A summary of the introduction of Adrian Heathfield's book about the 'genre' and tradition of performance and Live Art.
BACKGROUND
A result of the Live Culture event at Tate Modern (March 2003)
Curators: Lois Keidan, Daniel Brine and Adrian Heathfield.
In A-Gadda-Da-Vida: collaborative exhibition of Damien Hirst, Angus Fairhurst and Sarah Lucas.
ABOUT
Exploring the live element in contemporary arts: phenomenon of a sculpture that is performing and the aliveness of an object.
Live Art: confluence of the aesthetic elements/approach of performance with/in visual art.
Performance aesthetics have a history of : corporeal matter, movement in time, living objects and composite environments (Oblivion incorporates these elements) ; dynamics of space and time and embodied existence.
Immediate, immersive and interactive :encounter with and within time.
Vital elements and purpose: Social ritual, connecting the past with present, liminal temporality.
DYNAMICS EXPLORED:
TIME
It is dissected in performance: challenging its duration through the body, its flow through repetition, changing the idea of 'rehearsed' time through improvisation.
The occurence of Time in its dual capacity: La Ribot's Panoramix (2003) by exploring its fleeting and enduring quality. Subjective time.
The paradox of two impossible desires : to be present in the moment and to save/preserve the moment.
Temporality is scrutinised by questioning the commodification of time through slowing the speed, examining gestures, relations and meaning making/production.
Through questioning this, it is de-habitualising our need for instant relationship between art and meaning, desire and fulfillment, intention and realisation.
SPACE
It's form, operation and politics.
Site-specific art: investigates the matter, concept and perception of space.
Self in relation to Others: what is 'ours' and 'theirs' through interventions in public/social spaces, displacing,subverting or usurping places, re-ordering space and relation to question spatial divisions.
artists works pics
BODY
The artists body as objectified and the body that is malleable to be an object in relation to other materials. The blurred lines between subject and object.
Relation between self and others; intersubjectivity.
Sex, gender and ethnicity
Performer-spectator relationship : the unspoken contract, the 'divide'
Body Art: play of relations between surface and depth,corporeal experience inside and outside etc
Passive recipient of societal norms and active agent of testing these borders of the body.
ELEMENTAL LIFE
Human-animal relationships and dynamics.
Renouncing anthropocentrism
Commune with animal nature to re examine our values of art, culture and human exchange
Sensate opening: abject, liminal, without identity
Bio-political: placement of certain bodies by cultural authorities in conditions without humans or only to humans.
artists work pictures
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