Let’s Try That Once More, This Time In The Past: Performance & Documentation

Sunday, February 19th at 7:30 pm, $9 suggested donation.

Johanna Linsley and Christa Holka in attendance for discussion.

 Purchase Tickets

(From The Organizers) As performance navigates the shifting of its institutional position – from practitioners’ self-identification as alternative/radical/revolutionary to blockbuster museum fodder – artists and academics (and artist-academics) are re-evaluating the stories performance tells about itself.

The debate about performance and documentation, which for many years centered on questions of the inherent “liveness” of performance, has recently moved to issues of performance “remains” (Rebecca Schneider) and the particular histories and forms of knowledge that performance can engender.

From Marina Abramovic’s outings at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, to groups like the UK-based Performance Re-enactment Society, strategies for the preservation and re-presentation of performance history are being developed, and a host of new challenges and political problems are emerging.

The hugely influential Franklin Furnace archive, for example, has in recent years been the subject of numerous exhibitions and a book published in 2010 (Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-Garde: A History of the Future, Toni Sant). Begun as a gallery in founding director Martha Wilson’s Tribeca storefront in 1976, the organisation shifted into a virtual space in 1997, its archives and programs becoming represented primarily online. Its mission is to present and preserve such ephemeral media as artists’ books and multiples, temporary installations, and performance art, and to support the work of artists in the early stages of their careers.

A number of new initiatives have also arisen to creatively produce performance documentation, while thinking critically about what performance documentation can be and do. The new annual publication “Emergency INDEX” documents performances in the words of their creators, in hopes of capturing a state-of-the-field view of contemporary performance. INDEX includes performances of every kind, from any genre, made anywhere in the world for any purpose. INDEX’s sole requirement is that authors explain the purpose of the work, as well as describe the performance itself. An index of shared terms provides another level of documentation and an alternative way to connect geographically or stylistically far-flung works. The inaugural issue of INDEX documents performances from 2011, and is forthcoming in March 2012. INDEX is published by Ugly Duckling Presse as part of the Emergency series, which includes PLAYSCRIPTS (a series of radical performance notation), and ANALYSIS (a forthcoming series of theoretical texts on performance.

It is clear, then, that the document significantly conditions performance’s ability to be local and international, present and mediated, obscure and accessible, politically active and institutionally absorbed. This presentation and round-table event will touch on some of these rich and varied activities currently happening in this field. We will consider the role of photography in performance, from its use as documentation for publicity and funding to its potential as a collaborative element in the production of new work. We will look at some of the institutions and initiatives the produce and disseminate performance documentation. Finally, the event will stage an initial conversation aimed at facing some of the challenges performance and its documents poses.

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Martha Wilson is an artist and the founding director of Franklin Furnace. Wilson’s own work in photography, performance, and video art explores female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personas. She was also a member of DISBAND, an all-female performance group; it is in this context that she developed the character of Alexander M. Plague, Jr., one of several personas (both fictional and real; including that of Barbara Bush) that she has adopted over the years.

Matvei Yankelevich is the author of Boris by the Sea (Octopus Books) and Alpha Donut (United Artists Books). He is the translator and editor of Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms (Ardis/Overlook). He is a member of the writing faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse, a volunteer-run, non-profit publishing house in Brooklyn, New York. With Yelena Gluzman, he edited the Emergency Gazette from 1999-2002, for which he wrote many reviews of experimental theater. He continues to work on Emergency projects: Index and Playscripts.

Yelena Gluzman conceives and directs experimental theater, recently School for Salomés (2011) at the Collapsable Hole in NYC, Steal Life #1 (2009) and The Emancipated Spectator (2010) at Superdeluxe in Tokyo. She is interested in various issues around repetition, and is pursuing this via a production of The Bacchae performed entirely by 3-6 year old children. She teaches at the University of Tokyo and the experimental art school Yotsuya Art Studium (sic). She is an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse, where she leads the Paperless Books Department and, with Matvei Yankelevich, edits the Emergency series of texts on performance.

Christa Holka is an American photographer who lives and works in London. Her work mainly uses photography to deal with issues of documenting and archiving the communities in which she exists. In recent years, she has increasingly worked with performance artists, documenting the work of such renowned artists as Vaginal Davis, Lois Weaver, Ron Athey, Carmelita Tropicana, Penny Arcade and many others.

Johanna Linsley is a researcher, writer, producer and performance artist. She is a founding partner of UnionDocs and research assistant on Performing Documents, a collaborative research project with the University of Bristol, the Arnolfini Arts Centre and Inbetween Time productions.

* Photo of Dickie Beau in “THIS IS NOT A DREAM” directed by Gavin Butt and Ben Walters and Presented by Performance Matters, a collaboration between Goldsmiths, University of London, University of Roehampton, and the Live Art Development Agency financially assisted by AHRC. Documentation by Christa Holka.

(Source : Union Docs Website)

Ten essays, written by leading art historians and critics, including Stan Douglas, Mieke Bal and Beatriz Colomina, address precedents for the projection of images in space, including nineteenth-century magic lantern shows and the novel spatial/temporal representations pioneered by Surrealists and experimental filmmakers during the early and mid-twentieth century. Central to the book’s thesis are various alternatives–which were investigated by adherents of Expanded Cinema in the 70s and resurrected by video artists in the 90s–to the conventional portrayals of space and time promoted by the mainstream culture industry. Art of Projection serves as a timely reconsideration of media art’s history.

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Contents:

Stan Douglas and Christopher Eamon
Forward

Stan Douglas in conversation with Christopher Eamon
Regarding Shadows

Tom Gunning
The Long and The Short of it: Centuries of Projecting Shadows, From Natural Magic to The Avant – Garde

Veatriz Colomina
Enclosed by Images: The Eamese’ Multiscreen Architecture

Scen Lütticken
Liberating Time

Branden W. Joseph
“My Mind Split Open”: Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable

Gregor Stemmrich
Dan Graham’s Cinema and Film Theory

David Joselit
Touching Pictures: Toward a Political Science of Video

Thomas McDonough
Production/Projection: Notes on The Capitalist Fairy Tale

Mark Nash
Between Cinema and a Hard Place: Dilemmas of The Moving Image as a Post-Medium

Mary Ann Doane
The Location of The Image: Cinematic Projection and Scale in Modernity

Mieka Bal
Setting The Stage: The Subject Mise En Scène

Loie Fuller Added by Ola Maciejewska

Welcome to this weeks Network Round Up. We’ve gathered the top most viewed, liked, and discussed members, content, photos, and blog posts. Warning: Some of these are NSFW. Contemporary Performance Network is a social media / community organizing network providing artists, presenters, scholars and festivals a platform to meet, share work, and collaborate. Join now and share your work with over 3090 global members.

Also over at the blog we’ve been featuring Italian Performance companies all week. Let us know if we are missing some of your favorites and ones we don’t know. Send us a tweet at @pformart with your thoughts.

CP Network Blog Posts:

Top Members:

1	Corinne Cappelletti New York, NY, United States
2	John Giskes Rotterdam, Netherlands
3	FACT/SF San Francisco, CA, United States
4	Ola Maciejewska Rotterdam, Netherlands
5	riccardo attanasio london, United Kingdom
6	Bruno Listopad | DISJOINTED ARTS Rotterdam, Netherlands
7	Ivy Castellanos Brooklyn, NY, United States
8	The Present Tense Art Initiative Boston, MA, United States
9	Arianne Foks Paris, France
10	Sandrine Schaefer Cambridge, MA, United States

Top Content:

1	What is “visual art performance”? Posted by Caden Manson (Network Curator) on November 29, 2011
2	Sasha Waltz + Architecture Added by FACT/SF on January 31, 2012
3	Loie Fuller Added by Ola Maciejewska on February 3, 2012
4	EOB Added by Carlos Soto on February 2, 2012
5	trans2.1 Added by Nebahat Erpolat on January 29, 2012
6	Archiving the Ephemeral- The Present Tense 2005-NOW February 15, 2012 from 6pm to 7pm at BUAG Stone Gallery 855 Commonwealth Ave Boston, MA 02215 Organized By: The Present Tense Art Initiative
7	HIGHLIGHT – Tiago Cadete / EIRA Added by Ampersand Colectivo on January 29, 2012
8	29 Polygraphie Added by Simone Neumann-Salva on January 23, 2012
9	Palingénésie analogique Added by riccardo attanasio on February 1, 2012
10	Opening of False Summit February 9, 2012 from 6pm to 7pm at BUAG at the Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 Organized By: Sandrine Schaefer

Top Blog Posts:

1	Palingénésie analogique Added by riccardo attanasio on February 1, 2012
2	Featured: Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio – Tragedia Endogonidia Added by Contemporary Performance Network on February 2, 2012
3	Calling the Dragon Added by Annette Arlander on January 31, 2012
4	Featured: Volksbühne and Frank Castorf (Berlin, Germany) Added by Contemporary Performance Network on February 2, 2012
5	the amazed drill suffers with the tiresome color. this ‘art’ stalls my presence without the unofficial apple. the slim polemicist refrains before any paste. an agenda despairs against the attentive… Added by Tucker Sampson on January 28, 2012
6	THEATRE MANIFESTO Added by Darren A. Furniss on January 27, 2012
7	MASKA / Vol. XXVI, No. 143–144 (winter 2011) Added by Maska Ljubljana on February 2, 2012
8	Contemporary Performance TXTS – Evan Johnson Added by Evan Johnson on May 4, 2011
9	Featured: Gisèle Vienne (Paris, France) Added by Contemporary Performance Network on February 2, 2012
10	Accidental Festival, in role Week 9 Added by Joella Tepper on January 29, 2012

Share Your News And Thoughts With The Network Here–>

Top Photos:

1	Loie Fuller Added by Ola Maciejewska on February 3, 2012
2	EOB Added by Carlos Soto on February 2, 2012
3	trans2.1 Added by Nebahat Erpolat on January 29, 2012
4	29 Polygraphie Added by Simone Neumann-Salva on January 23, 2012
5	0084 Added by Sara Panamby on May 30, 2011
6	solo series/ part one Added by Steffi Wieser on January 28, 2012
7	Noon Bloom “Obfuscation:The White Orphan Finale” (detail) Added by Hoesy on January 22, 2012
8	2009Lean1 Added by Ronald Bal on January 29, 2012
9	solo series/ part one Added by Steffi Wieser on January 28, 2012
10	trans6.1 Added by Nebahat Erpolat on January 29, 2012

Share Your Photos To The Network Here–>

See you on the network!
Caden Manson
Curator/Editor Contemporary Performance Network

Troia’s Discount

photo alvise nicoletti

This present time. The sacrifice for love of two casseurs, Euryalus and Nisus.

Three women, Dido, Creusa and Lavinia, linked by an accidental encounter with the same man. Ragazzi di vita who have not fulfilled their destiny and dropped out. Creatures of the night. For all that remains is a thin handful of those unlit hours – that instant where everything can happen  as they embrace unconsciously the halting posts of their road to Crucifixion. Then, straight down. Towards hell. With no stopping places. Grasping onto Medusas driftwood against the backdrop of a shopping mall. Down. Deeper and down. Reaching the final exhaustion point of the will to live. To a point where, perhaps, they live life for the first time.

Wunderkammer Soap

Macadmia Nut Brittle

photo heloise lechat

We do not know what truth is… the most important thing is that ambiguity is clear.       In an age of pre-cooked passions and fashioned feelings we gorge ourselves with Dennis Cooper stories and the rough poetry that fills up his universe. With a Mozart-ish impudence we tell a cruel fairy-tale about adolescence. Our work is interwoven with the themes which are central to Cooper’s lysergic vision - life preservation based around uneasiness, inadequacy and loss. The overnight waiting of four devourers of Haagen Dasz ice-cream (macadamia nut brittle, as in the title), sitting in a hospital, on an airplane or in a tree house, who have the choice to discover themselves as they are – or to reinvent themselves and run the risk of losing control. We are victims, executioners, protagonists in this snuff movie that life offers, in desperate search of love in an impossible world where, at the end of the day, Nature, like men, is a bitch and unfaithful.  Always.

Pinter’s Anatomy

Claustrophobic space_violence_ambiguity_domain_time discontinuity: obscure past/lying present. Pinterian tools to scan the game that erase the untouchable edges of relationships. Memory is a refuge, the Alliance Ark, an operating table to sew up the subjective truth, where lies are normal. Human topographies, parked next to a checkpoint, analyzed under an inhospitable neon lights that show the contemporary weakness. Our devious nature is a frozen crust where we skate in loop and we don’t care that time melts beneath our feet every kind of compactness. Every kind of difference. The semiotic manipulation process of passions is not completed. The dissected death bodies of what we were come to light again. NOTICE: looking for a nylon lawn, even a second hand one, for an homologative definitive burial.

Video NSFW:

Displace - Muta Imago - ph© Luigi Angelucci

The shows (a + b)3 (2007), Lev (2008), Madeleine (2009), have been hosted by  festivals such us RomaEuropa Festival, Napoli Teatro Festival Italia (that was also the producer of the performance Napoli. Primo passo nelle città di sotto), Vie Scena Contemporanea Festival, Santarcangelo International Festival of the Arts, Inteatro Festival, Bassano Opera Festival, Primavera dei Teatri, Biennale dei Giovani Artisti d’Europa e del Mediterraneo and in various international festivals such us Premiéres Festival (Strasbourg), Festival Cyl (Salamanca), Fadjr Festival (Teheran), Bipod Festival (Beirut), Clipa Aduma Festival (Tel Aviv), Unidram Festival (Potsdam), Temps d’Images (Cluj-Napoca, Budapest), Teatro/Theater: Italienischer Theaterherbst (Berlin), Festival International des Brigittines (Bruxelles), Théâtre de la Ville (Paris).

In 2009 the company won prizes such as: the Premio Speciale Ubu, the Premio della critica from the Associazione Nazionale dei Critici di Teatro and the Prize DE.MO./Movin’UP. In the same year Claudia Sorace won the Premio Cavalierato Giovanile della Provincia di Roma and the Premio Internazionale Valeria Moriconi as “Futuro della scena”.

From 2009, Muta Imago receives MiBAC’s (Italian Ministry of Culture) subsidy as Progetto Speciale (Special Project)
In 2011, after participating in the XXIX Festival Fadjr Tehran, Claudia Sorace received the award for “Best Director” for (a + b)3 and Lev.

The Displace project, on which the group is now working, foresees the creation of three different performances: Displace #1 La rabbia rossa(premiered on october 2010 at the RomaEuropa Festival), Displace #2 Rovine (which will be at the Festival delle Colline Torinesi 2011) and Displace, the final production that will emerge from the first two performances.

PRODUCTIONS:

(a+b)3
Displace #1 La Rabbia Rossa
Displace #2 Rovine
Displace
Comeacqua
Don Giovanni (Looking For)
Lev
Madeleine

IMAGES:

VIDEO:

(a+b)3

Lev

Madeleine

• Santa Sofia.Teatro Khmer (1985)
• Kaputt Necropolis (1984)
• Les Miserables (1986)
• The beauty of ancient (1987)
• The Descent of Inanna (1989)
• Gilgamesh (1990)
• Hamlet. The vehement externality of the death of a mollusc (1992)
• Aesop’s Fables (1992)
• Masoch. The triumphs of the theater as a passive power, guilt and defeat (1993)
• Lucifer. The more a word is all the more old sinks (1993)
• Oresteia (organic A comedy?) (1995)
• Buchettino (1995)
• Julius Caesar (1997)
• Genesis. From the Museum of Sleep (1999)
• Tragedy Endogonidia , divided into:
• C. # 01 Cesena. The Tragedy of Endogonidia Episode (2002)
• A. # 02 Avignon. Episode II Endogonidia of Tragedy (2002)
• B. # 03 BERLIN. Episode III Endogonidia of Tragedy (2003)
• BR. BR # 04. # 04 BRUSSELS / BRUSSELS. Episode IV Endogonidia of Tragedy (2003)
• NL. BERGEN # 05. Episode V Endogonidia of Tragedy (2003)
• P # 06 PARIS. Episode VI Endogonidia of Tragedy (2003)
• R. # 07 ROME. Episode VII Endogonidia of Tragedy (2003)
• S. # 08 STRASBOURG. Episode VIII Endogonidia of Tragedy (2004)
• L. # 09 LONDON. Episode IX Endogonidia of Tragedy (2004)
• MARSEILLE M. # 10. Episode X Endogonidia of Tragedy (2004)
• C. # 11 Cesena. Episode XI Endogonidia of Tragedy (2004)
• The Cryonic Chants (2005) [dir. Claudia Castellucci]
• Hey Girl! (2006)
• Prudent vexilla Regis Hells (2007)
• Just narrabile Madrigal (2007) [dir. Chiara Guidi]
• Inferno (2008)
• Purgatory (2008)
• Paradise (2008)
• On the Concept of Face in the Son of God (2010)
• Parsifal (2011)
• The Minester’s Black Veil (2011)
• Buchettino I Catalugna (2012) [dir. Chiara Guidi]
• La Seconda Neanderthal (2012) [dir. Claudia Castellucci]
• Buchettino I Japan (2012) [dir. Chiara Guidi]

Books:

Videos:

Pathosformel is Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Paola Villani, young artists based in Milan. Their work explores new ways of using the body on stage and radically experiments with movement and visual imagery. The Timidity of Bones was created in 2007 when it won special mention at Premio Scenario, Italian theatre’s leading awards celebration. In 2008 it was an award-winner at Sezione Autonoma in Cesena, an event established by Romeo Castellucci’s Societas Raffaello Sanzio.

Works:

AN AFTERNOON LOVE
2011, 20’

Ph_ Paola Villani

An unbroken basketball training that, behind the image of athleticism and competition, let the eye perceive the world of relationships and intimacy existing among it. The relation between a man and his object has the same complexity of the one between two men? It looks like a fierce battle with the object but becomes the most persuasive of conquests; it assume the nuances of human life to return suddenly to be just a training: it is a duo choreography with just one man, who sketches the relationship in motion we always have one each other.

THE FIRST OUTSKIRT
2010, 40’

ph_paola villani

Three anatomical bodies have abdicated every impulse to be visibly modeled by the outside: my arms follow his movements, carving every single gesture; my chest slightly insists against his, to drawn an expression in its simple inclination. It’s almost an unarmed body, which – as a parasite – feeds himself with my movements.
Ecce homo: here is the man, a matter moved from the outside, in which every expression is made out of technical precision; in which even the simplest gesture is always helped by thousand muscles.

THE TIMIDITY OF BONES
2009, 25’

Ph_ Paola Villani

Eerily impressed into the surface of a large, luminous white screen, the outline of bones and skeletal forms appear. Perhaps the debris of buried civilizations, fragments build to form a floating frieze, and finally a body that evokes an unimaginably distant and mysterious past. Nose, thigh bone, knuckles and shoulder blade are broken up and shown through a thin epidermis that reveals everything and that allows a radiographic dance or a floating bass-relief to emerge.

THE SKINNY DISTANCE
2008, 30’

A first square joins the scene, sliding on a system of parallel cables, followed by the live sound o fan harmonium and a violin. A space fills of thin colored squares, which seem to graze one against the other as walking men in a crowded public square. As in a magical tale, bodies have been transformed in anonymous shapes, waiting to be reconstructured by the spectator’s eye as human presences.

Video

[The timidity of bones]

La più piccola distanza
[The skinny distance]