Art as Performative and Fantasy beyond control- Karina

Art as a Performative Act presents Hans-Georg Gadamar ideas on art. He says that the “truth of art asserts itself when the work engages us and says something to us about what it means to be ourselves in the world.” The truth also originates from the three concepts of play, symbol, and festival. Symbol is by far the most recognized concept of art as art as “I see and have the thing itself, but only in materials that are not literally the thing itself”.  In performance art, the body is able to play the role of many symbols through the context that you build around it or the movement (play) you are making. If the art is a live performance art such as Marina Abramovic’s piece “The Artist is present”, it highlights the play and festival components of the art as people are asked to engage in the piece themselves or are a part of the spectating group. All art has the three components that Gadamar was talking about, but when the art is an actual literal performance whether it is live or not, these concepts are magnified because it calls for the viewer and the artist to be engaged in it on a higher level.

In the Fantasy Beyond Control, the author really stresses the importance of interactive media because it calls for more participation from the viewer. Lynn states “The very act of viewing a captured image creates a distance from the original event. The captured image becomes a relic of the past.” Lynn’s importance of interactive media is that it creates a changing timeline based on the interaction and “replaces some of the nostalgic longings with a sense of identity, purpose, and hope”. I agree that interactive media allows us not to get stuck in the past but I feel that some pieces that aren’t interactive, if done right, don’t get stuck in “nostalgic longings”. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gYBXRwsDjY

For example, Olivier de Sagazan’s performance piece recording  is a recording with actions that will never change and it will always be the same, but what he does completely dissociated me from viewing the video as a video and engaged me fully. It made me feel uncomfortable to view what he was doing in front of me and brought me in visually but also emotionally though his outbursts and actions.