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Performance Art Project: Open Work

These past few weeks have been very stressful for me (and I’m sure for all of you too). I have felt like I’ve been restricting myself creatively and I wasn’t sure what to do about it. That’s why I decided to kill two birds with one stone for this performance. The painting in the video was due for my beginning painting class today (Thursday) and this was filmed on Tuesday. I’ve been very stressed about this painting and so I thought recording my process would help me connect to the piece more. For some reason, seeing myself paint helps me feel more involved with the piece. I think it allows me to finally “see” myself creating art. Sure, I can see my hands create the work, but the out-of-body experience you have seeing yourself create from a third person perspective is eye opening. I never noticed how much I move my face when I’m focused on something. No wonder I always have a headache after. Anyways, I thought this would be cool to do since we never really get to see ourselves when we are really focused in on something. I don’t know about you all, but whenever a camera is on me I always acknowledge it. However, I forgot about it for this performance. I painted and forgot the camera existed. That was until I started getting frustrated with the area I was working on. Aside from that, I found this to be a very freeing experience.

 And for anyone curious, here’s a photo of the finished product. I replicated The Stroll by Claude Monet :)

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Performance Artist of the Week #12 | Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen

In Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen’s Being Human Being, they focus on evolution and our beginning as humans. Cuenca Rasmussen does multiple performances that include mud which resembles the earth and where we initially all came from. 

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Project 5

https://www.instagram.com/tv/COeVF-DDTcs/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Artist Statement: For the free work project I continued with the drag performance aspect. I feel like maybe its a push to consider it performance art since it is a highly edited and compiled video. I had a lot of fun with this project though from recording takes with multiple angles. I enjoy the process of clipping videos and creating, essentially, a music video. It is a fun way to add another element to my drag and be expressive. It feels like a good middle step to getting comfortable performing in person as well. I have really enjoyed having this semester to play, explore and practice with drag and take an artistic route to creating performances and engaging with others. 

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Performance Artist of the Week 13

For week 13 I am discussing Victorine Müller. She is a Swiss artist who participates in performance art. Her art focuses on a dream like state, playing with light and textures. Victorine explores other worldly dimensions within her art and creates an environment for her audience that really engulfs them. Her main performance is creating a huge clear sculpture of usually an animal and standing in. 

Muller is quoted when expressing her work saying “I’m interested in creating moments of sensitivity, moments when our defenses are down and we are open to new things. moments of powerful concentration. … I create zones, put forward pictures, show processes that touch the viewer, that invoke associations on various levels, transport people into a different state, so that things hidden may become visible, accessible, opening up possibilities – to demonstrate something that is not said and cannot be said, but that is‘.”

Her work is ethereal and whimsical, but also mysterious and strangely dark to me which is why I love it.

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Project #4 | Participation

For me, I am very drawn to simplistic forms of relaxing and art making. I enjoy allowing myself to wonder aimlessly as I talk, watch, listen and more on a piece of paper and see what comes to life afterwards. For participation, I enlisted the help of my partner, who finds himself sometimes getting agitated at the fact that he is not “good” at art. With that in mind, I made sure to explain that the watercolors that we were doing were just for fun. We enjoyed ourselves as we soaked up the sun, laughed, listened to music, and talked about the latest family drama. He, and myself were lost in the moment and in pure enjoyment of each others company while playing out narratives or meaningless shapes on a canvas. It was fun to watch the person that I love come to life as he created a story of “Zeus smiting people” as he put it… The act of participation no matter how big or how small can make a lasting and enjoyable impact on the ones that we love the most. It was an experience that we both enjoyed as we could be in the moment and create silly art that had no rhyme or reason other than for the pure intentions of it being fun and wholesome. 

Music: Gravity, The Infamous Stringdusters 

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Performance Artist 14- Orlan

Orlan is a French artist that is mainly known for her work in the mid 1990′s that was based around plastic surgery. This is also known as “carnal art” which is exhibiting the distortion of body modification through self portraiture. Orlan claims that this work is to “disrupt the standards of beauty”. This work done by Orlan is bizarre and admirable because engaging in this art form, you are showcased as a living art at every moment to be perceived and examined at all times. 

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Performance Artist 13- Pyotr Pavlensky

This week Pyotr Pavlensky caught my attention. Performance artists that work with their own body in ways that can be seen as self mutilation are always intriguing and statement making just from the imagery alone. Pavlensky has been said to blur the lines between activism, art and crime. Seeing someones immense passion translated this way is really powerful and inspiring. This also is encouraging to push the execution of ones own art. Maybe not to this extreme but being able to pinpoint a feeling or idea and be able to execute it with the same intensity and depth! Seeing art like Pavlensky’s is important outside of the art world as well, letting those in power know the fight and intensity that people have to push toward change is bold and courageous. 

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Such a cute interpretation and love to hear the back story of other people’s experiences in the kitchen with loved ones. There’s almost always more of a sentimental feeling that people have with making food and spending time with family and it’s cool to have that documented and made into a performance piece!

Participation

Artist‘s Statement I love food, and sometimes process of making something you like is therapeutic.  My mom makes very simple version of (Mongolian) pig in a blanket and they taste like heaven.  My kids usually dig out most of the piggies and me and my mom are left with the blankets.  While making pig in a blanket, I get to bond with my mom.  We talk about old things, new things, fun things, and perhaps little gossip.  Sometimes it even helps to think over things, make some plans, meditate, and just relax.

The anxiousness of waiting for the food, the smell, the final look of the product, they all can be very overwhelming yet so satisfying.  Have you ever thought you made something not too good looking or not too good tasting, but ends up tasting amazing and looks just as awesome?  That’s what my mom felt making this particular piggies (since I’m hoovering over to take pictures).  And, how can I forget the most important people and their produces.  Here is Raheem and Reina with blankets for their piggies...

P.s this is a raw footage of the process, so please don’t mind the background noise.

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Project 4

For this project I was having quite a hard time finding something to do and decided to take the route of having participants through technology. I did a series of poll stories on my Instagram that allowed my followers to dictate and create my look. From wig to outfit to makeup style I let other people make those choices for me and it was a fun way to have participants without physically being around others! I was hoping to do something a bit more extravagant but this idea fit best with my timing and availability and I am pleased with the outcome. After taking in the choices made by my peers I just made a short video on TikTok to have some kind of physical receipt that I followed the choices that were made for me!

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Performance Artist 12: Jana Harper

Jana Harper is an associate professor and performance artist. I found an article that discussed her trials and concerns with being a performance artist during the pandemic and what it has been like to work around COVID-19 while being aware of safety measures. On May 29th Harper showed her work ‘The Holding’ which shifted location, title and meaning due to the impact of the pandemic. A dichotomy of isolation and intimacy is on display and aims to give relatability and sense of togetherness when people may not have been feeling this way isolated at home.

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Peformance Artist 11: Pearl as Roxanne

Season 7 contestant of RuPauls drag race, Pearl was known as a fan favorite and made it to the finale of their season. Though Pearl still has a large following on social media she has not taken her career in the direction as past drag race queens. I am talking about Pearl this week because of a character she portrays named Roxanne. I have not seen many videos but Pearl gets into drag as Roxanne and does transformation videos and takes on a totally different persona than the persona/character of Pearl. Though some queens do impersonations, I think it is a fun and creative idea having another drag character to create instead of just living by your original character.

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Performance Artist 10: David Delgaudio

This week I wanted to talk about David Delgaudio. David is a multidisciplinary artist but is probably most known for his abilities as a magician. A couple moths ago I watched his movie “In & Of Itself” on Hulu (not by choice) As the movie progressed I was pulled into the performance and really enjoyed the whole film. I think the film was an awesome interpretation of being a magic show and performance art and there were some really awesome things done that made what he does feel unique and worthy of being called a performance artist. 

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Film Response 4: The Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West

This film was really intense to watch, especially after reading about it from our reading response. From the reading I was thinking what it was like to be an audience member the time this was being shown and after seeing actual footage it made it that much more intriguing to think about personal reaction/interpretation and what it would be like to see how the rest of the viewers react to and perceive the performance. As the reading states it makes you think about the message this is sending, what it stands for and how it is being interpreted by so many different people. Having an aspect of our problematic history transported into a more modern time exhibited a lot of emotions, actions and reactions.

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Reading Response 4

The Coco Fusco reading was really interesting and I enjoyed the way it began with stating the hesitation or misinterpretation that this performance could convey. I think that thought must come often and it is sometimes a risk to take seeing how performances can be perceived by the viewer. It was interesting to understand how the time and political climate had an impact on altering how the performance would be enacted. This performance piece takes on a large issue but did a great job of critiquing and bringing to light Americas history of exploiting and profiting off of people labeled as “primitive” and “exotic”. It didn't just address the history but allowed the openness to how these actions have impact and power in the present. I am also glad that there is so much in this reading talking about what different audience members from different places around the world had to say about the performance.

“he  artist  is  conceived  less  as  an  individual  producer  of  discrete objects than as a collaborator and producer of situations; the work of  art  as  a  finite,  portable,  commodifiable  product  is  reconceived  as  an  ongoing or long- term project with an unclear beginning and end” I loved reading this! Reading this specific excerpt is really impactful because to me, it spoke to the unlimited opportunity and potential that every artist has inside of them. Discussion of participatory art is really interesting to read, hearing of its place in our social world and the changes that it suggests. This introduction makes me very intrigued in the rest of the text!

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Love the story behind this. I would call myself and introverted extrovert and a decent amount of the time (pre covid) my willingness to go out and socialize would come in waves so sometimes my friends would be upset when I decided to skip on the night out. Staying home way more these days has been a journey but it’s good to see representation of what embracing being at home can mean and look like. I really like the pov of the performance as well, and there is a lot to speak about the joy, peace, etc. that solitude can bring.

Artist’s Statement.

We are going through a tough time due to the pandemic.  Some people are handling it the best way they can and some people are struggling, whether it’s financially, physically, or mentally.  Upon talking to my coworker about her mental health and how she’s doing through the pandemic, we came up with an idea for this site-specific project.  My coworker likes being at home, away from people due to her anxiety.  She was always ashamed of it because others would express how weird she is for it, or that being alone and not socializing with others is bad for her.  She would sometimes force herself to hang out with people, force conversations with people, and it made her miserable.  But, now she loves it, she saw how strong she can be, those that told her she was weird, can not even enjoy themselves at home.  She sees them complaining how they hate being at home, and that it’s killing them, sometimes they say it’s affecting their mentality and wants to commit suicide.  We saw this as an opportunity to learn ourselves, meditate, relax our minds.  Society often sees those who like being home, those who don’t like socializing with everybody as weirdos and that there must be something wrong with them.  Here’s my coworker enjoying her state of mind, her own freedom, love for herself, being her own person.  

P.S.

I do not own the copyrights to music.  YouTube would not upload the video, so I will post it here.

Cindy loves dancing, we choreographed this small piece together.  After long day of work, nothing feels more amazing than being in your own space and be you.  Introverts or extroverts, who cares, nothing is more beautiful than loving yourself and self care.  

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I really love this! As I’ve commented on others posts, I love reading the artists statement to get that extra insight to what the performance means and how personal these acts can be. I like that you kept the raw audio as well because like you said, it’s essential to the space and also to the people that inhibit and experience it! Really awesome

Site Specfic Performance

(Sorry it’s so late)

Artist statement:

I have a complicated relationship with death, as I’m sure many do. It fascinates me, it scares me, in many ways, it rules me. When I was 15, my boyfriend died by suicide and I developed post traumatic stress disorder. My fear of death controlled my actions, thoughts and relationships for many years. When I entered my 20s I began actively working to accept death as an inevitable part of life and work through this trauma. This cemetery I chose for my site specific performance has been a huge part of this on going healing process. I began coming here with my partner about 3 years ago. Here I can appreciate the temporality of life and I think about how the energy of people who have passed never ceases to exist, and I find comfort. I have taken so much from this place, for this performance, I wanted to give to it. The graves that line this cemetery are predominately from the late 1800’s, early 1900’s, many seem long forgotten. For this performance, I bought a bouquet of roses, the flower of gratitude, and placed them at the graves. I did this to give back, to remember, and to pay homage to the space that has aided in confronting my own prolonged grief and acknowledge how far I have come.

(Sound warning: I left the sound in the video because I think its essential to the space, but it was very windy, so for the sake of your ears turn down your volume to low before clicking on the video)

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This looks so fun and I enjoyed hearing what the space meant to you and how you were able to let loose and have fun! Sidewalk chalk is a very nostalgic thing and to utilize at this point can take us back and not think about precise execution or making something “good” it’s just fun! It would be cool too see something like this really expanded too, like a whole journey of this fun funky chalk design.

Artist Statement

Being and creating in nature is a meditative and healing experience for myself and I’m sure for many others. What some may see as an elementary medium I turned into a meditative experience that also serves as a small little glimpse of beauty in the suburbs. For about an hour I sat out on my sidewalk just steps from my house and let my mind wander and guide me through different variations of color, shape, and playful actions. This site is very important to me as it is the place where I have spent the most time during this pandemic, so I felt it was only right to pay homage to this space in the best way, I see fit,  through art! I enjoyed the experience of allowing myself to be free in my creations and seeing many people in their cars and walking by looking at what I was doing with curiosity due to my age. This outdoor performance was liberating, as I slowly became more comfortable with sitting on the sidewalk and embracing the gaze of others. Why should any medium be frowned upon when it is equally as valid as the next? However, there were points in my performance that I felt uneasy and that I was holding back because I felt limited in what I could create, as I am not experienced in chalk. On the same token, it was fun to play with the exciting colors and soft textures that the chalk provided which I feel further lent itself to what I ended up creating as a whole. Though I only recorded 18 minutes and filled only half the sidewalk I decided to continue and filled the entire rectangle with unique images and shapes.