Early on in our preparations, Gavin posed some interesting questions for performance in visual art practice. For example, how did my own practice relate? Further, ‘whether making in situ is considered ‘performance’…how do others interact with that?’ And, in the daily, live performances to come, 'what would be my focus interest’? In the latter, through ‘reflection-in-action’ (going live was unrehearsed and immediate), performance art as a ‘site’ for our ‘TTP’ collaboration held new possibilities for my individual practice. I had been inspired by, and identified with, Neo-concrete artist Lygia Clark (1927-2004) Blog 3: Clark’s early genesis evolving through her 2D wall works towards the later, fully autonomous performance pieces such as Divisor 1968, recreated in 2017 on the streets of New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My viewer-participatory wall work, LACUNA (developed during open studios event 2016) was a linear progression of transitions involving 2D work into performance art. My focus interest was to recognize different ways to relax this approach. One of the cognitive highlights expanding an understanding of ‘site’ arrived in the form of echoing the ‘prosthetic’ of the musicians’ instruments, flute, viola and violin, by using a found object, a small crab’s claw and crab shell, (not necessarily from the same animal): During one collaborative performance, moving behind the audience tapping the objects close to their ears, playing on non-visual, but auditory proximity and intimacy instead, seemed to alter the acoustic space and terms of the site. Exploring the switch between being performer and part of the audience, inside and outside, is a shift noted by Etchells in the work of Fiona Templeton, as a blurring of the ‘networks of narratives’ (Etchells 1994, cited in Kaye 2000 p. 199). The trust, support and generosity of fellow collaborators enabled my practice to extend across different platforms from sound artist, to instrument maker, to image-maker performer. Also, challenging a familiarity with my previous (some of which is digitally recorded in time based media) audience based works using 2D traditional media such as collage, decollage, and ink on paper; similarly, the inclusion of residual materials from remnants of studio process, for example, the accretion of traces of paint patina on the floor. In his text, Kaye considers John Cage’s influence on performative collaboration site and spaces: the idea that layering performance content creates ‘works to prompt the viewer’s simultaneous perception of distinct and different spaces and perspectives’ (Kaye 2000: p 107). Cage emphasizing a works’ non-linear variable dimension unlike the formal, progression of a concept, its framework and narrative process which I previously relied on. Making three, visual performance pieces as a response to Gavin’s original questions brought a new experience and engagement with the performance ‘site’. Performance one, drawing directly onto unprinted newsprint paper with a hybrid tool - a feather at one end a calligraphy brush at the other- then turning the sheets, lifting the 2D paper layers in one gesture into a ‘Hokusai’ like wave form in 3D (image 3). The second piece, using my breath and breathing to produce random marks on paper scrolls incorporating the Surrealist technique of blowing paint, ‘flottage’, in this instance, ink, to produce experimental notation (image 4): The most interesting of the three interactive works, its unfamiliarity, came when I found myself using a tracing paper screen whilst fellow collaborators created experimental audio events incorporating Gavin’s stuttering flute notes, Nina’s growling, unearthly vocalizations, and the undulating landscape of tonal sounds created by Rachel on violin. The surface interplay of the visual movement between distant and close objects (a mat of hessian threads or colored panels) with individual sound performances located both a conceptual content and one with material presence and absence in the performance site, image 5 and [here…video to come] Cage, reflecting on his collaborative performance of 1952 at Black Mountain College, notes, ‘space arises out of the fact that the works are super-imposed and accumulate their own spaces. There is no single space, finally - there are several spaces and these spaces tend to multiply among themselves’ (Cage and Charles 1981, cited in Kaye 2000: p. 107). Cage’s observations concerning space seem to give a sense of the collaborative, performative ‘site’ we - musicians, students, visual artists and the audience - occupied together throughout the project. Clare KAYE, Nick. 2000. Site-specific Art: place and documentation. London: Routledge. |
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