Burcu Buyukunal grad student

Burcu Buyukunal grad student, originally uploaded by arthur hash.

SUNY New Paltz

Twenty First Century Bodies and Electric Textiles

I thought after the discussion we had two weeks ago about prosthetics, there couldn't be a cooler subject to talk about, until this week. Sorry if this post is a bit long, but I really enjoyed the reading and have some things I want to say. Fashion that pushes the boundaries of what is considered wearable is so close to my heart, I found the readings this week from Bradley Quinn's Techno Fashion, absolutely amazing, which is now definitely on my "to buy," list.

Quinn's dissection of avant guard fashion designers who approach fashion from different perspectives was very informative and very interesting. I know the work of artists like Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan but I didn't know all of the concepts behind it, which I definitely should since I reference their work so much, so this was very helpful. The work I was not as familiar with was the work of Tristian Webber, who creates garmets "with the forensic scrutiny of a medical autopsy. " What Quinn means by this is that he literally cuts fabric that is informed by muscle groups and skeletal scructures. Red coloring references the inside of the body and is cut in a way that actually looks like muscles.

This image is from a show, Fashion in Motion, that McQueen did at the Victoria and Albert Museum which you can see in its entirety here



















Webber's work rests on a line between beauty and grotesque, but his purpose is to address "the flaws and inefficiencies of the flesh underneath, correcting them through seems and stitching." Webber understands that modern fashion made in our western world is because of the way we are accepted through sexualized beauty, and his work addresses the inside as well as the outside. Technology informs Webber's work. It used to be that women's most effective device for body modification was the corset, yet these days there are so many options between surgical enhancement and excessive exercise that the untouched body is a thing of beauty. I enjoy Webber investigation into the inside of the body, because why not? It seems like a logical next step that hasn't happened yet. What if we could start altering the insides of our bodies and being able to be aware of that somehow when we see people. I think notions of making the private public parallel decisions that are made about dress, therefore his logic is well within the capacity of what fashion discusses.

Oh Alexander McQueen, you are so much cooler to me now. I have always been stricken by your garments but to know now why you do what you do, I relate to you so much more.



















Quinn explains how McQueen saw his sister abused by a man when he was young and ever since has created objects that are aggressive for women. He adds that the women wearing this objects must be strong in order to withstand their razor sharpness or body modifying extensions and could even elevate the women wearing his work to super hero status. McQueen uses beauty as a tool to create violence, although the women wearing his objects appear dangerous, they are still quite beautiful. McQueen also works closely with jeweler, Shaun Leane, who has been working with McQueen for 9 years, fashioning obtrusive adornment to further assert the danger involved with McQueen's beauties.

This image is another from the Fashion in Motion show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the rest of the photos can be seen here




















These two chapters really focused on how technology has impacted the fashion world. Quinn said it perfectly when he said that fashion used to be about what could be made with the technology available, but now technology is being created to suit the needs of fashion. No designer addresses this more head on than Hussein Chalayan, who creates fashion that addresses how the body moves within environmental systems. His fashions have a life of their own. The garments are activated by the wearer, but the wearer is only necessary to hold their form. These garments push the limits of what clothing is understood to do, they start to have a mind of their own!

Check out this video. Watch all of it if you have 4 minutes, but if you don't skip to about 1 minute 40 seconds..that is when the amazingness that is Hussein Chalayan happens.




I also really enjoyed the discussions of designers that are working with textiles in an interesting way - like Daniel Herman, who cuts fabric which looks like lace to leave a layered lace suntan on its wearer, Kei Kagami, who also brings the private to public by making garments partially or completely from glass, so the viewer is invited inside the garment, and Elisabeth de Senneville who makes garments from microcapsules that can be filled with dyes, drugs or cosmetic substances, depending on what the situation calls for. Artists like these may seem strange and weird to some, but I feel like the questions that they are asking address larger issues and are leading technology in directions that only they know to go.

New Design for Final Project

I have thought about my Final Project Design, and after our work day last Thursday, I think I understand how this microprocessor is going to work with my creations. I have an ongoing body of work I would like this piece to complement so I am leaning in that direction.

That being said, I initially wanted this piece to work with two people. I like the idea of the reciprocal, but I'm not too sure that I can pull it off with this piece anymore, because the viewer (the audience) is the reciprocal, so trying to squeeze a third in their seems unecessary at this point, although I would like to try that again later, maybe it will work with the next piece.

Here are some drawings I did of what I was considering when I was thinking of working in pair with a boy..reciprocal..





























I am still really interested in this idea of using the body as subject. Most recently I have been doing research about why certain parts of the body are considered beautiful to us. At the beginning of the semester, I was most interested in the bust area, which I think is a natural place to begin since our culture places so much attention towards it. Now, I have moved to the hips. The hips have a much more significant sexualized value because that is much closer to the place where intercourse actually happens as well as it not being available to us as much as breasts are.

The hips have been exaggerated quite violently in our past, and I would like to narrow in on a specific type of body extension, the pannier, which is in the same family as the bustle, however located on the sides of the body instead of the backside.






































At times, these body modifications reached quite extensive lengths, fully flattening the wearer, as well as making it almost impossible for these women to move without the help of assistants, a true symbol of wealth and class.

Understanding that part of our taste in beauty is this evolutionary residue of our natural instincts telling us who would be suitable for mating, which perhaps, these widening hip extensions somehow inform us.



















I would like to use that instinct at a lure to pull the viewer in, creating a belt-like attachment that resembles the pannier, but is constructed of my little eye opening and shutting devices, which should also pull the viewer in, then return gaze and threaten them with the evil eye.

Performers and Stage as Architecture, Oskar Schlemmer

In the two readings we reviewed for class this week, Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present – (Chapter 5) Bauhaus and The Theater of the Bauhaus, the stage itself and the role of the performers on stage are discussed. The Bauhaus was a school in Germany that began in the early 1920s, their goal was to investigate every type of creative process there is and have students doing their research all at the same time in the same place, interacting with each other, mixing and finding solutions together. Oskar Schlemmer took lead of the school and brought with him performance. The performances his students worked on were very experimental, even by today’s standards. Actors wearing garments only made of stripes or costumes which gave actors geometric shapes, took position on stage to look like a three dimensional painting. Lights and sounds were also experimented with along with geometrically breaking down the stage and creating movement based on these dissections. The second reading really breaks down the construction of buildings and how these were considered in performances, understanding that there were 3 basic types of staging. I enjoyed looking at performance in this way, and I believe that in creating performances that look at the stage so closely, the stage becomes part of the props that a performer has at their fingertips to utilize in performance. Not only does the stage become part of the performer’s props, but the performer becomes part of the stage’s architecture. For example, when Schlemmer broke the stage down into geometric sections and the performers moved within these limitations, the spider web-like residue of their movement gets woven into the architectural design of the stage.

Pinder Workshop

Last Friday I spent the day with Jefferson Pinder, a Washington DC based performance and film artist, as well as about 10 other students for a performance workshop at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee’s Innova Art Gallery. Pinder was invited to be an artist in residence and part of his residency was to offer this workshop. I really enjoyed the day! We started with introductions and swiftly moved into seeing some of Pinder’s first performance work. Procession was one of Pinder’s first performance pieces, in which he moved a 300 pound telephone pole 6 miles through downtown Washington, DC.















The imagery was especially significant to me, and reminded me of home. Along the way in his journey, he made 12 stops, in locations that he thought the pole could have existed. He was offered assistance from passerbys during his journey, and the whole time he was clad with a suit that referenced his grandfather, who always wore a suit, even to the dinner table.

After seeing his work and our introductions, Pinder took the rest of the morning showing up a seminal work by Jorgen Leth called, the Perfect Human. Leth is a Danish Film Director who is considered to be a leader in experimental film, who is well know for his series of films from 1967, called The Perfect Human.




What we viewed was a documentary of a project realized by Lars Von Trier, called “5 Obstructions.” In the documentary, Von Trier challenges Leth to recreate The Perfect Human, in a series of 5 films, but each time with a set of obstructions that challenge the way in which he creates the film. We watched the first two in class, which Pinder claimed were the best. I haven’t watched the rest yet, but I am eager to, since apparently, the relationship is not the same in the end because of the extreme challenges that Von Trier set for Leth.







I think Pinder’s purpose in showing us these films was to understand the rawness and beauty in working with restrictions. We were then requested to create a 5-10 minute film (based on a you tube video we selected during introductions) that also took a risk. Mine, was the risk of time, we had about 30 minutes to create two 5-10 minute films, so we certainly didn’t have time to think about it. I didn’t get to see the finished films since we ran over a little, but I hear I might have access to them soon. If I get them, I will certainly post.

Sensory Prostheses

The subject of sensory prostheses is addressed in Lisa Cartwright and Brian Goldfarb’s On the Subject of Neural and Sensory Protheses and is compared against Stelarc’s interest in the parasite as protheses in Julie Clarke’s A Sensorial Act of Republication.
First I have to say both of these articles were super interesting to me, as prosthetics are one of the biggest areas of research in my work.

Cartwright and Goldfarb address protheses by addressing the different ways in which protheses have developed. I am interested in the approach to understanding protheses through the nervous system or myoelectrics. Myoelectric protheses are extensions that tap into the remanant limb’s nervous system, creating a new body object in the place of what was lost. As well as the actual limb itself, the sensation of touch, commonly linked to emotions, sensual pleasure and language are also partially lost when a hand and the nerve rich skin that surrounds it is lost. The myoelectric protheses offers an abstract new language, through heat and vibrations and pressure, that must be reinterpreted by its wearer.













Myoelectric Protheses






Stelarc is an Australian based performance artist who incorporates themes of cyborgization and other human-machine interfaces in his work. Stelarc expands his “nervous system” to include the virtual environment of the internet and our mediated culture as well as the Avatar world to be considered as a new type of nervous system. Stelarc’s interest is in “technology [that] extends the body into the virtual realm of illusion and the Avatar moves Stelarc’s body through the motion prosthesis…(198)”













Stelarc





The research into the importance of prosthetics illustrates the potency of the power of touch in communication as we understand it. Stelarc’s decision to exploit this in our newly understood virtual world should be recognized. As a culture we are moving farther away from person to person contact in communication, which I recognize as precious. The power of understanding the techonology behind prosthetics, brings forward sensations that seem to be more and more overlooked in our modern forms of communication. These senses are precious and care should be observed to take full advantage because someday we may no longer have the privilege.

Musical Body Extensions

I think these amazing illustrations by Shawn Feeney relate to my interest in bodily extensions..although his are musical instruments extensions from the musicians that play them and mine are more physical manifestations of some psychological feeling..But I think they are amazing..and I love them...and I felt like I needed to post them here. They are amazing.

Japanese Device Art….ART with a capital A?

In Machiko Kusahara’s text Device Art: A New Approach in Understanding Japanese Contemporary Media Art, Kusahara introduces the importance of technology in Japanese artistic movements since the war. What I found particularly interesting is that words didn’t really exist in the Japanese language for “art” until the nineteenth century, although Art, most certainly did exist, some of the most well known include the wave woodblock prints of Hokusai.











Hokusai



When I think of Japananese artwork in my field, Metalsmithing, I think of artists who employ organic materials and forms, like the work I saw recently in Germany of Q Hisabashi Shibata or the lovely combinations of fiber and metal of Sayumi Yokouchi. Kushahara points out this could be because the Japanese come into direct contact with so many natural events like typhoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Japanese artists are very aware of the life and power of the earth around them and show respect for their environment as well as objects or tools they posses that reference the earth.










Q Hisabashi Shibata












Sayumi Yokouchi






Sayumi Yokouchi





Tools are particularly poignant in this essay because of the respect show for them by the Japanese, since they are commonly made from organic materials, and tools are an entry point in understanding how technology has come to be so important in Japanese art. The tea ceremony is a cannocial discussion in Art history classes taught at art schools all over the US and is recognized as a critical extension of Japanese art. Kusahara details a very simple robot or tea carrying automaton that was utilized during the Edo period in Japan, that would deliver a cup of tea when a full cup was set on top of it and when the empty glass was returned to it, it would turn 180 degrees and then return to its initial position. Kushara considers this the precursor to Japanese robots and perhaps an introduction to the Japanese desire to work with technology. I feel like this example is important because it relates to my questions about the level of craftness versus artness in an object simply because it serves a function. Japanese Device Art is struggling to be considered as high art because it serves a function, similar to craft which is also outside of high art, commonly has a function, but begs to be considered high art.




Kusahara claim’s the aim is to bridge the gap between high art, commercial products, design, science and technology by questioning Western notions of high art. As Osthoff utilizes Myron Kruger’s words in his essay of the work of Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica, “Many Aspects of virtual reality including full-body participation, the idea of shared telecommunication space, multi-sensory feed back, third-person participation, unemcumbered approaches and the data glove, all came from the arts, not the technical community (283).” So if Art has the authority to contribute to the scientific and technological community, why can’t experts in those fields contribute back to the arts and be considered themselves artists? If art is about constantly questioning itself, why does it hold strong to its title and not grant access to what should be clearly considered inclusive?

Final Project Proposal

My final project for this class will be an interactive costume.

I would like to:
-create a costume that interacts/performs/communicates between two people
-I would like my audience to know that they are watching an art performance
- I think the best space for that would be Kenilworth, preferably during an event there
-have this work be an extension of the ideas I am researching in currently in my practice
-relate to protection/antagonism as well as seperation/closeness










Ursula Guttman


I am thinking I would like to make an organ-like fanny pack/bag/purse that would hang off of the body. The fiber it is made from will either be compact at the beginning of the performance or limp and dragging on the floor. The pico device along with other prothestics needed for the performance will be inside the fiber material, hidden from the public eye. The piece will be activated by touch and when activated, extensions will extend beyond the body and bring form to the fabric that was either lifeless on the floor or crumpled up close to the body. Since the objective is about touch, the different places and amount of time touched will create different shapes from the fiber material. I am trying to decide also if there will be a specific dance like performance between two people and then others will be offered to participate or if that will be it.





Five Conceptual Questions:

1. Will the performance read as creating distance between two people in a longing sort of way or in a repulsive sort of way. I think the performance should answer this question. Based on how the performers react.

2. How will organs that protect by forcing people from being close read? I mean does that even make sense?

3. Why is touch creating barriers between the two lovers? What is keeping them apart? How far do I need to go to explain this, or can the viewer insert their own personal narrative?

4. How long should the performance last? How drawn out should each movement between the people be? How can these choices effect the impact of the performace?

5. Could the extensions attach to the performers? And could they then extend the pieces farther?


Five Technical Questions:

1. What materials could I use to successfully create a costume that is flat at the beginning of the performance and extended out at the end of the performance? Telescoping will definitely be my friend here, but what is the best material choice for the telescoping and what are the limits of the possibilities of telescoping here?

2. In what way could I use the pico to activate the telescoping? Turning? Pushing? Maybe the pico is what initiates the movement, but the performer follows it up.

3. Will I need to create a transistor in addition to the pico? If so, how the heck will I integrate the two?

4. I would like to be completely mobile. Is that possible with what I am trying to do?

5. Within the limitations of the battery life and strength of the pico, how far and how long can the turning or pushing of the telescoped extensions last?

Needed Materials:

Fabric
Telescoping materials (metal? Plastic? Fiber as well?)
Pico
A partner for the performance (preferably Matt)
Sensors that react to touch-possibly several


Production Schedule
4/2 (in process crit) have material investigations ready to discuss
4/9 pretty much figure out which materials I am using and have costume semi-built
4/16 start figuring out the electronic portion of performance
4/23 (in process crit) have attempt at electronic component ready to crit
4/30 performance rehearsals
5/7 final crit

Participatory Objects

Discussed through Simone Osthoff’s text, Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica: A Legacy of Interactivity for a Telematic Future.


Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica are both Brazilian artists who worked directly with the human body and viewer participation and are best known for their work from the 1960’s and 1970’s. Each artist has contributed to body art and interactive art movements in their own way. Lygia Clark’s work discussed in this text deals mostly with sensations of the body, but frequently with sight, or the loss of sight, in the form of goggles, masks and mirrors. Both Mask with Mirrors 1967, and Dialogue 1968, are Clark’s way of bringing awareness of the body directly to sight, or taking away control of sight from the wearer so other senses are heightened.

Mask with Mirrors 1967

Dialogue 1968

Oiticica’s work moved from an investigation of color, shape and space of three dimensional painting to active engagement of the senses in surroundings. Oiticica moved from making three dimensional paintings that activated space where the viewer had to physically move through them, to installations like Eden 1969, where the viewer was invited to interact (sometimes laying, sitting, or rolling around) in organic materials like soil or hay, heightening our awareness of smell and touch. This work makes more and more sense today, as sky scrapers are being built at record speed, and we lose more and more access to natural materials everyday.

Oiticica three dimensional painting

Eden 1969

Both of these artist’s work was important to the time because they were creating ephemeral moments that could not be captured and displayed in museum cases, which was unlike the work that was occurring at the time. However, I wonder after reading this piece, if this interactive body work has been going on since the 60’s, it seems like it has been done already. Maybe the future holds a resurgence of the object. Clark and Oiticica were framed as makine Brazilian work, just because it wouldn’t mold to western mainstream art of the time. That makes me want to reinvent the power of the object and somehow activate the object in a way that is totally different from what we see today.

Unruly Objects

Compared through Michael Fried’s Art and Objecthood and Damon Willick’s Still Live: Theatrics of the Keinholz Tableaux













Donald Judd
Team 3, 8
1968

















Robert Morris
Untitled
1969

Michael Fried addresses minimalism and specific objects, or what he calls literalist art through Donald Judd and Robert Morris’s work and their specific words on the subject.
Through Morris’s and Judd’s statements, Fried addresses the objecthood of sculpture versus the shape of painting. The key point in Fried’s discussion is when he addresses the beholder [viewer] of the work as being part of the work. I think this point is especially important for our work as makers of artwork on the body, since we consider the body on a physical scale since the work exists on the body. Fried says “the entire situation means exactly that, all of it – including, it seems, the beholder’s body (826).” Fried is concentrating on the points made by Morris and Judd that the viewers body is necessary in understanding the whole of their work. This makes me think of a discussion made by Glenn Adamson in the book, Thinking Through Craft, where he points out that the frame of a piece of autonomous artwork doesn’t always stop with the physical thickness of wood holding the canvas with paint up. This frame extends out to the space in the gallery, the carpeting, the lights and the street outside. Ed and Nancy Kienholz’ Still Live goes much farther to make the viewer aware that they are part of the frame. In Still Live the viewer must sign a waiver before entering because after moving around the space one realizes that there is a rifle pointed at your head with a warning that the gun is rigged to go off once ever hundred years. So instead of including the viewer in an abstract way, by making the work human size, the viewer is thrust into this direct confrontation aggressively staged by the artist. Willick also addresses the issue of theatre and theatricality, which the Kienholz work directly engages with because it is a staged work that is actively theatrical. The purpose, Willick argues is to “disrupt the common passivity of traditional art viewing in order to expose repressed aspects of everyday life… (23).” I feel like this active engagement with the viewer is more direct than a Judd or Morris work, therefore that theatricality is stronger in the installation style work of Kienholz than the objecthood work of Judd or Morris.







Ed Keinholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz
Still Live
1974












Ed Kienholz and Nancy Kienholz
Drawing for Still Live

Rebecca Horn: A dissection of touch as discussed through Lucy Lippard and Toni Stooss

Rebecca Horn is a female artist whose work inhabits the realms of sculpture, performance and video discussing feminism, the senses, movement and sensuality of materials on the human body through costume and extension. Lucy Lippard places her work in the “balance between communication and isolation, separation and interaction, distance and intimacy, self and other.” Her work provides a communication tool for the body through garments. Since we all exist in a physical body, we understand the limitations of the body to communicate. Horn’s body extensions are unusual but they ask us to reconsider the relationship between our physical bodies and our inner selves, as well as the relationship of our bodies to the world around us.



















In Finger Gloves Horn extends the body’s ability to touch with the hands, but at the same time distances the body from what is being touched; exaggerating one sense by sacrificing another. By distancing herself from others the work is implicitly communicating “fear of contact,” that Lippard discusses for its ritualistic historical reference. “Fear, in turn, is often the basis of ritual in primitive societies.” Fear is also used as an entry point in the pieces of Horn’s that draw attention to the face and then cover it.
















In Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts, Horn’s fiber facial extension covers the mouth, creating a woven tube from the mouth to the breasts, individually. Not only is she creating a “sensensation of communication with oneself,” as Stooss asserts, “because the breasts are isolated, and also separated from each other, one’s perception expands triangularly, allowing them their individuality as two separate beings.” Most of Horn’s work has been rendered with some form of material that relates to the outer covering of birds or other winged creatures. Horn uses these choices consciously, claiming these material choices are “a means of tactile extension of the outer skin.”(Stooss 15) Therefore, Horn really does consider her work to be an extension of the body and not just an object resting on the body. These pieces communicate what the body cannot because of our perceived understanding of the physical body, as we understand it.

What I enjoy the most about these specific pieces is the way they allow the body to communicate. Instead of allowing objects to come near the body, Finger Gloves creates distance, which makes me look at the body as timid and full of fear of objects from the outside world. Observing the careful way in which her object makes the body touch, we reconsider the value of touch, and the intimate distance we posses to investigate objects. Cornucopia, Séance for two Breasts is an illustration for me about the importance of communicating with our bodies and not just ignoring them, specifically the feminine body and the ways in which it has been oppressed.

Comparing and Contrasting Beuys and Barney through Nat Trottman and Nancy Spector

The readings I would like to discuss are Ritual Space/Sculptural Time by Nat Trottman and In potentia by Nancy Spector. These reading compare and contrast the work and methodology of Joseph Beuys and Mathew Barney. I enjoyed reading these two pieces together because the essay by Trottman is an overview that quickly and clearly distills the work of these two artists, while Spector’s essay dissects the work of each artist and describes in detail why the work can be understood through the work of the other artist.

Trottman’s main argument is that both Beuys and Barney use space and time to create their own realities. In order to understand the importance of the work of these artists, we must first understand Barney’s investment as a student of modern physics, “Beuys felt that time and space rested on a continuum that it was his duty to exploit”(145). Barney’s work continued Beuys’ investigations but complemented Beuys by reworking the relationship between action and object. Barney’s work uses performance and objects shown in video format, so we understand everything about the space, what we question is the temporal, or when it all happened. Bueys performances occur only once and his sculptural objects left behind are the residue of his actions transmitting meaning through space and time (148). What I found interesting is the material decisions that each artist made to create a convincing argument about the importance of their respective spatial and temporal arguments. For example, Beuys used fat in Fat Room, initially lining the room with fat, marking his ritualized space, and then performing an action, placing the fat under his knee and leaving a cast of the negative of his knee pit, creating sculptural objects that were made through action. Barney’s material decisions were ephemeral in the sense that they clearly referenced his actions, like in Field Dressing when he used petroleum jelly, inserted into his orifices, which support and exaggerate his actions but act less as independent sculptural objects.








Spector’s essay contains more descriptions of each project, how they compare and compliment each other on a much more obsessive scale. Spector also clearly identifies that both artist’s work is autobiographical yet the action is Beuys work occurs in the public performed and Barney’s occurs in the private preformed. Spector’s explanation of Beuys’s Fat Room and Mathew Barney’s Field Dressing, from material choice to metaphor are necessary in understanding each work. The material choice Beuys’s Fat Room, fat and felt, are personal symbols for the concept of renewal. Fat can be liquid or solid and is easily transformed between the two. Felt is composed of recycled animal fibers, and have commonly had a previous life. Spector explains that Beuys uses these materials to “expand from the idea of personal rebirth to that of worldwide political and social awakening”(16-17). Barney’s material choices in Field Dressing are particularly interesting because they reinforce his personal analysis of the functioning of the internal organs in the human body. He breaks this functioning down to three main components, “’Situation,’ contains unadulterated, raw drive. In this state, energy is unorganized and essentially useless but ripe with potential. ‘Condition,’…is a disciplinary structure that processes this crude and random energy…’Production,’ makes this force manifest to the world via anal and oral channels”(25). After defining these conditions, Barney’s video installation of Field Dressing shows Barney naked and harnessed in climbing equipment, raising and lowering himself from a tub of petroleum jelly. On another screen we see a close up of him filling his orifices with the jelly, in effect altering the production components of the body, in an attempt to create a “hermetically sealed, but potentially explosive vessel”(25). Spector’s assertion of each of the artist’s work is that Beuys is attempting to come to a resolution exploiting his personal metaphors while Barney is creating chaos after defining his theory of the production system.














I have to say, I am not particularly interested in the depth of this work. I find the material choices and relationship to the body interesting, because each of the artists have specific, personal reasons for utilizing these materials but the extent of which these critics accept the metaphors as effectively communicating their ideas is a stretch. I see this work for its shock value, and I find the reasons behind some of the actions far fetched and confusing. I accept and agree that this work is avant-garde and pushing the limits of conceptual art while also questioning itself. However, I find that it is hard to understand without a long explanation, which makes me question its effectiveness.

Performing Objects and Actors. Where does the power of life originate?

In John Bell’s essay “Death and Performing Objects,” Bell presents the dichotomy between the living actor and performance objects that are not living, but have a connection to the living world, either through their materiality or their animation through human interaction. Bell begins his conversation by proposing that we all “arise from inert material, exist for a brief moment, and then return to the larger body of dead matter from which we arose.” In essence, he argues that actors/performers have a connection to the objects that they perform in a cyclical sense because the materiality of the objects – whether it be leather, wood or bone – was at one time alive. Although these materials had a physical “life” to them at one point, I think his justification that the implicit power of these materials is stronger because they are more connected to the life is incomplete. For example, the native American Zuni tribe honors small objects the look like animals which are carved from stone, called fetishes. These fetishes reference the Zuni creation story in which predatory animals were struck by lighting and turned to stone, but the heart inside the stone is still very much alive which protects its owner from harm. I believe that the anthropomorphic power invested in objects such as the fetish of the Zunis is just as powerful as the leather or plant objects. Bell references the use of animal as well as human bones and remains as objects of power. The objects we might understand the most are relics in the church – a divine protection that connects the human world with the afterworld. I argue that although these materials have a physical connection to life, the power of the object itself is imaginary and its strength is in the belief of the viewer, regardless of its materiality.

The subject of the role of the actor and the role of the performing object is one of the main points of Bell’s essay as well as Kantor’s “The Theatre of Death” (1975). Bell references the arguments of Edward Gordon Craig and Heinrich von Kleist who both agree that the puppet or performing object is more valuable that the actor. Kleist and Craig both seem to agree that the human form is awkward and useless as a valuable art form. Bell instigates that although Kleist’s and Craig’s argument offer warning to the actor as secondary importance in performing object theatre, the actor is still necessary to successfully activate object theatre. “The elevation of the object from the status of prop to active agent provokes anxiety, because it appears that focus on the object will reduce focus on the human body. This anxiety is in fact justified, because forming object theatre de-centers the actor and places her or him in relationship not to another actor or to the audience, but to a representative of the lifeless world.” In contrast, Taseusz Kantor claims that the death of the actor must be present in performance in order to truly fill the puppet with life, “it is possible to express life in art only through the absence of life.”

I am surprised that throughout both of these essays and the variety of performances including puppets and props that represent death, the Mexican “day of the dead,” or “Día de los Muertos,” was not even brought up. This is a holiday that is celebrated each year by families welcoming and honoring their loved ones who have passed. There are parades with balloons, costumes, candy, toys and they all usually depict the skeleton to represent death. I feel like this discussion would have been helpful to include in Bell’s essay discussing ritual as it relates to death and performing objects.

William Kentridge

In Lynne Cooke’s essay, “Mundus, Inversus, Mundus Perversus” South African artist William Kentridge’s powerful imagery of the plight of his country is highlighted. Kentridge himself acknowledges the dangers and difficulty of addressing apartheid directly, “I am not saying that apartheid, or indeed, redemption, are not worthy of representation, description or exploration, I am saying that the scale and weight with which this rock presents itself is inimical to the task”(41). Kentridge’s chosen form of illustration utilizes the polarized colors of black and white to overtly display the weight of his subject matter. Cooke argues that Kentridge’s Monument (1990), a play modeled after Samuel Beckett’s short play Catastophe, addresses his subject matter much more directly than Beckett’s with the use of fractured camera angles, sympathetic characters and understood through the medium of silent film as in the dramatic work of Russian Sergei Eisenstein. Cooke continues that the significance of this animated film is rooted in the violence that was occurring at this time in South Africa. The collapse of economic stability, threat of guerilla attacks and formation followed by collapse of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990 fueled a rather tumultuous period in South African history. I agree with Cooke that Kentridge’s Monument provides a platform for us to address the South African plight through the easily consumed animation.

Cooke also discusses Kentridge’s recurring interaction with theatre, from his early work with Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (1975) to Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997) a modern adaptation of writer Jane Taylor and the HandSpring Puppet Company. Ubu and the Truth Commission is an interpretation of the unbelievable accounts of human rights violence that occurred and were described in detail in order for individuals to gain amnesty from the newly formed Truth and Reconcilitation Commission by the ANC in 1996. During the formation of the cast, the company found it necessary to have the Ma and Pa Ubu, characters who were never present at trials, be acted by actual people – and the accounts of the actual people be represented by puppets, who were visibly mechanized by people. This was to amplify the absurdity of the situation. The use of puppets is two fold – to express the absurdity of the subject matter and to somehow make the consumption of these unbelievable acts of racial violence easier. However, Kentridge’s illustrations acted mostly as visual backdrop, where the roles of characters were acted out with the use of puppets onstage. Cooke argues that Jarry’s play abstracts the system of flaws in the authoritative figures from South Africa’s past who felt like what they were doing was right and argues that Kentridge’s vision completes this conversation.

Kentridge’s role in Jarry’s theatre production impacted his practice leading up to one of his most famous pieces, Stereoscope (1999). However, instead of the Soho Eckstein being an active antagonist in the piece, Kentridge allows this Soho to remain passive while the city around him literally deconstructs, even occasionally impaling Soho himself. I believe this shows Kentridge’s growth in understanding the power of apartheid in South Africa. The causes of which cannot necessarily be the responsibility of a notable few government figures, but on the masses – the people of South Africa. Now that responsibility of rebuilding the country after apartheid relies ultimately on the people of South Africa. The use of puppetry - whether in animation or theatre - exaggerates ideas by activating the body as well as the voice and I feel like it successfully reinforces Kentridges work.

Puppetry as discussed by John Bell and Stephen Kaplin

John Bell’s “Puppet’s, Masks, and Performing Objects at the End of the Century” is a wonderful resource collectively introducing the writers who have discussed “performing objects” (borrowing Frank Proschan’s term) from many countries throughout the world over the last century. Bell is happy to argue that the field of performing objects has remained all but “invisible” up until the last century because there has been little critically discussed about performing objects, although they have been an important part of theatre and performance since the Greek Drama. I am a new student to this field, so I feel like I cannot disagree and provide other examples of essays written about these objects that he has not mentioned. However, I feel like Bell is trying to add to the critical discussion about these objects as they occur in theatre, ritual and performance attempting to reveal the importance of these objects as cultural links through tradition. I agree with Bell that these objects are worthy of theoretical consideration here in the Americas as they have been considered in Europe. In “A Puppet Tree,” Stephen Kaplin remarks that “more books get published yearly on soap operas than on puppetry.” Kaplin’s discussion introduces us to many different forms of popular puppetry in the Americas. His exuberant voice examines popular puppetry and breaks down the puppet/performer relationship quantifiable by distance. By specifically defining these relationships, Kaplin is creating a system of comparing the objects and therefore, examining them critically. Whereas Bell states he wants the objects to critically examined and discussed further, Kaplin is installing a system for us to examine and discuss performing objects.

I feel like these two writings complement each other nicely because we have examples of writings that discuss performing objects and a text that nicely illustrates the objects and breaks them down, allowing us to create our own discussion about them.

On a side note, I’ve seen some of the performances that Kaplin mentions, and they are amazing! I was part of a Bread and Puppet Parade in Richmond, Virginia and I have also seen Julie Taymor’s The Lion King in London, and they were both spectacular. The Bread and Puppet Parade I saw was on Halloween in 2007 and I am including some images here (although some are hard to see because it was so dark).

Brand New Blog

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to put the first post up and say I'm super excited for the semester, and I think some amazing things are going to come out of this semester. Yeah!!