Action | Body in Space

This project was completed individually and in response to self-directed research. It focused on using research to support our personal voice and inform our creative practice / thinking. For Seminar, the goal was to research a performance artist / work and write either an academic or lyric essay on it. Then following this, using the artist / work we researched, for Studio we had to create an action, body movement, or space intervention that we had to either document or perform live. We were required to go through the development process of identifying three iterations / versions of the performance, finalising one, and then presenting it in a dynamic media presentation.

Ideation + Process

Here is a link to my full ideation sequence for Studio. Below is a description of selected sections.

For me, the ideation process for this project began by brainstorming potential conceptual themes that I could explore in my performance. During our Studio class on 5th October 2020, Professor Villarreal introduced us to different forms of performance such as traditional performance art, lecture performance, and art interventions, while also asking us to pose some questions in response to our understanding of these terms in context of our final performances. One of the questions that I came up with during this session was “How does a virtual performance environment change / shape the meaning or impact of a work of performance art?”

Inspired by this question, a theme that I was very keen to explore was Space and Relationships – specifically how the difference between physical space and virtual space influences how we form relationships, and what happens to our relationships once we leave these spaces. While I did have other potential ideas in mind such as the exploring the distinction and overlap between individual and collective identity, rituals and their relevance, and the notion of materiality with respect to the human body, I decided to pursue this idea as I found it to be extremely relevant to our current modes of not only learning, but socialising and regularly interacting with each other. I thought that some of the questions raised in the process of contemplating this idea formulated part of an important conversation that needs to be had about how whether we will ever transition parts of our lives back into physical space from virtual space, and if and when this does happen, how we are going to do it. 

Therefore, in elaborating on this line of questioning, I developed a highly detailed, almost stream of consciousness list of thoughts and questions I wanted to explore, and then condensed them into a few main points that I wanted to address in my final performance. Figure 1 is a screenshot from my ideation sequence that shows evidence of this.

After this process, the next step was to research an artist or performance piece that related closely to the ideas that I wanted to convey. While looking through the catalogue of performance art on nowness.com, I came across Le Regard Ailleurs which is a is a multidimensional, collaborative production by fashion designer Samuel Fasse and choreographer Morgan Belenguer. The work essentially makes use of virtual reality technology to explore the overlap between physical space and a simulated virtual one.

In the performance, ballet dancers navigate the virtual space, and through their movements form a sort of relationship that links it to the physical world. It was this concept that inspired me to want to portray how relationships are formed within virtual environments, especially since it is so pertinent to the ways we engage with each other today.

In doing so, the three main facets that I wanted to explore or question were:

• The differences and parallels between how relationships are formed in physical versus virtual space,
• How we construct our personal identities in virtual space in response to this, and,
• What happens to relationships formed in virtual space once we leave it.

Inspired by this work and the ways in which the two artists make use of a virtual environment in order to convey a message about space, I formulated my thesis question for Seminar, which was

“Conflux of Spaces: How does Le Regarde Ailleurs (The Look Elsewhere) by Samuel Fasse and Morgan Belenguer explore the intersection of virtual and physical space through the integration of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in performance?“

Additionally, I also came up with the following three iterations for my Studio task:

After exploring and scrutinising these solutions in more detail, I decided to finalise Solution 3 as I felt that it would be the most interesting procedurally, it allowed for more concepts to be addressed, it would be more intriguing for the audience, and it possibly provided more flexibility for ways in which the audience can be engaged.

Final Work

Here is a link to my final research essay for Seminar.

Below is a video of my final performance:

Conflux of Spaces
October 2020
Digital video
5:28

In watching the video, you might notice that it is quite different from what is described in Solution 3. This is because as I was working on my project, I realised the limits of the virtual platform over which we would be presenting our pieces and came to terms with the fact that Solution 3 simply wasn’t the most engaging or feasible option as a performance, and moreover, I wanted push myself to remain true to the format of traditional performance art, meaning I wanted to conduct the entire performance in one sitting without any digital edits.

Therefore I decided that instead of having 2 projections / versions of myself interacting with each other to convey the ideas I had to share, that I would write a script (which can be read in the ideation sequence linked at the top of the ideation section) and then record a voiceover that would act as a soundtrack to my performance wherein I would conduct several actions / gestures. Moreover, when presenting to my peers during our final critique session, I also encouraged everyone to use the annotate feature on Zoom to directly interact with my work.

Consequently, while the voice over served to represent the dilemmas I wanted to explore in a more concrete and accessible way, the performance itself is a response to the spoken words but also a symbol of the almost absurd ways in which we create specific avatars to exist in virtual space. Finally, the idea of getting everyone to draw / annotate on the screen, was to capitalise as much as possible on the virtual environment in order to construct meaning, as well as get everyone to form a relationship with what is being performed, only to reiterate and evidence the idea that everything we do online is temporal.

Below is a video of how this turned out, along with the discussion amongst my classmates and I that followed:

Zoom recording, Bridge Project 4

Challenges and Surprises

For me the most challenging aspect was the research prior to writing the essay. I already had a very specific idea of what I wanted to do for Studio, so my objective in researching for Seminar was to find an artist / performance work that related in some way to what I wanted to convey in my studio piece.

However, this turned out to be a much more difficult task than I had anticipated as a lot of performance work is very explicitly political (possibly as a result of its founding principles to subvert the artistic canon of the time) and seems to be geared towards shocking the audience into contemplation, and in many ways this was not what I wanted to do. I wanted to convey ideas about space and the human experience (a comparatively universal theme) in a less jarring and rather unconventional manner wherein the audience is able to find meaning and possible political implications in the symbols underlying the actions rather than the actions themselves. 

Hence, when researching, this goal was always at the back of my mind. While my attempts to distance myself from it and then re-engage in process did result in discovering several artists I find very intriguing and intend to use as models for future work (such as Yayoi Kusama, Abel Azcona, and Ana Mendieta), it simply didn’t feel right to abandon my initial plan. Therefore, it took me an uncomfortably long time to find a work that I was actually passionate about and interested in exploring further.

Furthermore, the performance art piece that I chose as a model for my work was not one that was done by particularly accomplished / well-documented artists. In fact their public work is so limited that most of the available information about them related to this one particular show. However, what surprised me was that despite not being a very famous artwork, it had so much relevance and connected so deeply to the legacy of performance art and the potential direction I envision the movement taking in the future. I was especially surprised when I read that the history of virtual reality in performance art specifically tied to the works of Allan Kaprow and John Cage from the Fluxus movement. Moreover, the work also posed a powerful reflection on the ways in which we inhabit physical and virtual space and how we are connected as individuals outside these spaces.

Finally, when producing my work for Studio, because the process of working on the essay for Seminar was quite complicated, I felt quite unsure about my work, especially since I was doubtful about whether my peers would be willing to engage with it and annotate the screen. However, I was pleasantly surprised and extremely happy with how willing everyone was to participate and it add further meaning to my work!

Reflection

One of the most important things I learned through this project is the importance of going out of my comfort zone to explore different ways of creating and expressing ideas that I may have. I have never attempted performance art before, and while at first I wasn’t necessarily sure how to proceed with this project, in hindsight the process was actually very intriguing and allowed me to explore several different avenues to communicate ideas that I may not have been able to using solely visual media. 

Moreover as I mentioned above, I think generally we tend to associate readily available documentation and analysis (whether that’s in the form of published literature or Google information panels and Wikipedia pages) with the relevance or importance of a work or an artist, but working on this project taught me that this mentality is actually quite dismissive of the contributions that all artists have to make. Additionally, it also highlighted the fact that just because an artist is famous does not mean that their work is the be all and end all of a particular movement / medium. Overall my experience has definitely motivated me to do more research into lesser known or developing artists and find inspiration in their works even if they aren’t widely publicised, because with a little more digging so many of these often overlooked works have very interesting approaches and perspectives to share.

Connection to Creative Practice

While this work isn’t related to my existing creative practice in a conceptual way, there is definitely a connection in terms of materials and how I used them. The visual of the final outcome of my performance is quite closely linked to a work I completed earlier this year called Metamorphosed. This work was a photo series wherein I dismantled a mixed-media installation that I had created and transposed it’s elements onto my body. Below are two images to illustrate the similarity that my performance has to this piece:

Questions to Explore Further

The journey of putting together this project raised quite a few questions for me. Here are some of the questions that I cam up with that I would like to further contemplate:

• What are the different ways in which the audience can be engaged in a performance?
• In what cases is performance art or using bodies to convey meaning more effective than than visual media? Is the former a more universally comprehensible medium compared to the latter?
• Does the shock value of a performance affect how powerfully it impacts the audience and what meaning they take away from a performance?
• How viable / effective is cyberperformance as a form of performance art?

Work from:
Integrative Studio 1 with Professor Matthew Villarreal
Integrative Seminar 1 with Professor Marina Blitshteyn