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An essay on a small show I curated at the Think Tank project space, Curtin University, 2009
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Where does art sit in between the singularity of the art outcome, residue or object and the
contrasting multiplicity of process, performance and participation? Can performance frame
and unite the two? The September Performance Relay was a four week event taking place
inside the Think Tank at Curtin University that I coordinated to help answer these questions.
Artists in groups of two took it in turns to respond to and transform the evidence and
remains of artists who had used the space previously into a body of work with both process
elements and residual outcomes. At the completion of the four weeks, an opening was held
in which videos of process alongside residue were displayed in a carnivalesque space. I
intended to question the dualistic nature of art as a whole. Initially intending to examine
this issue from a somewhat Deleuzian perspective of rhizomic or intertextual links and
nodes, I have moved into focusing on Bakhtin’s idea of carnival to place the event into
perspective. Performance, becoming synonymous with carnival, became a catch-all state or
space that allowed singularities and multiplicities to exist together.
It has, of course, become accepted that artworks not only consist of objects. After the peak
of Abstraction in 1950s America (and even in movements like Futurism and Dada), the art
world more widely began to accept and embrace that its artworks existed in two parts. The
singularity of the art object, behaving autonomously, was also mercy to (and was even
undermined by) the extended processes, experiences and discussions that happen before,
during and after production. Even viewers, ideally converging on the singular art object to
glean from it a universal, basic and aesthetic experience were subject to their own readings
based on their individual circumstances and their position within a language system.
Postmodernism has developed strategies to undermine the structures and systems
developed within modernism that favour elitist and hierarchal models, especially in
painting. It has been the intention of the September Performance Relay to work in a more
fluid and interconnected space than usually expected within an institution, but without
necessarily negating art objects in a contrary fashion. Between reside and process, the event
has intended to find a mediating space between singularities and multiplicities respectively.
Painting especially has been employed to symbolise the top of a hierarchy or point of
singularity, however the way it has been treated in the Think Tank space has reduced it;
interspersing it with more multiple and diverse territories.
The September Performance Relay took as its most perceivably unconnected or isolated
forms; the aesthetic practices of painting and ceramics, and combined them with and
mechanisation and performance. It was great to see two practices mostly dominated by
“silent” object-making resonate with these habitually conceptual or socialised territories.
This is definitely a positive thing and suggests that stigmas between disciplines need not
exist despite any prejudices between them. Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner’s collaboration A
Series of Interruptions (Images 1 & 2) saw the development of a painting “machine”. Barretto
hovered around the environment, maintaining a Warholian sense of authorship without a
necessary “touch”. Paint was poured down tubes that dripped onto rotating canvases.
Steiner sat at her pottery wheel, becoming part of the overall machine as paint was
spattered on her fresh bowls. The result was an interesting mix – of the sense of authorship,
painting and gesture we see in modernism, and the interference of machine or tool; a
referencing the technology and mass-production that spurs much of postmodern theory.
This “mechanised Pollock” was both a spectacle to watch in its unfolding, and produced
charming aesthetic objects.
Image 1 Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (machine setup)
Image 2 Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (residue/outcomes)
I return to the 1950s here, where tensions between genius and mechanisation are
heightened, to discuss the duality of the work of Jackson Pollock (Image 3). For me he sheds
light on an art that consists of both process and outcome, creating a transgressive or total
art. Although heralded for the production of the “autonomous” art object, Pollock’s work
also existed as evidence of performance (Image 4). Not only was the outcome a singularity
offering a “universal” aesthetic experience in the modernist sense, it was also the result of a
pouring process derived from the methods of American sand painters. The work is usually
only given credit for the former purpose, it being displayed in clinical gallery spaces. In our
Think Tank space, the paintings and ceramics Ben and Claire produced were displayed as
objects, but in a more dynamic space that shed light on their process (Images 5 & 6).
Painting was displayed in a rotating motorised frame, alongside videos of the performance.
A perspective was offered that placed the work in both an object-based and time-based
setting. Theorist Roy Ascot favours the non-material side of Pollock, describing the result as
“an “arena”’ a meeting place, of behaviour, myth and idea.” (Ascot, 9, 1984). I agree, for I
think the work synthesises process, individual self and cultural reference on top of its
aesthetic value. This is what I’d hope the Think Tank could achieve and frame, and what I
aimed to forward with my own contribution.
Image 3 (left) Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952
Image 4 (right) Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1950, Courtesy Hans Namuth Studio
Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (final presentation)
Image 5 (left) ceramics displayed near video of process
Image 6 (right) Painting rotating on motorised frame
For my own contribution, keeping in mind the theories of Roy Ascot who creates a
“framework for approaching interactive artworks... [bringing ] together certain characteristics of
Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art” (Shanken, 2003) I also began thinking about
the space from a Deleuzian perspective; a place where disparate activities could be linked,
and their analogous features and potential states brought together into a new, piecemeal
art conglomerate. This did happen to some degree with Ben and Claire’s work, but my own
contribution with Shannon Lyons attempted to bring together not only art disciplines, but
ideas and behaviours from other time spaces as well as our own. When we dressed up in
costumes to paint the portrait of drag queen, Panache (Images 7 & 8), the result became a
fusing together of a medieval witch hunt with pop-art, gender-bending, painting and
occultism. The analogies I drew between these ideas were based on drawing metaphors
between witches and dark magic with the position of artists who use “impure” methods of
making art. These are artists who are not focused on aesthetic, spirituality or painting and
rather technology, pop, appropriation and conceptualism. These methods on a wider scale
are often met with mistrust or readings of anarchy, leading them to be “dark artists”. Our
act of painting was an appropriation tool to steal the “beauty” of Panache. This “beauty”
was represented in the drag queen as a state of being “other” – a transgressive or non-
binary-oriented (hermaphroditic) archetype that exists in a state of the liminal. By
attempting to portray this state on canvas, and by displaying the queen almost like a found
object or symbol, it became a metaphor for the condition we were seeking within the Think
Tank space itself, to portray two elements of a binary but transgress them.
Images 7, 8 Tom Penney and Shannon Lyons, Images from Untitled (Painting Panache) 2009
From reading Roy Ascott and Gilles Deleuze, it has become important to me that the artist
occupies a liminal or “between” space. This is a facilitating space navigating a world of
concepts, ideas, language and people, and the solid world of objects, materials and physical
law. Bengt af Klintberg from Fluxus (to whom the model was to be “in flux”) describes this as
a state between “stone and water” (Stiles, 2000). This location propels the artist into a
transformational space in order to become a connection maker – with the possibility of
taking any number of analogous or completely unrelated ideas from any number of
geographical, time, spiritual, scientific or material spaces, and highlighting their
relationships, apparent connections or (previously unforseen) potential as connected
bodies.
In a discussion with Markela Panegyres, she told me that Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of the
rhizome had also influenced her work Thirteen Actions that she devised in the space with
Roslyn Cadee. Panegyres worked with PVC pipe and her own body (Images 9 & 10),
explaining to me that electrical wire flows through the pipe; her body here becoming a
central element in an expanded networked structure; a structure that is reflective of both
the way the Think Tank space has operated and societies of people operate in general. From
my perspective, this, on another level, is the same way the networks of cells operate in our
body to form consciousness (Thomas, 2009). It is almost as if Panegyres’ body represents
this central conceptual or disembodied element – the consciousness or “body without
organs” of a space that is material. This shifting of scale and metaphor (from the body to the
space and to society), finding similarities within multiple systems and mirroring them with
art analogies, brings Panegyres’ work to operate with the transformational and the topic of
boundaries – where are things the same, and when are they other things? Collaborating
with Roslyn Cadee, Panegyres used the opportunity to question the point at which her
practice was compatible or resonant with another person’s. We might look to Bourriaud’s
alter-modernism to realise that things could be linked by universal models, while retaining
their own individual elements or “cultures” (Bourriaud, 2009). Panegyres and Cadee, coming
to terms with each other in the space (Images 11 & 12), developed a sense of definition in
discovering where their practices may or may not intersect within a broader conceptual
framework or space.
Images 9, 10 Markela Panegyres and Roslyn Cadee, Thirteen Actions, 2009 (Installation of pipes)
Image 11 (left) Markela Panegyres and Roslyn Cadee, Thirteen Actions, 2009
Image 12 (right) Roslyn Cadee, Untitled, 2009
(Markela and Roslyn quote each others’ work to investigate boundaries and compatibility)
In working together and building off each other as a team, the space began to reflect the
dialogical of Bahktin. Transformation and performance, linking and quoting became
facilitated through discussion. The space was self-referent and talked about itself. Painting,
machines, pancakes, a wooden frame, a wall drawing left over by Glasgow residents Clare
Stevenson and Alex Pollard, and the space itself, became motifs that were re-used and
quoted by us all. The use of an external discussion space, a blog site
(http://thinktankgallery.blogspot.com/) was used to help people see each others’ work and
continue discussion. It became a totally networked space. A network of course requires
nodes and it requires links. Photos and evidence (singular outcomes used to inspire the next
artists) became nodes, and the activity of discussion and quoting, and then making and
performing, became links that drew them together. From this perspective, I cannot say that
either the nodes or the links are more important, only that they needed each other. Our art
required both outcome and process to exist within the intended framework.
The outcomes and processes were however, mixed and not always discernable. This
confusion was important, and it is here that I mention the carnivalesque nature of the entire
period that became, at the end, synonymous to performance. This word, “performance” has
indeed been used right from the start to title and frame the experience. At the end of the
four weeks we displayed the work in a piecemeal, conglomerate, untidy style. We left tools
and mess around to confuse viewers as to what was process and what was outcome. The
space was inhabited by people dressed as witches, and anyone wishing to view the work
had to dress in costume. Pancakes, refreshments and a craft-tent style pseudo-relational
aesthetics work where anyone could glue googly eyes to objects became part of the
festive/carnival atmosphere. The space was deliberately awkward and topsy-turvy –
paintings that moved on their own, photos of drag queens, tacky portraits, stale week old
pancakes and cheap store bought costume created a post-apocalyptic scene, a
deconstructed state from which could spring new potential. This mirrors the relay’s use of
the word “performance” to suggest a common ground, blank canvas, or “zero space” to
frame and allow all other methods of production to operate inside it in an open-ended
manner. Reading RoseLee Goldberg’s account of performance art one might see that this
process is usually “anarchic” (Goldberg, 2000, p.9). This may be so, but many artists like us
are deconstructive in order to reconstruct and reconfigure.
Image 13 (left) Performance Relay Opening, 2009 (mess and residue)
Image 14 (right) Performance Relay Opening, 2009 (everyone in costume)
Image 15 Performance Relay Opening, 2009, Googly Eye Workshop (created objects)
Image 16 Harry Court and Tanya Lee, Pancakes, 2009 (week old remnants)
The Think Tank’s version of “performance” was one with no hierarchy, but it was not
necessarily anarchistic. Performance was not against anything, it harboured all things that
took place. It wasn’t a shallow rhizome; it was both diverse and meaningful. All things were
treated equally, rather than holding prejudice against object making which is common in
performance as a counter-modern strategy. In the context of Bahktin’s carnival, Shanti
Elliot writes “Carnival shakes up the authoritative version of language and values, making
room for a multiplicity” (Elliot, 1, 1999). I celebrated this diversity of art methodology as such
a multiplicity within the space of the Think Tank. If within carnival paupers can become kings
and vice versa, operating together without distinction; pop and conceptualism became
kings, and painting became a pauper – traditional approaches were butchered imaginatively
and enthusiastically by myself and Shannon’s naïve abilities with the brush and Ben’s use of
the painting machine, rigging canvas up to motors and using a frayed canvas that dragged
on the ground, creating a sort of “Frankenstein’s painting”. Essentially, one had to negotiate
art objects, time-based elements, and performance together in a mixed bag. Everything,
process and outcome, became privileged as part of a gestamtkunstwerk where distinctions
between the two were never clear, and rightly so.
As a result of the September Performance Relay, I have seen possibility in making the
statement that a different kind of performance exists. This is a broad idea of “performance”
that has no owner and does not necessarily own itself. It isn’t against anything but it is a
state of deconstruction that revels and celebrates the “other” and all things mashed
together, even where they oppose one another. In terms of the Think Tank this was a state
of mind, of activity and of framing that navigated both object making and process. The
painting of Jackson Pollock became a three dimensional space with more than one artist
behind the “picture plane” and more than just a discussion with a single Native American
tradition or the artist behind the work. It was a space that discussed itself through all the
artists who used the space together and all the experiences and ideas they were quoting.
One might ultimately say that art sits in between the singularity of the art outcome, residue
or object and the contrasting multiplicity of art process, performance and participation, but
I feel inclined to say that a state of mind, of thinking, and the space to privilege this
cognition, can transgresses both and contain all things together, rather than be victim to the
undecided “between”.
References:
Ascott, R, Art and Telematics: towards a network consciousness in: H. Grundmann, ed. Art
+Telecommunication, 1984, Vancouver: The Western Front, pp. 25-67.
Bourriaud, N, Keynote, accessed 21/10/2009 at
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/aaanz05/abstracts/nicolas_bourriaud
Elliot, S, Carnival and Dialogue in Bahktin’s Poetics of Folklore, 1999 (e-book) accessed
21/10/2009 at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/2327/30(1-
2)%20129-139.pdf?sequence=1
Goldberg, R, Performance Art From Futurism to the Present, 2001, Thames and Hudson,
London
Shanken, E, From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott in
Ascott, R. Telematic Embrace: Visonary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness,
2003, (ed. Edward A. Shanken), Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stiles, K, Between Water and Stone; Fluxus Performance, A Metaphysics of Acts, excerpted in
Tracy Warr, ed., The Artists'Body (London: Phaidon Press, 2000): 211-14 In the Spirit of
Fluxus (1993): 62-99.
Thomas, P, April 2009, Nano-Midas, lecture at Curtin University Art Department
Other Reading:
Bishop, C ed. Participation, 2006, Whitechapel & the MIT Press, London
Deleuze, G & Guattari, F, A Thousand Plateaus, 1980, University of Minnesota Press,
Minneapolis
Peeren, E, Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture: Bahktin and Beyond, 2008, Stanford
University Press, California