Among the books I read at the beginning of this year is this one,
It is a very readable story written around the legendary performance artist, Marina Abramovic's installation 'The Artist Is Present', which was held in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, from March 9th until May 31st 2012. For something like 736 hours Abramovic sat immobile on a chair and spectators were invited to take turns sitting opposite her.
It often proved an intense and emotional experience for the spectators. Marina would absorb their emotion and reflect it back to them. This link will take you to a film about the preparation for the MoMA installation. It's really interesting and gives the viewer a look into Marina's personal and performing background. She started in the early 70s and has always used her own body as a material for artworks.
If, like me, you become interested in Marina Abramovic, James Westcott's 'When Marina Abramovic Dies, A Biography' is well worth the read.
So, Performance is this blog's theme....Performance Art Clothing....
It is interesting to discover 2 books which investigate this topic
Elizabeth Patterson's 'Fashion as Performance' offers an academic study of fashion as dramatic performance and analyses a number of cutting edge designers such as Rei Kawakubo.
Comme des Garcons S/S 2017 "Invisible Clothes" collection is one of astounding creativity concerning the performance of the dress. Kawakubo sent out huge sculptural garments, which seem to make the body invisible. Wearing these dresses would be a performance to take part in.
Watch the actual collection performance via this link. Image you are in the audience viwing these garments for the first time, how would you respond... what would you think...
I tell you what I would think.....what will Kawakuo be doing for her next collection, and how I so look forward to being amazed and inspired. As Arabelle Sicardi states about RK.."She is a married and aging woman who is always working on something more." Inspiration for those of us who are aging!
Performance Art, where an action or series of actions by the body become the artwork.
It is an art form that combines visual art with dramatic performances consisting of time, space, the performer's body and relationship between the audience and the performance.
When I google Performance Artists, among the many names that come up that I have some form of connection with are, Laurie Anderson, Nam June Park, Yoko Ono and John Cage.
First, the wonderful Laurie Anderson...
Laurie Anderson is an avant-garde composer, musician and film maker. She particularly likes to make use of language, technology and visual imagery. She started out in the 70s with a number of performance art projects.
 |
| Duets on Ice |
My first experience of Laurie Anderson was watching Radio With Pictures when they played this amazing video of her singing 'Shakey's Day'. I just loved it. The sounds she made, the moves she made, the little story about Sharkey. My life was never the same again. This is a link to see LA singing Sharkey's Day. Such fun.
I took advantage of many opportunities to see Laurie Anderson. If she was performing, lecturing, talking, and I was near by, I was there!
One time after a concert I lined up to get her signature. She was so gracious and kind, and liked my Tin-Tin t-shirt. It was "happiness". Amazing signature..guess it can get like that when you sign so many autographs.
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik, a Korean American artist, who in the 60s after meeting the likes of Joseph Beuys and Wolf Vostell, became a member of Fluxus, a group of artists, composers, designers and poets. Their work was considered very radical and experimental creating art forms such as intermedia, concept art and video art. Video art was Nam June Paik's particular form. The television became a large part of Nam's works of art.
Watch this link for some very good background history regarding Nam June Paik and his art
My experience with his work was during my visit to The Storm King Centre, the open-air contemporary sculpture museum located in Mountainville, New York. I participated in a dance workshop that was based on 'Waiting for UFO', one of very few pieces of outdoor sculpture Nam June Paik created. It was a commissioned gift to Storm King Centre and features elements typical of his work - television and a representation of Buddha.
Sadly, Nam June Paik, a lifelong Buddhist, passed away Jan 29 2006, after a serious stroke he suffered in 1996.
Yoko Ono
of John Lennon fame, is a Japanese-American conceptual and performance artist who developed her art form in the 60s in New York and Europe. She associated with the Fluxus group, like Nam June Paik did.
A seminal performance work of Yoko Ono's in 'Cut Piece'. Ono dressed in her best suit, kneels on the stage with a pair of scissors in front of her. Members of the audience were invited on stage to cut off pieces of her clothing. Ono concluded the performance piece at her discretion. (A different approach to Marina, she'd take it right through to the intense end.)
You can see a performance through this video link.
My experience of Yoko Ono's work was her exhibition 'Odyssey Of A Cockroach'. It was a 3 floor anti-war installation and was to be an experience of walking through a city destroyed by war. I remember finding it effective and thought provoking.
I took one of her 'Imagine Peace' buttons, which she encouraged us to do.
John Cage
"I have nothing to say and I am saying it." John Cage was a leading figure of the post-war avant-garde scene and famous for 4'33"
Take in a performance of 4'33"...
I attended a performance in The Barbican garden area and Cage is right, there is always something to hear.
John Cage also perfected the "prepared piano". It was out of a necessity to provide percussion sound within a small space which only contained a piano. Cage altered the piano by wedging bolts and pieces of leather strapping between the strings of the piano which muted the piano's tone and created complex and in-harmonic timbres..just what he wanted for a percussive type sound.
This is an image of a John Cage performance, involving both Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik.
My experience with live performance art is Claire Fergusson, early 80s Wellington. The memory is a little vague but I think there was some cutting of clothes and certainly painting of the body.
Now, what about Performance Clothing...
Jessica Bugg for example, an English academic with a background in fashion and textiles, plus design for performance. She has produced wonderful work for performance exhibitions.
Watch a performance of the dress above left through this link, and I hope you get the sound as well. The swish and the snap of the fabric is fantastic.
If you like what you see, try her website and take in all her other garments for performance.
 |
| Feather Spine Dress - Jessica Bugg |
 |
| Saucer Skirt - Jessica Bugg |
There is something about Jessica Bugg's Saucer Skirt which makes me think of Maria Blaisse's wonderful work. Another woman trained in textile design, who has been highly creative concerning clothing and how it performs.She works to release "contained energy from existing materials." Often it involves common type materials and simple forms, which allow for a cool distortion of the body.
Caroline Broadhead, trained in jewellery, then developed into working conceptually with clothing, some that is used in a performance/exhibition.
Like her work for "The Waiting Game" 1997, a collaborative work Caroline Broadhead undertook with Dance Artist, Angela Woodhouse. It was a fascinating piece performed at Upnor Castle in Kent. The work concerned ideas of camouflage and warfare, yet accentuates the fact that the women who serviced the castle's community were never documented.
A lone dancer who was placed in the center of one of the rooms dramatised this. The skirt of the dancer extended to the edges of the room and the audience were asked to walk through the room, so doing they trampled on the dress. As Broadhead said, "I wanted the feeling of invasion into someone else's territory to be experienced at an individual level."
I love Broadhead's work...how she works with the craft of clothing construction and has it meaning something thought provoking. Take in her website, so you can view the wide range of works she has put together. I'm sure it could inspire you to create something in your own "craft image".
Angela Woodhouse and Caroline Broadhead are going to be working on another performance project this year...'History Come To Life' and it will be held at Wollaton Hall, Nottingham. It is a performance inspired by the various people who once lived on the estate.
This link should take you to more information about it. I look forward to seeing what concept they come up with this time.
In the workshop I was inspired to create my own form of 'A Shadow Dress'. First in tissue paper, then in organza. It's all part of the sheath dress style....the basics of pattern making...
Julia Mandle, a NY installation artist created PerForm Clothing, basing it on flat geometric shapes.
A video of the collection in action can be viewed through this link
Maureen Connor, another interesting installation artist, who works clothing as performance art. She has often worked around gender and its various modes of representation. She has been interested in the "workplace", which involves the attitudes, needs and desires of the staff who are operating in that "workplace".
The image below is a work of hers called 'Copy Room', which she put together in 2002. It's the concept of clothes performing without the body. (Kinda what RK was about with her "Invisible Clothes" collection.)
It's a performance about something anyone can do. Connor is wanting to express "obedience to regulation....the willingness to look the part rather than to be oneself. It appears you don't need a self!
These installations are about anyone can fill your shoes...so long as the shoes fit anyone can meet corporate clothing without expressing individuality. It's all about being willing to look the part, rather than being oneself.....there is no need for the self in these images!
Artist Gotscho gets into a bit of this sense of absent body in his clothes performances. I like his work with one of CdG's creations.
The actress Tilda Swinton often collaborates in performances with Olivier Saillard, who is the director of Paris' Palais Galliera fashion museum. In November 2014 they worked on a piece "Cloakroom Vestiaire Obligatoire". As spectators made their way into the room they handed over their jackets and coats to Swinton. Swinton proceeded to lay out each garment, hold it up, smooth it out, maybe even lay out on it, all the while contemplating the garment and what it represents. She would also add a small keepsake to each item, which the owner took home when they recovered the garment.
Trish Scott, English artist, performed a piece called 'Second Hand History'. She had spent a month collecting discarded clothing off the streets of Barcelona. At the performance the audience members were given an item of the collected clothing, which they then proceeded to hand over to Trish Scott to put on. As they handed over the garment they were asked to share a thought or anecdote that related to the item.
Another work she undertook focused on the performance of clothing is 'All My Clothes'. Check it out on this link. There's a video of the performance.
Danny Treacy is also into the collection of discarded clothing. As he gathers the various garments, he constructs "personas, stories, situations" that relate to them. As his "fantasies" develop Danny works on producing a physical form by sewing the relevant garments into full-body outfits, then he dons the created outfit and records it in a photograph.
...and this one, makes me think of a character from Dr Who..
Do you remember my earlier comment re what will Rei Kawakubo be doing in her next collection?
Here's a sneak preview! (CdG A/W 2017-18 RTW)
Could you perform in this?
 |
| Bit of a performance in my Lounge Lizard Jacket |
SLTSLTBsigning off.
P.S. What did you think of the scene in the Marina Abramovic video where David Blain, the Illustionist, is biting into his wine glass and chewing on it!
