Rockwell, Kent.  B.1882

Flame. Print. 1928

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Klee, Paul.  B.1879

Fire at Full Moon. Painting. 1933

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Baj, Enrico B.1924

Fire! Fire!  1963-4

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Browne, Malcolm.  B.1933

Thích Quảng Ðức Self-Immolation Vietnam.  1963

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Truffaut, François. dir.  B.1932

Still from Fahrenheit 451., 1966

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Chicago, Judy.  B.1939

Fire/Desert Goddess, 1974

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Abramovic, Marina.  B.1946

Rhythm 5: det.: artist lying in burning star 1974

duration 1 1/2 hours. Student Culture Center, Belgrade

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Mendieta, Ana.  B.1948

Untitled photograph, 1977

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Mori, Mariko.  B.1967

Burning Desire; from Esoteric Cosmos series.. Photograph 1996-8

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Sinclair, Stephanie.  B.1973

Self Immolation in Afghanistan: A Cry for Help.  Photograph, 2005.

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https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/7889925;jsessionid=F25D1FBEEC76AEBBA2609B4F0824D1DA

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Gavin Kroeber (Creative Time) leads a panel featuring artists Sharon Hayes and Alix Pearlstein, the Radiohole ensemble, and curator Nancy Spector, exploring the porous lines of affinity and bias that connect and separate performance art and the performing arts. To what degree are the burgeoning opportunities enjoyed by performance in the visual arts sphere the result of intentional disciplinary distinction, and to what degree is the institutionalization of performance art moving the form towards the mechanisms of the performing arts (casting, rehearsal, repetition, and dramaturgy)? Must cutting-edge theatre and dance artists cross over into visual performance art to find adequate spaces and sympathetic audiences, or can the American performing arts adapt to accommodate performance more broadly construed? Eschewing naïve scenarios of disciplinary rapprochement and nostalgic discussions of 20th century performance movements, this panel will bring artists and curators that are employing techniques across shifting disciplinary lines into lively dialogue, discussing how flexible practices benefit artistic inquiry, challenge institutional approaches and develop spaces for social rapport between often segregated art worlds.

Info here: http://web.gc.cuny.edu/mestc/events/s10/intersection-art-performance.html

In the first piece of the exhibition, Le Ballet Mechanique (1924), we can see why documentation only constitutes one part in the constellation of a performances physical life.  This futurist film by Fernand Léger put to a score by George Antheil, is a project that expands beyond the physical media the more you learn about it.  The wall text for the film informs us that the accompanying soundtrack would later stand on its own in a performance whereby musician’s interactions with the instruments became the ballet itself.  The viewer must consider the film as only one part of the representation of this work and activate other incarnations of the ballet in their imagination, to render it a complete piece.  In the same room a variety of Futurist manifestos are displayed which further destabilize the film as the final work of art.  The writings of the Futurists we’re important and legitimate influences on Fernand Léger and George Antheil.  If we understand these manifestos less as a backdrop and more as formal contributions, then don’t they also constitute an essential element in the life of this film?

In a room spanning the 1960’s – 1980’s, we can track the differences between individual artworks through one medium rather than many documents.  As artists working in performance during this period tackled the new form of video, it was employed for a variety of different purposes.  By studying the varying perspectives produced in video documentation, we can gain information about the context of a performance and how the artist wanted it to be perceived.  For example, the raw black and white street documentation of Valie Export’s Tap and Touch Cinema (1969) is straightforward and unbiased.  While in a work like Joan Jonas’s Glass Puzzle (1973), the artist is clearly thinking about her relationship to the camera by performing for it.  Performance art from this period is often categorized in terms of the body or, like the group of teenagers who immediately rushed to Gunter Brus’s Transfusion (1965) thought of it, as blood and gore.   It is when we look back at the documentation and consider the negotiations between camera, performer and audience that we clearly see the varied practices of artists, and understand the nuances of how and why they perform.

We are now in an era when artists like Tino Sehgal or Andrea Frasure have made these issues of documentation central to their practice.  As this new generation of artists demand that history find new means of representing their modes of production, the formal continuity of documentation explodes.  In the final rooms that span the past 20 years, I found that reviews and exhibition announcements offered the most valuable information just by their descriptive nature alone.  Video and photographs only felt adequate for artists like Mathew Barney who consider documentation the end all product of the performance.  Surely a photograph cannot help me to understand the scope and politics of Felix González-Torres’s “Untitled” candy piece (a work that involves the gallery visitor taking a piece of candy from a large pile with them as the leave).  Fortunately this artwork is physically present, and fortunately there are also live performances programmed into the exhibition.  On the day I went, a crowd had gathered to see the experimental music band Shattered Patterns perform.  They swamped the galleries with ambient noise attesting to the fact that there really is nothing more valuable than witnessing a performance live.

Simply reading a wall text, looking at a photograph or watching a video doesn’t enact the live experience of a performance.  But, it does present evidence or at least a starting point in solving the mystery of the live act.  During a panel discussion on documentation and performance art RoseLee Goldberg said,  “We’re looking at a medium that needs a new approach in terms of history: yes it is documentation; no, I very often wasn’t there, but most of the time, very few other people were there either”[1].  If there is to be a new approach to understanding performance art through history, we must first become literate in the language of documentation.  This exhibition is the perfect place to start.

Mike actually bestowed Kembra’s band with their name: The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. The bands performances are brutal and spectacular. One of my favorite acts is when eggs are smashed on Kembra’s vagina and ooze out colored paint. After Mike saw one of the bands early performances he mentioned to Kembra that it was like seeing “the voluptuous horror of Karen Black”. History was written.

Mike has one of the best vocabularies around; check out his intro in the bands c.d. book.

Mike was kind enough to lend me some pictures of him and Kembra from their days in the golden 80’s of New York.

Polaroid of Kembra and Mike

Cover for one The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black early albums.

Mike’s intro to the band (and Kembra’s vagina sewn up)

Paint filled eggs being cracked on Kembra’s vagina

Mike at train station in Berlin

“The Education of Abou Ben Adhem”
2009, 16.5 minutes, video. Made in collaboration with Marc Arthur. World premiere
Showing ways in which cultures clash by positioning the impressionistic figure of an imaginary Islamic nationalist torn between his love of erotic poetry and the need to defend his heritage against the very Western influences that are his material resources for said defense.

http://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/schedule/search/film/?id=9371