Art as Performative Enactment

I found the idea that "intermedia only exists or comes into being as such through the interaction between objective elements and the subjectivity of the viewer" to be interesting. I have always found the subjective side of the viewer to be extremely important in all art, but never realized how crucial it is in a performance piece. It would never have crossed my mind that in a performance piece "the point is not a theoretical one imposed retrospectively, but is rather given immediately and necessarily in the act of viewing". I feel as though this can make a performance piece simpler, in the sense that the piece must be simple enough for the viewer to be able to grasp the entire concept in real time. However, at the same time this makes giving the piece meaning much more difficult because it can never be too detailed or too subtle. Achieving a balance between the artist's subjective-interpretation of his work and the interpretation that the viewer makes of the artist's work allows the viewer the opportunity to take in all the information and process it simultaneously. 

The link I am posting is a performance art piece by Tony Orrico

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vldw0qs3A8

In camera edit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTVqDOKQL_c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaDurK6_xwE

Response to Art as Performative Enactment - Maxwell Legocki

This article was enlightening to me in the sense that it gave me a more in-depth perception of what goes into performing arts. The three concepts, play, symbol, and festival, helped me break down and better understand performing arts. I was especially fond of play and the idea of how the game is created for the sole purpose of being played by players, making it the master of the players is interesting. Usually when I think of a game, I feel that I am the master and in control however this different approach has me thinking differently. I see it more as a back and forth debate now, with both sides sharing a mutual benefit from interacting with each other. A game is required for the player to play, and the player is required for the game to play itself.

I see the three balls and the triangle as the game and the player being the man bouncing the balls within the triangle. Without either of them, both are nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHoedoSUXY

Art as performative enhancement

So this piece discusses the relation of performance art and intermedia, but more specifically he speaks of its origins in regards to three concepts: play, symbol and festival. With play, he discusses that a performance piece that involves the audience could be viewed as a game. When the audience participates, they are playing the game. However, through their participation the art comes through when it is realized that the game is actually playing itself through their actions. With symbol, he explains the idea that what we recognize in a work of art is the idea of self-identity. We exist in the world in which this art takes place. With festival, he talks about how a work of art can encourage a sense of community, be it through participation or through observation.

Here is a piece (or a description of a piece) that displays a few of these characteristics.

Art as Performative Enactment by Greg P

             In response to Art as a Performative Enactment, the concept of play had the greatest impact on my understanding of performative art. The most interesting note was how movement was imperative between the game and the player, and how we subdue ourselves to the game as the player. This reminds me of watching a movie and believing in its entirety that the movie is, in fact, real; I buy into the game, and in the sense of cinema, what the director wants the audience to believe. In the end, the movement of play unravels itself as the medium presents itself to the audience. The author notes that the dynamic being of the medium goes unchanged whether there is an audience or not.

           

           

            This video demonstrates a simulation of an actual video game. Unlike the video game itself, the user cannot control where the pieces of the Tetris should go or which way they should shape, but the audience gets to interact with the creator of the video by comparing what they would have done in the game to what actually happened in the video. This video brings out true realism because it uses real people as the players in a game that they subdued to or bought into.  In addition, the video of the game enforces the point of movement, from the top of the bleachers to the bottom, also symbolizing the beginning of the game to the end. 

In camera edit

New Project from Qi Su on Vimeo.

In camera edit- An adventure to the fridge from Qi Su on Vimeo.

Response to Art as Performative Enactment

Of all of the readings we have done so far, this is definitely the most interesting to me. I appreciate the philosophical analysis that the author utilized from Gadamer. The three concepts that he talked about as the origin of the work of art: play, symbol, and festival - all helped to put into perspective for me the abstract and ontological conceptualizations that artwork provides both the artist and the viewer. However, after reading through the descriptions of each of these concepts, I feel that Hans Breder's work did not help me to understand the grandiosity with which Gadamer explains all of these topics. This could also be because I did not find Breder's work very fascinating. Anyways, I would like to focus more on the three concepts that Gadamer suggests for art.

Play was the most interesting to me because I've never understood a game to play me. More importantly, I've never looked at art as having boundaries that we work within. I understood those boundaries to mean working with the goal of creating meaning where there is none. 

"Opposite movements activate self-consciousness in a place that is between dream and waking consciousness - a place of deep meditative consciousness." 

This is my favorite line in the entire article. Even though this line is interpretive of icons in Breder's work, I find it to be indicative of what happens in viewing a lot of performance art. Seeing something exist within reality, but is contrary to reality, evokes a sort of meditation that requires introspecting beyond surface level explanations. And I believe that it is this reason why there is a theme in art that goes, the harder it is to understand, the more meaningful it is. As cliche as this explanation may sound, I do believe there is some truth to it.

The video that I am choosing to include is the weirdest performance art video that I have seen. I do believe that this video invokes the viewer to meditate on a deeper consciousness.

Art as a Game and Games as Art

The article “Art as Performative Enactment” discusses Gadamer’s idea that art originates from three concepts: play, symbol, and festival, and these concepts have “direct bearing on Hans Breder’s intermedia work.” At first, I didn’t understand how the concepts of play and festival influence art (the concept of symbols was pretty obvious to me), but now it makes a lot of sense. The article talks about festivals in the sense of communities coming together to celebrate their “binding ties” and to “show themselves in their truth,” and I can definitely see how this relates to art. Art is very community-oriented in its nature, and it definitely has the power to unite people of the same community, just like festivals do. I also found it chilling to read about Breder’s interpretation of art as a festival with his project Nazi-Loop. While the idea of people coming together to celebrate as a community sounds like a positive activity, Breder puts a twist on it by showing that communities can also have extremely negative influences and meanings behind them.

                I think I most enjoyed reading about how art is like a game. I never thought of art in that light before, but it really makes a lot of sense to me. We are, essentially, submitting ourselves to the art and allowing it to call the shots. “The game plays itself through our movements;” so essentially, we are its puppets. Art tells us how to play its game and we are forced to abide by those movements and rules. We are still more powerful than art, however, because art would not exist at all if we were not there to make/propagate it. Just like the article says about Athena and Christ, if we are not participating in the game of art, then art does not exist. This sort of existentialist idea really got me thinking about different ways of viewing and perceiving art.

                I ended up finding an actual game (a video game) that’s about art and making art (http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/artgame/ArtGame.html ). The artist asks “Art Game is a game about art and a game about games. But is it art?” It’s not only interesting to think about art as a game, but also the reversal of that (games as art). 

Kiera's In-Camera-Edit

Response: Art as Performative Enactment

       Although this article focuses on explaining the truths of art through play, symbol, and festival, the author also highlights the importance of the viewers. Regarding intermedia and performance art the author writes, “The viewer has no choice but to construct meanings on his or her own...” This statement made me realize why performance art has so much power; One reason is that performance pieces incorporate much wider audiences. The audience includes those who do not typically “construct meanings” on their own when viewing artwork such as a painting, drawing, or sculpture. Performance art forces the viewers to think thoughts and make connections they might not otherwise make. This is what performance art has the ability to make a stronger impact on the world - because it speaks its message to people regardless of whether or not they are typical art-appreciators. The above quote accurately describes the way I felt when watching the results of a “performance art” search on youtube. There were a lot of scary things, and although I did not realize it at the time, those videos were actually forcing me to “construct meanings” and to think about “what it means to be [myself] in the world.”
       I also loved the idea of art being a festival and bringing people together. The author states, “Art is a power to enact an experience of community in solidarity.” This put a paradoxical picture in my mind of a group of viewers arguing over the meaning or significance of a performance. It reminded me of that story about the five blind men trying to describe an elephant. So in a way as the art brings us together by driving us apart. Everyone’s interests and opinions are coming together and forming a community not necessarily because they are the same, but because they are all focused on the same piece of art.
      I want to share Tintin Wulia because I like how she explains her fascination with borders, identity and passports though her performances and exhibits. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK5BrtD5Ai0

And I also want to provide the link to a series of “how to make performance art” videos that may be helpful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ8ZiqBJn58.

Art as Performative Enactment

If a piece of art is left alone in the woods, is it still art? The author of "Art as Performative Enactment" seems to think no, and I have to disagree wholeheartedly. The idea that an artwork manifests itself only at the level its reception is to turn art into something transitory, like the play and the festival Gadamer considers to be the origins of art. Whether a piece of art (intermedia or not) is experienced or shared with other individuals does not in any way contest its existence as art. For instance, caught in a crisis of teen angst and self-loathing, I took to writing poetry and short stories in high school. No one has ever seen these writings, nor will they. I don't pull them out when I'm at home and reread them. The journals they were in may have even been thrown away. My writing was a performative act at the level of its creation, but it was not some festival of communication or sports game I wanted others to engage in. It was the experience of writing I wanted to participate in, not the satisfaction of having created an "expressive symbol."

 While reading "Art as Performative Enactment," I though of Jackson Pollack's famous drip paintings. Critics looking at Pollack's paintings, such as Number 5, which I have attached to this post, remarked on how the layers of paint and patterns of the splatters functioned like a manuscript of all of Pollack's actions used in creating the piece. Looking at the art, viewers could retrace Pollack's movements and imagine the performative act of creating a piece like Number 5. Here, a work of art exists in the performance of its creation- an issue the author of "Art a Performative Enactment" completely ignores.

Art as Performative Enactment

Performance art has always stuck me as being one of the most personal forms of art there is, especially art that engages its audience physically. The analogy of a game was what stood out to me the most in the article, as actors in a piece of performance art are actually quite similar to players in a game. There are certain rules that they must follow and the players must "subordinate [their] own goals and purposes to those of the game itself." However, I'm not quite sure I agree with the assertion that "adding an audience does not change anything." I believe it changes things on a few different levels. First, the human factor of a performer must be considered. It is, in my opinion, to completely subordinate oneself to the game; one still has a sense of self, even when performing. Adding a spectator to anything changes the way in which the performer feels and, as a result, how they perform. Second, the audience members themselves, by directly interacting with a performer, assert a very direct influence on the piece. I suppose the author feels that no matter who the players are, the game is the game; that's where I disagree.
In the past, I've always thought that recording performances took something away from the magic off the experience. That being said, I realize now that certain pieces work best (or differently) in front of a camera. We already looked at Andy Warhol Not Rolling a Joint in class, so I won't post it again, but that piece would have a considerably different feel were it performed live. I racked my brain about performance pieces that worked best on video or film and found myself coming back to Warhol, perhaps just because I'm familiar with his work, but also I think some of his work is an excellent example of filmed performance.

I've included an edited version of Warhol's notorious Blow Job, since I couldn't find the full 35 minute version.

Art as performative enactment!!

As a studio art major, I never really understood art beneath a canvas a brush and paint. Since learning about sound, video and performance specifically, my definition of art has been drastically transformed. Even nowadays, I am still not exactly sure what these mediums are but exploring them from an artist’s lenses has allowed me to see their individual beauty. As I mentioned previously my definition of art pretty much covered the traditional representation of it being painting, drawing and sculpting and never actually saw art connected to technology or any digitalized medium. During the speaker’s presentation on Thursday when she showed us some pictures and videos of her work, I immediately became interested in beginning a portfolio with work aimed more at performance and video simply because I started to see a clearer connection such tools and art. Now, the reason I said this was because the question surrounding me became, what is art. 
 And the three concepts Hans-Goerg Gadamer includes in order to explicate how the truth in art happens are play, symbol and festival. Out of these three, I seemed to comprehend and appreciate festival the most. Simply realizing that just like a celebration brings an entire community together, art has also the power to do so, truly amazed me. A sentence that really stood out to me and makes emphasis on art’s potential and allure is: “Art is a power to enact an experience of community in solidarity”. 
 But this community must be a universal one that extends to everyone to whom the work of art speaks. I find this last assertion really interesting because I feel Hans-Georg is letting us know an audience and the role it plays is extremely significant. In order for someone to fully recognize the work of art, there must be self-recognition. This rises when the work of art “calls our being to question”. One great example of this, I believe, is Vincent van Gogh’s famous work Starry Night. This piece, painted in 1889 still resides and impacts people presently. I am quite sure it will forever be considered a masterpiece due to the way people have shown and continue to show an immense appreciation towards it. Art communicates. It directly speaks to us and this is why some paintings become historically precious. Starry Night has evidently touched/impacted thousands of people and will continue to do so because of its ability to directly connect with the viewer. But a video or performance has the power just as a painting to move and captivate people all around the world. This article has allowed me to see the power of performance to connect with people’s emotions, sentiments and it is precisely at this moment that the truth of art comes out. 
Video of Marina Abramovic explaining what performance art is!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcyYynulogY