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Mavens Do It Better

Check out this latest link to an interview with the Director of Out of Site talking about art policy, equality and the long road to liberty.

Singing from the mountain tops could be the title of this upcoming public performance for #OoS19 yet as we know there are no mountains in Chicago. This blog post talks about the inspiration of the Swiss Artists, Germann & Gehrig’s performance and how they were inspired by the topology of space looking at the ancient tradition of ‘betruf’.

Out of Site 2019

Getting ready for Out of Site 2019 public performance festival of unexpected encounters. Check out the website for all the info and the event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/891259014551451/

Sara Zalek and Ji Yang who decided to do individual actions and ended up working together. Sara’s action was to fall and get up repeatedly and Ji’s was to write on people’s bodies. They both went to perform outside the Cultural Center and Sara decide to fall and get up fifty times. After falling fifty times Ji encouraged her to do twenty-five more. After twenty-five more, he said one hundred. At one hundred Sara stopped. The Chinese Character written on Sara’s hand means ‘positive’. In reflection with Sara today about why she decided to do the action of falling and getting up she said ‘it was in direct response to Joanna’s lecture and the important need for humans to realize that when they fall we need to stand back up.’ Photos by Carron Little

The collective group actions from Adam Rose’s workshop for On Occasion on March 21, 2015.

Brianna McIntyre’s performative gesture inside Randolph Square as part of Adam Rose’s workshop for On Occasion. Photos by Carron Little.

Carron’s individual action shaking people’s hands. Photos by Brianna McIntyre.

People chatting in the workshop session facilitated by Adam Rose for On Occasion, March 21, 2015. Photos by Carron Little

Reflections on Joanna Matuszak’s Lecture on March 21, 2015

By Carron Little, Director of Out of Site

We in the west always have our presumptions about the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet living. When I first invited Joanna to speak I was thinking about the shape of On Occasion being this space where we could learn and think about different genres of public performance from multiple cultural perspectives. My plan was that On Occasion would present a diversity of cultural perspectives and performance genres. Our first debate came at the stage of writing the press release and different interpretations of Soviet, Post-Soviet and the term Russia. Having been born into the Cold War and being highly aware of Gorbachev’s election and the changes that followed – I wasn’t so aware of the new terminology or shall we say the academically correct terminology when referencing what we call now the Russian Federation. Also since the invitation of Joanna to speak was sent the tension between the USA and the now president, Putin has risen and I am personally fearful that we are digressing back into a cold war climate. And in creating a space for greater cultural understanding maybe a good place to start for both sides as maybe there are no sides and just lots of creative people trying to make art and be free in their own lives. Sometimes when we start to see our similarities we can have greater respect and that is an aspect that Adam Rose drew attention to in the workshop.

Matuszak’s lecture started with a brief history of the USSR working from the October Revolution in 1917 and the collapse of Russia to the different artistic climates under the various Soviet Communist leaders. Starting with The Nest performance in 1974, this piece was very participatory – the public was invited to sit in a nest and created this moment of closeness. There were no instructions and it seemed apparent in all the pieces between 1970’s and 1992 were group collaborations. There was one group that travelled around the train system visiting 42 stations. They documented each station – how many guards were on duty, the conversations they had with the guards and there was a leaflet sent out to friends stating where they could meet at specific locations during this performance. Matuszak showed a transcript from one of the conversations that documented a dialogue with a train station guard about taking photographs. The guard said they weren’t allowed and they said but tourists are allowed and his response was but they are not from here, ‘But we are at home why can’t we take photos’ and the response was ‘You are not allowed’. That one transcript reveals a lot in terms of how the people were policed and how critical government control over the population and let’s not forget these forms of censorship happen here in America too. It comes down to fear and governmental fear of artist’s as they are the people in society who they cannot control but what happens when you do let people become free and let artists express themselves freely? You create a more educated society, that is less prone to violence because educated people are more articulate and will use words rather use violence. When people are oppressed they are angry and we can see that revealed in the work of the artists who from the nineties up until now seem very angry, in Post-Soviet Performance Art.

There is a sharp contrast between the work prior to 1992 that was made in collective groups and the audience was friends or people who were part of the group compared to the 1990’s to date that spans a range of individuals, mostly male creating action-based works. Artists like Alexandr Brenner and Pavlenski who in 2013 nailed his scrotum to the Red Square in a piece entitled ‘Fixation’. This piece was performed a year after Putin’s re-election. Putin had been in power from 2000 to 2008 after Yeltsin’s resignation on December 31, 1999. Putin served his term and as prime minister in the years following 2008 and worked with his friend to change the rules so he could stand for re-election in 2012. Is this performance making a statement about Putin’s ‘fixation’ with ‘Power’? The artist has been hospitalized in a psychiatric ward since and in Pavlenskii’s most recent performance decided to chop off his ear. These simple, yet powerful one gesture acts are emblematic of a person who is desperate, who is so restricted he mirrors the oppression in society. One of the questions at the end was is there any difference between a person running naked onto a football field and these gestures by Pavlenski? And a discussion grew out of this about how these actions are spectacles played out in the western media as they are invisible in the country of origin. Another example would be Pussy Riot who are again working as a collective growing out of the Soviet Union tradition yet their audience is the a western public – presented through the western media. I would say much like Pavlenski’s work these performance are staged as a political gesture. And there is a long tradition of public performance being used as a method of raising political awareness. If we think about Emily Davison, the Suffragette who threw herself in front of King George V’s horse on June 4, 1913 at the Derby Race sustaining injuries that killed her four days later or the women who chained themselves to the fences outside the Houses of Parliament in 1918 to demand the freedom to vote. Or to 1969 when women in the UK and America burned their bras outside Miss World competitions sparking the feminist movement of the 1970’s. These often simple gestures come out of this need to campaign and draw attention to political oppression.

In the workshop led by Adam Rose we were invited to think of a gesture, one action and then choose if we wanted to do a collective gesture or an individual. All the performance artists decided to do solo gestures and the people who don’t usually perform decided to do a collective gesture. The collective group became a group of ten people and they decided to walk in two lines through the Cultural Center. They walked blending in normally before they started jumping, this simple gesture made people stop and look. After climbing the stairs they waved to each other and then they came down the stairs dusting the banisters as they came down. Me and Brianna headed into Randolph Square I went up to people who were sat on their own and shook their hands and said ‘Welcome’, I came up to the entrance of the Cultural Center and there was a group entering just at that moment and I stood at the doorway and welcomed everyone who came into the building. We then walked in the other way and switched roles. Brianna sat down opposite an older white man and took off her headscarf and massaged her hair – this action lasted about 10minutes and was very powerful. He of course tried not to look but he was being performed to in this intimate one to one space. We then left the space to meet up with the collective group. Sara and Ji went outside the Cultural Center – they were both wearing puffy jackets one was blue and one was yellow. Sara had decided to fall and Ji had decided to write on people’s bodies as his gesture. Having decided to do individual gestures they decided to collaborate. Everytime Sara fell, Ji wrote a Chinese character on her hand – the character meant positive. Sara had first decided she was going to fall 50 times, then after 50 Ji persuaded her to do 75 and then after she reached 75 he encouraged her to do 100. After one hundred she stopped. In our conversation after our public actions we had an enlightening conversation about audience in relation to all the gestures. Brianna and I produced the only pieces that directly engaged the public and this took risk on our parts to be brave to enter into the public’s meta-space. The collective group didn’t interact with the public or notice them and Sara and Ji’s performance became these two simple gestures performed with a fourth wall that remained in tact. The fourth wall becomes a safety net in a way when performing in public and sometimes it is the scariest thing to cross in the invisible divide between you and a stranger.

The question I posed in the first paragraph thinking about our similarities and what is interesting to me is the abstraction of these single performative gestures by Brenner or Pavlenski are similar to action painting in American Abstractionism. Adam introduced the idea of the abstract gesture and what happens as this gesture becomes repeated, as in the case of Sara and Ji’s? It becomes all the more abstract, like a ‘Becket-tian’ moment. In discussing it with Sara after the gesture of falling was a direct response to the Matuszak’s lecture. And in turn this abstract gesture although is live repetition, becomes a reflection of death in the living. Let me elaborate - living under an oppressive regime becomes a living death, a death of the living and when artists are oppressed then society becomes stuck in mental decay. And perhaps this is when artists take desperate measures and I would argue Pavlenski nailing his scrotum or cutting off his ear is an example of desperation in living under an oppressive regime.

Photos of Joanna Matuszak’s lecture for On Occasion taken by Cynthia Bond.

Above is a photo from Melissa Potter's lecture 'On Gender' for On Occasion - A Public Performance Think Tank at Chicago Cultural Center organized by Out of Site Chicago. Saturday February 21, 2015 12noon to 3.30pm

In the slide above is an example of over fifty gender pronouns being used today.

Below are some of my reflections on Melissa Potter’s Lecture

“We are at a totally new cultural moment with gender. Itfires me up like probably nothing else does. In terms of what is beingdiscussed in public it is probably one of the major debates today.” by MelissaPotter

I invited Melissa to talk about her Gender Assignment project and explore ideas of how gender is a daily public performance. The lecture and workshop revealed many questions both personally and politically. I knew for instance what my results would be on the BEM test but I was perhaps less aware of what Melissa was advocating for in terms of the gender assignment project. But for me the fascinating thing about the test is that it reveals the masculinity, femininity and androgyny that exists in us all. We are all amalgams of all these characteristics and to me that is the most important revelation and once we all come to terms with that as human beings the impact of this on-going social study could be profound.

Some wonderful highlights for me were the shared discovery that when we are in Europe we feel more feminine and when we are in the States we feel more masculine. I think this is worth further research as to why this is the case. When Melissa asked the room ‘How many of you have considered changing sex?’ Only two people said no out of eight. And when discussing gender pronouns there are now fifty definitions used across the world as opposed to the two being used just a year ago. This is progress.

Her lecture mapped out a past of gender bending and she shared her own research of exploring people being born female and then appropriating masculine roles in society in different cultures. In our one room of people in the workshop it was fascinating the diversity of experiences and relationship to gender that existed. One person was a twin, another from China, me from Scotland, another was from a rural farming community in America and our relationship to our socialized gender experiences growing up were all completely different.

How do we think of gender in a country were the one child, one family has been enforced? Where if a family had a girl they were drowned because boys are more successful and can bring in more wealth especially in impoverished communities. How do we think about gender in relationship to class and especially when we are thinking about communities who are struggling to survive, where food is a scarce resource? We can’t just think about gender in western terms and it can become highly problematic when we start to evaluate eastern relationships to gender through a western lens. How do we start to reframe the conversation and build a broader understanding?

In a recent trip to New York I acquired Judy Chicago’s detailed research of women throughout the past dating from ancient times to modern. So I’ve been thinking about my own relationship to this culturally as Scottish. Celtic society was considered a matriarchal society in ancient times and all the women in my family have been very strong figures. If I think about my grandmothers, both were the breadwinners for their respective families. However my knowledge of my own family history sadly ends there on the matriarchal line. Just in my own lifetime Scotland suffered a lot of brutal policy making from the British government that impacted on the quality of life in Scotland. However, this oppression dates back to the 16th Century when England banned the native language, Gaelic from being spoken. I wonder to what extent this oppression has manifested itself in my own family history and how the gender relations were effected through the battles of the centuries?

The lecture has raised lots of questions for me in terms of ‘Gender Neutrality’ and if this is something that we should be fighting for and why? Why can’t we embrace and have a culture that embraces the multiplicity of what it means to be human in all our various forms as opposed to negating or erasing specific gender identities in order to be accepted? It is a fundamental problem that women are objectified in society as sexual objects for desire and consumption but does this mean we have to erase ourselves to be seen as equal? My friend said to me recently “sometimes I need to do a personal privilege check in with myself”. Shouldn’t we be living in a society where we demand men do a ‘privilege check in’. It’s been fascinating for me to see women around me have appropriated masculine identities to become powerful leaders in the world. I am proud to be a woman in the world and in fact love it, but there are times when I get frustrated especially when I get paid less when I have more education and higher qualifications compared to my male counterparts. Right know in my own household I earn in a year what my partner earns in a month. These disparities are endemic and that is when we start to talk about class in relation to gender and the enforced impoverishment of female households.

This comes down to policy making and again something that Melissa brought up on Saturday and I spoke of at Columbia College on Tuesday: affirmative action. From the Government to companies to institutions we need to be taking affirmative action, not just token gestures of adding one black person or one woman to the board of executives but lets make policies were we are 50/50 on gender and diversity in all our institutions. Then we might start to see effective and caring decision making for the work force that creates a more stabilized economy. And when you obliterate poverty, you minimize crime and the impact on society could be huge!

Thoughts by Carron Little, Director of Out of Site Chicago

Art+Feminism will host its second annual Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon, where participants will create articles about female artists.

It's happening in Chicago too at the Flaxman Library on March 7 from 12noon to 5pm. Come join the intervention.

Everybody had a unique approach to all the tasks set for the day. We were asked to choose three high number words from our BEM test and three low numbered words and free-associate with those words. Then we were asked to choose two of those words and write a paragraph. I love doing these workshops because they are so generative and inspire me to come home and write much more. The fascinating thing for me was when Melissa spoke of how she feels masculine in America and Feminine in Serbia. I found this so fascinating and really related to it.

Maybe the banana has its own performance going on? Or perhaps its inspiring the writing of the afternoon? I swear by bananas - have one before every performance, every lecture and every class - helps maintain my energy levels and presence in the moment.

Some days are so special - one just has to go home and read more and think more. This happened today after a wonderful lecture by Melissa Potter. Big thanks for bringing all your wisdom. Fabulous photo by Sabina Ott.

There is a story in this photo... Big thanks everyone for such another mind-blowing day. It was so magical to go around the room sharing all our thoughts and writing - just in one room so much difference. Thanks for making it so special and unique.

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