(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