These are the last few days to view Detour at SPACES Gallery, presenting the work of five artists rerouted by an obstruction. Prior to the exhibit's opening, the artists met to discuss their practices and share their areas of comfort and discomfort. By the end of the evening, each was assigned an obstacle by his or her peers. Their challenge was to create work for the exhibit while dealing with the assigned obstacle, all the while paired with a documentarian who would provide "color commentary" on the process. OhioAuthority arts writer and critic Eleanor LeBeau was asked to participate; this is the second in a series of her blogs - originally published on SPACES' website - documenting the experience of artist Arzu Ozkal. Detour closes July 16.
THE ENDURANCE PERFORMANCE: DAY FOUR
9:29 a.m.
I email James Luna, who lives in SoCal.
HELP! Please send advice about my upcoming performance score/script and possible live performance.
[Addendum 05.11.10: Did you notice how fear prevented me from seeing beyond my own navel? And, most importantly, I’m not focusing on Arzu’s process. Pedagogical moment # 17.]
9:54 a.m.
As promised, Arzu sends her morning email:
Good morning!
I got some rope yesterday; will try a few things today. Will let you know how it goes. :)
Arzu
10:12 a.m.
I email Arzu to ask what she intends to do with the rope.
11:47 a.m.
Arzu responds by email:
Hi Eleanor,
Lygia Clark's performance is an inspiration: Lygia Clark "Propositions," 1966-1968.
Will write more tonight.
12:27 p.m.
Luna responds. The minimalist, as always, but right on point:
ELB
The moment you stand up and turn to the audience you are performing.
Communication can take many forms if you are not a public speaker. You can prerecord your statement, you can write it out, you can hand out notes or pass one around. Whisper to each one: Don't do Bob, Bob did it.....
Think about how you would like to be communicated to.
Be yourself.
I have no idea as to subject. That is between you and the artist.
Mr. Luna
11:52 p.m.
All day I’ve been wondering how the work of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988) might influence “Love At First Si/ght/te.” The trajectory of her oeuvre in one sentence: She transitioned from Constructivist painting to sculpture to relational art (for lack of a better word) and finally to what has been called “therapy.”
She is not a household name in the U.S. (how many female visual artists are?), but very much respected in the art world. Maybe Clark is not well known because her entire oeuvre thwarts fetishization of the object and thus presents major curatorial challenges. “She attempted to escape both the notion of artist as ‘genius,’ and the supremacy granted to the object which implicitly forces the viewer into a role of passive contemplation,” Juan Vincente Aliaga notes in a 1998 issue of frieze.
After 1965, she labeled all of her works “propositions”: a set of rules created by the artist, using easy-to-find props, that are activated (or “made”) by others. The propositions only exist in the “now” and cannot be documented or sold or exhibited post-activation. You should also know that many of Clark’s propositions emphasize non-visual experience (auditory, kinetic, haptic, olfactory) and attempt to collapse the mind/body duality. Said another way, the maker of a proposition may have an experience that compels him/her to reconsider the way s/he’s been taught to think about the body/self. I don’t know for sure. I’ve never made a proposition. I’m only imagining. Indeed, Clark, like Arzu, is binary terrorist who collapses dichotomies: mind/body; intellect/senses; objective/subjective; author/spectator; object/spectator and so on.
What does Arzu plan to do with the rope and elastic bands? Is she using other props that she’s not telling me about? Clark’s propositions require the makers to wear plastic boiler suits and Mobius-strip handcuffs.
Is Arzu’s last email a proposition for you and me, the spectators? She’s set some parameters (or rules) - the performance’s title and Lygia Clark, for example -and now I use what I think I know so far about “Love At First Si/ght/te” to produce color commentary about Arzu’s artistic process.
Am I not making my own “Love At First Si/ght/te”?
Image: Lygia Clark, Sensory Masks, 1967
