National Review of Live Art 2006
This essay is dedicated to the memory of Geert Feytons, whose sound installation Naos (Re-Ranitus Mytin Cycle#1) was a source of surprise and delight for the two days that it was available.
In 2006, the NRLA, which had outgrown the Arches in Glasgow, moved to Tramway, a larger space somewhat outside of the city center that permitted it to offer art exhibitions, academic panels, installations, and more live art events. 2006 was also the first year that the artists breakfast, which previously had taken place on the last day at an outside location, was offered at the Festival Bar in Tramway. On the last and most crowded day of the event, Nikki Milican, the executive artistic director of New Moves International, asked for feedback regarding the move from the Arches to Tramway. One of the biggest surprises was that Franko B, whose aesthetic and bloody actions seem to have been designed for a space such as the Arches, was a vocal and passionate advocate for a new home at Tramway, because, as he put it, he didnt have to worry about some fucker trying to punch him when he left the building at 2 a.m. Not being harassed in the streets after being psychologically turned inside out by the live actions that are part of the NRLA equals a kinder, gentler NRLA, which was the case this year. Thanks to the larger and more numerous spaces at Tramway, there was always something to do or see this past year. Queues were shorter and more orderly, spiritual and corporeal sustenance was always available, and the two artists in residence FrenchMottershead and Richard Dedomenici made actions that successfully facilitated the transition between the Arches and Tramway. What follows is an assessment of some of the highlights from this years NRLA.
Artists in Residence
Every year the NRLA has an artist in residence. This year, in keeping with the NRLAs stated purpose to provide a platform for artists that are at the point in their career where they are no longer newly emerging but not yet iconic, the artists in residence had previously performed at the NRLA and were beginning to get national and international recognition. Appropriately, both of the artists in residence are also associated with slyly subversive public acts that orchestrated actions amongst large crowds. FrenchMottershead, a live art collaborative group comprised of Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead, were so anxious at the first NRLA that they attended that they spent most of the time hiding in the toilet, emerging periodically to hand out subversive business cards to the unsuspecting patrons at the Arches bar. In 2005 they conducted microperformance classes at the Arches, and in 2006 they were the artists in residence. The actions facilitated by FrenchMottershead were designed to make it unnecessary for newcomers to the NRLA to hide in the toilet as FrenchMottershead had done two years before. Every night FrenchMottershead took a group photograph of those in attendance, which was posted the next day on the wall directly next to the large staircase that was originally designed for horses (A Daily Ritual to Capture the Presence of Everybody). It was fascinated to watch the progression of these large photographs, which thanks to digital technology were surprisingly clear. As the festival progressed, more and more people appeared. Currently posted on the FrenchMottershead web site (http://www.frenchmottershead.com/), these photographs are incredibly evocative of the event - proof, if the viewer of the photograph can locate him or herself, that one was there, at that time, at that moment. FrenchMottershead also spent a great deal of time the previous year casing out the area around Tramway, with the result that the daily diaries (schedule, for American readers) had a series of elegantly drawn maps on the reverse side for those who Need A Little Respite. These maps, or Local Review of Necessary Amenities told conference participants how to find things in the neighborhood surrounding Tramway, including a Zen garden, cheap Italian food, and the way back to the main train station in Glasgow. The third project that FrenchMottershead did for this NRLA - Now Thats An Idea! - was an attempt to build a community with past and present NRLA participants. Attendees and past participants were asked to submit an anonymous text that had great meaning to them. These texts were on display in the reading room - another first for the NRLA - for the duration of the event. On the final day, those who donated a text were able to participate in The Taking, which involved selecting another text and finding out the name of the person who donated it.
FrenchMottershead was a constant presence at the NRLA 2006, however, in keeping with the anti-black box direction of their earlier work, they never actually performed in front of an audience but instead made the audience perform for them. Richard Dedomenici, whose work has also consisted of some subtle and not so subtle public interventions, kicked off the opening night with his performance lecture Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back? Part exploration of Dedomenicis relationship with the police, part political satire, part history of his work, and part autobiography, Did Priya Pathak Ever Get Her Wallet Back? was not only quite humorous but surprisingly balanced as well, with the police responsible for as many good deeds as bad. Left unanswered was the titular question - did Priya Pathak, whose wallet Dedomenici found and turned in to the police, get her property back? Dedomenici, and his audience, still doesnt know. In addition to opening the NRLA, Dedomenici moderated the ConCrits, voluntary daily feedback sessions at the Festival Bar that took place at the beginning of each day. Free coffee and croissants were offered in order to encourage people to attend and discuss work that had been performed the previous day. After a slow start on the first day, the ConCrits picked up, with artists, critics, writers, and organizers showing up to discuss the events of the previous day. Dedomenici acted as a facilitator in other ways as well. Eager to ease the transition from the subterranean, smoke-filled caverns of the Arches to the airy and spacious Tramway, Dedomenici thoughtfully created two subtle interventions: air defresheners that smelled like cigarette smoke (unlike the Arches, Tramway is a smoke free environment) and a sound installation of a train rumbling by overhead that was a bit difficult to make out amidst the general din of conversation. Dedomenici was also available throughout the festival, standing in line with other festival attendees, organizing the evacuation during a fire drill that occurred on the final day of the NRLA, and handing out false moustaches to people and then photographing them.
Sekou Sundiata and Donna Rutherford
With the move to Tramway, which was formerly an industrial building for housing trolleys, trams and at one time the horses that pulled them, the NRLA lost none of its edginess while gaining the magnificent theatrical space in Tramway 1, with its spare and postmodern industrial architecture, soaring ceiling, and plentiful seating. Tramway 1 was the perfect setting for popular acts such as Sekou Sundiatas beautifully evocative performance Blessing the Boats, a poetic meditation on his experience with kidney disease, racism, and identity and Donna Rutherfords equally wonderful Ochone Ochone, based on a performance that she had done at the NRLA twelve years prior to this one. Like Sekou Sundiata, Rutherford uses memories -her own and those of other people - to obliquely comment on global politics and race relations. If Sekou Sundiatas world is one that began in Harlem in the Black Aesthetics movement of the sixties and retains the resonance of that utopian period of revolution and change, Rutherfords world is one of layered memories, nostalgia, and desire, a post-911 world where the identity politics are so much more pronounced and deadly. Ochone means a sorrow from before that is still with you, and Rutherfords vignettes are melancholy - about a dog that died, a dog that remained in Iraq, a dog in Canada barking furiously at two boys passing by on scooters - and about dancing, and eating, which she invited the audience to do at the end of her performance. Rutherford and Sundiata, with their minimal body language and rich, compelling voices, are masters of the solo performance genre that was over used and abused in the late eighties and nineties. The austerity of the setting in Tramway 1 proved the perfect foil for these works.
Philipp Gehmacher and Rachid Ouramdane
Tramway 1 also proved to be an excellent setting for contemporary dance performance. On opening night, Philipp Gehmacher and three dancers performed Incubator, a piece for two men and two women. A piece about gesture, touch, and interaction, Incubator was incredibly spare and minimal, with long stretches of virtually no action and no music. In the United States, which has seen the closure of virtually all the alternative urban spaces dedicated to experimental dance and live art with a few exceptions, it is unusual to see this sort of subtle and understated performance in such a magnificent space, particularly since most dance performances are driven by ticket sales and the need to make a profit. Based on the ordinary movements and interactions made by the body with the dancers wearing unremarkable street clothes, Incubator was reminiscent of the experimental dance performances of the sixties by artists such as Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Meredith Monk, as well as some of the Fluxus work from that time. Watching Incubator, one was reminded of the sort of attention that was demanded of the audience for the canonical work of the sixties and early seventies. Like these earlier pieces, Incubator was not easy to view for people accustomed to the fast paced media frenzy of contemporary visual culture, but for those people who stayed until the very end it was incredibly rewarding, the sort of piece in which beauty exists in the movement of a hand or the turn of a head. [1]
Discreet Deaths (Les Morts Pudiques), by Association Fin Novembre (co-founded by Julie Nioche and Rachid Ouramdane in 1996) was almost a sensory overload, with a viscous, blood-like fluid coursing through clear plastic tubing that was in a puddle on the floor and stretched between supports a bit like a pen or wrestling ring, static-filled LCD screens that alternately flickered on and off, and Ouramdanes powerful and explosive movements as well as the unusual, almost painful looking use of his feet (which he used to pick up a toddler crash test dummy) that reflected the static, hypertext nature of the piece. Discreet Deaths was conceived by Ouramdane when he initially did a search on the Internet for The Young Man and Death in the hopes of finding information about the 1946 ballet created by Jean Cocteau and Roland Petit [2]. Instead, he found all manner of deaths, including American teenagers being given the death penalty, the Goth movement in fashion and music (hence the Marilyn Manson Music at one point), teenage Muslim suicide bombers, and web sites and blogs for committing suicide. Discreet Deaths is also informed by Ouramdanes Algerian heritage. Growing up with illiterate parents exiled from Algeria in a French housing project, Ouramdanes background includes Smurf, an urban French form of street dancing [3]. Ouramdanes background along with his outsider status vis--vis French culture give this performance a raw, urban feeling that was quite a contrast with Philipp Gehmachers more classically avant-garde Incubator.
Charlotte Vanden Eynde and Kunst/WerkMarc Vanrunxt
Many of the dance performances demanded a more intimate space such as choreographer Charlotte Vanden Eyndes Map Me - an exploration of the geography of bodies performed by Vanden Eynde and Kurt Vandendriessche, her partner in real life. Map Me was a clever exploration of the idea that everyone has a male or female counterpart. Throughout the piece, projected images such as clasped hands, a dresser with open, overflowing drawers and other body parts and objects were projected onto the dancers, who fitted their bodies together in gravity-defying and surprisingly asexual positions. Conceived in 2004 while Vaden Eynde was pregnant with the couples child, Map Me is an investigation of individual identities merging into one, a male/female anima/animus creation that is literalized when the dancers tie a connecting string between her nipple and his penis and somewhat later wrap their heads together in duct tape and continue moving as though they were Siamese twins attached at the top of the head. The performance ended with the two performers donning tee shirts that together comprised the title of the performance. [4]
Choreographer Marc Vanrunxts Unspeakable was a solo performance made for Kitty Kortes Lynch on the music of the opera Neither by Morton Feldman. In Unspeakable, Kortes Lynch, dressed in a black and white evening gown with white gloves, was set off against an unusual background of greenish plastic curtains designed by Koenraad Dedobbeleer. Unspeakable explores Vanrunxts interests in the contrast between middle class tastes and avant-garde spectacle, aristocratic bearing and unexpected, anarchic actions. Kortes Lynchs movements, spare and elegant in contrast to the soaring operatic accompaniment, culminated in a dramatic finale for which Kortes Lynch donned a clear face mask over her own that clearly make breathing difficult. As the dance came to a close, Kortes Lynchs desperate need for air became more and more obvious as the cheeks of the mask were concavely distorted. At the end of the performance, her distress was obvious as she gulped air while taking her final bow.
Surprise and Delight: Ivana Mller, Eva Meyer-Keller, and Rosie Dennis
In How Heavy Are My Thoughts Ivana Mller began with the question of whether or not the head - and the brain - has a different weight when ones thoughts are heavy. With the help of a physicist, and philosopher, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a trampoline instructor, and about 50 friends, Mller undertook a variety of experiments to find out if her head was heavier than usual when she had heavy thoughts. How Heavy Are My Thoughts was a lecture performance narrated by Mllers frequent collaborator Bill Aitchinson, who read from pages that he discarded on the floor and frequently projected videos by Nils de Coster of Mllers experiments. As the absent protagonist, a role that she has taken in other works as well, Mller excited some interest, with rumors flowing that she couldnt get a visa or that she simply didnt exist [5]. Mllers absent body raises interesting questions about women, performance and subjectivity and the quality of that subjectivity when it is presented to the audience in a mediated format - in this case video and videos of various authorities on knowledge. Mller didnt speak much (if at all) in the videos, and the audience is left wondering if Mller is perhaps simply a construction of Bill Aitchinson, who seems to be willing to travel around the world giving this performance lecture in his erudite British accent without the benefit of Mllers presence. Does Mller actually exist? She does have an email address posted on the Association LISA web site, but there doesnt seem to be any pertinent information about her (or any information at all) on the web site provided to the NRLA (http://www.theatergasthuis.nl/).
Eva Meyer-Kellers Death is Certain explored all of the possible ways in which a strawberry could be executed. In other performance/dance pieces, Meyer-Keller had used ordinary objects (toy soldiers made of ice) or actions (pub tricks and school boy pranks) in order to give them magical and unusual connotations. Death is Certain, which was supposed to have been done with cherries rather than strawberries, was developed from Meyer-Kellers fascination with fairy tales, where objects come to life and respond to the protagonists. As Meyer-Keller put it in an interview with Sally de Kunst in 2003,
I'm just handling/ using harmless things, that everyone has at home in the kitchen or in their toolbox... Things you find in the supermarket... Everybody knows how it feels to have a knife, a hair dryer or an iron in their hand. At the same time, I'm not trying to recreate a kitchen on stage at all. It's more that I invite these objects into the theatre and let them stand for what they signify. Throughout the performance they gain or change their Eigenschaften/ characteristics..... In the mind they might become torture tools...[6]
The audience was invited to join Meyer-Keller on the stage, where she had set up two tables - one with strawberries and one with ordinary household tools. For the next 40 minutes, she proceeded to impale, ignite and otherwise injure the strawberries with most banal instruments of torture, until finally there were no more strawberries left. According to the NRLA program, Death is Certain was supposed to be about killing and death - at least in the imagination of those viewing the actions. But Death is Certain was really funny too, because the object being killed was an innocuous strawberry.
One of the advantages of a larger space for the NRLA in 2006 was the ability to schedule a number of more intimate performances because of the available space. In spite of the generosity of scheduling, it was still difficult to gain admittance to many of these performances, a problem that was addressed by scheduling a second or even third showing of the work. Rosie Dennis Access All Areas, an improvised spoken word, movement, and dance piece that quickly filled up on the first night of the festival, was re-presented on Saturday night. A native of Australia, Dennis had come to the NRLA via the NRLA Midland, where she had performed in 2003 and 2005. Access All Areas was an amazing piece, in part because Dennis, using only her own body, managed to weave together a tapestry of stream of consciousness language, restricted movements that were alternately fast and slow, and percussive sounds made from clapping, slapping, and snapping her hands and fingers. The piece was about the claustrophobia and anxiety engendered by modern life, which was reflected both in the movements of Dennis body and in the seating of the audience, who were encouraged to pile up toward the back of the performance space, leaving only a small crescent of space for Dennis to perform. [7]
Performances for One Person
On the second or third morning of Dedomenicis ConCrits, performance critic Antoine Pickles noted that actions for one individual at a time were not as interesting as actions done before a collective. Judging from the response, most of the participants that day did not agree with Pickles conclusions [8]. In fact, there were only four one on one actions at the NRLA in 2006, slightly down from the previous year, which had five or six, if one counted the microperformance classes by FrenchMottershead [9]. In the seventies and early eighties, individual actions for one or two people were much more common in the US and Europe, partly because the artists were at such pains to distance themselves from traditional dance, fine art, and theater. Performance art in the seventies was more influenced by the large-scale minimalist sculptures of artists such as Robert Morris and Donald Judd than it was by theater. Many artists were concerned with the idea of making or doing something that was even more minimal than a large, non-representational cube that was so abstract that it ultimately landed back on the life side of the art/life divide. In this climate, the logical step was to discard the object in favor of the actions of the artists body. Given this history, Drawing Breath by Jordan McKenzie was particularly interesting, because it referenced this period by asking the viewer to acknowledge the body that makes the drawing as well as the process by which the drawing is made. McKenzie has been interested in the relationship between drawing, minimalism and performance for some time, doing such actions as pushing a white cube through city streets while drawing on it or making a video of himself while drawing in a white box. For this performance, the viewer entered the room and was approached by McKenzie, who unbuttoned his shirt and placed the viewers hand on his chest. McKenzie then moved to a table, drew on a white paper bag, blew it up, and then threw it against a white wall, thus making a drawing of the performance. McKenzies piece asked that the viewer consider how the act of drawing is in fact a corporeal action, fueled by the breath of the artist.
Sam Roses Between One And Another, which she described in the program as a series of poetic performance actions and images for an audience of one, turned out to be a manicure. Rose lovingly clipped cuticles, buffed nails, and painted fingers, but only after first asking the participant viewer to think about the last time that somebody had held them. Between One and Another, like Roses earlier work, is about corporeal jouissance, an erotic coming together of two bodies. Using the manicure as a vehicle for exploring ideas such as the boundaries of the body, intimacy, and the willingness to deal with the abject, Rose concluded the manicure by inserting her own finger into a jar of nail polish remover, cleaning the nail, and then peeling it off in order to present it to the participant in a small glass jar. This gesture, so unabashedly intimate and erotic, was also rather repulsive. Rose gives the viewer something that was/was not part of herself - the illusion of an intimate connection with one of the performers and a fingernail that turns out to be a facsimile - an acrylic press. The fingernail, which on had seemed so inviting on Roses gentle, caring hands, suddenly becomes abject, a corporeal cast away.
Durational Performances
Thanks to the fairly mild Glasgow weather and the Tramway courtyard, which permitted several outdoor events, there were more durational actions this year than last. Many of these actions pushed the artists, and in some cases the audience, to their physical and psychological limits. For five hours, Daniel Whitehouse knelt on a map in the cold and wet as he scrubbed and carved a large piece of stone with his bare hands for his piece Yard Dog, which was about the cultural and geographical ramifications of the council estates. In point 33, distilled Varsha Nair painstakingly mapped an installation space with endless rolls of masking tape, stored in a large apron that she wore for the duration of the piece. By the end of the action, her feet, which she used to press down the tape, were shaking as she continued to move around the room. A postmodern, postcolonial nomad of the twenty-first century resided in a country other than the one of her birth, Nair has done a number of actions based on the 33 points of the compass, all of which point in different directions. The following day in the same space, Tejal Shah performed I Am Her, a piece about hysteria, femininity, identity, and gender construction for which Shah first prepared a syrupy solution of sugar, lemon, and water and then used it to literally rip her body hair out by its roots. I Am Her, which was unfortunately interrupted by an ill-timed fire drill, addressed the hysterical female body from the position of the non-western other. To engender oneself, particularly when your skin and hair colour already marks you as outside the Eurocentric regime of representation, is a lot of work for an outcome that might or might not be successful.
Live art cannot escape the presence and meaning of the body, particularly in the case of durational actions where the body of the artist becomes exhausted and wasted before the eyes of the viewer. I Am Her was about the raced and gendered body; The Hollow Lady, by Katie Etheridge, evoked the mediated, post-symbolic body. Placing a video screen inside her clothing, which she parted to reveal her inner workings, Etheridge simultaneously rewarded and thwarted the viewers desire to see and know more about her body, which remained impenetrable, nothing more than a promise of intimate knowledge. Kris Kanavans Act[ion] rendered the masochistic (gay) male body into a sculptural work of art. For more than two hours Kanavan, lay face up on the floor, his head encased in melted white wax while his slender young body was exposed and vulnerable. A second action done the following day, with Kanavan lying face down this time, had to be aborted when Kanavans pulse slowed. Rose Hills feral performance, The Exchange Part II, was disturbingly intimate. Against a soundtrack of wild monkeys shrieking and calling, Hill, wearing shorts and an undershirt, crouched on the floor, singing to herself while separating hair and meat out of bread dough whilst a reddish, bloody fluid dripped on her head. A survivor of cancer, Hill literalized her outsider status with this piece, becoming the sacrificial lamb, autistic savant, or the holy fool, engaged in some mysterious preparation. Hills mutilated body, clothed in a form-fitting shirt that made her missing breast (lost to cancer) readily apparent, was the twenty first century female counterpart to the mutilated body of Christ.
For the twenty-six years that it has been offered, the NRLA has consistently showcased the most difficult, cutting edge work. In 2005, Franko B, the artist in residence that year, kicked off the event with an action that was literally stomach turning. Back this year as a the DJ, Franko, who has apparently stopped making this kind of bloody work, was a facilitator rather than a performer. This year it was Ron Athey who pushed the limits of viewer tolerance with his action Incorruptible Flesh (il luminous). Lying on a metal cart, his head attached to a frame with fish hooks placed in his skin, his scrotum swollen to five times its size thanks to a saline solution, and his solar, tattooed anus - Batailles solar anus made literal - Athey, unable to move or even interact with the viewers remained immobile for 6 hours (although his performance, like Shahs, was also interrupted by the fire drill). Atheys HIV positive body, leaky, penetrated, feminized, and now aging, still has the power to shock. Like the late Bob Flanagan who also inscribed his illness (cystic fibrosis) on the surface of his body, Athey turns his disease - one that is largely invisible to those unaware of Atheys status - inside out, externalizing and aestheticizing his pain. Like Hill, Atheys references are Christological and profoundly spiritual, a gay boy from a fundamentalist background on the sacrificial altar of heterosexist conformity in the name of God. Incorruptible Flesh (il luminous) was unbearably beautiful, evoking in many viewers a feeling of profound tenderness and protectiveness towards Athey.
Installations and Exhibitions
As in previous years, the NRLA included several performance installations. This year, artists were able to take advantage of the courtyard, the greenhouses, the larger downstairs lobby, the T1 seating bank and the Project room. One of the highlights of the NRLA was Manuel Vasons Pure Collaboration, photographs of performers, past and present that have been associated with the NRLA in the upper foyer. It was against this background that Kris Kanavan performed his two actions on Friday and Saturday afternoon. For the duration of the festival, Lisa Wesley and Andrew Blackwood sat in the Greenhouse silently constructing a frozen urban landscape full of disturbing and incongruous juxtapositions such as a cemetery, a factory, an exclusive high rise building, and an elevated motorway. Eduard Bersudskys kinetic sculpture Noahs Ark was reminiscent of the work of Jean Tinguely. An animated assemblage of found objects, intricate carvings, and animal bones, including the skulls of a deer and a lamb, that first sprung into action at the opening and then subsequently erupted into movement throughout the duration of the exhibition, accompanied by haunting music and synchronized lighting, Noahs Ark is reminiscent of a circus side show, evoking a melancholic nostalgia. Noise-Makers Fifes, an audio-visual collective of Marc Wroblewski and Geert Feytons, installed Naos, amazing self-made instruments along with (according to the program) electronics, effects, and environmental sound recordings in the project room for two days. Constructed from found objects, Naos included approximately 30 sound sculptures. Ultimately, Naos was a magical, seemingly impossible landscape that seemed both lunar and subterranean. It was a shock to realize that the project room was simply a square space after the installation was taken down.
Pernille Spences I look upI look down, an outdoor video projection of the artist in a free fall from an airplane just prior to opening her parachute could be seen from the reception area and the courtyard. Played as a video loop, Spence seemed to be flying and floating rather than falling, a bird woman at play in the upper atmosphere. The loveliest, most evocative installation was Sea View by Geraldine Pilgrim, the artistic director of the Corridor Performance Company that creates site-specific events in unusual, sometimes abandoned buildings. Sea View was just such a building - a Bed and Breakfast that was slowly being reclaimed by the ocean, impossibly situated in the cavernous space of Tramway2. Walking through the corridor, the viewer/performer was confronted by holes in the wall, through which were visible videos of submerged men and women, gently treading water and looking inquisitively at the viewer. The installation culminated in a light room with a large bed made up with crisp white linen, a sea view and a sea experience - salt water dripping down exactly where the weary traveler would place his or her head.
Captured
Sea View which was originally intended for the balcony, ended up sharing the space with Captured, a video program organized through CRATE (Creative Response with Art, Technology and Experimentation, based at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design), organized by Lei Cox and Spence in 2005. Captured included Video Installations, videos of performances that were done for the camera, web based work, and interactive digital work that depended upon the audience for its completion. It was also accompanied by an excellent, web-based catalogue that includes images of the work, biographies of the artists, original essays by academics, artists and scholars, and links to important venues including New Moves International. The catalogue, which was posted off-line at the exhibition site, can presently be accessed at http://www.crate.uk.com/. Both Cox and Spence had pieces in the exhibition. Coxs Teleportation Experiment V3 used existing technology to suggest Beam Me Up Scotty type travel from one space and place to another. Spences Waiting, by contrast was a quiescent piece that used the technology of video to condense time so that two performers appeared to occupy the same space day and night as the clouds change. Jackie Hatfields Canine Stacatto a musical composition of dog barks is assembled through an editing process. Matt Hulses Take Me Home initially appears to have been made many years ago, a result of grained black and white stock and time-lapse technique. In this surrealist video, a naked man rushed through the architecture, dances, and interacts with the screen itself. Steve Littmans video installation (five LCD projectors were used) Static Statements with its hard-edged, geometric forms, high tech delivery and impersonal title initially appears to be a technological homage to minimalist aesthetics. Interspersed with the dissolving grid-like pattern is footage of Littmans own body, including close-ups of him shaving, bathing, and working that was taken over the years. Static Statements is actually an incredibly vulnerable portrait of aging masculinity. Much of the text, as well as the red grid, which turns out to be an extreme close up of a blood testing strip, makes reference to Littmans diabetes, literally corporealising the impersonal grids of minimalist art.
Talks and Panels
Rounding out the events at the NRLA were several talks, panels, and Films. Bina Sarkar, the editor of Gallerie Magazine (India) chaired the panel on Asian women artists called Mapping the Body: Body Dialectics by Women Artists From Asia that included Nair and Shah, as well as Bubu and Yoshiko Shimada, and Hsu Su-Chen, whose video installation Self-Portrait 1 showed the nude artist drawing her viscera onto a large projection of her own body, thus literalizing the notion of the mapped body. Master of Ceremonies Ian Smith, who had had a backseat role the previous year, gave a talk about his day job - artistic director of the company Mischief La-Bas and his art circus cum carnival Painful Creatures, which toured six cities and charged no admission. One of the highlights of the films and talks was Sited Recited a panel chaired and curated by Dee Heddon that included Geraldine Pilgrim, Stephen Hodge, Ron Athey, Sarah Cole, Angus Farquhar, and George Wyllie, each of whom spoke for about 20 minutes on their work, which involved performative uses of specific sites. Most of the artists spoke about their work while showing images or brief video clips. Athey chose instead to show Ronnie Lee, an early film with the actor as a stand-in for Athey. When the camera panned lovingly on a welling cut that Ronnie Lee had just made on his arm, several members of the audience passed out, adding quite a bit of excitement to the proceedings.
Conclusion
In the end, one of the best things about the NRLA is that no matter where it takes place, there is complete acceptance of anything and anybody, short of non-consensual physical harm. Several of the best images of the NRLA 2006, with which this essay will close, are the guerilla actions that took place in and around Tramway. Not to be found on any program or even on the daily diary, these unruly actions made by undisciplined bodies are what make the NRLA so unique. A short list follows. Since this essay is published online and thus easy to change, I would invite anyone reading it to add to this list:
1. The young man with the thick dark glasses, goatee and striped sweater who somehow always managed to be in the front of the daily photograph taken by FrenchMottershead (A Daily Ritual).
2. Tejal Shah and Varsha Nair garbed in matching white outfits that were connected by two long sleeves, draping themselves onto the architecture of the Tramway and becoming part of the space for a half hour or more.
3. Richard Dedomenici, wearing an official armband and directing people milling about outside after the fire drill.
4. Various people wearing moustaches for no good reason. Some of these people showed up in A Daily Ritual.
5. Franko B bringing his dog into the breakfast area at the Ibis Hotel and along for the DJ sessions in the evening.
6. Ron Athey, post-performance, in an orange and white polyester Puma tracksuit.
7. The free poster of Kris Kanavan, photographed by Manuel Vason.
8. No actions that took place in the toilet.
Jennie Klein, 2006
Footnotes
[1] One of the drawbacks of Tramway 1, as well as some of the smaller spaces in Tramway, was that people were able to leave performances much more easily. The people who left Incubator early unfortunately made a lot of noise leaving, which really took away from the quiet and meditative quality of the piece.
[2] Brian McCormick, Suicidal Tendencies: A Culture of Transience Goes Global, Gay City News http://www.gaycitynews.com/gcn_518/suicidaltendencies.html consulted 7/17/06.
[3] http://www.finnovembre.org/ consulted 7/17/06.
[4] Information about this performance can be found at http://www.kwaadbloed.com/, consulted 7/17/06
[5] If the internet is to be believed, she does exist and is a practicing artist: http://www.associationlisa.com/ivana/ivanahome.htm
[6] This interview was originally published in conjunction with the Klapstuck Festival Program and is excerpted on Meyer-Kellers web site: http://www.evamk.de/, consulted 7/20/06
[7] Reader who wish to get an idea of Dennis work can hear audio excerpts and view short clips of her pieces on her web site: http://www.suture.com.au/
[8] This is not to say that the point that Pickles made was not well taken. In Europe and the UK at least, artists starting out often do the one on one action, partly because it is such a definitive break from traditional theater to do that sort of work. In the US, this type of action is almost unheard of today, and thus seems very fresh and radical to this writer. One of the few exceptions has been Linda Montano, who read palms in the window of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in the late eighties.
[9] It is necessary to arrive early to book a spot for a one to one action. Of the four offered, I was only able to secure spots for two of them.
Image: Manuel Vason