Kilometre

Notes

Research was done to find the speeds at which the earth travels around the sun (107,00 km/hr), the moon travels around the earth (3,683 km/hr), and the earth spins on its axis (1670 km/hr). With technology and environmental constraints the speed that earth spins on its axis was chosen as the base of the kilometre and calculations determined the earth spins a kilometre in 2.15568864 seconds which was rounded to 2.16 seconds for the video clip. Information was provided in the video so that it felt more like a scientific observation.

The Artist is present, Marina Abramović

First Impressions

Key Features of Performance Art

“Performance is about state of mind”

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, Marina Abramović 2012

“When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”

Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present, Marina Abramović 2012

This quote illustrates how Abramović values truth in her work rather than illusion even though her performances can be theatrical in nature, especially in her later work.

Performance Art Resists Conventions

Performance art is fleeting and only based in the here and now, which is why it is only evidence of a performance that is usually enjoyed in conventional art spaces. Abramović has been successful selling limited prints of photos that document each of her performances. After extensive training she has also been able to recruit young artists to recreate her early work done by herself and in collaboration with Ulay. These strategies allow her to continue profiting off of her original performance art and enter the mainstream museums and galleries with older work as well as new performances. While other performance artists have used photography to record and share their work, it does not capture Abramović’s dynamic performances that rely on time as well as sound. Abramović’s art uses her body as a medium for which she has been prized for her stamina and commitment and in replacing her body for someone else’s it subverts the original emotion and intention of each reenacted performance.

Pipilotti Rist

Pipilotti Rist You Called Me Jacky 1990

In You Called Me Jacky, Wrist is lip syncing to the song ‘Jackie and Edna’ by Kevin Coyne superimposed with various clips of video footage of a train journey among other scenes. Wrist begins the piece in an orange, long-sleeved, button up shirt or dress and simple hair and makeup and remains dancing or responding to the lyrics in the middle of the frame. She abruptly changes to a black, sleeveless dress or outfit and tinted glasses with dramatic hair and makeup at the end of the piece, much closer to the camera, and on the left half of the frame. The majority of the piece, when Rist is in orange, it is one continuous shot of her with various other clips superimposed on top, but once Rist is in black, the clips of her are cut up and it is the superimposed train journey that is one continuous shot that began while Rist was still in orange. The transition from orange to black is done using the tilt of the camera in the superimposed train footage which allows the transition to happen seamlessly even though it is very abrupt. The music complements the images and allows the piece to feel like an unsettling music video that depicts Rist reliving or remembering moments of their life alluding to the analogy of their life being like a train journey. Rist is all alone in the piece and becomes the protagonist in the story of the song when she lip syncs the lyrics “now I’m so lonely, lost and all alone”. The installation of this piece does not seem to be well known as it is an early piece but is likely to be projected in a gallery, potentially with each layer of video coming from a different projection source. This video collage is unsettling but interesting in its ability to tell a story in a subtle manor that allows the viewer to immerse themselves in the story, however it is lacking the bright colours that have come to define Rist’s artistic style.

Rist and Modern Day Videos

Pipilotti Rist’s videos have been compared to music videos of the 90s and early 2000s by viewers who were expecting art similar to Rist’s immediate predecessors who resisted similarities to mainstream media. However, to the untrained eye, Rist’s videos are unsettling in their ability to reference mainstream media and subvert expectations rather than simply mock the tropes. The superficial familiarity draws the eye in, but Rist’s videos reveal themselves to be wholly different. This is especially jarring in the current context of Tik Tok and YouTube videos which excel when different creators all reuse the same audio, templates, and dance moves in their videos before moving on to the next trending video style the next week. Rist uses her body to perform intentionally for the camera but it is not done to the same extent as modern creators because Rist’s pieces have original emotions but Tik Tok videos feel purely performative and superficial. Many mainstream creators on Tik Tok and YouTube seem to intentionally use the male gaze to attract followers, but Rist’s videos are hyperaware and use the male gaze as a tool for the viewer to question its presence in their reading of her work. Rist uses tropes and themes in mainstream media as tools in her videos to subvert viewers’ expectations and question their understanding of the way they consume media.

Experiment: Inside-Out Top

Wearing a shirt inside-out is breaking a social contract that no one intentionally enters into at a young age. The social discomfort that I felt must be nothing compared to the discomfort neurodivergent people or people with chronic illnesses feel when they wear clothes with tags and seams. For people who need sensory-friendly clothing, maybe wearing clothing inside-out would be necessary and the social discomfort secondary so that they could function at any capacity. It seems as if no one notices the inside-out shirt, but maybe they are holding to another social contract of not commenting on moments when strangers stray from normalcy; like when someone has spinach in their teach and you just have to hope they notice on their own, rather than embarrass them by pointing it out. If I had worn my shirt inside-out all day, I’m not sure it would be a performance because it was prescribed and not done willingly.

One Feat Three Ways

Mariah Hanlin and Kaitlin Teeter | Feat: destruction of flowers

Just A Trim

Just A Trim was an exploration of the act of trimming a purple rose to completion. The act on trimming the rose from end to end created a deconstructed rose in the shadow of the original rose. The strong diagonal composition and action from bottom right to left provides a sense of confident unease in viewers. The motion of trimming goes against the subconsciously comforting left to right action that is the movement of the eye when reading. The pale colour of the rose on the white background highlights the delicate beauty of the flower while the dark colouring of stem provides contrast to both the background and flower in its purely functional appreciation. Despite how differently stem and flower are typically perceived for beauty, both are trimmed indiscriminately. The piece comments on themes of perfectionism, consumerism, beauty, and nature.

Pluck

In Pluck, the action of plucking petals off a gerbera daisy is pushed to its limits. The petals are initially pulled off counter-clockwise around the flower but reattach back on the flower in a clockwise motion. The direction of motion creates a quiet sense of unease and time running out when the petals are plucked off rather than time simply passing by if the plucking action was done clockwise. The clockwise action of the petals rejoining the flower is similarly moderately distressing as it suggests time is being added back to a timer rather than time rewinding had the action been counter-clockwise. The pale contrast between the background and gerbera daisy allows the piece to feel unobtrusive and fleeting.

Hand-tied Bouquet

Hand-tied Bouquet aimed to act out the title literally by using hands to tie flowers together to form a bouquet. The piece focuses on the tying action rather than the resulting bouquet made with a wide variety of flowers. The bouquet includes stems added in order of alstroemeria, spider mum, calla lily, celosia, hydrangea, lisianthus, thistle, button mums, and gerbera daisy. The variety of colours and flowers as well as the quick cuts to the next stem to be added add to the chaos of the action of tying the stems together. The starting stems are picked up at the start of the video to signal the start of the action and the resulting bouquet is set down at the end of the video to signal the end of the action, but there are no other times during the video that the bouquet is so obviously picked up or set down. Hand-tied Bouquet comments on themes of consumerism, nature, and language.

Audio Art

Mom’s Organ

This piece was inspired by stories and memories of my mother playing and talking about the organ that has been in our home since before I was born. I wanted the piece to feel like an onslaught of story telling layered with my mother preparing to play because my mother loves to tell stories but she is forgetful and often retells stories. I have memories of the organ always having papers and other things piled on top of it but on this particular day it was relatively clean. I had been many years since my mother played the organ in earnest and so she was not hitting all the correct notes and keeping the rhythm once she began playing from one of the books she would often play from. She was not happy I did not let her practice before turning on the microphone.

Conceptual Portrait

Mariah & Djordje is a zine of all of the wedding cards that addressed me and my husband from our wedding on September 9, 2023. It is a portrait of my husband and I as a newly married couple through the perspectives of our wedding guests. Not all cards were addressed in any way to us but twenty five were and of those most address Mariah then Djordje. Each card was scanned and the line that addressed us was isolated for the zine. There is a variety of colour, handwriting, and culture represented in the images of how we were addressed that reflects the backgrounds of the guests we invited to our wedding and the people who have shaped us throughout our lives. A neutral wedding font was chosen for the cover and back page to allude to the source material along with cardstock paper and the white satin ribbon tied in a bow to bind the pages together.

Inside Mariah & Djordje zine

Mariah & Djordje zine images

Artist Multiple: Artist Buttons

Skin Bacteria Buttons

Each button has a different skin background but each reads: “Put this button on your skin | There are approximately 159,043,128 bacteria under this button.” The images of skin were pulled from magazine websites such as Cosmopolitan and Glamour as well as skin care brand websites such as Aveda and Sage Wellness. A diverse array of skin colours was the goal but many models on the source websites were young white women or to a lesser extent black women and not very diverse between those tow options in terms of gender, age, or skin colour. The calculation for the bacteria under the button was done using the estimate provided by this journal article https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4991899/. The goal of this piece was meant to act as a public service announcement to not fear the bacteria that very naturally exists all over you and think of skin care as being more analogous of ecosystem maintenance. They are meant to worn and given away almost like the Canadian Cancer Society’s Thing-a-ma-boob, but a little less serious.

1 Kilometre

The ukulele has been a passion of mine for about one week now. As I play the ukulele for the entirety of a kilometres walk, I repeat one verse nonstop. Learning and experimenting new things is extremely difficult as it takes a great amount of patience and perseverance. In this kilometre, I have messed up the verse multiple times as it begins to sound scrambled, my fingers begin to hurt, and I am exhausted from walking. However, I will continue to play despite how frustrated I am with failing, and how frustrated you are watching my abilities for 8 minutes. The idea of music is created to express and activate emotion through rhythm, beat, harmony, etc. I contradict this idea of perfection and expose how mentally destructive it can be to fail, and push beyond my limits. I interpret a kilometre as a distance, in which there is not necessarily progression from the place you start and the place you finish although, the circumstances have changed.

A way I measure my kilometre is through a walk around my local high school track, in which one lap is equal to 400 metres. To complete one kilometre, I walked around the track for 2.5 laps. This is both comical and frustrating as I play an instrument in a setting where people are using a track for its essential purposes. As I walked this track, there was a man in front of me for the entire walk, this was definitely the longest kilometre of his life.

Marina Abramovic

What are some of your first impressions of Marina Abramovic’s performance works, based on the documentary? Use an image/example of one or two works2. to describe aspects you admire, and aspects you might agree are problematic?

Marina Abramovic’s use of nudity and aggression in some performances causes a feeling of uneasiness in the way she is exploiting and pushing herself, however, it is her ability to take risks that successfully brings out the most emotion within. Much of her performances consist of displaying uneasy emotions, in which she confronts these feelings, thus normalizing them. The performance art, AAA-AAA in 1977 with performance artist Ulay, demonstrates the two yelling at each other and syncing their voices. I admire how this performance is so simple as she exposes herself in such a pure form to highlight vulnerability. The performance challenges the idea that art should be aesthetically pleasing, in which this can spark a rise in being problematic due to just simply two people harmonizing their voices in an aggressive way, causing controversy in how this can be considered art.

AAA-AAA (performance RTB, Liege), 1977

What have you learned about features of performance art based on Abramovic’s work? Name a few key features according to her precedents. Include an image to illustrate. Consider her quote “When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”

In Abramovic’s performances, she uses other performers to demonstrate her work, as well as a significant amount of discipline on herself and performers. Prior to the group performance, she gathers the performers on a journey of discipline within the mind and body in preparation for the final performance. This is a key feature that highlights performance art is beyond the final performance, but requires a lot of hard work physically and emotionally to truly connect to the performance. Abramovic highlights in this quote that performing is undergoing personal emotions that are a connection between the performer and performance, whereas acting is superficial emotions with no deeper connection. The comparison between blood and ketchup demonstrates the relationship between artificial and pure life. In The Artisit is Present, she demonstrates the extremities she disciplines herself to to endure to perform genuine emotion.

The Artist is Present. 2009

Discuss the ways performance art resists many museum and commercial artworld conventions. How does Abramovic solve/negotiate some of these challenges, and do you find these compromises add to, or undermine the ideas at play in her work?

Museum and commercial artworld conventions are more focussed on having artworks on display and then selling that art. Performance art shifts away from expressing art through selling or owning tangible objects and focuses towards being in a moment in time, where art becomes reality. It resists artworld conventions through uncomfortableness and confrontation, and uses a new perspective to interpret art such as through the use of movement. Abramovic negotiates these challenges through her use of engaging the audience, and documenting her performances. Engaging the audience is more effective in her work because the audience is able to live through the emotions she is conveying through an inside lense rather than on standby. Although performance art is live in the moment, Abramovic records and documents her work just as a conventional artworld would. This neither adds to nor undermines her ideas, however, it can be considered to go against the idea that performance art is traditionally in person and allows people to watch through the internet rather than experience it.

Pipilotti Rist

Post an image from one of Rist’s videos that you are most interested in. Summarize the action of the video. Who is performing, and how? Describe the images – including framing, colours, and movement. How did she shoot and edit the video? Describe the sound and how it interacts/enhances/competes with the images. How is it installed in a gallery – in terms of projection/scale/presentation in a context of other things? How does the work strike you?

Pipilotti Rist – Ever Is Over All, 1997, audio-video installation, Glenstone Museum, 2019

In Rist’s video, End is Over All, it depicts a woman in a blue dress and ruby heels taking a leisurely walk through the city as she causes chaos. The woman is seen walking down the street with a smile on her face, as she smashes all car windows in her path with a flower. A woman police officer approaches her with joy and salutes her for her actions which is also unrealistic. The camera uses a frontal view of her walking directly towards the camera, capturing the woman smashing the car windows. In the video, there are multiple angles that include side, front, far, and close up angles. Flipping between the multiple angles demonstrates one viewpoint being the full reality of her actions, and the other a personal connection to how the woman feels. The video is shot using a saturated colour/filter that has a green tint to enhance a mysterious and dreamy concept. The saturation enhances the colour of red in her shoes as well as the cars, highlighting the contrast between beauty and chaos. There is a slow repetition of a woman humming in the background as well as a slowed down mesmerizing sound. This also contributes to the idea of a dream where the video feels almost as a haze. Rist projects the video in the gallery along with slowed down video of nature beside, where both projections fade into each other. Although the woman is committing a crime, Rist swaps out realistic actions and behaviours with fantasy – shifting our perspective and feelings of violence. 

Rist has had a long career in video art making – how do you relate it to the kinds of video that you might see all the time on Tik Tok or You Tube, in our time? Reflect on her performances and also – on her ideas (particularly about women’s bodies, and sexuality, exposure, behaving strangely or subversively…) and how they play out from examples in her works.

Rist produces videos that are short, entertaining, and informative all in one. This relates to the type of music videos you would see on You Tube in our time through using the same aspects that are used in performance art to convey a meaning — sound, performance, and framing techniques. Tik Tok is also informative but to actually engage the viewer, the video must catch your attention quickly. Rist successfully informs viewers on femininity through new and creative ways that grab the audience’s attention just as any video on mainstream media would today. 

Experiment: While still at school – put on your sweater/shirt INSIDE OUT. How does this change how you feel? Is it changing how others are treating you? If you can wear your sweater/shirt inside out all day – make a few notes about the results of this very small change in your presentation in public. Is this a performance? Why?

Performing this experiment felt as though it was a waste of a day. Instead of being able to wear what I wanted to wear, I had to sacrifice a day of not feeling confident in my clothes. Others did not seem to notice me, as fashion today is so broad, anything can be stylish if you make it work. I also do not feel anyone truly cared enough. Most people who walked by me were too caught up in their own thoughts or talking with friends to take the time to stop and think about what a stranger was wearing. The only person who noticed was my mom because she is very observant compared to my dad who is very oblivious and did not notice. It evoked a feeling in her, in which she was embarrassed for me to go out in public and her comment also made me feel insecure to go out in public as well. In this, I would consider this a performance because it generated a reaction in my mom and myself, and I was performing the art to generate a reaction in others.

One Feat, Three Ways video project

The One-Shot

The Sequence

The Loop

Audio Art

Shh, I’m trying to sleep

This audio piece is a representation of how nerve racking constant noise when you are trying to sleep can feel. In the piece, the peaceful and serene music allows you to feel relaxed and ready to sleep until, you unexpectedly hear loud coughing and you’re not sure when the next outburst will happen.

My neighbour enjoys to have a very early morning smoke on his porch, in which I have no problem with. My room is diagonal to their porch, and the excessive coughing that accompanies this startles me, causing me to be unable to fall back asleep. The constant outbursts of coughing brings out a hyper-fixation of anxiety where although I am closing my eyes, at the same time I am on edge just waiting for another one to strike. Although the coughing is something so little, its repetition drives you insane. The thought that it may never end is frustrating especially in this audio because you are trying extremely hard to feel the music and instead you just want it to end.

Conceptual Portrait

6 photos, 6 songs, 6 decades

As part of this project, I selected my dad to do my conceptual portrait on. The first thought that comes to mind when I visualize my dad is his love for music, specifically Rock music. My dad is 60 years old, in which I wanted to highlight his style and vibe during the specific time period, along with his favourite rock song from that decade. Each song is written in his own hand writing to signify the personal importance of the song to himself.

I originally hoped to do this project on his hair transformation throughout the decades in correlation to his favourite song from the same decade, however, I feel demonstrating his entire style and his process of aging holds much more value. Presenting these photos in a timeline is profoundly significant because it reflects on each stage of life evolving from 0-60. Maintaining individuality in each photo captures the beauty of each milestone rather than life as a whole.

Button Project

Infinite Kisses

Button Project

I chose to make a few different politically and socially engaged buttons for this project as part of a larger exploration of text-based work and political work that my renewed participation in human rights movements has largely triggered.

My first button is modeled after Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s “War is Over” poster. It appropriates their font and their message but turns it on its head to expose the realities of the war movement. Wars are fought by workers and innocents to financially and politically benefit the elite. I see it as a call to action for the people. Without revolution and a destabilization of the current system, war is endless, because the elite want it to be. War is not popular, yet it does not end.

This button provokes viewers and wearers to ask “Who wants war?” It provokes discussion of power and resistance to war and violence. It also questions the ability of political art like Ono and Lennon’s to provoke change. The original poster is over 50 years old, yet wars, genocides, and violent injustice prevail around the globe. How can we truly end the violence?

My second series expands on my last project where I made a tshirt that said “I don’t know what capitalism is.” I reused that phrase and added another: “I learned about capitalism on Instagram.”

Both phrases are pulled from personal experiences. A professor told me they didn’t think I knew what capitalism really was. That same professor warned me about falling into the stereotype of the “dumb woman who does all her research on instagram.” Both these statements made me feel small and they dismissed so much about me as an anti-capitalist artist. I took the opportunity to reclaim the phrases and wear them proudly. They become interactive, provocative statements that hold many meanings for many people.

I, like many activists have had to rely on instagram and other social media as a starting point from which I can seek out other sources. When much of mainstream news favours, for example, Israel in the genocide it is committing in Palestine, social media becomes a key factor for sharing knowledge and first-hand accounts. For me, learning about capitalism on Instagram is not a point of shame but rather of pride in the young people who labour endlessly to educate others and create a growing movement of solidarity with oppressed peoples worldwide.

Conceptual Portrait: I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAPITALISM IS.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAPITALISM IS. printed t-shirt, 2023.

I chose to work with text for this project. I had been looking at Jenny Holzer’s Truisms as well as referring back to previous works I’ve made surrounding text. The text-based work I enjoy the most is politically and socially active. My previous text works have looked at capitalist systems and government critique. I’ve included those works at the end of this section to help contextualize this new work in my wider practice.

I DON’T KNOW WHAT CAPITALISM IS pulls from a personal experience. I was told by a professor that they did not think I knew what capitalism was. As an anti-capitalist artist and student, I felt belittled. I wanted to subvert this phrase that was said to me and wear it proudly on my chest. “I don’t know what capitalism is” is a phrase that invites questioning, explanation, and thoughtfulness around the economic system we all live in in so-called Canada. It invites the viewer to ask themself: “Do I know what capitalism is?” “Does this person wearing this shirt need me to explain what capitalism is?” “Can I explain what capitalism is?”

I am also interested in the inherent performance of wearing such a statement on my chest. What does it mean to walk around in the grocery store wearing this? What about the dollar store? Or a public park? Or even a forest?

I wore my shirt for a full day of errands, chores, and even a leisurely hike.

This could be characterized as a performance or an experiment. In the future, I’d like to reperform my day in the t-shirt as it was pretty cold and I had difficulty boldly wearing the statement on my chest. The results of my wearing the shirt were not immediate, I did not notice anyone looking at me or questioning the words on my chest. If I had had the guts to wear the shirt more boldly and visibly, I think the results would have been different. However, I am quite shy by nature and had difficulty pushing myself on this particular day. 

I am pleased with the photos I captured, especially the one of me scrubbing my bathtub. I think this photo in particular pushes this work into a feminist framework. It comments on the value of domestic labour in a capitalist system. I think having documentation of the shirt on a body really helps push the work into different concepts and meanings. I am excited to continue to pursue this type of text-based work beyond this class.

LAND LORD, silkscreen, 2022.

The United States Government is a Terrorist Organization (triptych), document frames, paper, ink, plastic, lace, toys. 2023

Audio Project

Women Love Being Cheated On

This work takes clips from a popular white, anti-feminist creator named Pearl Davis. Davis has made a platform for herself on many forms of social media. She is a strong anti-feminist who has even advocated for divorce to be banned and for women to lose the right to vote.

Today’s hyper-individualist society is rife with far-right wing politics that dismiss oppressed people in all forms. North American society is a breeding ground for hateful, misinformed rhetoric and ideology. Pearl’s evangelist, white supremacist ideology about feminism and women in general is a dangerous example of the kinds of thoughts individuals have. I chose Pearl because of her refusal to talk about race, disability and class in her discussions on feminism. This work creates a portrait of the type of disillusioned white woman who feels her livelihood, and womanhood is threatened by the intersectional feminism that seeks to include all genders, races, abilities, and classes.

Video Art

For this work, I chose to focus on hair as the subject. I take special care with my hair. I have been growing it for many years and will continue to do so for many more years. Each night I brush and braid my hair before I get into bed.

I am a queer, femme person in a straight-presenting relationship. My partner is a cisgender man and I often think about my queer identity in the relationship. I am his girlfriend, but am I really a girl? My hair ties me to my feminine identity, but I often feel like my hair is less indicative of my gender and more representative of a routine of care I do for myself.

I used this video assignment to explore this haircare routine, which I often do as I get ready for bed with my partner. I want this work to make connections between gender and hair, sexuality and hair, and emphasize my gender identity in relation to the cisgender man I share my life with.

1. One shot “Brushing Sam’s Hair with Care”

2. Loop “Endless Care”

3. Sequence “Braiding Together”

Pipilotti Rist

1. Post an image from one of Rist’s videos that you are most interested in. Summarize the action of the video. Who is performing, and how? Describe the images – including framing, colours, and movement. How did she shoot and edit the video? Describe the sound and how it interacts/enhances/competes with the images. How is it installed in a gallery – in terms of projection/scale/presentation in a context of other things? How does the work strike you?

From Rist’s early work to now, installation has been of utmost importance to the meaning and experience of the work. I encountered Rist’s Selfless in a Bath of Lava early in my undergraduate degree and have often thought about that tiny screen and its ability to be walked over and completely ignored (intentionally or not). 

The tiny screen (only the size of a matchbox according to Randy Kennedy for New York Times) is installed in the floorboards of a space. It shows Rist herself, nude, reaching up so as to not be engulfed in the ‘bath of lava’ beneath her. Below is an image of this work as it is typically installed. The floorboards are chipped away irregularly, and the screen is set below the surface of the floor. 

As mentioned, Rist is performing. She is naked, reaching up and pleading for help. She says “Help me” in various languages as well as “I am a worm and you are a flower. You would have done everything better!”. The video is shot from above, just as the viewer is intended to be above Rist upon installation. The angle, coupled with her nudity and self-degrading comments reflect vulnerability. It is difficult to ignore the feminist undertones of this work, her position beneath the floor can be understood as a critique of patriarchal society where women are perceived as the lesser gender, positioned below men in the social hierarchy. 

Her movement and speech is almost childlike, again reinforcing feminist ideas in which women and children are often placed in the same category of weakness, helplessness and vulnerability. The bright, saturated colours on the screen can also evoke childhood and playfulness; despite nudity and the impending violent death in a bath of lava. 

The audio is quiet, the viewer must crouch down and get close to hear the tiny voice coming from the floorboards. Scale and audio work together to make sure that the viewing of the work is intentional and that those looking around the gallery absentmindedly will miss it.

2. Rist has had a long career in video art making – how do you relate it to the kinds of video that you might see all the time on Tik Tok or You Tube, in our time? Reflect on her performances and also – on her ideas (particularly about women’s bodies, and sexuality, exposure, behaving strangely or subversively…) and how they play out from examples in her works.

To begin answering this prompt, I thought I would speak about the direct relationships I could draw between contemporary media and Pipilotti Rist’s work. During class, we viewed “Ever is Overall” in which Rist’s friend walks down a city street with a metal replica of a “Red Hot Poker” (a flower) and uses it to smash car windows. She looked gleeful as she trotted down the street in her dress. Similarly, on Beyonce’s 2016 album Lemonade, the song Hold Up’s music video shows Beyonce herself walking down a city street gleefully, using a baseball bat to smash car windows. Watching Rist’s film immediately evoked Beyonce’s music video, which was iconic and exciting at the time of release. I had never realised that this video appropriated Rist’s performance.

Ever is Overall inspired Hold Up, and Hold Up has inspired other reproductions in film, television and on social media. My favourite reproduction being from the Netflix original show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

It is endlessly interesting how the art world infiltrates popular culture and how each new interpretation of the work reaches further from the original. We go from Pipilotti Rist’s video, which repackages female rage as beautiful, gleeful and ultimately ‘feminine’. Beyonce’s interpretations takes on a new meaning as she adds her song about being a victim of infidelity. Her position as a Black woman also transforms Rist’s rage to give it new meaning. Beyonce looks gleeful, like the performer in Rist’s video, however Beyonce’s video confronts the ‘angry Black woman’ stereotype instead of just general female rage. Then, the concept is flipped on its head again as a Black gay man performs it in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It becomes more comedic than conceptual, and begins to lose its roots in Rist’s work.

Rist’s work can also connect to more accessible and widespread forms of video media. TikTok is probably the largest short video platform in the western world.  It sets a precedent for how videos are consumed, with most social media sites having introduced some short video feature in the last five years. Feminist artists working with video such as Pipilotti Rist set the stage for so-called amateur video-makers on TikTok to engage in their own commentary about body image, womanhood, female sexuality, self-surveillance and other feminist ideas. 

In the last year or so, a trend emerged called “corecore” in which creators make compilations of a variety of videos to evoke a feeling of discomfort. A very common theme of these videos is womanhood, some explore female rage, which I think connects to themes of Rist’s work. Corecore videos showcase an aspect of womanhood, sometimes being misogyny experienced, sexual abuse, harassment and patriarchy. These videos are, in my opinion, contemporary video art, outside of the institution of the gallery or museum. I’ve linked a couple below.

@cairo.mp5

#corecore #feminism #feminineenergy #mysoginy #corecorefeminine

♬ original sound – cai

@anarcho0o

liberate us #nichetok #corecore #mentalhealth #nichetiktok #core #capitalism #corecoree #feminism #nichtok #nich #feminist #anticapitalism

♬ original sound – :/

3. Experiment: While still at school – put on your sweater/shirt INSIDE OUT. How does this change how you feel? Is it changing how others are treating you? If you can wear your sweater/shirt inside out all day – make a few notes about the results of this very small change in your presentation in public. Is this a performance? Why?

For me, wearing my shirt inside out posed more personal problems than issues wondering what people might think of me. I knew few people would notice my clothes, especially on the packed bus I took to school. When I walked through Branion Plaza I knew some people would notice, as there are typically students eating lunch and people-watching, I often sit and watch people. I was not super bothered by them, especially since it was my t-shirt that was inside out and I had put an open button down on top to keep me warm. So my irregular clothing was not fully visible. My biggest issue was that I was physically aware that my shirt felt wrong. It irritated me and the print on my shirt touched my bare skin. I had to fix my shirt during a break in my class, I could not take it anymore. 

In terms of this being a performance, I am still not sure. I was certainly performing for myself since I seemed to be the only one to notice the way my clothes were being worn. But as far as engaging a viewer, I don’t think I was successful, nobody seemed to care to watch me.  But a performance can be just for me, and maybe this was a performance only I engaged in.

My Kilometre

Background:

I have a hard time walking far distances. From the many buses that come to my stop, I always choose to take the 99 Mainline because it drops me off closest to my classes. When my partner (who loves to hike) plans walks for us together, he knows he has to keep my bodily limits in mind. Uneven ground makes my weak ankles sore, long distances begin to hurt my legs, toes and back. I am adjusting to this everyday pain that has become more of a problem in the last year. At only 22, I am fearful of how my current pain might progress in the future. Nonetheless I like to be outside. I like to move my body and I like to walk.

Process:

I walked from around 8:20 pm-8:30 pm in a relatively open space in the university’s Arboretum. I walked mostly on grass. My partner followed my path with my phone in his hand. He used the app “AllTrails” to map my exact route. I walked until I felt like I had walked a kilometre, but I had no way of knowing whether I had walked more or less than the 1000 metres usually prescribed in a kilometre.

I took an unconventional path. I chose an open space rather than a pre-existing trail for safety due to the low light conditions. I also chose an open space because I knew I did not want to walk in a straight line or along a path. I wanted to make my own path based on my own decisions and intuition. My route zig-zagged, looped back on itself and had sharp turns: all of these things stopped me from being able to measure physical distance travelled and forced me to rely on my body and how it felt.

What Happened?

I walked just over 600 metres at dusk. I stopped because I felt like I had walked a kilometre. My body was giving me signs that I had travelled some distance. I began to have some shooting pain in my right foot. So I stopped and asked my partner to show me my progress. That night, 600 metres was my kilometre.

How is this exactly a kilometre?

This is MY kilometre, based on my body’s limits on that evening. It is not a kilometre in terms of the metric system, rather it is a kilometre based on feeling and body.

I figure that I have many different kilometres. There was a sense of disorientation as dusk turned into darkness. I had no visual sense of how far I had travelled, only perceived time and bodily feeling. Perhaps in the daytime my kilometre would measure 1300 metres. 

This experiment, done at night, forced me to rely less on vision and more on feeling to distinguish my kilometre.

Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

Question 1

My first impressions of Marina Abramovic based on the documentary are mixed. I have been somewhat familiar with her work based on my studies in contemporary art history throughout my undergraduate degree. I have always found her compelling but was shocked to find that some of her work made me deeply uncomfortable. The main work, The Artist is Present made me emotional. There were tears forming in my eyes.

The aspect of The Artist is Present that struck me the most was the shift in vulnerability in the artist herself. 2 weeks before the opening at the MoMA, Abramovic was ill, and the film showed her clad completely in red, even eating red oranges. She said that red is a colour of strength, and she felt she needed all of the strength she could get in preparation for her retrospective. She had fallen ill just weeks before a 3 month long performance, after all.

What is especially interesting is that this red aura of strength followed her into the first two months of her performance. All day, for six days of the week, for two months, Abramovic sat unmoving in her red gown, which covered her from neck to wrist to ankle. She sat opposite her audience, separated by a table. She was protected by her strength in red and by the structure of the table in front of her.

The month of May, the final month of the exhibition, saw a shift in the performance. Abramovic began wearing white. She removed the table that protected her. She stripped herself of her strength and sat, truly vulnerable to the audience in front of her. It is admirable to watch her shift her performance. It became more emotionally heavy as these shifts occurred. The film showed more emotionality in both the audience and the performer after this shift took place.

I was not struck the same way by another work in the show, titled Luminosity, originally performed for 2 hours by Abramovic in 1997. It was reperformed by young artists for the retrospective at the MoMA. It is an uncomfortable piece for me, that is not to say that it isn’t a good piece of work. I am just made more uncomfortable by nudity than some. The nudity coupled with the pornographic position of the woman makes it hard for me to watch. The woman stands, largely unsupported on two small platforms. Her other source of support is a microphone shaped object pressed against her vagina. It looks torturous as she slowly moves her arms up and down. The female body will always be viewed under the male gaze, especially when nude. It is impossible to escape. I think that is where my discomfort ultimately comes from. In Luminosity, Abramovic unfortunately provides a vessel for the male gaze, and perhaps that is the point.

The work is still effective despite its implication of patriarchal male gaze. In its reperformances during her retrospective, Abramovic’s work took on new meanings based on the bodies performing. A Black woman taking on the role had a vastly different significance to Abramovic’s own white body. Women of colour being placed in the performance evoked themes of white supremacy, unpaid labour and slavery, bondage and freedom.

Question 2

Abramovic’s work shows performance art as a lifestyle and a lifelong kind of work. It looks at human relationships and humanity itself. It challenges the body and the mind equally and pushes the boundaries of the gallery and the world at large. Marina Abramovic is a highly dedicated performer who refuses to quit. I remember learning about her performance in which she burned a five point star while laying in the middle, and she passed out from lack of oxygen. Luckily an audience member noticed her lose consciousness and disrupted the performance. I remember my professor saying this disruption was somewhat unwelcome to Abramovic. She sought to push her body to its absolute limits.

In the documentary, those close to her assert that Abramovic is never not performing. She says that “performance is a state of mind”. Performance art uses the body as medium to explore some sort of relationship. Her work with Ulay explored the dynamic between man and woman. Her solo work challenged her physicality while building a strong bond-like relationship with audience members (especially in The Artist is Present).

Her performance is real, it is intense and it captivates viewers. She is never acting. Her performance becomes her life. Her intense discipline, rooted in her childhood in former Yugoslavia, benefits her craft as she is able to sustain long, exhausting performances. She is often thought of as the grandmother of performance art. She paved the way for many other artists. One aspiring performance artist is shown in the documentary. She walks up to Abramovic in The Artist is Present and disrobes. She is immediately removed by security. However, it could be argued that she was only following in Abramovic’s footsteps in breaking the status quo in the institutions of the art world.

Question 3

The institutions that control the artworld exist not only as cultural pillars of society. They also operate in the context of colonialism and capitalism. The roots of most major museums in North America and Europe are within stolen land, stolen objects, and stolen labour. The art world, when Abramovic joined it, would have been highly centred around white men and the physical objects they produce. Her work, along with the work of other early performance artists responded to the physicality and the permanence of the art world. It rejected the idea of making art to be bought and sold as commodity, and embraced ephemerality.

Her performances are not always available to watch in full anywhere. Some works exist only in those who made up the audience. Many exist only in photographs. These works reject commodification and they reject the traditional gallery/museum space. The documentary asserts that during her early career, and her time with Ulay, she was very poor. There was not a whole lot of art collectors able to buy her work, because it was not for sale. As her career grew, gallerists and curators grabbed ahold of her rising star and began coming up with ways to make money in a way that honoured the ephemerality of her work. Abramovic sold limited series of stills from her performances at over $2,000 a piece. Her work began to participate in the colonial capitalist art world. It had been commodified.

An artist has to make a living. It’s impossible to disengage completely from the art world to make critique about it. Marina Abramovic, however, became a superstar. She has clearly become very wealthy based on the scene in the documentary where she has a personal shopping experience with the creative director of Givenchy in which she considers purchasing an $8,000 jacket. This scene undermined a lot of her institutional critique for me. It feels as though she has shifted from disrupting the system of the art world to participating in it in a lot of ways. Though, much of her integrity remains as she continues to make performance art that is laborious and difficult. She still shifts the power of art and includes the audience wholeheartedly, though she does it in expensive clothing now.