Month: December 2015
Spider Plant Dialogues: A Performance Piece
Statement
Spider Pant Dialogues is a performance workshop that encourages illogical social activities to inspire an intrinsic experience between plant and human.
Performers gathered at a rental home in suburban Guelph, Ontario to participate in this workshop. Everyone was given an envelope containing instructions, and was then told to select a dialogue partner from a large pile of spider plants in the kitchen. Performers were encouraged to seclude themselves with their plant and get comfortable by nesting in pillows or stretching out on the floor. They were allowed to reorganize couches, benches, and chairs in ways that offered a private experience.
The envelopes contain a marker, two name tags for each performer, and index cards that instruct participants to perform four tasks:
- Read botanical facts to the plant
- Position, groom, and name the plant
- Practise soothing breathing exercises to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the plant
- Partake in a casual conversation describing their surroundings and feelings to the plant
This work is influenced by John Baldessari’s 1972 performance Teaching a Plant the Alphabet. His piece is described as an exercise in futility, which to me can cause a sort of unexpected idyllic experience, especially when the work is related to plants or naturalism. I wanted to perform a direct response to Baldessari’s Teaching a Plant the Alphabet because he completed his performance as a response to Joseph Beuy’s 1965 performance How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare. These artworks are influential because they encourage viewers to consider logic, but to also to look past logic to gain a more innate understanding of the work.
At the end of the piece, I asked all performers to fill out a brief questionnaire about their affiliations with fine and conceptual art, their interest in plants, and what their thoughts were on this workshop. Overall I would say that this workshop was a success. I discovered that Spider Plant Dialogues was the first conceptual art experience for many participants. I am pleased to have hosted a performance piece with individuals of many backgrounds and fields of study. -M
THANK YOU – Andrew Mandaliti
This video piece, titled “THANK YOU”, was created based on the words and information I gathered while getting to know the workers at a landscape maintenance company. THANK YOU is an example of one message that a worker wanted to tell the world. As the video progresses the message is mowed into the grass then promptly mowed away. The piece gave workers a temporary platform to express their ideas and feelings – something not usually permitted to blue-collar labourers.
Spectroscope Workshop
A spectroscope is a device that is used to analyse light by separating its parts into a spectrum.
On November 18th, 2015 I hosted an in-class workshop where I taught our class to build and use spectroscopes out of cereal boxes.
The spectroscopes we built used a CD to defract the light once the device is aimed at a light source.
How to Build Your Own Spectroscope:
Materials required:
– 1 cereal box
– 1 CD
– 2 Index Cards (Can be replaced with 2 razor blades)
– 60 degree angle (printable angles can be found online)
– black tape
– scissors
– ruler
Your spectroscope will look something like this:
STEP ONE
– fold cereal box shut and tape the bottom edges so no light seeps in
– on the top left of the box measure roughly one-two inches and mark a line across the width of your box
– cut along the line and unfold the flaps that were created and cut the flaps off
STEP TWO
– use your 60 degree angle and line it up to the top corner of the box so the hypotenuse of the triangle angles toward the center of the box. Measure and draw a line 3 inches from the top corner of the box. You will have a 3 inch line starting at the top corner of your box, and the line will lead ROUGHLY toward the center of your cereal box.
-cut those lines
-flip the box over and do the same thing on the other side
STEP THREE
– cut a 1 inch high rectangle out on the opposite side of the slits. The rectangle should be the width of the box.
-Use your index cards or razor blades (sharp edges facing inward toward each other) to block out most of the rectangle you just cut out. Place them horizontally, closely together, leaving a 1mm gap between the cards. Tape the cards securely to the box.
STEP FOUR&FIVE
-Tape the box closed
-Slide the CD into the slot
STEP SIX
-Point the index card slit at a light and look into the square hole into the box at the bottom of the CD. You will see your bright white light bulb break up into its composing colours!
Here are some more photos from the spectroscope workshop:
Here are the final products:
John Baldessari: Teaching a Plant the Alphabet
Leading Californian Conceptual artist John Baldessari is an American Collagist, Painter, and Photographer. He explores themes that question what art is and in the 1970’s, he abandoned painting to explore a diverse range of media. His work plays with humour and some of his later works are influenced by pop-art.
Baldessari’s 1972 work, “Teaching a Plant the Alphabet”, has been described as an “exercise in futility. An absurdist lesson in cognition and recognition.” In this video, he holds up a piece of paper with a letter of the alphabet to a common house plant. He repeats the letter aggressively and quickly (A-A-A-A-A) and after a few seconds he moves on to the next sequential letter in the alphabet.
This work may strike the viewer as illogical and foolish, but it can be explored past banal themes and irony. Baldessari performed this piece as a reaction to Joseph Beuy’s 1965 performance “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare”. Both performances cause the viewer to feel a visceral understanding of their work. The logical education task performed in an illogical way results in a greater experience for the viewer.
