#fjukresidency

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Texture

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That Which is Past, That Which is Now, pt II. February 1, 2016

Just before high tide I walked to the black sand beach of Skjálfandi Bay. Originally created by glacier activity, it now joins a glacier river as well as a freshwater salmon populated river into the northern Icelandic Ocean. The snow clouds were low and covered the Víknafjöll and Kinnarfjöll mountain ranges on the other side. I brought the two cotton sheets with my writings on it, and laid them in the ocean, I watched the waves cover and soak the sheets, then washed them in the tide as it swirled around my ankles. After I pulled them out, I lay them in the sand to let the salt do what it will. That night I sat in meditation releasing and contemplating the writings that were buried in the snow and facing the ocean. They stayed there all night and the next day. At dusk I pulled them inside to wash the sand off. The ink had spread and washed out as well, leaving weathered sheets reminiscent of my thoughts.

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Notes on Process and Performance Art

Process art assumed an important role from the 1950’s onward. It gained popularity partly as a repudiation of minimalism, which aimed at anonymity and absence of the subject, or artists personal expression, while focusing on form and composition. Process art became a focus on the how and why rather than the final what. By exposing in the finished artwork how art comes into being - how materials behave and how procedures are undertaken - artists disclosed arts dependence on the conditions of its factor, the context of its making, and the ideological aspects of its production and reception.

Post war art emphasized formalist claims, that advanced art is autonomous, divorced from the public sphere and apolitical. The critics of art were held by affluent white males. By the 60’s post minimalist works, including body or performance art, process art, site-specific and certain conceptual art practices were the canon. And by the 70’s, performance art within the feminist art movement was in full swing of challenging these rules. Women used process and performance to challenge social constructs and oppressed topics, i.e. the ownership of discussion of women's sexuality. In music composition, process pieces became a way of expanding musical ideas from chord variations and harmonies to an exploration of noise and sound.

Process art often functioned as a point of intersection between painting and sculpture, i.e, action works. A sect called anti-form focused on allowing materials to behave what they will through the process of interaction, so that the final form was largely dictated by that material. Overall, process art returned meaning to the why, and allowed artists to explore concepts that encompass much more than a fixed imagery or object would. Whereas process art remained largely about material, performance art, though working in much the same conceptual frame, went further in obliterating the concrete object as most important and utilized the body as art, or body as material. As work that was presented live, performance art generally liberated artists from rules and traditions. It served as the platform for discussion between personal, political, and anti-war activism. With the acceptance of process and performance art into the scene of museums and the fine art realm, other forms of art were also accepted, i.e. weaving or textile based works.

that which is past, that which is now is a process piece. Within the work I am exploring ideas of life and death existing in every moment; that space between destruction and creation in regards to the self is transformation. Throughout the process I am metaphorical exploring the death of what we were, the letting go, and the creating something that again will die to keep moving forward. I chose to do this piece in Iceland as a landscape that experiences long periods of darkness and long periods of light. I am incorporating ritual as a way to explore the residue or mark of an action, as well as signify cleansing or purification with the process. I am using natural material - cotton and unspun wool, vinegar, salt, charcoal, and aim to use repetitive and cyclical gestures within the process of transforming this material. 

Bibliography: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-performance-art.htm http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/art_market/process_art-51778 http://www.theartstory.org/movement-post-minimalism.htm Kristine Stiles + Peter Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, 2012.