Monday a.m. Artist Post 11/30

Being able to see and do…

This morning I was watching a special on improv acting at the Second City in Chicago. Being their 50th anniversary, this television special along with a Vanity Fair article I recently read, Second City honored their roots; where and who they began with. Harold Ramis, director and actor in several hit films, was one of a great group that got their start at the Second City acting hall. An excerpt from their website: “Since 1959, The Second City has established itself as a Chicago landmark and a national treasure. The theater that launched the careers of such comic greats as John Belushi, Mike Meyers, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, and more offers nightly comedy shows, as well as a variety of other programs and services.” These actors learned together the art of improvisational comedy and would continue to work together throughout their professional careers.

The one I thought interested me most was Harold Ramis, actor in Ghostbusters, director of Caddyshack and Groundhog Day to name a few. On the television special this morning it highlighted his keen ability to pick out and work with actors who could throw a curve ball at the audience in an instant. Ramis is not only a director and an actor himself, but he also is one who understands the success and art of improvisational acting and what strength it can add to not only film but many other types of visual and performing arts.

Ramis was born on November 21, 1944 in Chicago, Illinois to food mart shop owners Ruth and Nathan Ramis. His upbringing was primarily Jewish and now in his adult life he does not practice a religion. He went to Nicholas Senn High School and in 1966 he attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. After he graduated from Washington Univesrsity, he worked in a mental institution in St. Louis. Here is a quote from Ramis about his time spent at the institution. “…prepared me well for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors. People laugh when I say that, but it was actually very good training. And not just with actors; it was good training for just living in the world. It’s knowing how to deal with people who might be reacting in a way that’s connected to anxiety or grief or fear or rage. As a director you’re dealing wit that constantly with actors. But if I were a businessman, I’d probably be applying those same principles to that line of work.”

When watching snippets of his movies and his cast choice, I admire his strong knowledge and faith when choosing these actors and their abilities to improvise. Their improvisations create a unique and visually interesting situation for the viewer to watch unfold. The various scenes through out the film become unpredictable and therefore successful. When I first began this second series of performances I chose to perform the first two out in spaces where there was not a great amount of traffic. However, the more I thought about my use of improv during the performance and what other elements could help deliver some mystery to my audience, I added in the presence of audience variable. I chose to shoot in places that were the exact opposite of where I shot the first two times. Having an involuntary audience creates more ways for me as a performer to improvise and mix up my performances according to their verbal responses, body language, glances and glares, and just over all attitude towards me being within a specific distance of them.

With this being my last artist research blog of my college career and for senior portfolio, I wanted to end on a subject and an artist that relate a good amount to what I am doing right now and what I hope to do in the future after graduation. I have always enjoyed Ramis’ films and am glad I caught the special on CBS Sunday Morning today or else I may have overlooked him and this topic of improv as a whole. While watching the television special I kept thinking to myself how important improv is and how I have not paid enough of attention to it throughout this past year and a half with my performance work. I have one last performance to do to complete my portfolio and I am going to plan on being more aware of my specific actions and reactions while doing the line dance and improvising according to my audience.



Second City Website

Harold Ramis Bio

SCTV Website

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 11/26

Instructional Dance "Crank That" # 4 Digital C-Print 20inx16in

Instructional Dance "Crank That" # 4 Digital C-Print 8inx10in

As final critique nears I have been considering different possible displaying options and my reasoning for going with the option that I have come to choosing. Last semester, the first installment of this collection, I chose to leave the performance images unframed and with out a matt. The “glorified” image or the final image I chose to matt and frame. Thinking of how my work from last semester relates to my work of this semester, I have found that they are all performances dealing with movement and progression with one single performer; the performer who was also in the previous collection. When thinking of how the performances from this semester differ from last, I realized that the differing content would in turn make me question myself what do these specific moments mean and do? (The images that are chosen as the one to be displayed as the representative of the performance or the still image). The images that were chosen were the ones that I felt best represented the performer acting as other. The performance will remain unframed and free to keep/continue moving; I don’t want it to feel trapped or confined to a formal displaying method (frame and matt). The still image is one moment. Maybe one defining moment that paints a clear picture and characterizes the performer in a way that the audience feels like they have a sort of inside look into the performance. Therefore I want to formally place it in a matt and frame and encourage the act of studying. Focusing some extra attention on this specific print is important to the collection as a whole because the performance image tends to draw one in more due to the progression and constant movement throughout the print.

I want to keep my imagery for this collection (both semesters included) as cohesive as possible and feel that their displaying methods should be consistent as well. However, keeping their displaying methods consistent, I am prepared to discuss why I chose to display my new installment in the same way as last semester even though it is significantly different.

Monday a.m. Artist Post 11/23

While I was at work last night a man from India came in and we started talking about fine art and Indian fine art and artisans. I have always been drawn to their craftsmanship and design and we discussed how there are different ways to show movement and progression through art; much of the same as I am currently doing with my work. After I explained to him my process and concept he explained to me a piece that he got from an artist in India that depicts the movement and progression of a popular Indian dance. After he left the store, I started thinking about all of the many ways throughout different cultures that performance art can be depicted and portrayed.
Monali Meher is a performance artist that I recently found who is from Pune, India. She graduated with a BFA in 1990 from Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai and in 1998 she received “Unesco-Aschberg” Residency in Vienna by Federal Chancellery for the Arts and Science. In an exerpt from her website states that, “she felt immense necessity to work with her own body and emotions in public as a new expression/tool.” She has performed at the Tate Modern, the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, at National review on live art Festival in Glasgow, and has been a part of numerous solo and group shows. Most recently, in 2008, she performed “Departed, Assembled, Wrapped, Captured: Time”, at the Lumen Travo, A’dam. In 2005 she performed “Reverse, Rewind, Replay” at the Goliath Visual Space in New York and in 2004 performed “Ceremony” at the Artkitchen gallery in Amsterdam. She has received the VASL International Residency in 2008 from the Triangle Arts Trust Network; in 2007 she was a finalist in the “Black Magic Woman Award” in Amsterdam. In 2004 she received the Khoj International Residency that is funded by the Hivos in New Delhi, India.
She explains that her performance work is based on what is currently surrounding her and usually deals with social and cultural elements in her every day life. She has a specific interest in materials and “how two different materials react to each other and what sort of shape they create, what kind of smell they produce and what impression they make on the viewer” (excerpt from Artist Website). “Use of natural things like roses, used tea bags, coffee filters, henna and cooked rice have a quality of decaying and changing every moment of the time. These assemblages and installations are temporary structures in the time and space created by the performative act.” Much the same as myself, she wrote that the process of getting the performance together and gathering all of the materials and information is a performance in itself and a bulk of what makes the performance either successful or a failure. She uses drawings, photos, and text as a big part of her planning process. I have found that writing out my concept and fully thinking it through on paper helps me prepare for all of the potentials that could happen during the performance.
“Since last ten years, I have been working with performances, using my own body and voice in the space and with video, photographs and installations. My performances are atmospheric and they usually content props. They are sometimes ritualistic and show the cyclical circles of destruction and renewal as well as formal and conceptual ideas and the framework of personal references that inform the fragile divide between my life and art. The element of the past or the process transformation of the material as a quantity of time is of significance. To be able to record and replay time frames and juxtapose real time with mediated time is a vital area of the work.” Exceprt by Monali Meher about her artistic process on her website.

After reading through her statement and looking over a good amount of her stills, I find our styles very similar and our aesthetics. We both work very conceptually and our performances are based on the concepts and not on the attractiveness of the images/video that will be the end result. Both of our footage seems rare and real and I find that those aspects of the performances make them unique and essential for success.




Freewaves Article

Artist Website

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 11/19

They May Not Be Saying It, But That Does Not Mean They Aren't Thinking It
Still From Shoot # 4

Still From Shoot # 4

Still From Shoot # 4

Still From Shoot # 4

Still From Shoot # 4



The may not be saying it, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking it. Last week in my idea blog I spoke about how I was expecting to be snickered at and ridiculed while doing my performance in front of people at this field in my neighborhood. That day I felt as though I was invisible. Yesterday during my performance that took place at a basketball court in Huguenot Park, I felt the presence of my audience throughout the entire performance. I am not sure why this time was different than last weekends other than my age groups were different. This time I had three young kids to my right (under the age of 10) and then three older guys (between ages 25-35) directly behind me. The second age group did not pay much to any attention to me however with the younger age group I felt some strange elitist vibes coming from then. Upon getting to the basketball court, the younger boy had knocked the ball out of bounds and I grabbed it and tossed it his way initially establishing some sort of friendly relationship with one of my audience members. Because these performances I am acting as other and taking on a different persona I am usually pretty aware of how I am being interpreted and mentally taking notes of how I am looked at as this person. My audience knows that I am in costume and am not actually this person however, I wonder if they want to treat me differently because I am acting as other. Throughout this performance, I was able to put away the jittery feelings that I had from my last shoot and actually focus on the instructions from the line dance that I was performing to. I found myself getting into my music and my motions and thinking to myself how would a true Native American perform this dance differently from me to keep encouraging me to try different ways to dance. I have found that there are several different ways to carry myself and with each person I become for that performance, I attempt to act in a manner similar to my character.

At the end of my performance, I packed up my tripod and as I started walking away I felt inclined to thank my audience for their presence and cooperation. First mistake: do not confront my audience when they are my audience involuntarily. I glanced at the father playing basketball with his three young boys and simply thanked him. He looked over at me as if I had several socially unacceptable things about me. Immediately I felt this disgusted vibe float toward me and I went from being pleased with my performance to seeing clearer exactly what I am doing. The man I spoke to, one of the audience members, treated me as if I was “other”; a socially unaccepted “other”. It was perfect. I felt like a turtle that needed to crawl back into my shell with the exception that I could not do that until I walked all the way back to my car. I got into my car feeling strangely upset and satisfied simultaneously. This may be the first time I have felt those two at the same time and it was a strange combination.

Francis Cape Lecture: 11/18/09

Francis Cape, visiting artist from the Sculpture department, received a BFA in 1982 from the City and Guilds of London Art School and received his MFA in 1991 from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. Also along his education path, he apprenticed to a wood carver in York, England between 1974-1979 and also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1989. Currently he is represented by Murray Guy Gallery in New York and Chelsea Gallery. He is about to open his “Home Front” show, which has previously been shown at Murray Guy, at the Anderson Gallery on Friday, November 20, 2009. His other solo exhibitions include “It Happened Here” at the Suraci Gallery in Scranton PA, and “Waterline” at Murry Guy in 2006 amongst many others. He currently lives with his wife 100 miles outside of Manhattan in Narrowsburg, New York.

Cape’s lecture began with a brief explanation about what he thought the artist does. He explained the artist sees and then shares what he/she sees with the viewer. He defined seeing as the act of looking and sharing as an innocent structured convention. Because he mostly works in the sculpture medium he keeps in mind the word transience and relates it to the way things are built and how long they are intended to last. He works a good bit with furniture design and was heavily bringing up the topic of the “Utility Furniture Scheme” in regards to how if affected the United Kingdom during WWII. I found it difficult to follow him as he was discussing this concept because it seemed as though there was a lot of historical background that accompanied this idea. However, he said his work was heavily based on this idea so I felt it was essential for the viewer to understand why the scheme was important in order for the audience to grasp the where he was taking the collection.

He went off on a somewhat long and haphazard tangent about Hurrican Katrina and the relief efforts and only touched on how his experiences with FEMA encouraged him to make-work on that specific crisis. He explained and heavily emphasized that after the 2004 election he felt inclined and expected to make work outside of the studio about what was going on in the world and how he felt our government was not responding to it. At this point, he brought back up the “Utility Furniture Scheme” and explained it by saying when times are tough and materials are short in supply, the designs were specified and price controlled in order to help out the nation that was going through a crisis. He said that the US did not react this way after Katrina and did not reach out to New Orleans and help them boot their economy.
I was thrown off when he was speaking so much about his politics and his socialist ideology and then bringing in other artists that I forgot I was actually at a lecture that was supposed to be based on him and his new work that is going to installed at the Anderson this week.

What I feel is working with his sculpture installations is his inclusion of photographs. I enjoyed his series titled “Waterline” and how is examined and revealed what truth we could get about Katrina just from lines on the interiors of homes in New Orleans. I found it interesting that when he had these installed in a gallery, the viewer could get an idea of how high the water level got in these spaces according to how high he placed the images on the wall. It helped the viewer feel a part of the work and also give the viewer some tangible evidence as well.

Overall, I felt that he could have done a better job talking about his work if he had not skipped around as much and focused more on his work rather than other artists work and politics.

Part of the "Waterline Series"
Interior Sunset 2006 C-Print 11 1/4x 16 1/2inches

Cont...
Exterior White Stripe C-Print 11 1/4x16 1/2inches

Cont...
Interior Panelling C-Print 11 1/4x16 1/2inches

"Waterline 2006" Installation 17 framed C-Prints

Wardrobe Model 2a Hortonville, NY 2009 10x15in

Bed Model 6 New Orleans, LA 2009 C-Print 8x12in







Artist Website
Public Art Fund Article
"Francis Cape at Murray Guy" Article
Murray Guy Gallery Site
Francis Cape at Anderson Gallery

Monday a.m. Artist Post 11/16

Roman Ondak.

Roman Ondak, installation and sculpture artist was born in 1966 in Zilina, Slovakia. He attended Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania in 1993 and in 1988-1994 he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia. He currently works and lives in Bratislava, Slovakia. He has participated in many exhibitions across the world. In 2006 he took part in the Level 2 Gallery exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, in the same year he was in the XXVII Beinal of Sao Palo, in 2005 he participated in a show at the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago, and in a show in Amsterdam in the year of 2004.

I first saw Ondak’s work when I visited the MoMA over the summer. When you first walk into the room where he had his installation set up all you see is scattered black marks on all white walls (four walls to be exact). There were a few people who worked for the museum who were standing around measuring everyone’s height who was waiting in line. They would draw a line at the spot on the wall where they came to and then would write in the date and the person’s name whom they just measured. I did not figure any of this out until I stood in place for several minutes and observed what was going on. The artist was absent. The only people who were in charge of this piece were the few museum employees who were taking charge and gathering everyone’s heights and names. This artist had craft fully concocted a concept and then someone else (a few someone elses) would act it out and see it through.

“Measuring the Universe” is the installation I spoke of before. “Viewers play a vital role in the creation of Measuring the Universe”. Over the course of the exhbition, attendants mark Museum visitors’ heights, first names, and date of the measurement on the gallery walls. Beginning as an empty white space, over time the gallery gradually accumulates the traces of thousands of people” (an excerpt from the MoMA website). Also stated in that article was that Ondak intended for this piece to “turn domestic custom of recording children’s heights on door frames into a public event, referring through its title to humankind’s age-old desire to gauge the scale of the world. The process creates a work of art with a multitude of participants, merging art with everyday life in a confluence that is at the very center of Ondak’s artistic practice.”

I find myself attracted to his work because it is not completely performance art but it involves performance art mentality and concepts.


MoMA Article on Ondak

Kontakt Website
NY Art Beat Article
Frieze Article on Ondak
Tate Modern Article

Thursday a.m. Idea Post 11/12

Taking into consideration what was said at my last critique, I chose to shoot my next performance in front of a crowd. Going into this performance I was really intimidated and tried to convince myself not to it several times. However, in order to give this series some new speed and momentum, I knew this was an appropriate addition to experiment with. As I was making my way out to the shoot location, I noticed there was a good amount of people out there playing around since it was a nice day outside. Immediately, I became aware of who my audience was and because ¾ of them were under the age of 18 I began to worry about the immaturity level and the snickering that could happen. I pressed play on my Ipod and felt myself constantly turning around and making myself aware of what kind of scene I was making. However, to my surprise my audience had not noticed me; or they were not reacting to a young female dressed in a flowy Hispanic outfit doing specific dances out in the middle of a grassy field in the middle of a neighborhood. As time went by, I became more comfortable doing the performance in front of this oblivious audience that my moves gradually began to be more fluid.
One of the things I thought was interesting about this performance was how my expectations for my audience were clearly exceeded and more. I expected my audience to get in the way of the success of my performance instead they added something unique and quirky. In one of the stills that I feel is quite strong, I am in mid dance while this teenage boy is jumping up in the air to catch a football. What was important to my audience was to carry on with their outdoor activities. I was invisible to them and I am enjoying taking the idea of me acting as other and my audience not even noticing my presence as I am performing as someone else.

Show Entry 11/11/09 VMFA

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Digital C-Print 10x8in New York, New York 2009

Shimon Attie Lecture: 11/11/09

"The History of Another: Projections in Rome" 2004

"The Conductor" The Attraction of Onlookers



Shimon Attie received a B.A. in 1980 from the University of California, Berkley, a M.A. from Antioch University, San Francisco in 1982, and a M.F.A in 1991 at the San Francisco State University. He has participated in several solo exhibitions including one at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, the National Museum of Wales, the Mediatheque Louis Aragon in Martigues, France, and an exhibit at the Miami Art Museum in Miami, Florida. Originally from California, Attie left the states and headed to Berlin to work on his first assignment focusing on Jewish villages in East Berlin during and after WWII. The title of this assignment is “The Writing on the Wall.” Attie explained it as a low-tech guerilla project that involved four old projectors, a small portable generator, old Kodak camera, and lots of research through old photographic archives about Jewish street life. “Concerned with questions of memory, place, and identity, Shimon Attie gives visual form to both personal and collective memories by introducing histories of marginalized and forgotten communities into the physical landscape of the present. The Writing on the Wall project took place in Berlin’s former Jewish quarter, the Scheunenviertel neighborhood. There Attie projected slides made from pre-Holocaust photographs of the neighborhood’s Jewish residents and shops in the same (or sometimes nearby) locations where the original images were taken.” That is an excerpt from a page on the Museum of Contemporary Photography website about Shimon Attie and his recent work.

One project that I found to be most interesting to me, is titled “Portraits of Exile”, was created in 1995, and installed underwater in a canal in Copenhagen. He created light boxes that were 9feet by 9feet and were placed about 15 feet from the area where the audience is standing. These portraits portrayed both Danish Jews that were rescued by the Swedes in 1943 and now present-day refugees. The water that rushed over these light boxes changed by the minute according to the current and if there was any action in the waterway like boats or any other means of transportation that would pass through. He views the water as a medium for transit, safety, and memory. The light box installation stayed under water for about two months.


Between Dreams and History Article

Jack Shainman Gallery

Museum of Contemporary Photography Article

Learning the Soulja Boy Dance

Instructional Video

Monday a.m. Artist Post 11/09

Ashrita Furman, but born Keith Furman, is an interesting man that I found while watching an HBO special. He is known for his incredible enthusiasm and dedication to breaking world records while achieving inner peace and solitude. Furman was born in Brooklyn, New York and then moved and grew up in Queens, New York. He attended Jamaica High School and still finds himself practicing on the track and field of his old high school. As a teenager, Furman’s interest in Eastern spirituality heightened and in 1970 he became a follower of the Indian Sri Chinmoy. The Sri Chinmoy’s philosophy centers on self-transcendence. This philosophy has been at the root of all of Furman’s enthusiasm for record breaking. In 1978 he participated in a 24-hour bicycle race in New York City. “It was one of the most profound moments of my life. As I climbed off my bicycle, I realized that it wasn’t my body that had cycled for 24 hours, but my inner spirit. By using meditation I was able to connect with an inexhaustible energy, which we all have but rarely use. At that moment I decided to attempt breaking Guinness records to inspire others to connect with their own indomitable inner strength.”

When I first saw the special on Furman, I solely saw him as a performer. While he prepares, practices, and acts out these challenges he has an audience. There was a woman interviewed during the special on HBO who was one of his neighbors. She described having Furman as her neighbor as being entertaining and fun. She said throughout the weeks her and her kids will either watch Furman practice from the house or they will join him in his backyard in Queens and watch him work towards achieving another record. The idea of him working through all of these tasks as part of a meditation routine is simply fascinating to me. On his website it states, “he has been practicing meditation for more than 30 years and sees his records as a way to demonstrate the benefits of ancient Eastern Art. The name Ashrita is Sanskrit, meaning protected by God...” Furman later on makes a statement saying, “I am not a natural athlete, but my teacher has shown me that if one can be in touch with one’s inner spirit, anything is possible.”

Furman’s first record was set in 1979 and it was for doing 27,000 jumping jacks. Since then he has broken more than 225 records. Some of the records he has set include hula hoping the fasted mile at the Ayers Rock in the Australian bush, pushing a car 17 miles in 24 hours, walking 80 miles with a milk bottle balanced on his head, bouncing a basketball 339 times in a minute, standing on a Swiss Ball for the longest time at Stonehenge in England, balancing a pool cue while walking the longest distance at the Pyramids in Egypt, and bouncing the fastest mile on a kangaroo ball following right along the Great Wall of China. He has set records in more than 30 different countries on all seven continents.

The reason why I chose to research this man even though the kind of work that he does is not necessarily art, is because I found myself really interested in why he chose to spend each of his days pursuing something that was beneficial to himself and the public and not beneficial financially. Furman receives no financial reward for breaking any of the world records, however he is more driven to challenge himself in this area than ever. He runs a health food store on the side to maintain a living but keeps his head focused on meditating and bringing new challenges into his life on a daily basis. After he completes/sets a record, this sort of clarity overcomes Furman and he has moments of realization that have a lasting effect on him. I find myself able to relate to Furman because he performs these acts and challenges and is able to find clarity within himself after completing them. Like artists, he does these things for himself. It is a way of life and is his own piece of happiness.









Furman's Website

Wikipedia Page on Furman

HBO Real Sports Page on Furman

NY Times Article on Furman

Sri Chinmoy's Information Website