Back From Abra
I'm back from a New York trip (including a small hop in Philadelphia),
which was extended a couple days.
I think I reached above a 100 exhibit visits ?
I didn't count.
I'm going to TO very soon.
The surprises in NYC were not where expected, but it was generally
a better season than usual. Well...I need a few days to recap my thoughts
about it.
(image feeded from the cool New York Times article here)
For now I'll just mention a few thoughts about
the Abramovic PERFORMA 05 series of "performance interpretations" that was one of the major planned stops on my schedule.
Though I couldn't be in time for the "Lips Of Thomas"
re-take of Marina Abramovic at the Guggenheim Museum, which was
(expectably) the best of her series judging from general opinion, I was present to see the whole last 6 hours of the final, and only new, performance, and to
my surprise I discovered that the museum had an installation of monitors
placed nearby where each of the 6 previous nights' performances were playing
on at the same time ! So wandering from the main event to the monitors I simply managed to see the whole darn series of Abramovic: much cuddles to the Guggenheim
for that!!
Abramovic is an artist who is known for having blended the fields
of performance and installation, sometimes to majestuous scale.
And so, most of the "landmark" performances she chose to replicate
for this ackward event were (indeed, all but one) in fact works
that involved installations, or visual arts "artefacts" (sculptures,
art objects).
The thing that striked me at first sight is exactly how she had
adapted and made her own these various and varied performances: she
transformed them, if that was possible, into "minimalist" versions
of the originals.
She installed a circular white stage (made of painted wood) in the middle of the Guggenheim main floor, on which she sort of proceeded with her "essentialist" re-lectures of both the settings and actions of the original events.
Here:
For the Nauman piece, all dressed in black, she replaced the original gallery
alteration by a simple thin wall of glass in the middle of the stage, on which she pressed herself in different positions (and on both sides) over many hours.
Similarly, for the Vito Acconci piece, the original gallery construction/installation was reduced to Abramovic being under the wooden circle stage, with a small adjusted stair ramp permitting people to climb on it and talk to her through the floor, as speakers were transmitting her voice as, of course, she masturbated (this is the Guggenheim, don't forget).
For the Valie Export piece, which was the only piece originally non-installative, with the artist simply walking in a porn cinema, Abramovic simply sitted on a wooden chair, her crotch out in the open thanks to a cutted section in her pants, and holding a machine gun. There was a second identical chair next to her, but the guards didn't let the people climb on the stage (which I find bizarre).
For the Gina Pane piece, she got rid of the original slide project, simply layed in a white dress on a shallow metal bed that included a couple rows of burning candles from underneath, that she had to replace at some point during the performance. Her dress as she lifted up seemed a little burned from behind, just giving hints that the experience was more painful for the artist than she had let apparent. I think they were a pile of cloths nearby, or it could be boxes of candles.
For the Joseph Beuys piece, she replaced the original "pictures" installation with
7 small empty school blackboards, put on 3 easels (not sure if it's 3 or 4), some of them on the floor. She dressed exactly like Beuys, had her head exactly like him (gold leaves and honey), and wore the same things on her foots (felt and iron).
She goofed around while holding a dead hare for the whole time, in what most people agreed was too much of a theatrical rendition of the original (maybe resulting from the downsize of working with a small stage, as if in a freak theatre show). The emotion wasn't there. Not the one we had mythologized from seeing photographic portraits of the original Beuys.
For her own piece from 1975 (Lips Of Thomas), she respected most of the original
set-up, except that the "stations" for it were now enclosed near to each other, forming a tight ensemble. Her giant ice cross was splendid, her objects, including many razors, were put in row on the floor at the upfront of the scene, as the table
and the other station were pushed to the back. She varied the order of her original actions, including eating honey and drinking wine, flagellating herself, cutting a star on her belly line by line (one razor and one line only per period), and sleeping on that ice cross with a heater suspended right above it (she's totally naked in this piece). She added political overtones by wearing an army hat and holding the cloth featuring her blood as a flag. That is just to summarize rapidly an event that received a lot of strong reactions including faints, people crying, or shouting at the artist to stop. You didn't think this could still happen in 2005: wow !
The final night had Abramovic stand high in the air above a gigantic blue sparkling robe, enveloping and hiding the circle stage for once and for good, like a giant musical doll. No more black and whites, no more pain, the final event was radically different from the previous, except for the minimalism. It was the best night to climb the Guggenheim museum ramp and meet the artist's eyes at an higher scale. She looked gorgeous! She was repeating some very precise gestures (lifting her arms, twisting slowly, looking at the crowd, posing her hand against her robe, palms toward the public, at times breathing deeply). At some moment during the night she started to move faster and faster, sort of rolling around herself to caress the vision of the public around her, making eye contact with everyone. I had the impression that she was inviting us for something. The piece was titled "Entering The Other Side" (2005), and I couldn't help but think she wanted us to go under her robe. I talked to somebody there that seemed of authority (a curator?, she had a special badge and was explaining the work to a friend). She thought my interpretation was interesting, but that from what she knew the artist only intended to be this living sculpture for the whole night. I could see that I left her wondering, as I insisted that many Abramovic pieces involved participation. Much later on, some people with more balls than me (women, in fact) decided to open up the robe but were stopped immediately by the guards. I went to ask the head of the guards if the artist herself had told them specifically to not let anyone touch the robe. The answer was yes. I am still not sure what it is she meant with that title. I'm not satisfied with answers invoking gaze and "unnatteinable desire". I still want to know what was under that robe.
But for the whole I think Abramovic won her bet.
I think that the fact the series was presented by
such a landmark performance artist as Abramovic,
and within such a museal context, added an hyper-aura
that functioned more like an opaque glass that needed
some reflective time to erase or forget, but still, the exercise
prove how re-interpreting performances could be an interesting
way to re-evaluate their importances and meanings.
The Nauman piece, for example, here left me with a strong
impression of being not much more worthy than for historical
value, a work representative of an era when artists where gauging
or delimitating the mediums they used or the spaces they inhabited.
It was good for 10 minutes, but then you really got the point fast.
You can make this in your bathroom in the morning if you really
need this work to imprint on you.
The Acconci piece, on the other hand, has not loose
an itch of its power. The issues of intimate and public spaces
are probably even more resonating here in the context of such
a museal experience. This re-interpretation only confirmed the
importance of this piece. And the fact it was done by a woman
sealed the piece's universalism. Bereft of any sign of
representation, or any transfixed cultural codes of gender,
men and women, through they simple breath, are finally levelled back
to sexual equals.
Well, not for a long time, as the Valie Export piece is all about
codes and gender image, but the blunt rendition of Abramovic
kinda let you wondered if radical feminist art really made a difference
through the decades, or if it wasn't too easily re-absorbed by porn.
Abramovic was as much an icon of fantasy that night than one
that embodied any revolt. The image was powerful, though, and I
hope some feminists out there will take this opportunity to reflect
on what it means to impersonificate this action in 2005.
The Gina Pane piece made you wonder about how re-interpreting
a performance can lead to varied meanings depending if you
leave or add details to it. The Abramovic version was ascetically
religious, and I couldn't help but link it with the religious tensions
of our present times, and how so many people are ready to die for what
they believe in. I have no idea if the religious tone was part of the original
onset, but the white dress, and the same death-pose over candles similar to
a tradition in south america of burning madonnas, made it all quasi too obvious.
It could upset some artists that a meaning of a piece be displaced as such, but in the end I was thinking how with music or theatre, interpretations always imply a part of creation. This piece is the one that prove this point the most.
The Joseph Beuys was perhaps a failure, but an interesting one, that permitted
to adress the danger of falling into theatrics with replicas of performances. Just how do you mean the work you represent? It wasn't so much a demonstration that the work can't be redone than a demonstration that an interpretation can fail for loosing or emptying too much of the original context. Or even respecting too much of that context. For example: dressing up exactly like Beuys was a bad idea. Abramovic looked like if she was attempting to act Beuys for a movie. She even had her hairs arranged so they looked short. It was as if she was posing for a great poster honoring the ego of Beuys, not getting at the gravity of the situation, the essence of Beuys's gestures. Or maybe it helped to reassign the debt of performance to theatre, with which it was closely linked in the beginnings. The schoolboards made the whole look like a kid tv show to a point when the hare started to look like a puppet. Maybe we've just seen too much death in films and on tv but we just couldn't enter the reality of the presence of a dead animal. You can blame that to "the impossibility of death in the mind of..." or simply the fact that I saw this event on a monitor myself.
The "Lips Of Thomas" (1975) performance was as radical as the original,
and proof that if you have a set of actions that are up to the level
of shaking your audience, they will at any times. The witch torture chamber
composed of the ice cross and heater is obviously one that will fascinate
for a long time, and replicating that piece probably brought Abramovic new fans amongst the young goth-enthralled or piercing-aficionados crowds. To me there
was a retro feeling to this work, since recent artists are less pre-occupied with
strong catholic symbols. It was like rediscovering an old horror movie that we love so much because none others are made like it these days. It really acted more
like a polished reprint than an interpretation, but as with anything else these days, bigger, firmer, crisper, and hyper than the original, and here I really mean the context of having it played in a widely accessed public space. Judging from the reactions: we were back in the 1970's for one full night.
The last performance is not a replicate but still an easygoing living installation
that could be redone anyday, anywhere, and always the robe that need
be confected for the occasion would constitute a strong part of the work, almost
more like re-interpreting a visual art project than a performance. Unless there is details that I missed (what was under the robe????)it was the softest work I had ever seen from this artist, more like she had become Colette, but I guess this is normal when some of the recent works of the artist referred to bouddhism and relaxation.
At any rates,
Now I know that if I'm uninspired and feel like doing something
I can always go out and redo a Chris Burden action for you,
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com
PS: I pun Burden because he refused Marina to redo a piece of his,
which I find ridiculous.
PS2: I'm fully aware that the demonization of the Venus star is a cultural fallacy,
and of the implications that might have the communist party as critical ground for Abramovic. The link to goth-horror aesthetic still stands: that art piece scares the shit out of the audience, it is strategically thrilling.
which was extended a couple days.
I think I reached above a 100 exhibit visits ?
I didn't count.
I'm going to TO very soon.
The surprises in NYC were not where expected, but it was generally
a better season than usual. Well...I need a few days to recap my thoughts
about it.
(image feeded from the cool New York Times article here)
For now I'll just mention a few thoughts about
the Abramovic PERFORMA 05 series of "performance interpretations" that was one of the major planned stops on my schedule.
Though I couldn't be in time for the "Lips Of Thomas"
re-take of Marina Abramovic at the Guggenheim Museum, which was
(expectably) the best of her series judging from general opinion, I was present to see the whole last 6 hours of the final, and only new, performance, and to
my surprise I discovered that the museum had an installation of monitors
placed nearby where each of the 6 previous nights' performances were playing
on at the same time ! So wandering from the main event to the monitors I simply managed to see the whole darn series of Abramovic: much cuddles to the Guggenheim
for that!!
Abramovic is an artist who is known for having blended the fields
of performance and installation, sometimes to majestuous scale.
And so, most of the "landmark" performances she chose to replicate
for this ackward event were (indeed, all but one) in fact works
that involved installations, or visual arts "artefacts" (sculptures,
art objects).
The thing that striked me at first sight is exactly how she had
adapted and made her own these various and varied performances: she
transformed them, if that was possible, into "minimalist" versions
of the originals.
She installed a circular white stage (made of painted wood) in the middle of the Guggenheim main floor, on which she sort of proceeded with her "essentialist" re-lectures of both the settings and actions of the original events.
Here:
For the Nauman piece, all dressed in black, she replaced the original gallery
alteration by a simple thin wall of glass in the middle of the stage, on which she pressed herself in different positions (and on both sides) over many hours.
Similarly, for the Vito Acconci piece, the original gallery construction/installation was reduced to Abramovic being under the wooden circle stage, with a small adjusted stair ramp permitting people to climb on it and talk to her through the floor, as speakers were transmitting her voice as, of course, she masturbated (this is the Guggenheim, don't forget).
For the Valie Export piece, which was the only piece originally non-installative, with the artist simply walking in a porn cinema, Abramovic simply sitted on a wooden chair, her crotch out in the open thanks to a cutted section in her pants, and holding a machine gun. There was a second identical chair next to her, but the guards didn't let the people climb on the stage (which I find bizarre).
For the Gina Pane piece, she got rid of the original slide project, simply layed in a white dress on a shallow metal bed that included a couple rows of burning candles from underneath, that she had to replace at some point during the performance. Her dress as she lifted up seemed a little burned from behind, just giving hints that the experience was more painful for the artist than she had let apparent. I think they were a pile of cloths nearby, or it could be boxes of candles.
For the Joseph Beuys piece, she replaced the original "pictures" installation with
7 small empty school blackboards, put on 3 easels (not sure if it's 3 or 4), some of them on the floor. She dressed exactly like Beuys, had her head exactly like him (gold leaves and honey), and wore the same things on her foots (felt and iron).
She goofed around while holding a dead hare for the whole time, in what most people agreed was too much of a theatrical rendition of the original (maybe resulting from the downsize of working with a small stage, as if in a freak theatre show). The emotion wasn't there. Not the one we had mythologized from seeing photographic portraits of the original Beuys.
For her own piece from 1975 (Lips Of Thomas), she respected most of the original
set-up, except that the "stations" for it were now enclosed near to each other, forming a tight ensemble. Her giant ice cross was splendid, her objects, including many razors, were put in row on the floor at the upfront of the scene, as the table
and the other station were pushed to the back. She varied the order of her original actions, including eating honey and drinking wine, flagellating herself, cutting a star on her belly line by line (one razor and one line only per period), and sleeping on that ice cross with a heater suspended right above it (she's totally naked in this piece). She added political overtones by wearing an army hat and holding the cloth featuring her blood as a flag. That is just to summarize rapidly an event that received a lot of strong reactions including faints, people crying, or shouting at the artist to stop. You didn't think this could still happen in 2005: wow !
The final night had Abramovic stand high in the air above a gigantic blue sparkling robe, enveloping and hiding the circle stage for once and for good, like a giant musical doll. No more black and whites, no more pain, the final event was radically different from the previous, except for the minimalism. It was the best night to climb the Guggenheim museum ramp and meet the artist's eyes at an higher scale. She looked gorgeous! She was repeating some very precise gestures (lifting her arms, twisting slowly, looking at the crowd, posing her hand against her robe, palms toward the public, at times breathing deeply). At some moment during the night she started to move faster and faster, sort of rolling around herself to caress the vision of the public around her, making eye contact with everyone. I had the impression that she was inviting us for something. The piece was titled "Entering The Other Side" (2005), and I couldn't help but think she wanted us to go under her robe. I talked to somebody there that seemed of authority (a curator?, she had a special badge and was explaining the work to a friend). She thought my interpretation was interesting, but that from what she knew the artist only intended to be this living sculpture for the whole night. I could see that I left her wondering, as I insisted that many Abramovic pieces involved participation. Much later on, some people with more balls than me (women, in fact) decided to open up the robe but were stopped immediately by the guards. I went to ask the head of the guards if the artist herself had told them specifically to not let anyone touch the robe. The answer was yes. I am still not sure what it is she meant with that title. I'm not satisfied with answers invoking gaze and "unnatteinable desire". I still want to know what was under that robe.
But for the whole I think Abramovic won her bet.
I think that the fact the series was presented by
such a landmark performance artist as Abramovic,
and within such a museal context, added an hyper-aura
that functioned more like an opaque glass that needed
some reflective time to erase or forget, but still, the exercise
prove how re-interpreting performances could be an interesting
way to re-evaluate their importances and meanings.
The Nauman piece, for example, here left me with a strong
impression of being not much more worthy than for historical
value, a work representative of an era when artists where gauging
or delimitating the mediums they used or the spaces they inhabited.
It was good for 10 minutes, but then you really got the point fast.
You can make this in your bathroom in the morning if you really
need this work to imprint on you.
The Acconci piece, on the other hand, has not loose
an itch of its power. The issues of intimate and public spaces
are probably even more resonating here in the context of such
a museal experience. This re-interpretation only confirmed the
importance of this piece. And the fact it was done by a woman
sealed the piece's universalism. Bereft of any sign of
representation, or any transfixed cultural codes of gender,
men and women, through they simple breath, are finally levelled back
to sexual equals.
Well, not for a long time, as the Valie Export piece is all about
codes and gender image, but the blunt rendition of Abramovic
kinda let you wondered if radical feminist art really made a difference
through the decades, or if it wasn't too easily re-absorbed by porn.
Abramovic was as much an icon of fantasy that night than one
that embodied any revolt. The image was powerful, though, and I
hope some feminists out there will take this opportunity to reflect
on what it means to impersonificate this action in 2005.
The Gina Pane piece made you wonder about how re-interpreting
a performance can lead to varied meanings depending if you
leave or add details to it. The Abramovic version was ascetically
religious, and I couldn't help but link it with the religious tensions
of our present times, and how so many people are ready to die for what
they believe in. I have no idea if the religious tone was part of the original
onset, but the white dress, and the same death-pose over candles similar to
a tradition in south america of burning madonnas, made it all quasi too obvious.
It could upset some artists that a meaning of a piece be displaced as such, but in the end I was thinking how with music or theatre, interpretations always imply a part of creation. This piece is the one that prove this point the most.
The Joseph Beuys was perhaps a failure, but an interesting one, that permitted
to adress the danger of falling into theatrics with replicas of performances. Just how do you mean the work you represent? It wasn't so much a demonstration that the work can't be redone than a demonstration that an interpretation can fail for loosing or emptying too much of the original context. Or even respecting too much of that context. For example: dressing up exactly like Beuys was a bad idea. Abramovic looked like if she was attempting to act Beuys for a movie. She even had her hairs arranged so they looked short. It was as if she was posing for a great poster honoring the ego of Beuys, not getting at the gravity of the situation, the essence of Beuys's gestures. Or maybe it helped to reassign the debt of performance to theatre, with which it was closely linked in the beginnings. The schoolboards made the whole look like a kid tv show to a point when the hare started to look like a puppet. Maybe we've just seen too much death in films and on tv but we just couldn't enter the reality of the presence of a dead animal. You can blame that to "the impossibility of death in the mind of..." or simply the fact that I saw this event on a monitor myself.
The "Lips Of Thomas" (1975) performance was as radical as the original,
and proof that if you have a set of actions that are up to the level
of shaking your audience, they will at any times. The witch torture chamber
composed of the ice cross and heater is obviously one that will fascinate
for a long time, and replicating that piece probably brought Abramovic new fans amongst the young goth-enthralled or piercing-aficionados crowds. To me there
was a retro feeling to this work, since recent artists are less pre-occupied with
strong catholic symbols. It was like rediscovering an old horror movie that we love so much because none others are made like it these days. It really acted more
like a polished reprint than an interpretation, but as with anything else these days, bigger, firmer, crisper, and hyper than the original, and here I really mean the context of having it played in a widely accessed public space. Judging from the reactions: we were back in the 1970's for one full night.
The last performance is not a replicate but still an easygoing living installation
that could be redone anyday, anywhere, and always the robe that need
be confected for the occasion would constitute a strong part of the work, almost
more like re-interpreting a visual art project than a performance. Unless there is details that I missed (what was under the robe????)it was the softest work I had ever seen from this artist, more like she had become Colette, but I guess this is normal when some of the recent works of the artist referred to bouddhism and relaxation.
At any rates,
Now I know that if I'm uninspired and feel like doing something
I can always go out and redo a Chris Burden action for you,
Cheers,
Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com
PS: I pun Burden because he refused Marina to redo a piece of his,
which I find ridiculous.
PS2: I'm fully aware that the demonization of the Venus star is a cultural fallacy,
and of the implications that might have the communist party as critical ground for Abramovic. The link to goth-horror aesthetic still stands: that art piece scares the shit out of the audience, it is strategically thrilling.
posted by Cedric at 10:37 PM
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