Install a space
It is essential: To install a homogeneous space, establish breach lines, and position disruptive elements.
Install time
It is essential: To give time a form, that defines ‘the life’: lengths of time from daytime moments to periods of over 24 hours, either constructed, or simply growing in time.
Out of this fusion, days are formed through quiet and precise images, experimental studies and eruptive outbreaks.
A temporary programme has been established for logistical purposes. Expected changes will occur according to the situation and will be dealt with spontaneously. All the events will be parallel and create specific images, shifting between concentration and relaxation. The breathing is installed, stretching, expanding and struggling into a vital image.
As the situation evolves, a blackboard will give information about solos and duos, different actions, and activities by the principals of Black Market, and about the experiments with specially invited guests, conversations, or presentations and spontaneous events developing in situ. What interests us is the encounter with the ‘current affairs’ in this place, between us, with the emerging situations and the exchange of practical and theoretical views, through search and research of different cultural roots. Black Market is a principle of ethnic and cultural dimensions that is expressed in images, visual action, and movements. This is the space in-between that has to be built. The main principle is a vision of society with minimal group-structures. It is the principle described by Martin Buber:
All true life is meeting. Meeting does not reside in time and space, but space and time reside in meeting.
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From the past to the present the 10 golden rules for performance art accepted by Black Market International.
1 – install an open space – don’t be boring
2 – install time – don’t be boring
3 – install the daily life habits – don’t be boring
4 – install extreme communication, without touching – don’t be boring
5 – install atmosphere – don’t be boring
6 – install no giving, people have to take – don’t be boring
7 – install taking, some good artists are present, good materials, take it –
don’t be boring
8 – install sense, maybe – don’t be boring
9 – don’t be boring in any case
10 – don’t give up control
* ALASTAIR MACLENNAN
Wave to Water
A continuous 24-hour actuation, 7.30pm 9 Feb 7.30pm 10 Feb
Performance gives 100 percent to the moment.
In 1997 Alastair MacLennan represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale with inter-media work commemorating the names of all those who died as a result of the Political Troubles in Northern Ireland from 1969 to date. During the 1970s and 1980s he made long, non-stop durational performances in Britain and America of up to 144 hours each, usually neither eating nor sleeping throughout. Subject matter dealt with political, social, and cultural malfunction. Since 1975 he has been based in Belfast and was a founder member of Belfast’s Art and Research Exchange. Since 1975 he has taught at the University of Ulster and for 11 years ran the Postgraduate Fine Art programme in Belfast. He is currently a Research Professor in Fine Art and travels extensively in Eastern and Western Europe, America, and Canada, presenting actuations (his term for performance/installations). He has been a member of Black Market International since 1989.
http://art.ntu.ac.uk/liveart/maclennan
* BORIS NIESLONY
www.asa.de www.epi-zentrum.org
* ELVIRA SANTAMARÍA
‘I am interested in instant creation. I think that the need for real human communication demands freedom and spontaneity, far away from seeking determinate answers. Action artists are inventing new relationships among others and at the same time they are discovering and reinventing themselves.’
Elvira Santamaría (Mexico) was born in 1967. Her work currently focuses on intervention and process art. Since 1991 she has presented her performances at the Nippon International Art Performance Festival, Japan, Rencontre International d’Art Performance, Québec, Trans-Europe 2000, Hanover, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, and the Blurrr Biennial of Performance Art, Israel, among others. She has been a member of Black Market International since 2000.
* HELGE MEYER
Hand To Hand
A cultural exchange of cloth and more (solo).
A man in black suit enters with a suitcase. He opens the suitcase and exchanges all of the clothes he is wearing with the clothes found in the case. Then he tells the story of one piece of the clothing and its former owner. He invites one person in the audience to exchange this first piece of clothing with him. That person then tells a story about the piece he/she is giving away in turn. After the exchange, the performer drinks schnapps with the audience member. The performance ends when all of the performer’s clothing has been swapped with the clothing from the local audience.
Helge Meyer formed the group System HM2T (with Marco Teubner) in 1998.
Helge Meyer and System HM2T have performed at festivals in Finland, Italy, Japan, China, Russia, the Philippines, and Canada. As a researcher Meyer is interested in questions of pain, duo work, cooperation, and the history of images. He is currently finishing a doctoral thesis about the image of pain in performance art.
www.performance-art-research.de
* JACQUES VAN POPPEL
Jacques van Poppel started his career as a musician. In his performances he creates a radical narrative based on working with ordinary objects from ‘street-wise’ personal life. He often invents a situation that breaks preconceived assumptions of art and which can welcome an intimacy with the audience. He often puts up a tent in a gallery space, or distributes cans of beer or snacks to the audience as he works with other objects like toys, clothes, and household appliances. He uses these objects in an original way to create a collage of imaginative interpretation.
Van Poppel has been a member of Black Market International since 1986. He also formed Traum-Duo in der Auszeit with Boris Nieslony, and often collaborates with trombone-player Wolter Wierbos.
* JULIE ANDRÉE T
Not Waterproof (solo)
Slow transformation of a picture, listening to the sound and the silence, visual poetry, the body as a tool is used to transport-transform a strange moment of transition. A lady is trying to reach the impossible. A line on a body, a body as a line falling on the ground. The impossible is reached.
For Julie Andrée T practising art is a reflection of daily life and the dark ages we are presently in. She tries to reach a place where personal identity is lost. Although this is a utopia, it might be the only way to find a common abstract language to understand what we do and who we are
Julie Andrée T’s works have been shown around the world. She was part of PME, an experimental theatre company directed by Jacob Wren. She has been a member of Black Market International since 2002. She is currently working as co-director of the Brussels collective PONI.
* JÜRGEN FRITZ
Jürgen Fritz was born in 1958. He studied theatre and the science of music.
He has worked as a theatre director, curator, and actor, and since 1984 as a performance artist. He has worked with Black Market International since 1985. He has shown his performances in all countries of Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. Since 2005 he has lived as a freelance artist in Hildesheim. He is co-founder of the International Performance Association.
www.fritz-performance.de
* LEE WEN
Lee Wen’s work attempts to combine Southeast Asian contexts with international currents in contemporary art. Born in Singapore, he now lives and works on a global circuit, based between Singapore and Tokyo. He continues to be active and involved with the new generation in collaborations, network, and discourse. He sees art as cultural action for liberation and social change.
* MYRIAM LAPLANTE
Born in Canada, Myriam Laplante now lives in Italy. She has been working with Black Market International since 2001. Her work parodies the world’s attempts to deal with alienation, difficulties in communication, the refusal to adapt to society, and the cynicism of dominant social groups. Her works have been presented extensively in Europe, North America, and Asia and are in the permanent collections of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (Rome), MACRO (Rome), Musée du Québec (Québec), and the National Museum of Photography (Ottawa).
* NORBERT KLASSEN
With an experimental mix taken from drama, play, spoken word, and performance art, Swiss artist Norbert Klassen has evolved an art of small actions. The influence of Japanese haiku – three-line poems that make poetry out of the eternal change of the seasons – is obvious in the mysterious style of his reduced performances.
* ROI VAARA
‘The world makes me sick. I would like to see changes being made. I am working on that. I am participating. I do it my way. I am generous. I pay. To the cashier I say, ‘Thanks and good bye’. The older I get the more confused I am. I am a decent citizen.’
Roi Vaara was born in 1953 in Moss (Norway), but grew up in Helsinki, Finland, where he has caused constant controversy in the art world since the early 80s. He has created performances since 1982 and been a member of Black Market International since 1988. He seeks not to attract public sensation but to challenge the way we look at things.
* SPECIAL GUEST ESTHER FERRER
Esther Ferrer is best known for the performances that have been her principal form of artistic expression since 1967, both as a solo artist and as a member of the group ZAJ. During the 1960s she created the first Workshop for Free Expression in collaboration with the painter José Antonio Sistiaga, which inspired other similar groups in Spain. In 1999 she was one of the two artists who represented Spain in the Venice Biennale, and she has performed throughout Europe – including Poland, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Holland, Norway, Czech Republic, Slovakia, U.K., Spain, Denmark, and Finland – as well as in Cuba, Mexico, the United States, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. Ferrer’s work demonstrates a very particular kind of minimalism, which she sometimes terms ‘rigorous absurdity’.
WORKSHOPS AND TALKS
A one-day performance art workshop run by different members of BMI. The Company invites up to 10 participants from a fine art/ performance background. Participants should bring evidence of their recent work with them, comfortable workshop clothing, and a readiness to innovate. The open workshop will take place on Thursday 8 February from 12 noon.
For the full talks programme given by different members of BMI on Friday 9 February please refer to the blackboard posted outside the artists’ space on the day.