Posts Tagged ‘performance art’

Sit silently with the artist for a duration of your choosing. So the instructions read on a small plaque on the 2^nd floor atrium of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Behind the plaque, a queue forms of visitors eager to enter a large square space—demarcated only by tape on the floor—and sit down at a wooden table across from a dark-haired woman in a navy-blue dress that conceals every part of her body save her face and her hands.

The woman is the pioneering artist Marina Abramović (whose retrospective is on the 6^th floor concurrently), but probably less than a third of the people in line have any sense of this woman’s indelible impact on contemporary art. I, on the other hand, queue with an anthology of her performances scrolling through my head. Watching her from afar, I look to see the courage and fearlessness that must abound in a woman capable of incising a five-pointed star on her own stomach, screaming until she loses consciousness, and living in a gallery for 12 days without food. Strangely, she doesn’t seem reckless at all, but peaceful and wise. I then remember she trained with Tibetan Buddhists and has said she’s able to transcend the limits of her own body and mind through meditation. She’ll need these skills now more than ever as she attempts her longest performance-to-date, sitting at this table for every hour of every day that her retrospective is open at MoMA. No food. No water. No breaks.

So, I wait for my moment with the artist, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A young girl is sitting across from Marina and the two seem engaged in a staring contest, though from that distance it’s impossible to tell if they’re actually making eye contact or simply staring ahead in a daze. Seventy-five minutes later she finally stands up and exits the square, declaring she lost all sense of time and thought it had only been a few minutes. Marina leans forward and closes her eyes, while the next sojourner steps forward and takes the empty seat. Marina sits up and another staring contest commences—this one lasting sixty-seven minutes. This process repeats—ten minutes, fifty-five minutes, twenty minutes, forty-five minutes, etc. Finally, the man in front of me takes the seat and I’m next. More than threehours from when I entered the succession I’ve seen only six people participate in the performance and more than thirty leave the line in frustration. The nameless, faceless strangers I queued with hours ago are now friends—an artist from Poughkeepsie, an art history undergrad from Chicago, a nurse from outside Philly—and we share our excitement as our turn approaches. Finally, after nearly four hours, my time has come. I enter the square and approach the table, immediately noting the heat of the lights and the watchful eyes of the crowds gathered to gawk at the spectacle. I put my purse on the floor and take a seat. While Marina leans forward, I settle into the chair and imagine I’ll last about ten minutes before I become either bored or totally uncomfortable. She begins to sit up and I try to prepare myself for the moment she opens her eyes. I have many skills, but sitting still and being silent are not traits I’m known for, so I was afraid: afraid of the judgment implicit in staring, afraid of the silence, afraid I wouldn’t have the transformative experience that had captivated those before me, afraid, afraid, afraid. Her lids opened and our eyes locked, not in a stare but in a friendly gaze. For the first few minutes, I thought only about who this woman was—a renegade, a feminist, an inspiration—but quickly realized that those things were more about her persona than the person. I discarded my preconceived notions and expectations and, as soon as I stopped thinking of her as an artist-celebrity, saw the woman behind the legend. We sat absolutely still in deafening silence, exchanging energy, and just being with each other. I’ve heard it said that couples married for decades can sit in silence and understand one another perfectly, but I’d never imagine that sort of intimacy could be possible between two total strangers. It is.

I could have stayed in that moment for hours but thought of my fellow line-mates, now friends, and decided it would be selfish to bask in this experience any longer. But, could I leave? It felt as rude as leaving a lecture in the middle. How would I leave? Abruptly just wouldn’t do, so I said good-bye and thanked her. More than thirty minutes had passed, thirty minutes of epic silence I’ll never forget.

By Rebecca Taylor

Photographs by Penny Dell featuring Rebecca Taylor and Marina Abramović

Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York through May 31, 2010. For more information, please call (212) 708-9400, or visit www.moma.org.

What do you get when you showcase the brightest and boldest of Angeleno performance artists?  GUTTED.  Gutted is the only word to describe Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions’ encompassing performance art-based program, which includes live performance, texts, and objects speaking of, from, and to the body.

GUTTED is Saturday, February 20 at 7:00pm, LACE.  Click here for more info.

The exhibition Actions, Conversations, and Intersections at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park continues to add new participatory projects to its roster.  This weekend, roll up your sleeves and join artists Edward Pine Stevens and Joseph Stuckleman with their installation Make Objects Make Marks or BikeHaus as they bike through Los Angeles as part of Cloud Lines and Chemospheres.

Check out the rest of this weekend’s programming here.

Newly purchased by Quentin Tarantino, the New Beverly Cinema is continuing its program of repertory cinema.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Election will play back-to-back not only once, but twice this Saturday because it is oh so nice.  Save Ferris!  Pick Flick!

The Matthew Broderick double feature starts at 3:20 and 7:30 at the New Beverly Cinema.  Click here for more info.

Angelenos love a good art walk. We hit the pavement for art walks all around town, including downtown, Silverlake, and the Miracle Mile.  And, we walk the art walk down La Cienega and in circles at Bergamot when galleries stay open late for their openings. Not only do we have a chance to get the latest scoop from our friends armed with Tecates, we have a higher chance to run into one of our favorite food trucks. We have a sneaking suspicion that since we keep running into them when we don’t follow their Twitter feeds, they’ve been reading ours…

Right before Valentine’s Day, we’re sure that you are bracing yourself for unexpected PDAs (Public Displays of Affection). Re-think this idea as a group of artists are launching another type of PDA (Public Displays of Art) in art walk form straight through Echo Park.

These PDAs are much more palatable for your art starved tastes. You’ll find: chain link fence galleries, driveway theaters, a hands on crafting station, performance art, intersection musical performances, outdoor movie screenings, sculptures, parking lot mini concerts, and other various creative and mind stimulating public displays of art.

If you tweet about it, food trucks will come.

The Echo Park Art Walk is this Saturday, February 6th, 12 – 6pm, 12–6pm. The Echo Park Art Walk begins at Blue Collar Pet Supplies (1533 Echo Park Ave.) and travels through to FIX coffee shop (2100 Echo Park Ave.) Click here for more info.

After days of exclusive parties and bad food, the art fair circuit in Miami is winding down.  Everyone has two cents about this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, especially with Michael Jackson’s surprise appearance.  Yet somehow the world goes on outside of Miami…

• Galleries from across the globe have congregated in one spot for one weekend.  Word is they are doing more with more in Miami.  Linda Yablonsky gives her first impression of the fair.  [New York Times]
• And ArtForum gives it a whirl as well.  [ArtForum: Scene and Heard]
• Art Basel Miami Beach has bigger works and smaller prices… “When markets contract, art fairs shrink — but only to a point.”  [The LA Times]
• There are stronger art sales at Basel than last year.  “As well as taking longer to complete, sales are happening at a different level. ‘The numbers have all changed, 500,000 is the new million,’ says 303 director Lisa Spellman.” [The Art Newspaper]
• This is an art fair favorite.  At PULSE, “Corner Store envelopes the visitor within the environment of a gas station or convenience store typical to Texas and the Southern United States.”  It is a Kwik-E-Mart for the art world.  [Daily Serving]
• Michael Jackson strikes back.  Artist Kehinde Wiley reveals a portrait of Jackson a la Rubens commissioned before Jackson’s death. It is showing at Deitch Projects. [The Art Newspaper]
• David Hockney zips between Los Angeles and Yorkshire, England and tells what it is like being an “English Los Angeleno.”  [The LA Times]
• James Franco loves performance art.  And thus, we love him even more! [Another Righteous Transfer]
• MOMA presents a retrospective of Tim Burton.  Will it include Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter as well? [New York Times]
• The strike of Paris museum workers, which began recently at the Centre Pompidou, has spread to the Musee d’Orsay, the Arc de Triomphe, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Carcassonne in the south of France, Versailles Palace, and the Louvre.  The Louvre was able to open a number of its rooms for a very limited amount of time this week, but that is not necessarily a harbinger of good news – the protesters say they will “keep going until they give in.” [Bloomberg]
• Eli Broad makes very clear why he loves LA in this top ten list… Listen up, New York. [Huffington Post]

Similar to last month when a good portion of the Los Angeles art world headed to London for the Frieze Art Fair, another group of artists, directors, curators, and art aficionados are packing their bags for more art-related travel, which is Fine Art LA’s favorite kind of jet-setting by the way.  No need to bring your passport – the destination is New York and Performa is the word.  This is a biennial with a specific focus and promise: performance art.  And this stuff is the cream of the crop.

In New York City, Performa 09, the third biennale of new visual art performance, continues its run until November 22^nd.  Headed by director RoseLee Goldberg, Performa combines visual art, music, dance, poetry, fashion, architecture, and film (as well as television, radio, graphic design, and the culinary arts — Performa is much more inclusive than exclusive) to form over 110 events throughout the city of New York in institutions as well as smaller artist-run spaces.

Highlights include Performa commissioned work by artists Guy Ben-Ner, Candice Breitz, Omer Fast, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mike Kelley, Arto Lindsay, Wangechi Mutu, Christian Tomaszewski, and Yeondoo Jung as well as premieres by artists Keren Cytter, Tacita Dean, Alica Framis, Loris Greaud, William Kentridge, and Joan Jonas.

We’re keeping our eyes and ears open for Los Angeles-based Mike Kelley’s three dance/performance pieces entitled Day is Done Judson Church Dance, which will be occurring Tuesday, November 17 to Thursday, November 19 at the Judson Memorial Church.  Kelley’s work will feature characters from Day is Done, who were inspired by the photographs found in the extracurricular activities section of American high school yearbooks.

Founded by Goldberg in 2004, both Performa 05 and Performa 07 flourished in terms of program and attendance, with this year’s incarnation including even more artists, performances, exhibitions, educational forums, public art projects, publications, film screenings, and radio, Internet, and television broadcasts.

The first of its kind, Performa is a leading example of a multi-disciplinary examination of performance art.  As Los Angeles experienced its own version of Performa with PERFORM! NOW! this past summer (July 25) up and down Chinatown’s Chung King Road, we are only excited to see any further developments Los Angeles has to aid this growing want and need of performance art at home.