the problem of ending

With this, my last post, the day before submission, I wish to write a few words on the problematic of ending. As I’ve mentioned previously the work comes to a point where I have to draw the line, whether it be through the work (almost) erasing itself, running into the physical limits of the site, or the time limits of the situation.

Here this ‘live’ journal comes to an end with the denouement of the documentation of my thoughts and processes. As I have attempted to address the ineffable, the excess of what can be made available for representation, much of what I have said in this blog may seem to undermine, contradict and double back on itself. Fittingly I am struggling to articulate this end post and feel it must remain somewhat sketchy and insufficient.

So to the ‘final’ resolution of my work in Plimsoll gallery cannot be viewed in its site of production and intended exhibition as the footage from the installation, the final installation, cannot be played back due to the limitations of the gallery itself. Hence I shall leave the work here, posted in clips (due to the restrictions of this blog) hoping it allows the work to be kept perpetually ‘live’, existing beyond itself, beyond being contained as a final completed work. Remaining as representation of a re-presentation.

projected studio footage (at the end of honours)

Unsure of the outcome, I took the opportunity of a pilot show we were having for our honours submission to take my way of working to the nth degree, projecting most of the footage to date this year ontop of itself.

Using two laptops and two projectors I projected previous recordings of myself working in the studio in consecutive order. I filmed this projection then projected it back on one projector, whilst projecting the next archived footage ontop of it. The result was a consecutive build of past workings, a manual compression of previous work into one sequence. The ‘final’ version, containing 6 layers of footage was so abstracted to the point of being near invisible, so I decided to leave it as a consecutive build, allowing one layer to come in at a time.

battling with layers

Due to the nature of re-recording projection, initial layers become so embedded in the work they begin to erase themselves. There is constant struggle for me in losing initial layers and the attempt to perpetually keep the work live through re-projecting and re-recording it.

Although I am interested in a cyclical process it is not so much as an eternal return of absurdist self-looping. There is a sense of futility to true repetition, a process with no outcome as each loop replaces the next. I battle with this process of working yet also retaining some ‘proof of existence’ that each layer has been manually enacted, recorded, mediated and re-enacted.

Christine Kozlov ‘s Information: NoTheory (1971) works as a process of the continuous replacement of information. Through a continuous tape recording the representation of the now perpetually records over the former recorded information, having a two-minute life before it is erased by the new. Unable to be played back at any point the work remains as an imperceptible sound image that exists only in theory (despite its title). Proof of existence does in fact exist in actuality, but is based on probability- as the recorded information is never actually heard. This form of reproduction without representation may be more radical than representation without reproduction, but I feel it remains dry and does not give alot to the viewer, being far more satisfying as a concept than as a physical work.

Unlike Kozlov’s work I am creating a duration in which past and present can co-exist, being simultaneously present. The point at which I generally stop is just before the restrictions of the site or medium make the layers become too abstracted to be recognisable. It is important for a viewer to be able to read the history of the work, within the work. I have toyed with the idea of re-recording over footage, similar to Kozlov, but allowing it to be visible through projecting the former layers recording. The previous layer would not exist except in this re-recording of the projection - and in memory. Taping over the same tape for example (sorry convoluted I know, I am still nutting out the technicalities of this). However being the archivist I am, and part of the reason I continue to work on tape is that I like to have each layer recorded and available as independent footage, even if I am only the one aware of these individual layers. Perhaps this lies in a future project when I record over the recordings themselves, perhaps with the same action simultaneously documenting and resisting existing as documentation.

work, mediation or documentation?

I’m interested in prompting this question in the viewer when encountering my work as its something that I’m eternally questioning myself. Perhaps through making the work ‘live’ (I’m keeping it within scare quotes as I’m starting to think of the work as being live without myself necessarily being present) the work can exist as all three. Is there a way to make a viewer experience production, mediation or documentation of a work interdependently?

I read somewhere about a piece by Peter Richards, I think from a body of work called ‘Performance Lucinda’ where he performs in one room with the audience being in an adjoining darkened room. The audience experiences the ‘live’ performance through a small hole in the wall which projects the live Richards onto unexposed photographic paper. Hence the audience witnesses the documentation of the event rather than the event itself; through the performances' remediation as documentation. It would be like memaking a viewer watch my work through the camera itself, even though they are physically present at the same time and in the same site that Iam performing in.

This also makes me think about how a shadow or reflection is evidence of presentness and how this could potentially be altered. Often in my works the real time ‘actual’ me is given away by my shadow in the projection light. Perhaps there is a way to separate it to further confuse what is present and what is past action. Then again maybe its an important tell tale sign, an opening in the work, exposing its construction. a little.

liveness and mediation

In reading Phillips Auslander’s Liveness, Performance in a Mediatized Culture, I came across an anecdote concerning The Doors in the early stages of their fame. Having been filmed playing on a television show, they wanted to be able to watch their performance as it was televised and so requested a TV be placed in their dressing room. As their segment had not yet come on before they had to play, they simply took it on stage with them and placed in on top of an amplifier with the sound turned down. When the segment started they stoped playing live mid song, turned up the television volume, and sat on the floor of the stage watching themselves, their backs to the audience. When their segment was over the resumed playing. The mediation of a previous event hence not only becomes part of the live event, it takes priority over it.

Traditionally a concept of the ‘live’ must remain in the present; the event happens simultaneously to the moment it is viewed. Most often the mediatisation of the original event does not take precedence, rather it is based on and around the authentic live moment. I am interested in how this can be reversed. How the ‘live’ or could I say the present action is dictated by the former recorded past action. In playing a past event simultaneous to a present event there is a sense of spatial co-presence alongside a temporal simultaneity. Past and present moments physically coexist. In (re)screen projection I projected the mediated on an opposing wall to the live action, forcing the viewer to chose between which they viewed, as despite being interdependent, neither could be viewed at the same time. When The Doors stopped playing to watch their mediatised performance there became a prioritising of the past event over the present.

Yet a television placed on stage with the sound turned up is not replacing the live performance. Rather through its smaller size and being re-viewed outside of itself (in the larger context of a seeing it on television, on stage, at a concert) it becomes abstracted. It becomes a prior performance embedded within a present performance. At this moment the crowd cannot experience the prior moment as it was but they can begin to realise the presentness of the particular situation which they are viewing, how it has been and continues to be modelled by a past performance and how this break in performance they are witnessing now, may model a future performance. The mediatised performance becomes a referent of the live and vice versa from one we can expect the other to behave in a similar way.

(re)crit

An attempt to be making and presenting at the same time, projecting the footage from a previous studio critique back in order to have a conversation with my past self about my work. This is the first time I worked with placing viewers in the position of addressing a moment which they have previously lived and having to respond to footage of their past selves. Perhaps part of the success in this piece is that it can be pulled off in a crit situation as it is often a repeat performance of presenting and talking about recent work with the same audience, particularly in relation to my practice where what I say about one work can easily be applied to the next. There is an inherent struggle to be subject and object at once as I have to flip between performing and presenting. The projected footage at moments seemed to correspond to real time - either answering a question or nodding to a comment. Along with this there was also times where the footage did not meet up, moments where I had to struggle to talk over my projected self, or moments where I moved out of the ‘set’ either in real time or in the projection where I became skewed or was projected onto someone. Hence the viewer can disengage from the status of their reflected selves (which in actuality is merely a projection and can-not respond to the present)and rediscover the real-time of their own history. A sense of presentness create through the suspended time. As the projection lapses out the work can be seen as an independent event, exchanging the atemporality of repetition for the temporality of change.

orphée & the manual special effect

Jean Cocteau’s use of special effects revel in their artifice, making themselves known as special effects. There is a sense of immediacy, like a direct magic trick, as what we see has actually happened in front of the camera. As Orphée passes through the ‘mirror’ into the underworld, in reality he moves into an identical adjoining set.

I find the scene this scene where Orphée moves through purgatory fascinating. Heurtebise leads an Orphée who has been pre-recorded on location and is being projected back behind Heurtebise. The dialogue is choreographed to make it appear as if they are conversing in real time. The choreography even extends to a passing vendor who appears in the foreground set with Heurtebise then after moving out of shot appears in the projected footage. As he moves from one space to another it initially appears as no time as passed, as if the foreground and the location footage as one and the same thing. Yet as the scene progresses there is a sense of something not quite right, a move out of the linear path of time, as there is an interaction between a past and present moment.

The manual special effect continues to be an important way of working in my practice. Through physically manipulating projected footage, the projection apparatus and the camera itself there is a sense of immediacy as I work with choreographing myself ‘on set’, in real time with former footage. There is an honesty and integrity to this way of working with no intention to trick a viewer with postproduction illusions. Clumsy and awkward smoke and mirrors rather than digital effects. Through manually creating the effect there is the chance for the work to fall apart to expose the struggle of its creation and re-creation, allowing a viewer to ‘figure out’ my attempts to make a past and present moment interact.

aura-less performance art

‘performing’ in a sculpture studio

(re)screen projection I. & II.

Originating from thoughts concerning the previous or original layer being the template for the next work, here I re-presented and re-enacted Screen Projection, a work from 2008 exhibited as part of my undergrad. I have been trying to experiment more with live performance, as I’m still unsure if it is an integral part of the work, and as I’ve been tossing up re-enacting other peoples work I thought it was fitting that I try it out with my own. I’m conscious of the ‘aura’associated with performance work and I’m hesitant to create a sit-down-and-watch arena. I’ve also noticed from previous works where I am enacting the same action that is being projected- how viewers seem to give preference to the projected image; perhaps it has more authority than the live. The live vs. representation.

original screen projection (2009) & workings

Presented for a crit session, Screen Projection was projected onto one side of the gallery and used to prompt me to re-enact the performance live on the opposing wall. As a crit is taken to be a situation in which to show, unpack and explain recent work, I was interested in using the situation to become a work in itself. Performing a demonstration of the older work yet choosing to take aspects which are most relevant to my current practice and ignoring the rest. A selective re-enactment.

As I had my back to the original work for the majority of the performance I was working from memory (having re-made that particular work a couple of times and also being a gallery attendant for a show it was in I could re-enact it with my eyes closed if I so wished). The difference between visual prompts and memory is like that of tracing as opposed to redrawing. The footage from the original work acts like a mental projection of the past, literally projected behind me. This footage is of what has been and gone, in the present moment I have no control over its durational outcome as it has already been set. This juxtaposes the precarious present action, something may fail, fall, break, someone may decide- conscious or not to interact with the work. I then have to respond to these interventions, making the split second decision to attempt to remain integral to the original action or respond to the new interruption. The present action has a tension, there is an unpredictability of working live, any second the work could fall apart to reveal itself. There is a familiarity of repeating actions; a constructed déjà vu. Is the past dictating the future action or is the future action leading and skewing the memory of what has been. Along with the temporal gap there is a spatial gap causedby working on opposing walls, a physical space between the past and future actions, which mirror themselves. Mirrors squeeze out the space in between. The gap acts as a suspension of reality; a compression of time. As I, along with a viewer glance between simultaneous occurring, yet temporally spaced actions the work begins to act as a stereoscope. I begin to enact and merge with my former self.

The works second (or would it would it be 3rd) incarnation could be consideredas purely staged for the purpose of documentation as it was relatively audience-less - although I did alter the work in projecting it back on top of itself rather than onto the opposite wall. I had decided that the presence of camera in the above mentioned crit. would be too distracting for myself and for a viewer. In the same way the laptop left playing in the space, refers to the previous layer, the camera left running alludes to the potential of the present action becoming a past layer.

7 easy pieces

Obviously this is developing into a form of debate between live art and mediated reproduction, and I don’t know why I’m being lead so far down this path but it keeps cropping up. There is a definite consciousness in my work of recording, documenting and representing. Whilst filming I undertake a conscious moment of stepping into the set time; of pressing record on camera and enacting an action usually as a means to an end. This then is projected back simultaneous to pressing record on the camera and step back into that time. Hence there is a strong relationship between the live art and mediated reproduction. A form of medial reflexivity.

Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces, performed in 2005 at the Guggenheim is interesting in the context of the cyclical recurrence of performance art. For the work Abramović repeated performances by Bruce Nauman, Vitto Acconci, Valie Export, Gina Pane, Joseph Beuys and two of her own previous works, which were largely constructed from iconographic documentation of the original. Her gesture in re-enacting these works rather than speaking of the ephemeral nature of performance work (its non-reproductive and non metaphorical nature) seems to highlight its antithesis – how performance work operates on a reliance of images (documentation) to choreograph representation. Through constructing the work from documentation they become a kind of ‘live image’ of the past, rather than a re-creation of what it was like to see the original work. Then through meticulous efforts to then record these re-enactment (by Babette Mangolte) they become images of a past event. again.

re-presentation & re-enactment

Traditionally performance is considered as a work enacted ‘live’ in an original event. The event is then normally documented and this documentation (be it photography or film) is shown as a distilled representation of that previous event. There is the potential for the event to be re-enacted by the original performer or remade by someone else, but this is seen as somewhat less authentic to ‘being there’ and experiencing the original event. Perhaps it helps to consider the difference between simulation, reproduction, repetition and re-enactment, more so than the other terms re-enactment seems to rely on memory (previously lived experience) along with a consciousness of time passed and an existence in the present moment.

Re-enactments of performances have the potential not only to act as a ‘live image’ occurring in real space and real time but also become displaced, acting as an inserted past moment in a present situation. Through re-enacting a historical event there is also the potential for interpretation and interaction with the past, an opportunity to change the past or alter ones conceived memory of a perceived past moment (Bergson again). If there occurs ‘an error’ in the re-enactment, if it is not truly performed as-it-was, there is the opportunity to disregard the rhetoric of authenticity rather highlighting the presentness through interpretation or the impromptu. The next-time-around erases the need for the original.

So there is a move away from the traditional understanding of performance rather to see it as an ongoing process between event, mediation and reception. The role of documentation, then is involved in a mutual relationship between performativity and mediation.

Documentation and representation not only gives form to the message but also participates in the translation and reception of the message. Performance as documentation as performance… as simultaneously the moment of production and the moment of reception can itself become the subject.

moving into Plimsol

relocating from my studio into the gallery space

presence & presentness

The question keeps arising if I’m performing in the work and what is the difference between enacting them live, as I have been in crit situations and then representing the documentation – as shown in this blog. It seems to be working somewhere in between as I’m not performing ‘live’ and then presenting the documentation (evidence of an action) rather the work is performed as it is recorded and rescreened. By not insisting the action be seen live, I’m interested in how the resulting evidence of action can make the viewer contemplate the series of events that have lead to that conclusion. Maybe this is a possible way of making it live, without necessarily being present.

There is also the importance of it occurring within a specific site, or situation and its relation to the audience, for example there is a difference between inviting an audience to observe something which I am presenting to them and then having them witness me enacting (performing) the actual situation itself. Say showing previous work in a crit vs. performing the crit itself.

A friend commented its like seeing the performance of the performance, something to do with the difference between performance and performativity. This is often bought up in relation to the ontology of performance; if the ‘performance utterance’ of J L Austin addressing language can be transposed to performance and performance theory. In investigating the pragmatics of language it is possible in saying something, to be actually doing something, rather than simply reporting or describing it. For Derrida the performative enacts the now of writing in the present time- perhaps so if this can be applied to the pragmatics of performance, by imbuing the performance in its actual situation so that one ends up enacting the activity that the representation signifies rather than describing and presenting it.

Peggy Phelan in Unmarked the Politics of Performance suggests that performance can only exist in the present, and its inability to be reproduced or repeated.

‘Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation, once it does so, it becomes something other than performance… It can be performed again, but this repetition itself marks it as ‘different’. The document of a performance only a spur to memory, an encouragement of memory to become present.’

I am interested in how this can be sit alongside philosophy which opens up notions of temporal continuity such as that posited by Henri Bergson. The documentation of a performance serves only to spur memory, the moment of its existence is in the past, yet if we consider Bergson’s temporal paradox of the past (through memory) informing perception of the present, there is an opportunity for past documentation not only to contribute to present perception but also to exist in the moment of reception. I am interested in developing work that emphasises the presentness of performance yet through the means of recording and documenting the work for assumed re-presentation.

reality of projection

Plato in The Republic addresses art as imitation or as mimesis. He critiques representation as a pretense to actually experiencing the real. The artist differs to the craftsman as he seeks to copy the Form (with a capital F), that is he copies the copy rather than creating something which is real. Hence art represents the appearance of appearances; a way tomake things appear rather that make them as they truly are. His philosophy suggests thatart appears different without being so; the image is removed from the truth and hence is inferior.

I am interested in emphasising art as being an enactment of the real,a re-presentation, yet I consider this presentation to be considered as something new in itself. Rather than critiquing image as merely an illusion, a projection of a higher reality, I feel it is more beneficial to call attention to the very nature of mediation;a reflection on mediation itself. This couldbe aligned with the simulacra and Baudrillard’s notion of the hyperreal yet I feel my interest lies more in theprocess of appearing itself as opposed to naming and categorising the outcome. The means and mediation of 'difference' itself I suppose, if I want to bring Deleuze into it.

Still on the other hand I do feel that I am not trying to prove or overlay the projected image as reality, rather I see it as an attempt to imbue the work strongly within its own situation, (working in the studio, documenting and presenting work etc) so that it becomes difficult to distinguish work from requirement, representation from the real.

Emphasising the experience of the moment itself by presenting it as representation but then allowing it to fall out again.

I’m not sure it fits in but I am also intrigued by Schopenhauer’s philosophy of aesthetics in The World as Will and Representation particularly ‘das delo’ or the systematic ordering of how things present themselves in an illusional way. That is the world as we encounter it does not exist rather it occurs as the way we order and systematise it in relation to sufficient reason. This harps back to my thinking at the beginning of the project- of making a viewer come to understand the pre-established way in which they approach representation. Schopenhauer suggests it is through the infinite that we can enter domains outside of space and time and experience reality as it truly is. He cynically suggests it is through total absorption into the world of representation that prevents suffering as it diverts the spectators attention form to grave everyday world and lifts it to a world that consists of the folly of a mere play of images.

layering (after paintover)

The layers within the works are always manually constructed by projecting footage on top of itself and refilming. They are mostly done in consecutive order, only an hour or so apart, but I am interested in potentially emphasising the gap between layers, be it a different day, activity, duration etc. While importing some of this footage I was thinking about Alvin Lucier's piece I am Sitting in a Room, particularly the degradation of layers as it goes through the manual process of retransmission (visual in my case, audio in his). As it projects over itself the work begins to erase itself with the first layer becoming almost non-existent. I also found it amusing, in the attempt to paint out a screen I start to paint over the previous layer which through the white paint actually exposes the previous layer more, a bit of an oxymoron really. Also reminiscent of Lucier, the work becomes dictated by the limitations of the site is it in- I could only play back three layers before the projector backed into the parameters of the studio.

Up to date I've been working with the layers being transposed on top of each other but I am beginning to consider whether it is possible to expand horizontally rather than extending forwards. By using multiple projectors rather than a single fixed channel and allowing these to run different footage (or perhaps the same footage) at different durations resulting in the interaction between the layers happening within the projected install itself, rather than happening within the film. As the layers respond and react to each other, syncing up and falling out again there is a potential for the work to have a 'live' dialogue with itself.

station drag

Screened as part of Intransit at the Wellington St Bus Station in Perth. Here I aligned the camera to a projected image of the station both of which I clumsily drag around a nondescript space. Like studio drag I’m deliberately exposing the struggle of composing the work, in fact harping it up to a certain degree. For the project I was working towards the projection being viewed life-size so there would be the potential for a passing glance to misinterpret the projected action as actually being in the site, yet as the install shots show the work was scaled down to a video type format. Not that significant yet it brings up the relevance of the scale and situation of the work, how much control I can have over this and if not if the work can stand on its on as a video rather than an installation.

install shots by Daniel Grant

interlaced video & the glitch

As a consequence of my slowing developing video skills a number of my works to date have exhibited glitches and/or interlaced footage. I’m hesitant to pass this one off as a ‘charged moment’, of revealing its own construction, as it is a (common) production fluke, rather than a physical manipulation, such as knocking the camera, but still it is interesting in consideration of the project. The glitchs have come as accidents, mostly through using the schools tape decks that have run hundreds of various tapes through them, unlike the work of Daniel Crooks who has devised a way to manipulate video to mimic the glitch. Yet it is interesting to consider they display a past and previous moment simultaneously. Interlacing or the combing effect viewed when the two fields that normally combine to create one frame do not meet up is perhaps a too literal and instantaneous translation of a temporal paradox I’ve been trying to create, but still worth consideration.

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medium & mediation

Perhaps a recap is necessary at this point of the project to date. Being rather broad I am looking at the nature, means and processes of representation but more specifically I am attempting to use projection as a medium and re-enactment as a way of creating and emphasising mediation, merging process and reception. This lingo medium and mediation has stemmed from the previously mentioned article on the work of Andrei Tarkovsky by Robert Bird. As with Krauss arose an expanded definition of medium, to include an intervening substance (or potentially person) of communication as well as the obvious connotations of material, with Bird’s article the definition of mediation has expanded to refer to not only the space between but also the materiality of this gap. The technical process of how something can come about. The very means of which allows us to transmit an articulation or representation of …well whatever it is we wish to get across. In terms of my thinking medium has come to refer to the means of production, while mediation refers to the materiality of the in-between process, between production and reception. By refusing to act as representation of a defined subject the work rather re-presents only the possibility of representation (how many times can I put that word in a sentence). What I am trying to get at is in its avoidance of subject or mimesis the work alludes to its own material construction as medium. Bird phrases it as ‘affirming the materiality of its mediation.‘ Rather than working with content, (for example re-presenting the close-as-it-can-be-to-real imitation,) the work allows for the confrontation of the corporeal of the very medium of its own representation. This undoubtedly has been affirmed in Modernism’s self-referentiality, with the stock standard example of Vertov’s Man with Movie Camera which uses its own medium to reveal the nature of its medium, but I still feel there is something to drive forward in all this.

The project to date

• Conflating the past (footage, notes & diagrams) with the present moment (mirroring, live performance, live feedback). Creating a spatial and temporal paradox or a collapsed present through layering site and duration.
• Relation of production, representation and reception, focusing on the documentation & re-presentation of a time based practice.
• Aligning through synchrony and proximity. Creating a conflation between my real self and former recorded self. a real situation and a past situation.
• Content- the search for content becomes content itself through re-enacting own actions in making, documenting and presenting the work. Attempt to understand and demonstrate the feedback loops I am placing myself within.
• Charged moment- a moment where the work lapses to reveal itself as a construction. Falls apart to reveal itself hopefully in order to question what is conceived as real and what is representation.

enacting studio drag

i) film self in studio

ii) projected footage onto opposite wall and film self attempting to align studio to its image

iii) project this footage

studio drag

studio drag, projection installation (colour, sound) 8.32 mins

attempting to align my studio to the image of my studio being projected on the opposite wall