Performance as a medium for Spatial Intervention. When considering this type of performance based work I think of artists such as Wurm, Bas Jan Ader, John Wood and Paul Harrison, Gordon Matta Clarke, Denis Oppenheim, Acconci, Dan Graham, Rebecca Horn and Roman Signer.This is a medium that I have been investigating and employing in my art practice, as shown with the photography of the mattresses placed in different positions. Performances of this nature interest me because of their element of absurdity, awkwardness and new spatial relationships they create in an environment and meaning they bring to the object and the space.
Initially what drew me to this subject is my own experience and memories of awkward but necessary situations. In particularly I remember when I lived in Cambridge, a man carrying a mattress in the middle of the night under the yellow light, not a tramp, but carrying the object as part of a last move. Urban situations that animate the regular rhythms of everyday life are situations that not only fascinate me but make my life worth living. What would be the point of waking up everyday, showering, going to uni, seeing the same people walking, doing uni work, going back home, eating , going to bed and waking up again and repeating the same sequence. It is the inevitable absurd and almost comic situations that bring a sense of purpose to life. Situations which also compel the viewer to see their environment with new possibilities and renew their saturated relationship with that environment.
In Dennis Oppenheim's Parallel Stress, Oppenheim hangs himself between two raw brick walls as direct juxtaposition against the raw urban objectified landscape of architecture. His intention was to create situations as experiences of form. This was his reaction to minimalist sculpture which at the time had become very object obsessed. Simple, poignant, simple situations with the urban environment are not explored enough. Image taken from "Performance Live Art 1909 to the Present" book.
Vito Acconci's Seedbed is another example of transforming and possibly displaying an individual's aspiration of a space, in this case a gallery space. Vito installed a ramp and a speaker above which linked to below where he would crouch and mastubate about the viewers, passerby's creating a very uncanny situation.
The Tree Dance by Gordon Matta Clarke features several people inhabiting nets hung in a large tree. The form of the peopl's changing postures are modelled by the nets. The piece has a very sculptural quality and again conveys a sense of an urge to connect and react with the local environment that surrounds us and is almost invisible to us but within a non-everyday situation.
Bas Jan Ader's performaces involve many querky but simple sequencies alluding to traps, failure and fragility, anxiety generally interactions and interventions in public spaces.
Roman Signer's performance work involves situations of destruction, consequence following action, before and after, events which follow as a consequence of one an other. There is an element of order and rationality within the irrationality of the actions which Im drawn to. Again, these are spatial interventions, working with the context of the site or setting up a site himself with which to work with.
John Wood and Paul Harrison create performances which evoke spatial tension and references to equilibrium. Although their work has a modernist minimalist aesthetic, the simple querky spatial situations are relvant to the idea of performance as medium for spatial interventions.
Rebecca Horn creates objects which she uses to perform and interact with in a spatial context. These objects are often extensions of her brody used to connect and experience spaces that are at a distance from her. Her sculptures could be ways for individuals to interact in alienating urban spaces of the city. Similarly, Pistoletto's Performance Globe forms an extension to his body, a hindrance but at the same time a way of experiencing the environment more wholly as opposed speeding through it to get to a destination. The relation of one to the whole became a recurrent observation from installing the mattresses in the public spaces. The way the mattress moulded into the architectural context but also became temporarily an extention or growth of the immediate wall touching it or the bench etc.
Initially what drew me to this subject is my own experience and memories of awkward but necessary situations. In particularly I remember when I lived in Cambridge, a man carrying a mattress in the middle of the night under the yellow light, not a tramp, but carrying the object as part of a last move. Urban situations that animate the regular rhythms of everyday life are situations that not only fascinate me but make my life worth living. What would be the point of waking up everyday, showering, going to uni, seeing the same people walking, doing uni work, going back home, eating , going to bed and waking up again and repeating the same sequence. It is the inevitable absurd and almost comic situations that bring a sense of purpose to life. Situations which also compel the viewer to see their environment with new possibilities and renew their saturated relationship with that environment.
In Dennis Oppenheim's Parallel Stress, Oppenheim hangs himself between two raw brick walls as direct juxtaposition against the raw urban objectified landscape of architecture. His intention was to create situations as experiences of form. This was his reaction to minimalist sculpture which at the time had become very object obsessed. Simple, poignant, simple situations with the urban environment are not explored enough. Image taken from "Performance Live Art 1909 to the Present" book.
Vito Acconci's Seedbed is another example of transforming and possibly displaying an individual's aspiration of a space, in this case a gallery space. Vito installed a ramp and a speaker above which linked to below where he would crouch and mastubate about the viewers, passerby's creating a very uncanny situation.
The Tree Dance by Gordon Matta Clarke features several people inhabiting nets hung in a large tree. The form of the peopl's changing postures are modelled by the nets. The piece has a very sculptural quality and again conveys a sense of an urge to connect and react with the local environment that surrounds us and is almost invisible to us but within a non-everyday situation.
Bas Jan Ader's performaces involve many querky but simple sequencies alluding to traps, failure and fragility, anxiety generally interactions and interventions in public spaces.
Roman Signer's performance work involves situations of destruction, consequence following action, before and after, events which follow as a consequence of one an other. There is an element of order and rationality within the irrationality of the actions which Im drawn to. Again, these are spatial interventions, working with the context of the site or setting up a site himself with which to work with.
John Wood and Paul Harrison create performances which evoke spatial tension and references to equilibrium. Although their work has a modernist minimalist aesthetic, the simple querky spatial situations are relvant to the idea of performance as medium for spatial interventions.
Rebecca Horn creates objects which she uses to perform and interact with in a spatial context. These objects are often extensions of her brody used to connect and experience spaces that are at a distance from her. Her sculptures could be ways for individuals to interact in alienating urban spaces of the city. Similarly, Pistoletto's Performance Globe forms an extension to his body, a hindrance but at the same time a way of experiencing the environment more wholly as opposed speeding through it to get to a destination. The relation of one to the whole became a recurrent observation from installing the mattresses in the public spaces. The way the mattress moulded into the architectural context but also became temporarily an extention or growth of the immediate wall touching it or the bench etc.
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