Performance Art Empire

kimvi:

SEIZE performance at the Barge house, London

Kimvi Nguyen & Andrea Willette

2011

omodesto:

Quando todos calam  - Berna Reale

Performance arte, 2009. 

(via wearinggutsforgarters)

contemporaryprofpractice:

likeafieldmouse:

Michael Johansson - Tetris (2012)

Just a little thought about ‘things’ fitting into society and filling up spaces and gaps after seeing this work. I’ve always been interested in the way in which objects and people fit in with society and blend in to their surroundings. Dust kind of does this - fits into tiny gaps and crevices of everyday life. It’s a natural phenomenon that blends into our society. With my sculptures and works so far I have been looking at how I can heighten the appreciation of dust, by not alienating it like we always do but instead learn to accept it as part of our everyday life. Who are we (society) to reject a natural ephemeral substance such as this and claim it has no place? 

We have killed organisms in order to use them for commodity and every day practical/aesthetic use. Trees for example. Killed it, turned it into a wooden fireplace frame. Are they actually dead? I’ve just asked my friend about this and he said to me that if it stops growing, it’s dead. Well, does that mean that post-adolescence when the average human stops growing up, you’re dead? And what about this idea of ‘transformation’. Is it really dead if it’s still in a process of transformation. The tree - the fireplace frame…… we’ve transformed it. When it stops being a fireplace frame, it’ll be transformed into something else. But what right do we have to choose how it transforms? 

Imagine if trees and other things and objects dictated how we transformed. In some essences, they do already, because we grow up and adapt to our environments to survive. Are the trees and things adapting to survive us? Has a tree transformed into a fireplace frame in order to survive? Does that mean it is still living? What if the world flipped around, and we were the objects and the things we previously transformed for our sake had a greater power over us and chose how we transformed and used us in imaginative ways? I like to imagine - and I always have done since I was a child - that objects have thoughts and feelings and are ‘living’. I take great notice if I hit something or throw something in a burst of anger, such as a lamp, and I take notice of the affect I am having on it and to some extent I feel guilty of what I have just done. We made it to appreciate it for it’s uses, not to throw it around and disregard it again. Why do we throw things out? Are we ever happy? We made the thing or object to make us happy through it’s practical or aesthetic use, and yet we want to throw it away again after we have gotten bored? 

And why do we feel the need to fill gaps and spaces with things? 

7knotwind:

Alud (Landslip)
Performance, 2011 (video here)
Regina José Galindo 

the artist’s words:
Water runs.
The body is there, dirty.
The public’s position as observer is replaced by the action of participating and cleansing the body. Motivated, perhaps by some empathy for the unknown individual, hidden behind the mud.

DYNAMO project-space, Thessaloniki, Greece
Performance Festival of the 3rd Thessaloniki Biennial of Contemporary Art. Photos by Eleftheria Kalpenidou / courtesy of the Greek State Museum of Contemporary Art. 

(via syntheticbloodflow)