Performance Art theory..... through practice??

update

2006-04-05T18:54:00.000+05:30

the post...discussion on the nature of performance has been updated...check it out.

open day...wrk in progress

2006-03-25T14:30:00.000+05:30

work in progress....one day to go

2006-03-24T12:45:00.000+05:30

pageunderconstruction for a complete photo documentation of paulo nazareth in chadni chok and mena bazzar check out http://daywithpaulonazereth.blogspot.com/

paulo in nehru place

2006-03-24T11:26:00.000+05:30

page under construction A small piece of history was made yesterday by Paulo Nazareth.....he made a calculated impromptu performance at the nehru place market.

hmmm...

2006-03-23T19:06:00.000+05:30

this stunning art work happened in Khoj sometime ago....

oreet...angelia and me...out on last sunday

2006-03-23T18:54:00.000+05:30

with what degree of transversing would one be satisfied.

dressed as a conservative....slightly shabby nearly middle aged jewish lower middle class male.Oreet was out being tourist in delhi. early summer sunday.....great light for a photo shoot....and certain delights Oreet went through...i could only sense..but could never be a part of. the act of gender crossing had shielded Oreet from the male gaze ...'letting her be' for a while. By the time we arrived at the delli haat, angelia (oreet,s friend a practising psycologist from london who has teken a holiday and come down on a holiday to assist oreet in the final week of the residency) were already high on some grass.....tripping and looking forward to some nice photo shoot. it was fun vdo shooting oreet having her potrait sketched...one could see that the potrait artist had taken oreet to be a male...a sharply depicted angular jaw line sealed this observation. people dropped in to see what was going on...drawn in by the odd looking jewish man and the cameras. Some lunch...some shopping later we came back to the potrait guy....this time with oreet having an palestenian scrarf over her/his head...... This time s/he attracted much more attention. The catchy

red and white pattern....and the scarf giving her gender identity an interesting twist. some of the onlookers could actually sense that it was a difficult potratit to sketch...and soon a small crowd gathered around the artist to watch him render the potrait. it was apparent that the artist was by now completely confused about Oreet's gender identity....maybe even a wee bit disturbed. this infact went on to affect the quality of his work....at the end we got a confused sketch.....disappointing a bit too. However....must admit the guy is very good with capturing expressions of the eyes and capturing a vurnerable expression.

out of delhi haat we went.....had kind of a bad trip when we could neither locate our cab....nor its driver. ........off we went for a drive around lutyens 's delhi....the grassy fields around India Gate.......in the evening sun was really inviting. we picked up some beer and got back there........being brought up in india was feling a bit tied up about drinkin around in public spaces...but oreet and angelia cared a heck. ...big time heck. by now oreet's moustache kind of had begun to melt in the sun....and s/he was beginning attract a whole lot of attention. .......As soon as we took our cameras out a crowd had begun to gather and .....hooo soon we were absolutely swarmed. being stared at by a crowd (an interesting collection of kids, toddlers brash youthful men and women of the family) .........my instant reaction to being stared upon was to take out the spare still camera and click away at our 'audience'....this lead to a friendly exchange of random clicking....loads of group photograph.......then peace as the crowd disspersed.

at this point oreet took off her moustash....making her feel more comfortable....and behold her persona comletely changed....suddenly she was transformed into this.....smart sexy jewish boy..... Oreet's change in appreance had a significant impact over our outing....suddenly s/he stopped attracting attention...allowing us to chill and open our beer cans.

as the evening drew to a clso .....some how the clours began to make a sharper imapct (was that due to the bee r) ...angelia and i moved into our shutter happy mode while oreet was just lazing around in sheer relish. it had been hard...and fun days work for us and thia was really winding down . light soon started to fade and.....could no longer carry on our clickin spree....it was time to call the day off.....and venture into the evening??? we moved on to the alliance francaise and watthc a movie

2006-03-23T15:42:00.000+05:30

Dianne's dance worshop with the the residents of khirkee has been an interesting story by itself.....ups...downs ...and loads of fun. visit Khoj community - http://khojcommunity.blogspot.com

funcky photos.....all the mad house ''freaking out"

2006-03-23T15:29:00.000+05:30

partying at khoj

diane's posting

2006-03-23T14:08:00.000+05:30

Diane's short note on the nsd wrk shop. The drag king workshop at NSD was with six 1st year students from 11am-9pm on Sunday, March 12. It was the first drag king workshop I presented in India! What excitement! During the workshop each participant gets a make-over with facial hair, five o clock shadow, etc. which is a pre-requisite to their developing a male character. Some of the students went on observational field trips on campus to check out their male counterparts - how the men articulated themselves physically - behavior, gesture, facial expressions, voice, etc. Others in male garb were confronted by some male students, "Why are you doing this? This is a male-dominated culture. You should not be doing this!" (they clearly were offended by this deconstruction of "man") or some male students were sympathetic and wanted a separate class so they could transform to women.

Diane's sunday....

2006-03-23T13:42:00.000+05:30

March 19 – Workshop held in the National School of with 3^rd Year Students

the students participating in were......Laxmi Rawat – male character name “Kapil Rao”, Madhu Smriti Shukla – male character name “Bobby Singh”, Rasika – male character name “Anil Sharma” and N. Kritika – male character name “Abhilash Natrajan”

Each of these students was extremely serious in their engagement with the workshop. They are in a reflective frame of mind as their time at NSD is coming to an end. The workshop brought up issues for them about their situation as 5 female students in a class of 15 males, and the struggle they have had to have a voice over the last three years. They spoke about overall sexism in the school – the fact that no female student has ever had a position, as Union Rep, School President, etc. Also about the selection process for the school – that it is predominantly male students who are on the selection panel. Then they talked further about gender politics in the Staff at NSD, which made me realise that sexism was not just confined to the student population. Additionally, the workshop confronted the students with their situation once they graduate from NSD. They discussed being an actress or working in the theatre in a culture where it is not considered respectable employment for a woman and, for some families, is even approximating prostitution. We deviated from the schedule of the workshop in order for discussion to take place.

Diane was assisted in the make-up by Meeta Mishra, an ex student who contributed to the discussion by describing her experiences of working in theatre in other countries, and how this was a possible strategy as a way to develop confidence as a theatre artist. Meeta a new make-up technique – a method of making a thick moustache or beard – something that also had a few new make up trips that were shared with Diane....like making thik beard and mousthaches....which were not wasn’t essential for diane before she came to India!

Laxmi Rawat said in the introduction that she is curious about experimenting with taking on a male character. In her family she does not have a problem being a girl. She feels free. Laxmi spoke in Hindi when she was in her male character, which was fine, though I missed some of what she said as him. Her character, Kapil Rao, is 26 years old and a graphic designer. He is single and has many friends. In developing the male character, Laxmi tended to act as “Kapil” and had difficulty becoming him. Her performance as “Kapil” in the class improvisation was as if she was on stage, and it was not until we hit the streets of Greater Kailash that Laxmi came into his own. Laxmi coupled with Meeta Mishra, and went to a restaurant together. In the restaurant, they discussed their relationship as boyfriend and girlfriend, with Meeta insisting that she only liked Kapil and Kapil declaring his extreme love for Meeta. Their conversation became impassioned, much to the distress of the woman at the next table, who held up her hand as if to shield herself from them. Kapil was thoroughly enjoying the situation and proceeded to kiss Meeta which apparently shocked those at nearby tables. Meeta played her part and insisted that they be “friends” and nothing more. In the van driving back to NSD, Laxmi was very animated and said she hadn’t ever had so much fun.

Rasika never felt forbidden to do things as a girl, but she sometimes felt that nobody should look at her and give her special attention as a woman. She doesn’t want to be noticed – wants to be part of the crowd. She hoped that as a man she would be able to achieve this invisibility. Rasika is very expressive, and has "fluttering fingers". She uses each finger individually, which is an unusual skill, especially for diane – coming from the West. However, this expressiveness in the way she uses her fingers, arms and whole body, is not useful in becoming a man. Her expressiveness is very much a part of her, and she found it almost impossible to be aware of it, and to change it. Consequently, when she went out in public, she found that people were staring at her even more. She was somewhere in between being a man and a woman, and this held even more of a fascination for onlookers than if she was merely a woman. The experience made her frustrated, but also brought her, and Madhu, who accompanied her, to think about people who are transgendered – how it must be for them. I

Madhu Smriti Shukla in the introduction wanted to develop a different perspective. She wanted to separate from how she thinks as a woman, and wanted to discover, for example, what is a man’s process when he looks at a woman or when he talks to other men. What is it like on the other side? As the male character, Bobby Singh, his parents are from Punjab and he did his education – B.Commerce in Bangalore. His ambition is to become an engineer but he knows that his father will give him money to open his own businees and he is planning to open a woollen factory. He likes girls. Likes to talk to them. He was in a co-ed school where the girls would steal his parathas, but he didn’t mind. He likes girls. As Bobby Singh, Madhu was very successful. It was fortunate that Bobby Singh accompanied Anil Sharma to the McDonald’s at G.K. Market, as he was able to maintain confidence when Anil was losing his. One thing that Madhu noticed was that there was a man eating in Mcdonald’s and he had extremely feminine gestures – he was even more feminine than Rasika. It made her wonder what it must be like for him, and for others who don’t fit into the gender stereotype. This experience gave Madhu some sympathy for them. Madhu was courageous to take such an extreme character as a Punjabi Sikh, but she pulled it off with flair, and was particularly good at maintaining a male voice. Though as a young Punjabi man, her voice could have a light and playful quality which was not so far removed from her own.

N. Kritika, in the introduction, talked about a production she had done with other students where they were looking at gender and at transformation into something else. Rasika, for example, had played the part of a eunuch. She saw the workshop as an extension of that enquiry. As the director, Abhilash Natrajan, she was impersonating one of the Acting Directors at the school with whom she had been working on a production. N. Kritika is a big woman and very self-aware. The transformation into her male character was not difficult, and probably was made easier because she had worked closely with the person she was impersonating. Her size was useful in exercises like learning to take up space and to hold your ground. I coupled up with her when we went out publicly to G.K. Market. However, first the whole group went to Nathu’s Pastry Shop in the Bengali Market – a daily hang-out for the students. It was interesting for the students to interact with counter-hands who see them regularly but didn’t recognise them. At G.K Market, Abhilash had a plan, and I followed him through the whole market walking at a fast pace, never stepping aside for anyone and even bumping into some stationary people, without a backward glance. Our destination was a local bar/disco where we had a couple of beers and even danced to the Bollywood numbers, bringing our beer glasses on the dance floor. This last action filled N. Kritika with mirth, as she later recalled the experience. We did not attract any special attention and were generally ignored by passers-by, who got out of our way – two men on a mission! In the feedback session afterwards, N. Kritika said that it was the first day she had not been conscious of the fact that she is fat. She felt it was OK to be fat as a man – that it was not a problem. On the way back to NSD, N. Kritika bought a bunch of white roses, whilst we all observed his interaction with the flower seller from the van.

Diane was rewarded with a bunch of roses, when Abhilash re-entered the van. That was a special thank you from the students.

Long may they thrive!!!

wu's sunday

2006-03-23T12:31:00.001+05:30

ok guys last sunday when oreet, angelia and i were out havin fun and shooting in the city, Wu was having an alternative adventure of his own. out for a vdo shoot with two of his new found chinese friends, Wu went the the khirkee mosque and was doing a naked shoot on the terrace....oblivious to the huge crowd of women who had gathered in the balcony to watch him..........obviously their men were not in a mood to take see the women watching a naked chinese man. before Wu and his friends realised it a group of around thirty men had surrounded them.......and had begun to issue threats. none of these guys understand hindi.....and by then all of them were shit scared. thankfully one of them could speak english and called up hemant at office. reaching there with a small group of friends hemant saw Wu shivering and scared .....bowing his head and saying sorry....and the crowd sensing that they could make money out 'hapless tourists'. having spent loads of time in the streets of delhi and various cities across india......hemant knows what urban crowds are all about......giving them a spree about colonialism and the body hemant managed to hit their sense of context....the crowd did not get the tamasha they had set out to create. wu was safely back...not before a one of his chinese friends had hurt him terribly by running away form the spot. under the pressure of the moment wu had erased all his footage....and the next day Paulo and i went back to the mosque with him. the ASI gate keeper was dead suprised to see us there....never thought that Wu would come back.....after a small round of chatting up a bit of talk about 'public spaces' ...i managed to get Wu the permission to shoot again .....this time with a robe on. .....what do you guys think. ..........?

check out...treat for your eyes

2006-03-22T18:42:00.000+05:30

Wu ye

oreeet's script for the open day

2006-03-18T17:00:00.000+05:30

hey everyone......check it out....oreet's script for the open day....really interestin stuff

actually it is just a sample

Dearest sister,

By the time you will be holding this letter with your gentle loving hands, I will be gone. You will be looking at my bed - and it is empty. No doubt this will make you very sad, my beloved sister.

I will be leaving like a thief in the middle of the night, the fox and the moon will escort me. As always you will have to face our dear parents alone, this makes me a double thief.

As you know I have been very restless lately, and have had many sleepless nights, those black circles under my eyes are my witnesses.

Palestine is like a chain around my neck and I am yearning to visit other lands, I have heard tales from Jewish merchants of their travels in the Middle East, Persia and Hindustan.

Their stories took hold of my soul and senses and I’m obliged to leave, it is my calling. My heart is heavy with regret, but if I stay a day longer I am as good as dead.

You might wonder how will a short single female travel on her own on roads that are dangerous to the bravest of men… but after much consideration I have found a good answer! I will dress as a man and travel alone! I have been practising many times now; how to conceal my chest, how to deepen my voice and I feel reassured that I can travel safely and without fear.

I have decided to trade in sweets during my travels, sweets are easy to carry and are always in demand. And so I saved and bought enough sweets to destroy a whole village teeth!

I believe I will be returning to the Holy- land next spring with pockets full of gold.

I promise to keep clean and pray ‘Shma Israel’ every night before I shut my eyes.

Oh Moses son of God! How will I go to Hell!

Yours faithfully

Sarmad

discussion on the nature of performance art

2006-03-18T14:49:00.000+05:30

Note on the discussion on Performance Art, which followed the Video presentation by Paulo Nazereth on his works, and works of some other Brazilian Performance Artists

Participants: Diane Torr Paulo Nazareth

Anousha Lall

Sushil Kumar

Oreet Ashery Sonia Khurana WuYe

Anita Dube

Pooja Sood

Rahul Bhattacharya

Paulo’s presentation was an occasion for a discussion on performance art and the nature of critical theory around it. It was almost inevitable that the discussion would start using the videos shown as a springboard for raising questions. Oreet in reference to the video, which captures Paulo walking into an eatery, dressed in a suite and ‘blind folded’ by slabs of meat asked whether the suite was a symbol of any kind of power. She went on to ask how consciously Paulo worked within the realm of counterculture... especially in the context of economics and race.

Paulo consciously chose not to go in for a direct reply and instead threw in a reply, which served as the keynote statement for the evening:

”There are political people and there are artists. Work needs to be seen through different kind of windows... one can also engage with the form.”

One could sense a feeling of surprise as Paulo’s translator Mirea made his statement available in English. I guess the manner in which we had looked at his work nearly ‘limited’ it to being ‘political’ and ‘activistic’ and in a certain sense failed to understand his formal plays.

Pooja stepped into the moderators’ role...turned to Oreet: “Where is your Art coming from”

Oreet: “well it comes from my interst in social realities...especially crossings between feminism and sexuality”

Pooja: “where does your take on sexuality come from”

I expected Oreet to give a concise ‘self history’...her experience in Israel, especially as a weapons trainer in the army, questions of marriage and the encounters with her sexual orientations.

Don’t know if Oreet caught the question right...she went on to give an account of various takes on sexuality done within the context of ‘Performance’. She then proceeded to express a concern about performance becoming ‘too mainstream’, and how over the ten-fifteen years it has really become ‘fashionable’ to have ‘Performances’ at various Art show openings. Oreet further observed that the proliferation of ‘reality TV’ shows has made ‘Performance’ mainstream even within popular culture and maybe in a certain way this has diluted the radical possibilities of Performance.

At this point Pooja tuned to Diane and asked for her take on the discussion so far.

Diane: “I have done a lot of collaborative work”

She went on to give an interesting account of a development within ‘Performance’ which focuses on group collaborations and centers around marginalized geographical groups and spaces. Influenced by Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, and other critical texts centered on alienation of social experience, a form of Performance has developed wherein a group gathers in a socially invisible geographic space, enact a ‘ritual’ and suddenly vanish, but through enactment of the meeting resist and possibly subvert the culture of ‘alienated consumption of the spectacle’ which has been dominating our social experience. Diane went on to suggest that a city like Delhi provided a rich ground fro such ‘Performances’

I have my own takes on Guy Debord’s text and the euro centric Marxist bias that it encodes. For me both the ‘spectacle’ and ‘alienation’ have their own pre modern and non ‘Occidental’ histories and I felt that that the ‘marginalized/vanishing geographical spaces’ project sounded like that it can lapse into being a tokenistic romantic engagement with the past...casting it in a certain mould of purity. Moreover the project may have its own relevance within the context of Europe’s negotiations with modernity. However to assume that the project would have a similar relevance in the Indian context seemed very problematic.

As I was trying to make this point through the thunder of a low flying air craft, Oreet made came in with an interesting observation about the ‘counter economics’ of being a performance artist.

Touching back upon her earlier comment about Performance becoming (too) mainstream, Oreet:

“A lot of really strong performance art survives due to different kinds of networks of small artists supporting each other and this mode of linking also facilitates a lot of crossovers”

She further went on to express serious misgivings about the manner in which performance art is written about, and how art criticism is struggling to write about Performance. Mentioning the 80’s Oreet sited the coinage of the term ‘Live Art’ to ‘release performance art from the disciplinary limitations arising out of the links between ‘Performance’ and ‘Performing’. Continuing to voice concern over critical writing on performance art, Oreet referred to the birth of ‘relational aesthetics’, which as a response to ‘high modernist’ Formalism seeks to ‘value’ works of art on the basis of their contextual role-playing and the semantic significance of such in the realm of social relationships. She went on to observe that in the recent times ‘relational aesthetics’ has come in for its share of revisionalism and there has been a certain (ill understood) going back to ‘form’.

Sonia came in to comment:

“the manner in which Performance has/is being suddenly co-opted has had an adverse effect on critical theory”

She reminded us of the voice claim proclaiming loudly across New York and London, claiming Performance as the art of the 21^st century. Sonia went on to pose a polemical question as to what happens to the contextual nature of Performance when it enters the Tate Modern.

The discussion was taking interesting turns...in a residency held in the context of Performance having a marginal space within artistic practices in India; suddenly there was a burst of lament about a certain loss experienced in Euro-American circles over Performance loosing its subversive potential by becoming too mainstream.

This stream of thought was temporarily broken,

Diane: “Performance Art allows you an immediate way to make a statement”

Anousha: “The definition of Performance is dominated by visual artists”

...Referring to the dominant trend of using performance towards making political/positional statements...she went on to say:

“It seems as if there is a need for a manifesto”

Diane: “visual art is very imperialistic with terminologies...

But actually there are various different impulses coming in from dance that have a significant role to play on how the history of performance has shaped up.”

She referred Merce Cunningham’s collaboration with John Cage as an early endeavor from within the realms of dance to de-establish the disciplinary understandings of dance...and a significant moment in the history of performance.

Anita: “there is very little space sub-cultures get inside the elitist definition of performance.”

She went on to express in the possible languages of performance...further stating that as a visual artist she was drawn towards performance as a medium that facilitates a certain nature of immediacy in reaction and enables her to express ‘spontaneously’.

At this point Pooja raised a question about the kind of background performance artists came from.

Oreet: “Performance artists come in from very difficult back grounds”

Diane: “what about the possibilities of political engagement through performance in India”

Pooja: “in the context of theater India has a rich tradition of political engagement especially IPTA...and we also have history of political activism through street theater...”

Oreet: “Globally art is going through its most conservative phase”

Paulo: “In Brazil older artists have a way too activistic definition of performance, and they recognize only a very loudly political pieces as being good performance”

Paulo again managed to surprise us all...all of us were still viewing his works chiefly within the category of ‘political’. However Paulo has a great knack for making people stop and think...and then think again. I suddenly realized that Paulo’s statements were leading me to better appreciate the poetic quality of his pieces...their layered levels of metaphor use[1].

At this point Anita and I started marveling about Latin American and Chinese performance and how artists like Song Dong, Danniel Sariva or Paulo make stunningly strong political commentary trough the use of highly poetic acts...minimal production backup...often enacted in isolated environments and documented (dramatically) in video.

Soon it became absolutely impossible to take notes as the discussion broke up into pockets of cross exchanges. The discussion that stayed on with me started with Anousha revisiting Anita’s earlier statements about sub-cultures and their space within the discourse of performance.

Anousha however, framed it combining Anita’s statement with her concerns about the discourse around Performance being Euro-American in its conceptual framework that while sketching a narrative about performance in India, we tend to ignore various traditional forms of Performance.

Catching up with Anousha, Anita reiterated her discomfort regarding the mainstream definition of Performance, and how one should get into dialectical relationships with the etinic/traditional forms of Performance...and try and be able to define it as Performance.

Sushil had walked in a while ago and was trying to understand the various strands of conversations floating around the space. He joined in with Anousha to voice extreme discomfort with what came across as Anita’s desire to voice extreme discomfort with what came across as Anita’s desire to appropriate various sets of scattered practices under the umbrella of ‘Performance’.

This ‘attack’ forced Anita to clarify her stance and probably rethink a bit. She expressed her desire to work with the various (sub-altern) forms of Performance, use their formal approach and radicalize them in terms of contemporary notions of subversion. She mentioned that Sushil and she were planning a Performance chanting the Ram Charit Manas or rather using the form of Ram Charit Manas, but using pornographic or politically subversive textual input.

Though I kind of understood what Anita was getting at...but we have to be very careful/sensitive about the imperialistic appropriative tendencies of High Art practices. Anita’s internationality definitely has a great relevance within the discourse of High Art. However that evening, the discussion was centered on revisiting the definition of Performance and some of us sitting there celebrate Performance as a medium, which has the potential to break the boundaries of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ within artistic practice...and as a praxis, which radically redefines art. Therefore it is only natural that we would be very sensitive to any urge, which suggested any reiteration of the ‘high’ and ‘popular’ divide; and also threatens to decontextualise practices which have very strong histories of their own.

By this time Rohini and Aastha had also joined the group.... somehow a certain strand of the discussion went back to gender and Performance...someone (I think Diane) made a remark about the video presentation and discussion which took place a few days ago featuring the works of Shantanu Lodh and Mrs Manmeet & Inder Salim, and where artists are invited to share a significant artwork and or an aspect of their practice, followed by open discussion with the audience. All of us have/had very strong opinions on their works...and very soon there was complete anarchy.... the ‘discussion’ eventually broke up....but even as it did I remember Rohini’s voice coming out strongest.......................................................................................................................

Rahul Bhattacharya.

[1] Hope it does not come across that I am proposing a absolute duality between the ‘poetic’ and the ‘political’

check this

2006-03-18T14:45:00.000+05:30

hey guys check out this link

vdo show and presentation by paulo nazareth

2006-03-17T21:58:00.000+05:30

the 16th ....We were treated to some very good vdo footage of brazilian avante-garde performance art.

two works of daniel saraiva...in the tradition of 'latin american and chinese perfomance art' saravira's works are heavy textual. in the first vdo the artist played out the role of a catalyst. he kick-started a question, frame a point of consideration,he used the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. in the spirit of relational art the artist dramatically crawled....dragged himself into a cowshed and waited........waited for responses from 'random stranger'. his strangers were cows....they crowded around his crouched/lying figure...confuse beteen familiarity and a stranger...

saraiva's second vdo was a take on the violence of branding in which the again uses the raw untreated cow hide both as a camaflouge and as a metaphor. situated in an rainforest river bed the artist swims ashore...... we encounter a bonfire....and see a pile of metaphor and camoflouge collapsing in front of it....still in anticipation....the audience is stireed as the romantic imagary of a romantic river side bonfire is tranformed in to potential scene of torture as the camera zooms in a branding iron.....the sizzling sound of the iron brandin the raw hide...threw up for the the brutal side non-vegitarianism and animal husbandary......that many of us are party to .as if to ensure there is no complacence...or to mock or relief about the artist not getting hurt......the next act of branding was on the artist's body itself.......even through the relative distance of a vdo...daniel saraiva managed to hit us hard on our stomacs....

daniel saraiva makes his comments specifically from the context of brazilian modernity and its impact on the value for animal life .....and ecology. focusing on the body of the cow.....the artist comments on how the animal is increasinly turning into a staple diet.....and how duing the dry season...families are forced to kill the animal who are otherwise their friend...

Comapered to saraiva work.....Carolina Cordeiro's vdo on focussing on the body....failed to pack a punch.....the context was ambiguous...one wonders why a stereotypical 'perfect' body was chosen as the site of work...even the formal value of the vdo was not captivating.

the our resident artist paulo nazareth showed vdos of his works.....like saravira paulo works in the realm....of contextual art. in the first vdo we witnessed paulo walking into a crowded resturant blind folded ( i use the word for the lack of a better word....blinded would be misleading....though blind folded contains within it the metaphoric value of 'blinded'). he wears two slabs of meat over his eyes....at a time when only the very rich could afford to have more than one helpin of meat in a resurant.....eveen that was prohibitively expensive.....'a meat is gold' slogan was coined in brazil to to able to capture the distance of the commn man from the commodity...blinded by money....na na that is a way to simplistic metaphor.

in the discussion that followed paulo commented that subsequently the prizes of beef have fallen to a huge extent....and now beef is strruggling it out with soya to emerge as the staple food of the brazilians...........and this developemen has largely changed to naurescape of brazil...with vast stretches of the rain forest transfrmed to grazing grounds

paulo next vdo showed him in near ragged clothes wwakkin down the streets melo.....one soon noticed that red was a ddominant colour in his dress and was left wonderin if it stood as a motif for something diffrent........his feet were also coloured red abd apart from walking his other 'act' was that of constantly fixing his rubber slippers.......

paulo told us this story about the people from the rural areas comming into the city for work did not have access to transport....hence had to walk really long distances.....they were known as 'red footed' people as their feet woluld inevitably swell up and become red......

both the was a dark critiqu of the developement model of brazil.....done with a playfuluse of context....yet heavily loaded with the textual...a treat for the mind.....butstuff to shake up some slumber.... :-)

where is live art

2006-03-16T22:47:00.000+05:30

live art is hip.....live art is dead.... long live live art

sonia khurana's concept jottings

2006-03-16T11:30:00.000+05:30

Hi, my title and things: [ try to print it all as it is] Sonia Khurana Notes from performance residency at Khoj, Feb-March, 2006. Much of my performance video work is predicated on the idea that video extends the impact of performance, adding the possibility of remote and future audiences for a one-time presentation. The video camera also changes the nature of performance, enabling an intimacy in which artists would do things in front of a camera that they may not do in the presence of live audiences. Through video, the performance could become endlessly present, always enacted for the first time. However, when incorporated as an element in live performance, video equipment can alter the experience of performance in a ‘live’ [theatrical] space by disrupting spatial continuity and adding a layer of technologically mediated presence and reception. [ and in my case: absance] In the past weeks it is this nebulous point of contact that I’ve tried to explore in various ways. I try to utilized this distance/intimacy to explore a range of psychosocial and psychosexual relations. Both by using my Body/self as a site for such interaction to take place, but also by situating my body/self into various sites where such negotiations can take place around the city. The following ‘works’ are at various stages of formulations and I shall share all or some of these for the open day: 1. performance/ video: ‘don’t touch me just when I start to feel safe’ [working title] 2. performance/ video: ‘when I fall in love, it will be forever’ [ working title] [ I may or may not show this at all] 3. performance video : ‘Volga’ 4. performance video: ‘Bag Lady’ [ 3. and 4. are sketches of performative acts done during the month around the city. These would be shown/shared as photos and video] 5. Am working on a surprise performance! [ which more or less addresses similar issues as I’ve spoken about: above ] Watch out! Or, there is also a possibility that this may not come together in time for the Open Day…

Diane Torr at the National School of Drama

2006-03-11T15:32:00.000+05:30

Diane gave a two hour presentation at NSD comprising of a presentation on the development of her practice in New York, Europe and England over the last 25 years, a video of her 'Drag King Workshop' and concluding with a performance and a Q&A session. Diane will be conducting a Drag King Workshop at NSD on Sunday Feb 11th and 18th for students of NSD. The workshop is an intensive 10-12 hours where the participants enact and become 'Men for a Day'. Drag King Workshop (for women only) presented by Diane Torr "Have you ever wanted to dress like a man, try on the male guise and enter the male domain? The drag king workshop is a unique experience in which women take on the role of men, and live as men for a day. Each woman is responsible for the identity of the male she conceives of for herself, and is required to provide the clothes she will need for her male persona. In the workshop, women will learn how to walk, talk, take up space, and assume the sense of privilege and entitlement that goes along with the male gender. They will practice interacting with other participants in the workshop in their new personae. The workshop culminates in a visit to a public space - a strip joint, a sports bar, an art opening, or perhaps a dance club, where we can test our new identities."

a lot has been happening

2006-03-07T20:14:00.000+05:30

a lot has been hapening over the last two weeks....new dynamics unfolding between between our resident artists. Oreet Ashery led an workshop......and we forgot to get in the translators for wu and paulo. thank fully perfomance happens more with body than with the spoken word (welllll not really....but valid for the workshop). Sonia Khurana could not join the workshop and Sushil Kumar came in late....he was not well....but stii tried for a token participation. good enery....but somehow did not really come together......still enabled the artists to explore their bodies and minds...................................hmmmmm all for now

not exactly a concept note

2006-03-07T20:09:00.000+05:30

Re-visiting Performance

Poetic Terrorism?

Performance art is a concept metaphor usually used to tag avant-garde/conceptual art which grew out of visual art practice and locates the body and space as the as the subject and the actual material for the artwork. Traditionally it is viewed as a interventionist challenge to Painting and Sculpture, and located in the realm of ephemeral artistic practices which resist the “commodity status” of art products. However Performance Art is also a resistant to main stream practices in theater, and has enacted the resistance through positing the performer as an artist (as against a character) and working in the margins/outside of the traditional understanding of plot or narrative and often actively subverting them.

Over the last two decades performance art has largely gained from trends towards dienchanments about the objecthood of art. There has been a significant growth in the and a growth in interest towards the process; performance art often highlights ‘process’ as an anti-thesis to the ‘celebrated finished hood’, often situating itself in an anti commodity protest. However it has also diversified into being a ‘new art’ which transcends boundaries of recognized media, encompassing those that have not been previously identified as artistic media....especially within fine art practices.

Although performance art claims a inter media status, it is still claimed from within a particular framework of visual arts practices. In its workings to create an ‘other’ vis-à-vis performing arts, performance art tend to become more comfortable with it’s another ‘other’ i.e. ‘fine arts. The KHOJ 2004-5 November December residency was a step towards discovering, locating and showcasing newly emerging practices in an attempt to challenge the concept metaphor called ‘performance art in India’. We had been exposed to various possibilities in performance through the various KHOJ worhshops where over the years a number of artists have worked with performance art. Even outside KHOJ artists like Nalini Ramani, Rumanna Hussain, Sharmila Samant, Pushpamala and Monali Meher [1] had been exploring possibilities and re defining performance art. In 2004 we decided to put it all together in a residential ‘process and display’ format and give performance art a new critical impetus through practice. The residency was a significant exploration of ‘performance’ within visual arts.

There is a need to challenge the ‘trans media’ claims of performance art and to interrogate the comfort it enjoys with a certain kind of ‘high’ within visual art practices. If performance art has to engage with allegations about it being a derivative practice, it has to it has to constantly rejuvenate it self ....possibly through pushing boundaries of performing and video. The KHOJ 2005-2006 residency is curated towards putting together artists from across the board in an attempt to rejuvenate the concept and practice of performance art in India.

For 2004-2005 November December residency: http://www.khojworkshop.org/database/residencyatkhoj/residency2004/novdec04/index_html/

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.18.02/activist-0229.html

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/

http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/f/fluxus.html

http://www.zazi.com/search/search.php?browse=/Arts/Visual_Arts/Performance_Art/

http://www.chennaionline.com/ArtScene/newsmakers/anita.asp

www.sniggle.net

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Performance_art

AM NOT PERFORMING

all the mad house

2006-03-07T18:37:00.001+05:30

Participating Artists: Dianne torr (Glasgow) paulo nazareth(Brazil) Anousha Lall (New Delhi)

Sushil Kumar (New Delhi)

Oreet Ashery (London) Sonia Khurana (New Delhi) WuYe (Shanghai) profiles of the exclusive members should be in by tomorrow.