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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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From a 1998 article in transmissions by Judy Radul:
Distance is needed for analysis, too much closeness tends to produce immersive and manipulative scenarios. The twentieth century has been charted via the disappearance of distance (Jameson), similarly live "presence" in performance works against distance to provide a sense of immediacy, a tangible connection to the performer. Paradoxically, our present moment seems bereft of live performance - yet besieged by compulsory liveliness, presence and animation. Let me crassly overstate the point': we crave animation because we want to feel alive. We have a distrust of contemplation and things passive, and an overdeveloped belief in "action" and "dialog".
I really love Radul's Empathy With Victor which is currently showing (scroll down) at the Power Plant in Toronto. In the 3-screen video, an actor and a director are working together on developing a scene. This scenario is itself scripted. There are many levels of representation and they fold back in on themselves, as the scenes within scenes play out, and our attention shifts back and forth from a meta-appreciation of the construct, to engagement with the characters and content. Sounds dry and boring but nope, its not. It's a thrilling, chilling existential experience. The 'actor' is working himself into the character of a man (Victor) who is about to present a eulogy at his friend's funeral. He is practicing his talk, while ironing. The eulogoy itself is an abstracted exploration of mortality. What does it mean to be a person, and by extension to be dead? Victor ends up concluding that his friend's death is a sad occasion because, and only because, he was human. He concludes this many times, as the actor tries to get inside the character with helpful prods and suggestions from the actor playing the director.
Here are some more of Radul's words, from the article quoted above:
What can or should be considered "live" is a philosophical question but wittingly (or unwittingly) it is also a question which performance engages with. Is the live situation best defined in terms of humans, sentient organisms, matter, conjunctions of time and place or an intensity of lived experience? What we accept as "live" structures a hierarchy between the live and the inanimate. It also structures our understanding of time. The present is alive, and dies with each passing moment. The death of not only the mortal body but of experience is something capitalist society uses to trigger a panoply of consumptive responses through anxiety. But, if, like many other cultures, we broaden our understanding of what is "live" or "alive" we may be able to work in the interstices of these hierarchies for an oppositional effect.
Top ten art lists for 2003 are gathered together here. Thanks folks!
From Better to Have Loved, by Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary, Between the Lines, Toronto, 2002. pp.237
"Somehow it is hard to write this. I don't mind talking about sex, which is important, or personal love, much more important, or love for space and adventure, which many people think is childish or "escapist" or even "reactionary"; but I am oddly shy about proclaiming that love for humanity and passionate social anger that is called idealist ideaology."
If you don't have cable, go here for some great video clips from the Daily Show. Thanks to dave for the link. Unfortunately, you have to sit through car ads before the clips. If you are like me with no tolerance for such things, hit the link, go get a snack, and come back for the video. Or skip it altogether. After all, it's just TV.
Guest Top Ten
Do you have your own 2003 top ten art list to post? email it to me at smblog@sympatico.ca and I'll post it here. Or click on the comment link below and post it yourself.
Paola's top 10 (links by SM)
- Michael Bittermann (Netherlands) talking at digifest about the hyperbody research group (Oosterhuis Associates) and e-motive architecture.
- Talking to Steve Mann on the phone (he is a clever sponge - this is a term I picked up from Dutch architect Kas Oosterhuis) about his ideas around de-consiousness.
- The Butterfly Effect - choreographers Petr Zuska, Shawn Hounsell, Jiri Kylian - 3 contemporary dance works premiered at Narodni divadlo, Prague.
- A hypnotic 20 minute or so video by a young British artist that repeated the phrase "you're no good" shown at the Venice Biennale (I don't know the artist's name - if someone knows what I'm talking about, please tell me, it now feels like a really hot dream). (I think it might be these guys. - ed)
- The Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale for an eclectic curation of a short video, a sculpture light-show, and what may otherwise pass as trash.
- Sheila Butler's Medusa Mum and Sally McKay's Miss Mouse for Girls and Guns.
- Julie Voyce all the time. (I can't find a good link for Julie Voyce! its a shocker - help me out! - ed)
- Bill Buxton talking at the Registered Graphic Designers Conference about the future of personal information within the urban landscape (architecture) and specifically of the capacity to project information in public and private space using a wrist watch within 5 years.
- Patrizio Davila's slick "gumba" photo series. (ditto on Davila link - ed)
- Compagnie Marie Chouinard's "Chorale" dance choreography coming so dangerously close to dance video or over the top fuck-up, premiered at Harbourfront.