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petrichorpc · 10 years ago

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The Liminal Body in Vela Phelan’s “En Ti Confio” and Alastair MacLennan & Sandra Johnston’s “Let Liminal Loose”

Text by Sandrine Schaefer

Liminality is frequently understood as being neither here nor there, an in between state that allows room for the ambiguous to take precedent. In the realm of anthropology, the liminal, also known as the marginal state, signifies the middle or transitional period endured in a ritual or rite of passage. The term has increasingly been used to attempt to describe the indescribable in performance art. Simultaneously, many performance artists strive to engage and explore liminality through their work. Within the context of the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, where the ritual body was named as part of the exhibition’s theme, the liminal state was evoked in several live works, but most noticeably explored by two long durational pieces that unfolded throughout the week.

When encountering Boston-based artist Vela Phelan’s En Ti Confio, one enters a space that is illuminated by projector light emanating from a corner of the room. The images moving through the projection are pulsing with black and white shapes and pixels. The image of a statue on a television is one of the only recognizable forms coming through this intentionally skewed transmission. Objects, predominantly technological devices moving towards obsolescence, (tape recorders, record players, etc.) await action as they line the space where the wall meets the floor. In front of the projection, an altar has been constructed on the floor. On top of the altar is a small bust similar to that which is seen in the projection. Carefully composed on the walls are a variety of black objects: a feathered headdress, bandanas, black plastic bags, etc. Most notably, several towels are hung throughout the space that bear the image of the infamous drug trafficker, Juaquin El Chapo Guzman. Some towels have been imprinted with an image of Jesus Malverde, a Mexican Saint who in life stole from the rich to give to the poor. Both of their eyes have been blacked out with lines of black fur. This visual treatment of these portraits simultaneously references abduction posters, while pointing to the physical resemblance between these two men.

During the ART WEEK’s panel, Commemoration - Rites, Rituals and Daily Matters, Phelan points out the similarities in the faces of these two figures in Mexican culture and describes his fascination with them. Phelan explains that Jesus Malverde’s body was left to rot in the street when he died because of his thievery, yet 100 years later, he has been resurrected into Sainthood and celebrated for taking from the rich to give to the poor. Through this story, Phelan suggests, that El Chapo, named the most powerful drug trafficker in the world and undisputed murderer, could one day, like Jesus Malverde, become a “Saintly Sinner.” This notion of the Saintly Sinner evokes liminality, as Malverde is suspended in an in-between state, his character is neither good nor bad. El Chapo is treated similarly in En Ti Confio. In the space that Phelan describes as a “video altar action,” El Chapo is not painted as a villain, but sits alongside Malverde to be contemplated within the realm of the liminal.

Phelan’s actions within the space also flirted with liminality. The actions were often spontaneous and unconfined by the times designated by the exhibition’s program. Many of the actions occurred when Phelan felt compelled to do something, creating an air of chance around the piece. When Phelan did activate the space with his body, the actions always felt in service to the installation, in service to the “video altar.” Phelan stood with his fingers outstretched behind the altar on the ground. He walked around the space spraying rum from a cleaning bottle. He sat in a chair facing the altar and the projection in the corner. The modesty of these actions allowed the objects in the room to speak louder than the artist’s own body.

Nestled between 2 rooms on the first floor of Palazzo Mora, a rotting fish is nestled between the feet of Alastair MacLennan and Sandra Johnston, collaborating artists from Northern Ireland. The artists hold onto one another as they balance the fish’s dead weight between their feet and drag the fish across the floor. They are dressed similarly, wearing solid black that exposes their bare feet and bare heads. They are clearly individuals, but in this space, operating as a single being. This is pronounced by the shadow cast on the wall that makes it appear as if there is, in fact, only one body engaging in this action. In another action, MacLennan and Johnston stand back-to-back, palms face up, and heads pointed upwards. They each balance a single tissue on their face that gently captures minute vibrations produced by their breath. There are moments when this breath appears to be one breath, MacLennan and Johnston’s torsos expanding and contracting in unison. These slippages from two beings into one are common occurrences in this 5-day piece, titled Let Liminal Loose.

In the influential essay, “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage,” anthropologist, Victor Turner focuses on rites of passage practiced in several societies to examine the “sociocultural properties of the liminal state.”[1] In order to talk through these properties, Turner uses the term the “transitional being” to identify individuals enduring the liminal state. Turner states that during the liminal period, “the transitional being, passes through a realm that has few to none of the attributes of the past or coming state.”[2] This realm that Turner speaks of can be felt in Let Liminal Loose, and therefore, transforms MacLennan and Johnston into transitional beings, and at times, a single transitional being. Although it is clear that MacLennan and Johnston have taken great care in developing Let Liminal Loose, it is also apparent that the artists remain open to explore what arises in the present moment. By protecting this open space, the artists succeed in the intention put forth in their artist statement, “to keep each situation direct and without contrivance.”

Exploring this realm where qualities of the past and coming state are unknown, is not only reserved for MacLennan and Johnston. Witnesses to their work are also suspended in this state of unknowing. Upon entering the room on one day, Johnston precariously holds lit candles in her mouth beneath a heavy wooden table that is precariously balanced on one log. Meanwhile MacLennan drips hot wax onto the surface of the table. Various objects are scattered throughout the room (socks, trash, feathers, a box of tissues, branches, etc.) The space is filled with a constant state of action. On another day, Johnston and MacLennan are encountered, standing forehead-to-forehead. Their movements are modest and at times invisible to many viewers passing through the room. Nothing else is in the space except for a single flower petal between their feet. For the witness, there is no way of knowing what will occur from moment to moment, day to day. This unpredictability not only conjures the sensation that one is truly engulfed by the liminal, but also requires the audience to experience the work with heightened awareness.

The way that time operates in the work is also responsible for requiring heightened and active witnessing. In this room, time is in a perpetual state of slowing and shifting. In one of the early days of the piece, the artists move the table across the space. The pace begins in a way that is congruent with MacLennan’s methodical wandering. Then, Johnston pulls and pushes the table abruptly. This is followed by the artists adjusting to a shared pace. Because the artists have created and protected a space where time unfolds in a way that is both unexpected and unforeseen, this action does not feel aggressive, nor disruptive. The action creates a necessary shift that makes visible Johnston and MacLennan’s understanding of how time lives in one another’s bodies. It is nearly impossible for witnesses to these actions not to consider their own physical time-consciousness. MacLennan and Johnston’s treatment of time, both with one another and with the audience, maintains a space that invites one of the most fascinating qualities of Let Liminal Loose: the creation of the perpetual encounter.

One of the most compelling images of the performance begins when Johnston places a log on her chest and attempts to balance it between the weight of her own body and the wall. The log repeatedly falls. MacLennan notices this struggle, takes the log and places it to his own chest. Johnston stands, faces MacLennan and releases her weight into the log. As they stand balancing against one another, the log quite literally, becomes a conduit between MacLennan and Johnston’s bodies. What is so profound about this action is that it is an encounter that can only be realized through a series of encounters. The action requires MacLennan’s ability to step outside of his own action to acknowledge Johnston’s desire, and Johnston’s openness to accept his proposal to adjust the action. This image of transfer and translation recurs throughout Let Liminal Loose and results in creating a perpetual state of encountering that invites an opportunity to contemplate the complexity of human relationships with space, time, and one another.

[1] Victor Turner, Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites De Passage, The Symbolic Analysis of Ritual, (Cornell Univesity,1967), 94.

[2] Turner, 95.

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petrichorpc · 10 years ago

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WIND BETWEEN THE LEAVES - Free thoughts on Zai Kuning's "Loosing oneself to be with it and taken away by it"

Text by Francesco Kiais

Elements of visual orientation

At the centre of the large rectangular perimeter of Palazzo Mora’s main hall, Singapore-based artist Zai Kuning has suspended an oval and smooth stone, at a short distance from the ground, half enmeshed in the net of a thick red wire, stretched in the space between the high ceiling and the floor.

Two boards of clear solid wood, lie on the ground not far from the suspended stone. Stuck into the wooden boards, four heavy knives. A small wooden bowl is placed under the stone and contains a smoking coal of plant material. Another wooden bowl, containing water, is placed on the side of one of the boards. On the floor lies a curved bamboo stick.

Limit and Release (Abandonment)

Zai Kuning marks paths of crossing, continuously passing from one side to the other of the stone. He plays with knives, hits them one with another and throws them down to stick into the wood, as if they were a natural extension of his gestures, as if he threw farther the limits of his acting, thinking and feeling.

He sprinkles the boards with water, makes turn the suspended stone around itself: the rotation axis of our emotional and sensorial space, brought outside of us, now runs along the red line, turning with the stone and repeating a cosmic phenomenon: the dance of planets and galaxies around themselves.

Zai stops, and emits a sound with his eyes closed, involving the whole body in this sound emission. It is a cry, or a recall, pushed from the belly through the chest, in the mouth. Even the hands and arms participate to push this lament, creating the fragile and unstable figure of a frail flourish.

The strength of the sound exceeds the fragility of the figure, which sways like a leaf in the wind, in front of the inexorable gravity of the stone, beside the weight of the objects. The abandoning/release of the self is underway. The liberating distance from the self is taken. Now, the person Zai is no longer in the presence of a limit: he becomes the happening and the crossing of it.

On the other side is the heart of our fears, the face of our temporary nature. It is an exorcism, for those who are witnessing. It is an experience of the limit with the latest metamorphosis, for the one who guides us in this journey.

Zai gives another rotation boost to the stone. The galaxies go on in their timeless dance.

Thirst and memory

The shamanic exorcism is related to the human metamorphosis in the scenery of a universe, which we no longer know how to philosophically embrace, and which we must again recognise starting from our physical limits, from our sensory boundaries, for to be able to comprehend it again.

The starting point of this performance is the moving in the proximity of an absence. It is a missed person, whose disappearance causes a sudden awareness of our being present, of being present “without”.

These gestures made in proximity of an absence, make us consider that you’re not present only for yourself. That there is no life without an end. That you must lovingly take the burden of responsibility of a memory, of a life, to give value also to your own presence in the world.

Life is thirst for the present, for the presence and for the presences. The audience itself is a gathering of presences. The present itself is a set of presences. Here is the performance space, here is the meaning of the ritual, here is where Zai, the shaman, leads us.

The form and the experience / The form is the experience

For those who stopped at the superficial aspect of this performance, the sacral ritualistic appearance in the traditional sense, expressed by Kuning in its full force, has definitely prevailed.

And this is natural, because the superficial appearance is actually by itself a vehicle full of meanings. It is language, carrier of content and generator of sense. It is metaphysical and physical extension of a way of thinking, of expressed and generated reality. It is a gesture deeply rooted in an archaic tradition.

But Zai does not exhibit the form in itself. It is our gaze that aestheticises the on-going lived drama. That which Zai offers in a radically archaic way, is the eloquence of gestures matured over centuries, which give a name to pain, absence, detachment, abandonment. The shamanic gesture does not mean to recite, it means to experience.

Wind between the leaves

The choice of tradition and the choice of transgression, in relation to the linguistic and formal conformism of the present, are equivalent, as breaking elements. Because today tradition does not mean cultural continuity but, on the contrary, memory of a path broken by an overwhelming and homologating cultural model.

In his last poem written in Friulian dialect, Pasolini urges the young Phaedrus with these words: “defend, conserve, pray,”1 namely: discover the substance in the forms of your own culture and defend it, preserve it through regenerating it. Give new meaning to the sacred, in a broader philosophical sense, in its humanistic matrix devoid of any god. Perform acts of faith toward our fragility and imperfection, to understand our limits and give back their beauty.

The transgressor/caretaker Zai, indicates the way toward a small temple, -as the transgressor/caretaker Pasolini, or like other transgressors/caretakers did in their turn-, and that is called, Person, Memory, Sharing. It is a place that is many places, an ensemble of basic needs that form the basis of every communitarian process and any language.

The question, then, is to be able to practice everyone’s own identity, which is the bearer of a language that gains value in the comparison with other identities and languages. We have to express ourselves in different languages, dialects soaked with universality. We must cradle the idea of the Babel, in which we live, and that invites us to live in the difference. We must gather ourselves in rituals that celebrate this substance, being together and understand also from others how we perceive and interpret the world.

Defend, protect, pray. As in the case of the nomads, who Zai has approached in one of his projects,2 or in the case of the people who had to leave their land after a catastrophe,3 the temple, the school, the square, the law, all are within the individuals themselves, and move with them. Zai finds and creates small momentary communities, he finds us and he leaves us, like wind passing through the leaves.

NOTES

1 - Defend, conserve, pray: from “Greetings and good wishes”, the last poem written in Friulian dialect by Pier Paolo Pasolini (In: The new youth, Einaudi, 1975).

2 - Zai Kuning has stayed years with the Orang Laut, nomadic indigenous fishermen living in the Riau Archipelago for his on-going research.

3 - More recently, Zai Kuning went to places where people were forced to abandon their homes after the nuclear catastrophe of Fukushima-Daiichi and the subsequent tsunami, which generated another kind of nomadism, practiced not by choice, but by compulsion.

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petrichorpc · 10 years ago

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The Blindfolded Body in Wen Yau’s “Wish You Were Here,” Alice Vogler’s “Liability of body. Language of liability” and Marilyn Arsem’s “Marking Time.”

Text by Sandrine Schaefer

When an artist undertakes an action blindfolded, it undoubtedly makes them vulnerable to their audience. Although the removal of a sense allows the audience to experience a heightened empathic response towards an artist, the blindfold offers a far more complex experience. While blindfolded, an artist’s personal history with an action is exposed. If there is an immediate confidence while engaging in an action, we can assume that the action is one that they are familiar with. If there is hesitation, witnesses can assume that the action has been previously unexplored by the artist. When an artist is without sight, what is made visible, is the artist’s understanding of time, mediated through the chosen action.

Installed in a room on the 3rd floor of Palazzo Mora the phrase “I want real universal suffrage” has been repeatedly and methodically written in Chinese on half of the walls. In this piece titled, Wish You Were Here, Hong Kong artist Wen Yau is crouched on the floor, blindfolded with the national flag of the People’s Republic of China and wearing a t-shirt that reads “I Heart HK.” Wen Yau continues to repeatedly write the phrase in charcoal on the other half of the space without the sense of sight. Over the duration of approximately 4 hours, the writing not only fills the walls, but also spills onto the floor.

“I want real universal suffrage” is a phrase often used in protests of the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong in which Wen Yau is an active member. Upon Wen Yau’s arrival in Venice to create Wish You Were Here for the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK, police cleared the site that the movement had occupied in Hong Kong for the past 3 months. Being disconnected from her community during such an important time resulted in Wen Yau being moved to tears while performing this blindfolded action. As she wrote, Wen Yau allowed her witnesses insight into her relationship to the phrase and the power it holds for her.

The duality between the phrase written in an orderly manner next to the chaotic scrawling produced during Wen Yau’s blindfolded action furthers the complexity of the performance as it foreshadowed the piece’s ending. Several days later, Wish You Were Here was continued when Wen Yau returned to Hong Kong. In the final action of the performance, Wen Yau walks blindfolded, around the government buildings once occupied by protesters. As she traverses this location, she secretly writes “I want real universal suffrage” in places along her path. This action that was live streamed at the ART WEEK contextualizes Wish You Were Here in a way that otherwise could get lost in the magnitude of the exhibition. Through this action, the audience is reminded that although exhibitions like VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEKK and performance art festivals prioritize the gathering of artists from around the world to share work, these artists must return to the places from which they come to continue their practice. Wen Yau endures the action of blindfolded writing in one space, yet never abandons the space that has inspired this action. The action cannot exist in Palazzo Mora or the former occupy site alone. These contexts must be linked through Wen Yau’s own body for the piece to be fully realized.

It is through this choice that Wish You Were Here serves as a refreshing example of the lineage that performance art shares with activism. The piece is made for an art-educated audience, protesters, and the public, and therefore, erases the boundaries between what is demarcated as “art action” and actions of the everyday. Furthermore, the blindfold illuminates the challenges of operating within the safety of an art-designated space vs. operating amongst an unknowing audience.

The blindfold also ignited dialogue around everyday actions in the final action of Boston-based artist Alice Vogler’s Liability of body. Language of liability. With ease and confidence, Vogler sits blindfolded on top of a plinth and fluctuates between repeatedly injecting her arms with needles and dropping small cards that depict life size images of the needles that she is using for injection. Even to the witnesses who do not know that Vogler is a Type 1 Diabetic, diagnosed in childhood, they can recognize that this action is so familiar to the artist that she can even do it with her eyes closed.

On the first day of the 2-day piece, Vogler sits at a table that holds a mountain of white sugar. She methodically fills empty pill capsules to make placebos for pre-made pill bottles that are also placed on the table. The bottles contain labels like “optimism,” “luck,” “fascination,” and “more time”. As she fills each bottle her demeanor changes and it becomes apparent that she is infusing each pill with an essence of the word written on the bottle. In this action, Vogler wears a mask and gloves. Not only does this create a physical barrier between Vogler and the audience, she also refrains from making eye contact or engaging with those who enter her space.

This changes dramatically in the second day of the performance upon the audience’s entrance into the space. Each audience member is greeted by an assistant and required to sign a waiver and release of liability. This form states that the undersigned knowingly assumes the responsibility of all risks and that they will not hold anyone affiliated with the VENICE INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART WEEK responsible for any injury, disability or even death that could occur in the witnessing of the work. Those who refuse to sign the waiver are asked to leave.

Once the form has been signed, the audience must navigate thousands of clear marbles that are pooling on the floor. As Vogler stands in front of another plinth that holds a large glass bowl containing the marbles, she dips her face into the bowl, takes a mouthful, and spits them onto the ground. This repeated action is unpredictable. Sometimes she spits the marbles one by one, sometimes she simply opens her mouth and allows the weight of the marbles to send them tumbling to the floor. Sometimes the spitting is gentle. Other times, she spits aggressively and the marbles bounce across the floor, hitting the legs of audience members.

Like much of Vogler’s work, Liability of body. Language of liability is rooted in chance and choice and passively invites interaction. As Vogler spits marbles, another plinth presents the pill bottles that Vogler filled during the previous day alongside a bottle of water, a glass, and a cloth. As Vogler moves into her blindfolded action of injection, she lays out a paper explaining the side effects of sugar. The audience is never told to ingest the pills, simply offered a choice by positioning and suggestion. The majority of the audience ignore this subtle invitation until the moment that Vogler blindfolds herself. Once the artist’s eyes are covered people pool, like the marbles, around the pills and ingest. As this situation unfolds, witnesses also move close to Vogler’s body. Some photograph her, some observe her form, the needles and the cards at an intimate proximity. Regardless of the differences in how the interactions take shape, what is consistent, is that Vogler has created an experience that allows space for the audience to witness in ways that encourage collaborative viewing in which we all assume responsibility for our individual and collective safety.

Collective and nuanced witnessing is also called upon in Boston-based artist Marilyn Arsem’s Marking Time. Over 7 days, Marking Time spans 24 hours in which Arsem explores the seen and the unseen, the living and dead. Installed in a room are two black chairs, one that holds a bundle of black fabric that emits a faint aroma of rose to those who get close enough. The room contains a constant and soft ticking of a clock. This causes many to become mindful of their own pace upon entering the room. In the beginning hours of the piece, Arsem stands with her back to the chairs and stares out of a window, she also dressed in black. As she watches what is happening outside of the building, her breath is captured on the surface of the glass and illuminates smudges previously placed on the pane. This is a subtle acknowledgement of the space’s history. The curious thing about encountering a body in front of, or behind glass, is that the observer is required to navigate their own reflection. Arsem’s choice to engage with this aspect of the architecture sets the tone for the next 7 days. Marking Time is about reflection and invites the audience to explore their own relationships to time and ways in which it is marked in its passing.

As Arsem peers out the window, an insect flies by and catches her eye. Her curiosity ignites the curiosity of the others in the room. This is the first of many invitations for the audience to engage in a way that is unique within a traditional performance context. Some viewers stand and peer out other windows while others peak through a closet in the space that is slightly ajar. Many also occupy a close proximity to Arsem’s body. Her actions are modest and she often sits and stands in places in the room where the audience is gathered. In these moments, Arsem is not recognizable to all as “the performer.” This invisibility is shattered in the moments when Arsem looks around the room, engaging each person in eye contact. This tension between looking and being looked at continues to gain intensity throughout the weeklong duration of the piece. On the second day of Marking Time, Arsem introduces another black cloth and engages in various actions that include her covering and uncovering her body. In these variations of seeing and inviting herself to be seen, the cloth provides a similar function as the blindfold. Arsem’s actions with the cloth make her vulnerable, invite the audience to engage, and position time as the primary concept of the work, rather than something that is consequence or bi-product.

Throughout the week, Arsem creates an evolving relationship with the cloth, the chairs, and the black bundle that sits on one chair. In the final days of Marking Time, Arsem reveals that the bundle contains stones. This is not revealed, however, until Arsem has engaged in an action of holding the bundle in her arms for an hour. In this provocative image of an enduring body, Arsem’s body visibly breaks down. Her limbs tremble softly as it becomes apparent that this mysterious bundle contains substantial weight. This image adds an immense gravity to the actions that follow.

In the final hour of the piece, Arsem lies on the ground, covered by her cloth. The stones have been hidden once again, under the other cloth that has been removed from the chair and gathered on the ground in a way that resembles another covered human body. Because Arsem made several artistic choices that positioned the audience alongside her, many chose to endure the full 7 days of Marking Time. These witnesses wear their personal investment in the piece in their body language and facial expressions. Some lay on the cold ground with the two forms. Many cry silently. While Arsem offers her own covered body next to the visual suggestion of another, she is present, yet simultaneously she embodies the past and inevitable future of death that unifies us all.

In all three of these works, the blindfolded body is used as a strategy that breaks traditional witnessing and viewing behaviors that are often a consequence of “performance art’s” close semantic proximity to “performing arts.” In Wish You Were Here, Liability of body, Language of liability, and Marking Time, the audiences are not only considered, but positioned as active collaborators that are invited to engage in the creative processes necessary for these three works to be realized.

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