that as the card with which to ‘out me’ to my superiors, like ‘this is what I’m going to do with you if you break up with me.’ She was a little crazy. She wanted to expose me. If she had done that, I would have been thrown straight in jail and demoted to a lower rank.

RLC- Tell me more about this sex session specifically, what was so controversial about it?

YL- Well, it was the weekend. Most of the soldiers were home for the weekend. Einat and I went into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of wine, it was Friday as per the traditional Kiddush – A Traditional Sabbath Dinner- so we had the bread and everything. We got a little drunk and – without going into too much detail – we decided it would be fun to switch places, do role play, with Einat as the officer and me as her secretary. But what made it worse was that it was quite a tense time at the base, because of the military scenario in Israel at the time, around 9/11. That was the situation at the base, but at the same time you have to relax every now and again, because living with that fear for a long time; you can’t do that.

RLC- How do you feel about the fact Einat was willing to destroy your career by playing that videotape?

YL- Like all the other times I have been in love, you don’t really know what is going on. You have to forgive yourself for stupid things that people do.

RLC- How did you come to be involved in Ideal Viewer?

YL- Einat called me and asked me to be the human side in the story. I knew that she had become an artist. She said she had got me a plane ticket and hotel accommodation to be involved in this thing if I wanted to be. I felt that accepting her invitation would show good feeling between us. Like if she had taken the trouble to make a work out of this story after all these years, maybe she had grown up a little bit and got over it. Maybe she is on Ritalin – or whatever she is taking right now – and making something that is hopeful. Maybe we can both move on. And I get to enjoy New York City for a while, which is very nice.

RLC – When you first got to Scaramouche what did you think of the work, and your part in it?

YL- At first I was really taken aback with the whole thing. It was really shocking. Someone showed me the business card in the gallery that listed the ‘Handsome Israeli Ex-Boyfriend’ as part of the work, and listing the ‘private performance’ on the 21^st that I am supposed to be a part of. I’m being rented out, and people are signing up to hire me! I was very upset. I don’t want to say I was nearly in tears but I was like, why am I here, what am I doing to myself? Why am I acting as a whore?

RLC- Do you know what you are supposed to be doing on the 21^st?

YL- Apparently people can request me. Someone told me that one lady came to the gallery had asked for me to be an Israeli mover, a house mover. It’s a New York stereotype – Israeli’s are into the moving business – they are hardworking, like horses. An older lady in the gallery requested me for the night, she was very excited to tell me that she wanted to hire me, but wouldn’t say exactly what for. Technically though, Einat could have called her other previous ex’s to do this too. I don’t know, maybe she has? I am just like ‘Mr X’ on the business card, my name is not on it, it’s just ‘Handsome Israeli man’ In fact, any actor could show up as me on the 21st.

RLC- It’s totally unethical, what Einat is doing, putting you through this – coming to New York and not telling you why or how you and your relationship with her might be used in the work.

YL- I don’t think she is concerned with ethics. She feels that she is an artist and can use her life.

RLC- And by implication yours too?

YL – Yes, because I am part of her life.

RLC- Do you worry that she would have made work out of you, even if you had refused her invitation to come to New York?

YL- I do worry, she said the show might actually tour to Europe. I don’t know if she will use a different boyfriend or invite me again. I’m not sure what will happen. I don’t know if I’m the only guy involved in this.

RLC – Wow. OK…. Is there anything you want to ask me about all this?

YL- What did you think about the show?

RLC- I remember you came up to me in the gallery, really insistent that I listen to you. I worried that you were a crazy person but then you told me you were the ex-boyfriend… I don’t really know how I feel about the show, I understand what Einat is trying to do with the work – but I don’t know about the ethics of it, or if I would trust her if I met her. I don’t think I would go for a long walk in the woods with her, put it that way.

Credits

Ideal Viewer by Einat Amir is curated by David Everitt Howe, selected by Performa09 as part of the ‘Lust Weekend’

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Speed Reading at Definitions Gym

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

We go to ‘Speed Reading’ at Definitions Gym to see…

writers limbering up

writers in sports gear

writers in the gym

writers stumbling

writers sweating

writers performing

writers breathless

writers on speed

writers reading

writers running

writers going nowhere

Credit

Speed Reading included 30 writers on treadmills reading on the theme of speed. The event was presented by Cabinet Magazine and held at Definitions Gym 19 West Union Square, 14 November 09 6-8pm.

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Writing as a way to listen, 11/15, Bronx Museum:

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

If we are left to our own devices
If we can call it what it is
If we enact it literally
If we circumscribe
If we flaunt our imprecision
If we are indiscrete
If we react
If we show our indifference
If we are interested in another outcome
If the war continues unseen
If we are unable to admit loss
If we cannot say I won’t
If we are trapped by euphoria
If we are trapped by echolalia
If we entrap some future by this past
If we were willing to leave it be (but did not)
If we did, in fact, meet in a wood, but could not recognize it
If we agree that it could be given up
If we agree, instead, to go on
If we are not in agreement

Then we are perhaps bored
Then it has become a kind of vanity
Then the transmission is interrupted
Then the old story will have to be told again
Then the author will remain unknown, the voice garbled
Then I will leave you (perpetually)
Then the circle is too small to contain it
Then hell comes in answer
Then we hear it other than it is, out of time
Then it is not as it had seemed, as we had hoped it
Then it goes on longer than was meant

(Pre-performance talk related to the legacy of Futurism by Marjorie Perloff, Richard Sieburth, and Charles Bernstein)

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Tacita Dean Craneway Event at Danspace Project at St. Marks Church in the Bowery

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

I am currenlty organizing the sound from the piece into the following categories.

silence
movement
voice
audience
ephemera

I am also creating an even more specific section, Merce: Go, included here while the remainder is still in process. This piece includes the times in the film that Merce said go as a command, in the order in which they appear in the film.

MerceGO

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(Empty Is Also)

by REBECCA ARMSTRONG

We are alone here, and quite small, but trying hard. This is a kind of second childhood, full of sophistication, reference, and yet that put-together-with-what-I-had and altered-by-how-I-move quality of days and days alone, within and separate from the adult world. We are on a boat, we are on a sea, we are on a tower. It is something between loneliness and delight, a sweet spot to send us back to. It is better, now that we can make it what we want, but haven’t already forgotten.

The dancer moves the scaffold. The scaffold moves the dancer. The mast is raised but no one sails. The music moves on, the musician moves on, stops. Goes again.

This is a kind of open offering, a sweetness. You may move about the space. You may leave. We expect nothing of you. We are making our world and though you are welcome, we don’t depend on you. We are consumed.

This is the opposite of the conscribed experience, the didactic experience, the determined experience. I am invited not told. I am given the chance of. I am let. I am allowed to. I am offered. I am not sat down and forced to remain. I am not made to be quiet. I am undetermined, by subtlety or other means.

This is like certain live music, where you watch the art happen while it happens. This is full of precision but uncertain. This is a question that demands in place of an answer another question, an opening making an opening. This is a place to put our gratefulness, our little lost soul, our hope that something can be made from remainders, our restraint, our playful continuing.

(red)(wandering)(mendicant)(shipwreck)(taut)(tremble)(try)(try)(follow)(humble)(hero)
(red)(go)(try)(again)(melody)(motion)(motion)(again)(not)(lost)(again)

Response to/for: Tamar Ettun and Emily Coates: Empty is Also, X Initiative.

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“Picturing Performa, Part Three”

Cell Phone Photos by PETER WALSH

: Glenn Kaino with Ryan Majestic, Honor Among Thieves: (Chapter 1: The Tower and the Star), The Slipper Room, November 9th, 2009, 6:47pm.

: Tan Lin, Chalk Playground, X P.S. 2 Playground, 122 Henry Street, November 14th, 2009, 1:15pm.

: Kabir Carter, Drifts and Traps, Bronx Museum of the Arts, November 15th, 2009, 3:38pm.

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Subverting Authority (or not) in the Lecture: A Formal Analysis in Four Parts

By PATRICIA MILDER

1. S&M techniques take the power away from one symbol of authority. An analyst lectures while a young woman nuzzles his knee, kisses his neck, and makes him sweat even more than he might, naturally, under stage lights in front of a packed house of not so sympathetic observers. She degrades herself to gain control over him. He loses all capacity for intellectual engagement. He can’t answer the woman’s, or anyone else’s questions regarding his topic. It feels dangerous to watch him (the individual) lose his power, even if it is somewhat exciting to see to him (the symbol) destroyed.

2. Technology, as mastered by the artist, asserts even more power within the classic instructional format. This, even as the absurdity of the multiple iterations of the man make a statement about the instability of the word and an inner monologue ridicules perceptions of mastery. It is mastery over technology that indicates authority here, as technology is used to explore itself, revealing that ultimately, power relationships in the context of access and financial success always stay the same.

3. Instead of technology it is the use of the old methods of human capacity that are explored here in classic form. Information moves clearly and one directionally about and through the analog topic of memory: a discovery of that which can be housed in the brain instead of the computer. The artist becomes a testament to human capacity and refusal to use technology brings authority squarely into the body of the lecturer as the house of information. The audience listens, amazed.

4. The panel discussion classically spreads authority across speakers, but doesn’t extend to the audience. George Michael characters call attention to and ridicule this structure. Webs of connections are built and then slashed by a song that breaks the tension. No one here is interested in straightforward communication as in the classic uses of those institutional forms. Less answers means more space for the brains of listeners to fill in the blanks. Authority becomes silly but the audience is made stronger: they are gifted the power to (mis)(re)construct meaning.

Performances Referenced:
1. The Prompt (a night club), at White Slab Palace, Thursday November 12th
2. William Kentridge: I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine, at Cedar Lake, Monday November 9th
3. Alexandre Singh: 3 Lectures + 1 Story = 4 Evenings, at White Columns, Wednesday November 11th
4. Bruce High Quality Foundation: Art History with Benefits, at X Initiative, Thursday November 5th

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Thoughts in Real Time, or Notes Written Quietly, or I’m Too Busy for Complete Sentences, or Writing Live
(Maria Hassabi: Solo Show at PS122, Friday November 13th, 8pm)

By PATRICIA MILDER

Walk in and already in motion
She faces away from
Stage
Wearing white
Happening as people enter
Ambient noise, sound of background, people talking
People don’t stop talking
Slow movement
Like a drawing/life model
House lights dim
Concerned expression
Straining, neck back
Feeling of being still in the middle of chaos
Music stops a little
Stops.

Pause in the day
Dead person/dying person
War, blood rushing to head
Resigned, weak
Why do we watch this kind of thing?
Childbirth
Gesture drawing
Falling with thump hear music more clearly
Both artist and clay
Manipulating self
Sometimes with hands outright.

Not exciting not
Theatrical
Calming
Beautiful
Slower is harder
Restraint
Well-oiled tool
Mastered this medium
Slowing it down is the challenge to
Body so apparent
Veins, nipples, breathing, wrinkles.

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NEW LINKS TO the GINA PERFORMA blog:

TEXT SCORES

IMAGE SCORES

SOUND SCORES

VIDEO SCORES

Text, Images, Scans, Sound and Video by RYAN TRACY

: DESIGN REALNESS

: DUNG DOT REALNESS

: FACE REALNESS

: GOETHE REALNESS

: LUST REALNESS

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Scoring Performa09 (History of the Future 11)

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM

1____2____3____4 Publish your notes from the performance

: Photo: ‘Dear Visionaries and History of the Futurists from Franklyn Furnace’

5____6____7____8____9____10____11____12____13____14____15___16____17____18____19 Artists name, work title, venue name, date (and iteration of performance) Performa09 US/Global premier and commission credits as nec. and geographic location.

History of the Future 11, Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street, Friday November 6 – Saturday, November 7, 8:00pm (notes from 6 Nov), Presented by Franklin Furnace. Featuring live performances by Adam Pendelton with Alicia Hall Maron, Nao Bustamante, Jibz Cameron, Cathy Weis, Deb Margolin,Shelly Mars, Neal Medlyn. 20 ……………………

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Tacita Dean ‘Craneway Event’
Film
Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery, 131 E. 10^th Street
Thursday November 5 2009

By MARY PATERSON

: Tacita Dean, Craneway Event, 2009. Courtesy of Performa, Frith Street Gallery, London, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York-Paris, and the artist.IMAGE #1

To dance
1. To move rhythmically, often to music;
2. To move rhythmically, often to music;
3. To commit a body to movement;
4. To balance the force of each movement against the resistance of another;
5. To capture the weight of a body in the bend of a knee;
6. To match the curve of a neck with the stretch of an arm;
7. To stretch an arm, like the wing of a powerful bird. To stretch it, to test it, to almost fly.

To dance;
1. To move rhythmically, often to music;
2. To balance the force of a body against the resistance of another;
3. To know the resistance of another body before it is there;
4. To fall into another body before its arms have stretched to reach you;
5. To feel the muscles in a leg twitch while you listen to instruction;
6. To feel the muscles in a leg twitch while you listen to instructions and the rest of your body remains still;
7. To localize movement;
8. To move with conviction;
9. To move as if you know what is coming next;
10. To fall and know your weight will be met;
11. To meet the future.

To dance: to meet, bodily

To choreograph
1. To direct the rhythms of a dance;
2. To feel the weight of a body that isn’t your own;
3. To feel the length of a breath you have not breathed;
4. To cup your arms behind your head and imitate a movement you can no longer make.

To choreograph
1. To direct the rhythms of a dance;
2. To conduct with your eyes and your pen;
3. To be still while others move;
4. To say, ‘let’s do that again;’
5. To say, ‘let’s do that again, more slowly;’
6. To hear your voice silenced by the inhuman space of an industrial studio;
7. To hear your voice silenced while the light makes a halo out of your hair, and the dancers bend their long legs to sit near you;
8. To say, ‘and then you go that way, and that’s the end of this.’
And be understood;
9. To translate.

To choreograph: to translate into movement

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Black Girls #2

By KENNY ULLOA

Link to full size image: http://www.kennyaquiles.com/wifeyscreenshot.jpg

” Mrzxxx Wifey type reacts to Terrence Koh/ Target ® Free Saturdays at Brooklyn Museum ”

(Translation for non-myspacing teenage girls from brooklyn below)

He is the best thing thats ever happened to me.

Always and Forever

His name is Javontae and we’ve been together for about one month strong.

I have this nagging suspicion that we will make it to the end.

I try to keep my companions at a minimum, since many have betrayed my trust in the past.

I’ll reference my closest partners in the story below.

Most recently Javontae asked me if I could accompany him to a dancing event at the Brooklyn Museum. He assured me it would be a good time since his cousins would be in attendance. I was reluctant at first seeing as how a late night bus ride to Crown Heights on a saturday night would be hectic. I decided it would be best to bring Rashida, Mariyah, Fifi, and Jorell (He acts up from time to time.)

We we’re pumped, ready to head upstairs where the dancing apparently took place. Fifi asked a few people in the main entrance where the music was happening, and they advised us to stay in the main entrance. We saw a crowd gathering around the Rodin sculptures (they remind me of some I’ve seen in my youth in Queens borough parks). Then this slender asian man emerged, he was wearing a skin tight outfit and was painted in black from head to toe. He slowly moved to the stuttering rhythms of obscure electronic music I would usually dismiss at ‘Techno’. It was surprising to me how he could get away with such a thing, seeing as how if it were my girlfriends and I, performing our well choreographed step routine, we would of most likely ended the night with a heated altercation with the local authorities.

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3/X: Hear it Here

By TYLER COBURN

Coburn_WritingLive_9Nov09.pdf

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Performa09: Day 11 Examination of Works Seen:

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

8. The documentarian A. does B. does not act as a determining element in the viewing of the work.

Nikhil Chopra: A
Ideal Viewer: B
Auf Den Tisch: B
Alexandre Singh: B
William Kentridge: B
Tacita Dean: A

9. The work A. does B. does not borrow its central structure from a corporate or academic discourse.

Nikhil Chopra: B
Ideal Viewer: B
Auf Den Tisch: A
Alexandre Singh: A
William Kentridge: A
Tacita Dean: B

10. Improvisation A. is B. is not an obvious component of the performance.

Nikhil Chopra: A
Ideal Viewer: A
Auf Den Tisch: A
Alexandre Singh: B
William Kentridge: B
Tacita Dean: A

11. Sympathy or tenderness towards the performer A. was B. was not a factor in the experience of the piece.

Nikhil Chopra: B
Ideal Viewer: B
Auf Den Tisch: B
Alexandre Singh: A
William Kentridge: A
Tacita Dean: A

12. A second viewing of the piece would have a A. significant B. insignificant effect on the experience of the piece.

Nikhil Chopra: B
Ideal Viewer: B
Auf Den Tisch: A
Alexandre Singh: B
William Kentridge: B
Tacita Dean: B

13. The performance A. could B. could not be described, at least in part, as durational.

Nikhil Chopra: A
Ideal Viewer: A
Auf Den Tisch: B
Alexandre Singh: A
William Kentridge: B
Tacita Dean: A

14. Humor A. did B. did not play a significant role in this work.

Nikhil Chopra: B
Ideal Viewer: A
Auf Den Tisch: A
Alexandre Singh: A
William Kentridge: A
Tacita Dean: B

works seen:

Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX, The New Museum, 11.5,11.7
Einat Amir, Ideal Viewer, Scaramouche, 11.7
Meg Stuart et al, Auf Den Tisch, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 11.6, 11.7
Alexandre Singh, 3 Lectures and 1 Story=4 Evenings, White Columns, 11.11
William Kentridge, I am Not Me, the Horse is Not Mine, Cedar Lake, 11.9
Tacita Dean, Craneway Event, Danspace Project at St. Marks Church in the Bowery, 11.5

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Black Girls #1

by KENNY ULLOA

Arto Lindsay – Times Square Performance

“Mariyah reacts to performers on street”

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William Kentridge lectures, shows videos, lectures to videos, videos his lecture.
Video. Lecture.
Monday November 9th, 2009.

By PATRICIA MILDER

: William Kentridge, I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine, A Performa 09 Premiere, Photo by Paula Court, Courtesy of Performa

1. Regarding ideas:

About halfway through his lecture performance with video, William Kentridge tells a story that involves himself, the early morning/late night minutes lying between four and five a.m., a garden, a studio, an alarm system, his wife, a bed, and a video camera. In the story he wakes up with thoughts of an impending (now happening) performance project running through his head. He has an idea on many levels. First, he realizes that he’s awake because the ideas are coming to him now and he must record them somehow; second, he realizes that this process of having the idea is really a part of the idea itself; third, he decides to document the idea via an external visual of the idea process, which is really the same thing as the idea in this case.

He said it: “My job is to make drawings, not to make sense.”

He gets out of bed and walks through his garden. Just the word garden alone, when it comes out of his mouth, evokes a kind of manicured loveliness: something magical and precise and softly colorful in the pre-dawn glow. There must be dew. There must be roses present. He walks across the garden and reaches his studio. Again, though he refers to it as just “my studio,” the image is clearly illuminated. It must have many windows; it must be wood, painted white, perhaps with a wall clinging vine along one or more of the outer walls. He turns off the alarm and walks in the door. The alarm is less visible: is it a little keypad to the right of the door? Does it beep when he punches in the code? Let’s say yes to both, only the beeps must be somewhat faint, more elegant than beeps should be allowed to be.

He gets the video camera from the studio and walks back to his bedroom. He sets up his video camera at the foot of the bed where he and his wife sleep. He tells his wife the camera is not for domestic pornography. And then suddenly, or rather, a few minutes after he’s moved on from the initial story description and into another segment, we get to see footage of the bed, the wife, and the idea process via the artist sitting up sleepless in bed between four and five a.m. Then all sorts of questions, or rather, one specific question arises. Are we watching real-time footage of a man having an idea about having an idea or are we watching a writer/actor who planned this pre-recorded performance ingredient (which is really just one idea) precisely because of its charmingly accidental, diary-like quality?

2. Regarding movement:

Roberta Smith said of Kentridge in the New York Times in 2007: “Perhaps because he began as an actor, writer and set designer, he doesn’t exhibit great feeling for the immediacy of the art object. As a result his work is almost always best when presented at a remove, in translation or in motion.”

Claudia La Rocco said of Tere O’Connor in the New York Times in 2009: “At a time when many choreographers are distancing themselves from dance as the central focus of their work and instead placing themselves in a broader context of conceptually driven art and multimedia projects, Mr. O’Connor’s work remains rigorously movement focused.”

Seen in the context of a larger arts-world of colliding pure forms, movement ceases to become something outside the “art object.” Adding elements of motion and choreographed live action does not take Kentridge’s work away from itself or create distance and remove that adds value to some higher level tangible object-based aspect of itself. It is not some way of presenting itself, but rather, just is itself.

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“Some Notes on Liveness: Part One”

By PETER WALSH

I’m addicted to the privilege of “being there.” In a society where the eyewitness testimony of one person can put another person behind bars – or set them free, it’s hard not to be. We honor the power of the witness. As a sensing person, my being shaped by a constant bodily flow of information, I prefer, for example, a well-made meal to simple calories. I also prefer theater to cinema, a big movie premiere to stuttering YouTube videos, the passion of a lover to the secondhand “sexiness” of pop culture.

Yet, I’m uncomfortable with the power relationships created by the unique object or the ephemeral moment.

Live performance creates a class structure: those who were there, and those who weren’t. Photos, drawings, videos and artifacts mediate the intensity of a direct experience, falling between an action and a viewer, as do written critical responses like this one. Memory, too, lies between the event and the telling.

: “Peter Walsh’s notes for Nikhil Chopra’s Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX, The New Museum, New York, November 5th, 2009.”

The first thing I remember seeing is a young boy. His digital camera is floating between the ends of his delicate fingertips as he kneels in a classic photographer’s crouch. On the other side of the action, a woman with an official looking video camera is slowly circling a thin man in cream-colored long underwear who sits in a pool of light, his hands immersed in a white enamel washbasin. I reach for my cell phone, flip it open and push a small button marked with the image of a camera. I’m ready, too.

Seated amongst a handful of boxes and belongings, Yog Raj Chitrakar looks like some 19^thcentury explorer taking his morning rituals in the field. On the other side of a glass wall, spectators watch his methodical movements while sipping coffee in a café.

: Cell Phone Photo by Peter Walsh of Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX, The New Museum, November 5th, 2009, 4:53pm.

A week later, I interview Mumbai-based artist Nikhil Chopra about his character Yog Raj Chitrakar at the Performa Hub at Cooper Union in New York City.

Constructed from memory and notes:

Peter Walsh: I love the large drawings that you’ve created for your performance. Do you consider them to be documents of the performance or artworks in their own right?

Nikhil Chopra: Well, both. Performing itself is a kind of document. I’m interested in transitions, in recording changes; for example, where the city meets the harbor.

PW: You mean geographical transitions?

NC: Yes, but all kinds of changes. The images in the drawings are from Ellis Island. The character of Yog Raj Chitrakar is a kind of draughtsman explorer. Back in the 19^thcentury and even earlier, before the advent of photography, drawings would be used as a way to claim ownership. They were a way to bring back a picture of empire for those in the west.

PW: You mean they were a kind of proof, evidence?

NC: Yes, so I’ve created an image of New York’s harbor, as seen from Ellis Island, as a way of allowing an immigrant’s view to be part of this project, to take ownership.

PW: I was surprised to see so many people taking pictures during the short time that I was watching your performance. I was surprised that we were allowed to! During this Performa festival [Chopra’s performance and installation are part of the three week festival] it seems like there are so many more cameras than even a few years ago. Everyone’s got one.

NC: Yes, very much so. And you know the decision was made to say “yes,” to allow the pictures. I see photography as an interactive tool that gives people a way to interact with me during the performance. As a rule I don’t speak during a performance so the cameras allow people to take something away with them. I’m also very interested in the theatrical set-ups of early portrait photography, where people would get dressed up and take on a particular manner, a way of holding themselves, and pose in front of these painted backdrops.

PW: Do you mean you see your drawings as photographic backdrops?

NC: Yes. The whole installation and performance is set up to create a kind of photographic tableau vivant. And you know the video is important to me. Since I’m performing, the video is the only way for me to see what the work looks like. Still, I’m interested in the performance itself. I can really tell something about a piece by the feeling of anticipation and the sense of danger I experience. I’m interested in the freshness of the experience in real time.

Next up: Slowness.

_____________________________________________________________

Fischerspooner Performance at MOMA

by KENNY ULLOA

_____________________________________________________________

Artists: Alterazioni Video and Ragnar Kjartansson
Title: Symphony N. 1
Venue: Performance Space 122
Date: Monday November 2^nd 2009, 8pm
Movements: Four
Instruments: Bowling balls (silent), Clothes drier, Footballs, Gin, Ice, Ice bucket, Lemons, Metronomes, Microwave,
Ping pong balls, Step ladder, Tables and chairs (wooden), Tonic, TV, VHS player

by MARY PATERSON

: Alterazioni Video and Ragnar Kjartansson,Symphony N. 1, Photo by Paula Court. Courtesy of Performa and PS122 IMAGE1

[Watch]
A line of metronomes at the front of the stage
Watch them to and fro and to and fro and
Swinging against each other out of time
Swinging apart from each other until
They slow together
Find each other
Find the time
Like applause
Like magic.

Ladies and Gentlemen: this is the beginning. Welcome to the introduction and the start of the symphony. Tonight’s performance is played by musicians, played by men in tuxedoes.

[Watch]
The VHS tape. Watch it spinning in the VHS player playing on a TV strapped up sideways. Watch the image of the flabby torso of an overweight man, wearing nipple tassles, jumping up and down.

In the first movement the journey of the symphony starts to unfurl. The musicians coax their instruments into life, ease their instruments into sound, into sounding together. The tinny strike of a ping pong ball on wood. [Listen] The busy hush of a bowling ball shined in a soft bag. The musicians concentrate like men who know they are watched. They keep time to the tired sighs of the man who is jumping up and down, wearing nipple tassles, on a sideways TV.

[Fade]

For the second movement our timekeeper, our conductor, our video tape invigilator, shows his face. His face and his chest are red with the impact of a computer keyboard that he bashes BANG that he smashes BANG against his head his chest his BANG fragile skin. Listen to the sharp impact of ping pong balls on wood and metal. Listen to the cold crush of ice falling from the top of a step ladder into a bucket on the stage. Listen to the words spat in Italian to the beat of the BANG Pepperoni Pepperoni Pepperoni!

Listen to the beat of a hand on the domestic clothes drier. Magnified by a hidden microphone, the beat of a hand is the sound of giant footsteps making a fairy tale shake.

[Watch]
Only the bowling balls are silent. Stacked ontop of each other like tiny planets. Full of mass but you can’t hear them move.

[Watch]
The men in the place of performance.
The musicians wear uniforms of black and white and bow tie; polite expressions and occasional smiles directed our way.

The timekeeper is filmed against white walls and without any clothes on.
They look like an orchestra. He looks like an artist.

The tea towel on the clothes drier jumps each time it’s hit. Jumps until it drops.

[Fade]

This movement ends, as they all do, in darkness. The lights dim low enough to dampen the audience’s senses. Ladies and Gentlemen: this is a pause. Please remain seated. Do not applaud.

The four men on stage tug on the collars of their jackets. They shuffle in their sleeves and make small steps in small circles. Their progress in the half light releases the drama of the music like the damp fizz of a soda can. Their dances in the half light anticipate what is to come – small steps in small circles are buoyant preparation for the next campaign.

[Watch]
The VHS tape. Watch the next VHS tape playing on the sideways screen,
upright like a playing card.
Upright like a tombstone. The protagonist, the timekeeper, the artist is eating. Breathing heavily and patched in red skin, he bites into a foil covered wrap. Members of the audience make a noise when the man on TV eats a piece of salad that has stuck to his chest. Members of the audience groan as if the man on TV was in the room. As if we could smell his sweat, or breathe his warm breath. As if he is here, really here, keeping time. As if he is more than an agreement we have all made.

[Listen]
The tortured strings of a clothes drier played with a bow.
The hiss of alcohol poured from a great height over ice
The eerie silence of stacked bowling balls that are not falling

The pause before the punchline.

[Fade]

[Watch]
[Listen]
The VHS Tape. Watch a man put on a guitar and mumble a song. Listen to a song being sung by an amateur. Being sung by a protagonist. Watch the protagonist at home in his institutional white walls and his birthday suit, in his past time, making instructions for now.

Listen to the instructions. Listen to the mumble of a song being sung by an amateur. Listen to the sound of red skin cooling, of food digesting, of winding down.

Watch the musicians relax. Watch their shoulders go limp, their backs go straight, their eyes stray from their instruments. Watch the musicians step away from their instruments. Step away with the sharp steps of something new. Watch a man in a tuxedo watch a football he kicks float in a round arc towards the TV tombstone.

Watch the TV wobble.

Watch the microwave creak and buzz and fizz into flames

Feel the audience twitch.

Feel the weight of leather on wood. Leather on wood. Bouncing.
Watch the footballs career over the stage
Hitting the lights
Smashing the ladder
Knocking the tables
Crashing the set
Trashing the stage

Crossing the field hitting the lights smashing the ladder knocking the tables crashing the set trashing the stage ladies and gentelmen, Ladies and Gentelmen. Now is your Moment. You know you’ve been Waiting.

You will find a football by your seat.

You have found a football by your seat.

[Play]

____________________________________________________________

Actions Propaganda at the Performa Hub

By MARY PATERSON

MP Actions

Photo: courtesy Performa09

_____________________________________________________________

A Score for Writing Performa

By RACHEL LOIS CLAPHAM, with PETER WALSH and RYAN TRACY

Based on notes and discussions between WL Fellows at the Writing Live Scoring Workshop

a score for writing performa09 latest-1

_____________________________________________________________

Photo by MARY PATERSON

_____________________________________________________________

Meg Stuart: Auf Den Tisch! / At The Table
Barishnakov Arts Center

By PATRICIA MILDER

Attended: Friday Nov. 6, 7:40pm

First response written Saturday Nov. 7, 7:40pm; Location of response M14 Bus; location on bus back left section; Entered bus Ave A between 2^nd St. and Houston; Got off bus Ninth Ave; Destination The Kitchen; Mood anxious; Songs played on ipod include Flushed Chest, Joan as Police Woman; Russian Hill, Jellyfish; After the Flood, Talk Talk; Think, Do Make Say Think.

I’d be lying if I said I knew how they got from here to there. All I really know for sure is that I didn’t want to leave when the performance was as over as it was going to be.

“Is improvisation alive and well?” Roselee Goldberg asked.
Yes (in more words) was the answer.

Exposing the physical and psychological makes these performers human, and then very near super human. (I wouldn’t want to watch just anyone in formlessness.) It’s all out here. They’re laying it out: the ugly, the sex, the politics, and blatantly tortured souls. What I know I saw was that they did this because they had to do this.

Suicide attempts called out. Dollar bills torn, and why couldn’t I tear one?

Apple in the mouth; (fake )blood spilling down cheeks. Desperate steps. Eating, kissing, consuming each other.

Second response written Monday Nov. 9, 9:00am; Location of response an apartment in Williamsburg; Mood empty; No music playing.

Yesterday Tan Lin was talking a bit about his Twitter and chalk performance piece. This was in the context of a Writing Live workshop, a deprogramming event that, at best, resists definition. He said he was surprised when so many people stopped to read a long, personal story as it was being written with chalk on the sidewalk. Rebecca Armstrong said this wasn’t surprising, that the personal was the only thing that anyone would stop for in this city. I’m paraphrasing her from memory: the depersonalization of the experience of living and being in New York City (any city?) creates hunger for intimate personal moments. I read this once in a magazine: the spa industry exists to package and sell touch and intimacy to New Yorkers (any city dwellers?) in a non-threatening, consumable way. I’m drawing the obvious conclusion: Meg Stuart’s Auf Den Tisch! is a question, not a filling station.

_____________________________________________________________

Picturing Performa, Part Two

Cell Phone Photos by PETER WALSH

: Nikhil Chopra, Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX, The New Museum, November 5th, 2009, 4:53pm.

: The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Art History With Benefits, X Initiative, November 5th, 2009, 5:56pm.

: Adam Pendleton, Two Scenes, with Alicia Hall Moran, Abrons Art Center, November 6th, 2009, 7:58pm.

: Fire Engine Piñata Performance, Brooklyn, November 7th, 2009, 4:23pm.

: Writing Live Fellows with Charles Bernstein and Tan Lin, Writing Machine Workshop, Cooper Union, November 8th, 2009, 11:10am.

: Performa Hub at Cooper Union, November 8th, 2009, 1:49pm.

_____________________________________________________________

Auf den Tisch, post-performance score based on common elements between 2 performances, 11/6 and 11/7, Baryshnikov Arts Center (initial iteration):

by REBECCA ARMSTRONG

text-based beginning—specific text (leads to)
single dancer on table

and follows, sometimes more than once, order remembered, not performed:

sex scene (possibly more than 1)

Janez goes off somewhere and does something precarious involving balance, then attention shifts to him, but he is not required to use it. at least one other performer interacts in a physically intimate way with him

characters eat something

the corner game: everybody who________, go stand in that corner

a conversation between 2 men in which one accuses the other of not trusting him

a discussion about race

tearing up federal currency, as a group

long-ish duet between Meg and David

self-reflexivity (this is a conference, so…)

a person under the table pops up a section or sections of the table, people on top respond

Keith wears the crazy cat suit and is a lone performer, someone interacts with him, someone tells him to stop

Yvonne sings the same song both nights

someone wears a fleshy body suit

men take off all or most of their clothes

intervals of improvisational dancing

comments of the effectiveness of what people try: internal commentary/interruption

Janez expresses a desire that is only partially or alternatively fulfilled

sound&lighting: fixed components, improvisationally mixed, can be used to shift (or attempt to shift) activities

some performers begin planted in audience

variables:
willingness of audience to participate
level of humor
length of show, presence or absence of “intermission”
dead chicken, fake blood, wedding dress
where the crescendo is, pacing (front heavy or back heavy: where is the lag?)
/where the stillness falls
reading of external text(s)

question:
Is there a silent leader?

_____________________________________________________________

2/X: Six Meetings

by TYLER COBURN

Coburn_WritingLive_6Nov09.pdf

_____________________________________________________________

Pasta Sauna
Proef (Marije Vogelzang)
Performa Hub
Visited November 5^th at noon

By PATRICIA MILDER

My mother is Italian. When I tell her I had a bad day she tells me to eat pasta and go to sleep. I’m worried this process will make me fat. I have a lot of bad days.

Marinetti said pasta makes you fat. And slow. And dull. And lazy.

The Pasta Sauna at the Performa Hub slows me down. I’m rushing between appointments. I have to check my email. Instead, I stand in a steamy room and watch Shelley, who is dressed in a white jump suit, take a ball of dough and work it through a pasta maker that is at the top of a 12-foot ladder. It unrolls slowly into a pot of lightly boiling water waiting below. We try not to talk about Performa logistics. I tell her it’s nice to see her in this atmosphere.

An NYU student with short black hair and bright pink lipstick takes photos with a little red camera. People write on the steamed up glass walls of the sauna as if they were dirty cars parked on the street, only they don’t write “wash me.” That I would have noticed. I don’t notice what they write.

Lillie asks me how to pronounce two words in the Manifesto she is reading outside the Sauna doors, inside the Performa Hub. She reads well. I grate cheese onto the pasta (“fat,” I think), and drizzle olive oil (“more fat,” I think), sprinkle salt and pepper, squeeze lemon, add a little rosemary. I sit with Lyra. We talk a little about the website. We talk a little about how good the fresh pasta is. I watch people walk in off the street and go through the lulling, satisfying process of obtaining fresh, free lunch.

Marije Vogelzang is back in the Netherlands by the time I’m sitting here enjoying her “eating design,” but a journalism student from Columbia interviews people on her team. I think about how this girl looks exactly like I imagine a proper journalism student should look: brown hair, glasses, a young face with a serious expression. She even has one of those little notebooks with the spiral binding at the top of the page.

When I finish my pasta I check my email. I check out. I run to my next appointment.

_____________________________________________________________

Bruce High Quality Foundation
Art History with Benefits, at X Initiative
Thu Nov 5^th, 6pm

By PATRICIA MILDER

On the BHQF website they say there will be a guest appearance by George Michael.
Michael doesn’t show up in person.

Neither does Mariah Carey.

But there is singing.

_____________________________________________________________

NEW LINKS TO the GINA PERFORMA blog:

TEXT SCORES
NOV 4
NOV 2
NOV 1

SOUND SCORES
NOV 2
NOV 1

VIDEO SCORES
NOV 2
NOV 1

Scores by RYAN TRACY

Photos by Ryan Tracy and Michael Hart

: AUTOGRAPH SCORE ACCORDIAN REALNESS

: IMAGE SCORE CANDACE REALNESS

: IMAGE SCORE CAUGHT IN THE ACT REALNESS

: IMAGE SCORE FINDING HER LIGHT REALNESS

: IMAGE SCORE STAND BACK AND LOOK AT IT REALNESS

: IMAGE SCORE SURREAL REALNESS

: MANUSCRIPT SCORE NIKHIL CHOPRA REALNESS CHORUS

: YORK NEW YORK PASTA SAUNA REALNESS

_____________________________________________________________

A Response 2 ways: Layers of experience/editing within Performa09 iteration of Brody Condon’sWithout Sun.

By REBECCA ARMSTRONG

BrodyCondon

_____________________________________________________________

Writing Live fellow Ryan Tracy has devised a performative system for scoring Performa 09 that is a reflexive and co-generative practice of performance and writing: GINA PERFORMA.

: IMAGE SCORE SQUAT AND REACH REALNESS Photo By Michael Hart

During the three-week course of the Performa 09 biennial, GINA PERFORMA will appear at performances. She will perform at performances. She will also document performances descriptively in terms of “REALNESS”, and will collect autographs of those attending the performances in order to track the social score of Performa 09. Artifacts of this writing/performance project include the articles of clothing worn by and used to create GINA PERFORMA; audience autographs, which will be taken on Performa 09 programs; live-written notes, which will be taken in notebooks; digital reproductions of such autographs and notes; photographs and digital images of the process of GINA PERFORMA; text scores describing and prescribing performances of Performa 09 as well as the performance of GINA PERFORMA; sound scores created from the text scores; video scores created from the text and sound scores, including photo, audio and video documentation of the total score for GINA PERFORMA in/and PERFORMA 09.

Part of this project is the production and maintenance of a concurrent digital platform to the Writing Live website: aka, the GINA PERFORMA blog.

: AUTOGRAPH SCORE BATTERY PARK RUTH SACHS REALNESS

: AUTOGRAPH SCORE AXEL SCHWEISS

_____________________________________________________________

Picturing Performa, Part One

Cell Phone Photos by PETER WALSH

: Fischerspooner, Between Worlds (2009), Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), November 1st, 2009, 7:12pm.

: Arto Linsey, Somewhere I Read, Times Square, November 1st, 2009, 8:13pm.

: Proef ( Marije Vogelzang) Pasta Sauna, Performa Hub, Cooper Union, November 4th, 2009, 12:15pm

_____________________________________________________________

1/X: Other Architectures

by TYLER COBURN

Coburn_WritingLive_4Nov09.pdf

_____________________________________________________________

Performa09: Day 4 Examination of Works Seen

by REBECCA ARMSTRONG

1. Either A. the body is the generative text or B. the text generates the body.

FischerSpooner: B

Arto Lindsay: B

Brody Condon: A

Dexter Sinister: B

Lost Astronaut*: B

2. Is the piece made by A. a single performer or B. multiple performers?

Fischerspooner: B

Arto Lindsay: B

Brody Condon: B

Dexter Sinister: B

Lost Astronaut: B

3. This work could be reductively stated as about A. performance B. gender C. the body D. race.

FischerSpooner: A; B, D problematic

Arto Lindsay: A

Brody Condon: C major, A minor, D present, B neutralized

Dexter Sinister: A

Lost Astronaut: B

4. Without any extra explanation, this work could be described as A. alienating B. friendly to an audience uneducated about performance art.

Fischerspooner: B

Arto Lindsay: A

Brody Condon: A

Dexter Sinister: A/B

Lost Astronaut: B

5. It A. is B. is not possible to easily identify “the other” in this work.

Fischerspooner: B

Arto Lindsay: B

Brody Condon: A

Dexter Sinister: A

Lost Astronaut: A

6. I A. have B. have not already described this piece to at least one other person.

Fischerspooner: B

Arto Lindsay: B

Brody Condon: A (4)

Dexter Sinister: B

Lost Astronaut: A (5)

7. Action describable as “dancing” A. was B. was not part of this art work.

Fischerspooner: A

Arto Lindsay: A

Brody Condon: A

Dexter Sinister: B

Lost Astronaut: A

works seen:

Performance 6: Fischerspooner, Between Worlds, Moma, 11.01

Arto Lindsay Somewhere I Read, Times Square, 11.01

Brody Condon Without Sun, Moma, 11.02

Dexter Sinister The First/Last Newspaper, At Port Authority-Blank SL8, 11.03

Alicia Framis Lost Astronaut, APF Lab, 11.03

* Only work with non-performative character development. Character, rather than author, becomes tag.

_____________________________________________________________

An Evening With Brody Condon
Monday November 2, 7pm at MOMA

by PATRICIA MILDER

Notes/Keywords:

Elvis
Yucatan Mirror Development
Art therapy vision quest
Anne Hamilton
Dungeons and Dragons
Death animation
Machine Project
Monroe Institute
Nordic progressive LARPING scene
Temporary commune
Legacy of a group gathering
Collections
External View of projecting elsewhere
Cyber Punk
Addiction and Transcendence
Drugs.

It depends on your definition of psychedelic art – that’s certainly up for debate and in need of definition – but as far as generally held popular notions of creative output stemming from the content of psychedelics: Brody Condon doesn’t make that. Using “found” video (from YouTube) of mostly college age people tripping in their rooms and backyards, he collages together what amounts to a purely external view of bodies and voices that are in every sense removed from the internal experience of the people on screen. Inside they might be seeing God, but the 15-minute video features average kids in states of disarray not too different from how they probably look after binge drinking – babbling incoherently, falling over, laughing and being laughed at.

As a viewer, it’s hard not to join in the laughing and I suspect the audience is giggling for a few main reasons: empathetic embarrassment, judgment, and slapstick. Condon used to show this video alone; now he follows it with a 15-minute performance interpretation featuring one actor and one dancer, which helps transcend the unavoidable humor of the video. The performance reveals the shape of the actions in the video through an extra remove – the purely external actions here representing a generalized disembodiment, or a specifically New Age out-of-body experience. The performers make the shell, the physical experience, so much more visible because they act out the video collage exactly as it is pieced together.

A male actor stands on stage right, speaking the words that come out of each video character’s mouth: “I’m so glad I don’t have any pants on right now,” or “ahhhh, ughhh, hahahaha,” or “I’ll keep them from coming in by holding the door just like this.” To his left, a female dancer – notably, for the visual contrast to the video, in her 50s – acts out the physical gestures and gesticulations. She uses just a square block set up in the center of the stage as a base for her leaning, falling, and convulsing. It’s hard to watch both the actor and the dancer at the same time: the simple two-sided set-up creates diversity that makes the show easy to engage with. The live performance’s immediate reference to the previously viewed video reminds viewers of time-based progression and creates durational awareness, a technique that is also kind to the audience.

Condon, since his background is in computer animation, not choreography, approached the organization of this performance from a physical, technical place of entry. As if she were a character in his animations, he designed movement for the dancer by placing her body in frames of time. They interpreted the rest together based on the video. In terms of process, working from a video creates, ultimately, the reverse performance experience: the documentation creates the script. In consideration also of Condon’s interest and work with the Live Action Role Playing community (he is currently working on developing a role-playing self-actualization game based on the Nordic progressive scene) the fantasy aspect of the embodiment of others’ external actions becomes apparent. Formal physical shapes, removed from the depth of experience of their spontaneous origin, become hollow. They are conduits for the projection and escapism of others.

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Artists Unite Issue » scoring performa 11.13.09 / 8am

[...] Peter Walsh is a writing fellow for Performa ‘09. He just let me know about the project Scoring Performa, which has a number of writers, well, scoring the annual performance art festival. The resulting [...]

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