Tag: performance art

categorized-art-collection:

Gina Pane, “Action Psyche” (1974): Along with the poetic descriptions accompanying them, these photographs on glossy white cardstock paper document a performance in which the artist applied make-up while cutting parts of her body and face with a razor as she sat in front of a mirror. “Throughout the grizzly display, her impassive stare increased her detachment. Excruciating, both to herself and for her audience to watch, Pane’s art addressed the anaesthetization of a society numbed by the violence in everyday life. During the 1970s, Pane was the star of Body Art, a phenomenon that used the body itself as its primary material. ‘One has to understand “My body in Action” not as the skin of a painting enclosing its interior but as a WRAPPING/UNFOLDING bringing back depth to the edge of things,’ said Pane. In her extreme acts of self-mutilation, Pane equated masquerade with masochism, questioning the relationship between vulnerability and violence. Like other feminist art, her work also explored the sexual stereotypes of female passivity and male aggression.“ (The 20th Century Artbook, London: Phaidon Press, 1999. p. 357)

Source: archives.carre.pagesperso-orange.fr

Stuart Brisley

The performance 10 Days happened during Brisley‘s DAAD artist exchange to Berlin. During this performance, which took place between 21 to 31 December 1973, Brisley offered the food he would usually consume to his audience, essentially living without any source of food for the whole 10-day duration of the performance.

Brisley recreated the performance at the Acme Gallery in London between 21 and 31 December 1978.    
     
Mitchell Algus 2011

Source: stuartbrisley.com

blue-voids:

Janine Antoni – Slumber, 1994

“Antoni sleeps in the gallery for 28 days. While she sleeps, an EEG machine records her REM patterns, which she then weaves into a blanket from her night gown under which she sleeps.”

Source: blue-voids

psyche8eros:

Slaven Tolj et Maria Grazio “Food for
Survival” Performance (photo documentation) | Helsinki, 1993 
via racinenova.tumblr

At the time, Sarajevo, Slaven’s former city, was under siege, just as Dubrovnik had been a few short years earlier. During that time, aid would be dropped on those cities in the form of dehydrated food products that could be made into a soup by adding water; the packet read “food for survival.” The two artists mixed the soup and covered their bodies with it, eating it off of one another. The two combine an act of desperation (consuming to survive) with an act of love, and the stark contrast between the two highlights the struggle for survival that the food embodies or represents.

halogenic:

‘Beneath Dignity, Bregenz’ (1977) – Stuart Brisley

“The materials which (Brisley) employed were water, chalk, powder (flour) and paint (black and white). He made five separate statements using each of the materials, working in all for four days.” (x)

‘Beneath Dignity, Bregenz’ (1977) was performed in conjunction with an exhibition of British art in Austria (Englishe Kunst der Gegenwart in September 1971); Brisley was invited by Norbert Lynton to take part. Brisley had worked during this year on an Artist Placement Group project in Peterlee in a community of miners and the title is indicative of his sympathy with the miners, and the lowness (and implied loneliness) of their working conditions. The work that preceded it had a similar preoccupation with digging and working in appalling conditions.

In Bregenz he was presented with a strikingly different environment: a picturesque town by the side of a lake (Lake Constance) with a small mountain behind. This work is a response to this setting, the movement from mountain to flat ground and the lake (from the vertical to the horizontal). He chose to work on a quayside, using five roughly constructed frames which marked the limits of his physical reach. The materials which he employed were water, chalk, powder (flour) and paint (black and white). He made five separate statements using each of the materials, working in all for four days. In order to reduce the drama of the work (a character that Brisley abhors) the fifth frame was a mixture of black and white. On the last day the audience was large and Brisley avoided a climax to the work by jumping into the lake and swimming, replicating his drawing action in water, another medium. He describes his action here as similar to the other works in the Tate’s collection, showing a preoccupation with formal, sculptural problems. It is possible however that Brisley may, in hindsight, be emphasising this aspect at the expense of his political concerns.