art bullshit: friday night with weird art people

from mimi fadmi's untitled

climate change: language action poetry facilitators-from asia with love

9pm - 1am friday, july 16th, 2013

at grace exhibition space

840 broadway 2nd floor, brooklyn

as part of the brooklyn international performance art festival (bipaf)

multiple venues

july 4, 2013 - july 28, 2013

from miao jiaxin and lee heeran's money

over the past few years, i have inevitably accumulated more artist and art-related friends than not, but i still have a few friends who don't consider art a big part of their lives. many of them--with jobs in or students of finance, law, or government politics--tell me they don't "get" contemporary art. because i am supposed to be an art critic, they don't say so exactly, but i can hear something like: "art seems like bullshit." they find it inaccessible--its meanings only decipherable by an extensive background in art history. 

i don't really "get" art either, but i try to see a lot. i tend to process information very slowly and carefully so i feel more comfortable with object-based art rather than those which unfold over time. media such as film or performance give me anxiety since i feel i may miss something if i do not pay it extreme attention. this is especially so for live performances--at least i can replay films if i can get my hands on them. so i shy away from performance art. i see less and "get" it less. my choice to see a performance rather than objects is a gamble: when i invest my time in it, i may not be able to write about it or worse, not enjoy it because i find it too cryptic.

i do like the potential of performance to sidestep the commodification of art. sure, places charge money for tickets and the event can become more precious because it is ephemeral. but even with documentation, the fleeting act cannot remain as it is--passed around and reproduced the same way as objects. the performance is already dying as soon as it begins. once over, it is forever dead. but it also lives on through individual and collective memories, where it continually changes shape. that's how myths and legends are created--or forgotten altogether.

from dylan christiawan's performance

a friday night. i finally devoted myself to an evening of performances, part of the bipaf. titled climate change, the event presented work by artists from korea, japan, indonesia, hong kong, and new york-based émigrés. 

the website of the venue--grace exhibition space--declared their lack of a "stage" blurs the line between performer and audience, "the way things should be." i laughed because that's what everyone says. "anyone can enter" and "everyone is free to participate," but as claire bishop has written once on rirkrit tiravanija's work, who is this "everyone?" even if there is no architectural divide that delineates performer and audience, those with power and with none, insider and outsider, that divide is clearly felt. i expected to feel a tension and divide as i did on the first two days of the gramsci monument. however, my friday night was one of the closest experiences i've had to this blurring.

i went alone. i am clearly an outsider to performance art. though many people there seemed to know each other there, that didn't seem to matter. it felt like a casual and open house party, the kind where one expects people to show up uninvited, mingle, and have fun like everyone else. no insider codes, only basic social etiquette. despite the fact that i was (i think) the only person there writing furiously on my notepad throughout most of the night, i never felt unwelcome. maybe it helped that many present were performance artists themselves--i find that artists more used to interaction with strangers (directly or at least being watched by them) rather than those who make objects or ideas in solitary confinement most of the time have more flexible walls. as an introvert who goes to events alone, i tend to repel people (yes, i have magical powers), but during breaks between performances, many came up to me to start a conversation and artists said hi to me (i had never heard of any of them). one person did an e.t. thing at me with his finger. i responded by touching his finger with mine, and mimicked his gestures when he touched his finger to his chest and between his brows. (i later found out he was a performance artist. he thanked me for "giving [him] the finger." indeed i saw him do it to other strangers and they would not lift a finger. punny roll)

the structure of the event was very casual. a performance, then a few minutes break to set-up for the next one, then another. the "stage" moved around constantly around the spacious venue. the event went way past the designated end time, 11pm. but i enjoyed every minute of it.

image credit: bushwick daily

i arrived a few minutes late, so i missed the first performance by (i think) yuenjie maru from hong kong and i began my night with w christiawan's action poetry #9. the indonesian artist was dressed in a white cotton dress (the kind for prairie frolicking, age c. 12) with the front unbuttoned. he stood below a camera on the ceiling that pointed directly down to the floor. the camera's images were projected onto a screen behind christiawan the whole time, with a red dot and minutes indicating that it was recording. most of the time, the artist was facing away from the audience or sideways so that my gaze kept shifting to the screen. the screen didn't provide much of a frontal view of the work either, but the framed image possessed an uncanny cinematic lure. the directly downward shot rendered his body (his bald head) abstract. when he began to use props (an ipad, a dead chicken? and an egg, black tape) their arrangements within the frame became flat pictures. he paused frequently between his acts of holding his ipad (photographic close-up of his own face) upside down between his legs, pulling out a stiff chicken, then later an egg also from between his legs. 

the juxtaposition of his emotionally charged but carefully executed movements with the flat still images on the screen called forth an uncomfortable reminder of our own relationship to the "physical" and "digital." here, the two realms appeared separate, functioning regardless of the other's rules or activities. but the recording image held sway--was it because i'm also part of a generation used to living through the screen and the camera? even at a live performance, my eyes turned to the screen. my favorite quote by david levi strauss came to mind: 

"it's not that we mistake photographs for reality; we prefer them to reality. we cannot bear reality, but we bear images--like stigmata, like children, like fallen comrades. we suffer them. we idealize them. we believe them because we need what we are in them."

the disturbing aspect is that the projected (preferred) image completely eliminated the charge of the artist's gestures, which simply became indifferent forms. a broken egg at the center, half of a chicken peaking from one side, and a bare, limp arm of the prostrate artist also cut off by an edge of the frame. when the kneeling christiawan held up the egg toward the ceiling with a trembling hand, his fearful offering to the camera dominated the field of my vision; yet, the screen displayed a plain egg as a center of focus. the artist's knees and shortened limbs became other formal components of a compositional image. dramatic climax: when he later began wrapping his head with black tape--covering his nose and mouth--he struggled to breathe, but the screen showed next to no hint of his pain. christawan was silenced, and the recorded image will refuse to speak.

most of the work presented was political. the next work was by arai shin-ichi, ironically titled, i like america. on the wall a large collage of black and white photocopies of american magazines and other media. the japanese artist had written "i like america" upside in red; adjacent to the collage also hung a copy of the 84th issue of october magazine (spring, 1998, according to my calculations). arai began by reading a short introduction about himself (from tokyo) and his hometown (a countryside near tokyo). he took down the collage and journal, placed both on the ground--the latter in front and center, close to the audience. then followed a weaving of his personal narrative and painting. he recalled his memories as a child--idolizing the very expensive coca cola, american troops giving children chocolates, and even sang and danced the japanese commercial for del monte ketchup ("derumonte, derumonte, derumonte kechapu"). according to the content of each anecdote, he sprayed tubes of del monte ketchup, heinz mayo, hershey's chocolate syrup, french's mustard, or relish. in the beginning, his painting seemed like offerings to the shrine of american pop culture--especially the gentle sprinklings of relish by hand--but his movements gradually took an angry turn as he violently squeezed the containers, banged them against the floor, and shook them in the air, spraying the surrounding viewers. 

when his painting was "done" ("more black," he said once, and took out more chocolate syrup), he told the audience about when he first learned of jackson pollock, clement greenberg, john cage, etc (1998?). he held up the copy of october and said reading the journal was difficult because of the english, and it contained few images. he read the list of editors and contributors, tore off the cover, and laid it at the same place on the ground.

japadog. sausage fest. he proceeded to strip naked. he slipped on, swam in, and muddled his condiment pollock. a strong scent of mustard and sweet vinegar filled the space. he stood up to read the first sentence of the first page, tore the page in half, and put one half in his mouth. handing the other half to an audience member, he looked straight at him/her and said, "i like america." 

then repeat. 

he must have gone through half of the volume when one could no longer discern the words he was reading. he had difficulty breathing. he teared and coughed with his mouth full of october; the very words he tried to read prevented him from speech. a painful few minutes. then he took out the saliva-soaked pages from his mouth, bowed and said, thank you.

next, an equally political and angry language flower by korean artist, gim gwang cheol. on the ground lay a parcel wrapped in newspaper (international herald tribune) and red rubber string. gim slowly unraveled the string by pulling one end and allowing the parcel to turn over on its side. he tied one end of the string to an index finger of one audience member, the other end to that of another across his stage. he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and unwrapped the newspaper, which contained a single red brick. he twisted the taught string around his neck without using his hands and hung a loose piece of string near his head. his right foot on the brick, he proceeded to read the paper (the tribune and english print of korea joongang daily), turning and pausing at different angles with each open page. 

when he was done reading, he removed a box cutter from his pocket and began shredding the paper. the knife ripped down through the pages and his hand shook them out until none remained whole. he twisted their ends into bunches and held them in his mouth. only the top of his head peered over. the paper ribbons spilled out--an explosive bouquet of disembodied words.

after squeezing a whole orange over his head, he furiously tied the spare red string around the shreds. around and around the string went, binding the voluminous flow into one stiff and suffocated braid. it stuck out straight from the artist's face like a mute beak. his neck still fettered by the same red string, he drew near the audience members and swept over their faces with the end of the paper rod. the communion inflicted change: gim vehemently began to twist and turn the paper still clenched between his teeth. he freed his neck from the string with his knife. finally removing the paper from his mouth, he used the same knife to shred one end, which spilled out again into a paper bouquet. he tied the other end to the brick, its base. alas, the final product. declaring it a "language flower," he thanked the audience and bowed.

(due to time/space constraints and laziness, i am skipping the next three performances by indonesia's mimi fadmi, korea's park kyung hwa, and indonesia's dylan christiawan.)

the last piece, titled money, was a collaboration by new york-based artists lee heeran and miao jiaxin. the work gave a refreshingly sexual turn to the largely political trajectory of the evening's performances. the process of prior preparation, pleasure, then a much longer process of an aftermath/clean up--here money and sex were virtually synonymous with each other. miao in his sharp black suit was the pleasure/sex/money-seeker, lee in her red lipstick, black spandex, and red high-heeled boots, the sultry and dominant pleasure-giver. 

like many pleasures in life, miao's was short-lived; most time was devoted to its preparation and "clean up." to prepare for his "blow job," miao took up put on a white painter's coverall and climbed a ladder to cut a square opening in the ceiling. he stripped down to his underwear and lay face-up on the ground. lee approached with a red leaf blower and a pile of rubber material. placing the rubber on top of miao's passive body, lee inserted one end of the blower into an opening of the deflated balloon and began to blow. the balloon grew and grew--it contained a mass of u.s. dollar bills that flew about the expanding space. when miao's body became barely visible and the balloon loomed close to the ceiling, it finally popped. a short climb to the climax. 

then the unsexy aftermath. after lee tapped miao, motioning him to get up, both crouched on the ground to gather the scattered bills and pieces of rubber. miao put on his black suit and white coveralls while lee wrapped the money into a neat bundle. her job done, lee strutted away, flashing the black heels of her shoes. miao spent the next 15 minutes  placing the bundle in the ceiling, nailing the square shut, spreading two rounds of wall sealer around the edges, and finally, painting over it. tedious and long-drawn process. was the pleasure worth the trouble?

i am not used to writing about performance so trying to write about some of the work this evening took me longer than i usually take for other posts (excuses!). i find that performance invites poetry, though, and i feel freer as a writer even simply describing the movements i saw. performance also creates more possibilities for art writing through its peculiar interaction with memory. i replay and relive the past, but it changes each time i recall. but perhaps all the more difficult to write about because of it.

i haven't been to many other events, but i plan to, and highly recommend others to attend at least one during the bipaf. it runs through july 28th. even if you don't "get" it, it's fun. give artistic bullshit a chance.