Alexandra Bachzetsis

Extract from 'Musical' by Alexandra Bachzetsis, performed on 24th May, 2006

Antony & The Johnsons

For Wolfgang Tillmans 'Truth Study Centre', Bistrotheque, Wednesday 7th September, 2005

Art Basel Miami Beach

Cerith Wyn Evans

Christian Marclay

'Shuffle'

by SHOWstudio .

Shuffle is an artwork-cum-book that takes on the form of a deck of playing cards. Emulating a Fluxus box, a John Cage 'chance operation' or Eames' House of Cards, the deck of cards, each respresenting an image of musical notaion as captured in quotidian life- is intended to be used as a spontaneous musical score. To coincide with the publication Shuffle in print, Marclay invited a lineup of top musicians to interpret the score and bring Shuffle to musical and performative life.

The musicians: 

  • Steve Beresford (electronics) 
  • John Butcher (saxaphone) 
  • BJ Cole (pedal steel guitar) 
  • John Edwards (double bass) 
  • Sylvia Hallett (violin and musical saw) 
  • Alan Tomlinson (trombone) 
  • Byron Wallen (trumpet and flugelhorn).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g483qbD3qBY

 

Duggie Fields

In a presentation of his digital films during a performance night "Live Humans" at The George Tavern -though not live themselves- the audacity and energy of veteran popster (or hard-edge post-Pop figuratist) Duggie Fields' which has been his benchmark for three and a half decades stood out as the liveliest contribution. Art Historian Neil Mulholland described his work as "one of the earliest manifestations of Jencksian post-punk art in Britain, the adolescent historicist neo-kitsch of Duggie Fields." Set against the Victoriana of the pub I enjoyed seeing these presented slightly awkwardly, and with the sound of the live audience giving an enlivening sense of appreciation for the idiosynchratic digital choreograhy.

Francis Alys

‘Rehearsal II’ was a performance devised by Belgian artist Francis Alys in collaboration with Rafael Ortega, staged at The Slipper Room in New York. Removing elements of conclusiveness from the performance by emphasising rehearsal and repetition, the piece was devised to “allegorically explore notions of promise and disappointment, as well as the avoidance of success.” Familiar stage performers – a stripper, a pianist and a soprano- are brought together in a less typical arrangement for this public rehearsal.

Guy de Cointet

 

The late Guy de Cointet is a figure central to the largely unmined Conceptual performance movement of three decades ago, an artist who expounded a kind of Surrealist theatre of the absurd which employed a very succinct and beautiful way of making structural linguistics visible. The artist himself descibes his stage performaces thus:

"What I like is the texture of the characters interacting with the objects and shapes and feeling completely at ease with them. . . . The audience sees arrangements and piles of painted geometric forms. During the course of my plays these forms are talked about and their identities revealed. After the audience discovers what everything is, sometimes they’re even more confused."

French born, Cointet moved to the states in the late 1960s, briefly becoming one of Warhol's Factory visitors in New York, before setttling in Los Angeles. His work was well regarded in his lifetime, and remained influential long after his death (in 1983), particularly to west coast practitioners such as Mike Kelley and Allen Ruppersberg.

 

Janice Kerbel

Janice Kerbel's 'Nick Silver Can't Sleep' is a radio play originally written as part of Artangel's 'Nights of London' commissions, that was performed for the first time live in front of an audience at Tate Britain. Kerbal's description of it is "a radio play for insomniacs", takes the tropes of various nocturnal plants as the artarting points for its character and plot, and weaves a beautiful tale of plants destined never to be together, because of their botanical characteristics:

"Nick Silver (Nicotiana sylvestris), a nocturnal subtropical perennial in bloom, longs for Cereus Grand (Selenicereus grandiflorus), an exotic climbing perennial who blooms just one night a year."

The script was delivered by excellent actors in a simple line up, performed deliberately at dusk to infuse the atmosphere of the tale. The play lasts 20 minutes, apparently just a little longer than it takes to fall comfortably asleep.

 

Jimmy Robert

Diana Stiger Galerie

by SHOWstudio .

A barometer of market-driven taste Art 38 Basel was sandwiched between the openings of the 52nd International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia , Documenta 12 and Skulptur Projekte Münster 07, that happenend accross sites in Venice, Basel, Kassel and Münster this July. One of the most interesting performative happenings was at Galerie Diana Stigter, daily, three times a day Jimmy Robert made a performance in the gallery booth, which was specially divided through the middle to incorporate his bodily and filmic interventions.

Working accross the mediums of photography, performance, and film, Robert's installation offers a fluid conversation between elements that present ideas on the instability of representation. His performance took on the body as material, specifically as a means of creating composition, and as a place on which image can be made - film overlaid on figure. Roberts inserts his own presence into the installation of found imagery which he has distorted and represented, suggesting his presence communicates a curious dichotomy of alienation and belonging.

Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan

Jonathan Meese

Live performance at 10pm on Saturday 25th February, 2006

German artist Jonathan Meese has been forging a serious and controversial reputation for his diverse practice that includes paintings, sculptures and found materials that he uses to create visually complex installations. This Saturday at London's Tate Modern he will present a stage packed with such materials on which he will perform a highly charged live one-man scenario. Cannibalising material from culturally charge sources as varied as Richard Wagner, Noel Coward and the Marquis de Sade; Meese's world-view is extremely individual, bordering on the absurd. 'Noel Coward is back' will feature several enormous and violently drawn paintings of Coward, a sculpture of the Colossus of Rhodes, and a boxing ring.

Jutta Koether

Maria Pask

'A Delicious Feeling of Confidence'

by SHOWstudio .

An interesting starting point for a special off-site project for a Kunstverein to embark upon in the context of a fair, was to investigate the complicated relationship that contemporary art seems to establish with its audience by, wait for it, using the notion of stand up. Sloverian artist Tobias Putrih designed the venue: a stage for the performances (made out of scaffolding and cardboard, its structure explicit).

 

"Stand-up addresses the ancient democratic aspiration of free access to the "pulpit". Lenny Bruce and Andy Kauffman are held up as leading figures of stand-up comedy, a genre explored so as to consider the possibility of a crowd being transformed into an audience, and the aspiration to provoke a response.

"The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can't fake it... try to fake three laughs in an hour - ha ha ha ha ha ha - they'll take you away, man. You can't" (Lenny Bruce).

Maria Pask (b. 1969, Cardiff), practices in Amsterdam made her contribution to the democratic stage by inviting a philosophy lecture on absurdity, a Dr Who Dalek and a curious band to perform. The following film captures Dosa Jhana, who work on the notion that religion needn't be pigeon holed to certain musical styles, and created a metal band that practice a modern Buddism.

 

Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether

The etymology of the word karaoke suggests it is a fusion of two words that make the evocative sounding oxymoron 'empty orchestra'. The term has come to be a catch all for an international cultural phenomenon based on many forms of ever evolving participatory sing-along technologies. Highly respected New York musicians Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether created an alternative experience for joining in musically, and termed it a reverse karaoke. In an artfully-made tent decked out with black paint strokes, silver stage decorations, and striped fake fur rugs a set up of guitars, synths, drum kit and microphones complete the environment for audience participation experimental Sonic Youth-style. The reverse of the karaoke norm comes in the opportunity to mix Gordon's (pre-recorded) vocals with your instrumentals -removing the familiarity of the hearty sing along, and encouraging application of that bedrock of punk ideologies do-it-yourself- devoid as you are of lyrics appearing by sub-title prompt. Independent principle is continued in the distribution ethic as you are given opportunity to record your own efforts and make the cover for yourself (leaving a version for Koether and Gordon's karaoke collection). Watch how the eminent musicians sound and behave in their own empty orchestra in this intimate glimpse of musical inventiveness.

Kim Gordon & Jutta Koether

K2ao and Stephan Dillemuth

Los Super Elegantes

No Bra

Pablo Bronstein

18.30 performance of 'Plaza Minuet', Tate Modern Duveen Gallery, Friday 7 April, 2006

Sunn O)))

The following footage is Marcus Werner Hed’s short film of a performance by LA-based dark ambient, drone metal band Sunn 0))), who have a loyal fan base and are widely regarded as leaders in their doomy genre. This experience of them perform was orchestrated by artist Banks Violette as the pivotal part –the collaborative subject matter- of his first solo show at Maureen Paley's gallery. In the upstairs space Violette constructed a "ghost" of the band's guitars and amps, cast in the artist's signature materials resin and salt, whilst gallery walls were drawn directly on to. The main gallery, however, carried the message: "No entry until after performance." Sunn 0))) performed their drone from this secluded area, fully aware of the penetrating noise of their particular take on drone. Apparently their guest vocalist -Mayhem's Attila Csihar- was performing from a sealed salt-and-resin coffin, and presumably Sunn 0))) were in their hooded cloaks. The sounds resonated for an hour to an audience that had to make each other, and their presence at a hidden band’s gig, the focus of interest.

 

Stephanie Taylor

Stephanie Taylor is an artist at home with the poetics of language, and the word play and meaning structure -or quite the lack of- this can engender. A Los Angeles based artist, she creates intruiging narratives for as the basis of works by starting with a given word or phrase that is broken down into syllables, and more specifically sounds, and using these as the basis for new narrative. One work of hers played with the word 'performance', mutating it into the title 'Sir Thor France'. Entire stories are composed using this method, and the result is a series of engaging and poetic narratives, objects, installations and soundtracks that relate to the stories. An original approach to the relationships between language -and the sounds spoken language generates- objects and spoken word poetry. This reading meanders through rhyme and broken, absurd, ultimately nonsensical trajectory that is engaging in its linguistic obfuscations.

Pablo Bronstein

Pablo Bronstein continues his investigations into the style that critics brayed at and the style conscious noughties urbanite forgot: post-modern architecture. Developing the invitation from Frieze Projects curator Polly Staple to create some sort of tour-based work to happen in or around the fair in London's Regent's Park, Bronstein decided to provide a geographical extension of visitor's experience by taking people on a bus tour of the city. Hiring a coach and fully embracing the role of tour guide, Bronstein crafted a route and an engaging argument about the relative value of post modern architecture to the landscape, development and perception of London today. Put down your Eames coffee-table reader, and go celebrate the decadent pretensions of London's boom town facades.

The Landsc Apes

Making a reputation for himself with films that present controlled explosions in both urban and rural circumstances Cyprien Gaillard teams up with French musician AKA Koudlam to present his films with live accompaniment. This clip is of a projected film of kind of controlled visual experiment - a choreographed fight scene set in a suburban tower block location - set to Koudlam's music and presence.

The Otolith Group

Communists Like Us

Tris Vonna Mitchell

Tall Tales and Short Stories

by SHOWstudio .

Photograph of Act I

Tris Vonna Mitchell, recently graduated from Frankfurt's Stadelschule, uses a contemporary performance spoken word format to deliver his 'tall tales and short stories', in this case a narrative performed in three short acts with visual and object props. A recent review describes:

"The incredible rapidity with which he speaks changes the words and sentences in to a baffling rhythmic and abstract composition. His use of sound reveals how the complex relationship between speech and language balances between order and chaos, illusion and disillusion. His practice is at once structured and spontaneous. Working with a premeditated scenario, Vonna-Michell's performance is influenced by the situation in which he finds himself, and new stories, images and associations come into being."

At Cubitt the light was low, and the room crowded, so the documentation performs more as sound than visuals, but Vonna Mitchell's work embraces the changing situations of linguistic and visual degredation.

Utrecht

The famous quote of the anarchist Emma Goldman "If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution" is the departure point of an ongoing visual arts programme most recently presentedat at Festival a/d Werf in Utrecht.

An emphasis on the language -on the one hand of dance, music, theatre- and on the other of archived visual material is used to create a series of performances which explore "the potential of art to politically and critically engage with the world we are living it, yet at the same time celebrate it". Touching on the position and representation of women today, performance and the live moment are considered from an emancipatory perspective, as ways of examining the legacies and potentials of feminism.

 

Ulla von Brandenburg

'Singplay', a short stage ensemble by Ulla von Brandenburg was performed as part of 'The World As A Stage', a Tate Modern show described as "a ground-breaking exhibition exploring the rich historical relationship between visual art and the notion of 'theatre'". The ground being broken is perhaps by the Tate itself, from whom this is, in fact, the first exhibition to bring gallery-based and live work together. Singplay is one of the key performances to taking place throughout the exhibition, an unusual piece of artistic theatre from the young German artist. A ‘tableau vivant’, it depicts a family who take turns to mime to a specially recorded song (pre-recorded in German by a young girl).

William Hunt

A poetic performance by artist William Hunt who has been building up a portfolio of endurance-related performances that involve a degree of musical performativity played out under some situation of physical duress. This time flooding a black BMW car interior with cold water and placing it in it's own splash pool, Hunt climbs into the makeshift tank of water to sit submerged in the drivers seat, take deep gulps from an oxygen tank and sing out notes on exhaling. He keeps up this watery performance for over 20 minutes. The work has a sculptural gravitas, and not only emphasises physical daring, it suceeds in echoing some of the tennets of romanticism: invoking an emotional reaction as a source of aesthetic experience, through trepidation and the awe experienced in confronting natural physical forces.