#performance documentation

[tom-isaacs]

Pietà - Tom Isaacs Photography: Alex Wisser MAPBM members' exhibition BLUE TOO (curated by Beata Geyer) at WAYOUT ArtSpace in Kandos until 11 April 2021.

[tom-isaacs]

Pietà - Tom Isaacs

Installation view Blue Mountains Cultural Centre. Photo: Silversalt Photography.

Also pictured: Blue - Rebecca Waterstone.

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Oh Lover Boy - Franko B

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Sweat Work - Antti Laitinen

“I ran on a running wheel until I was sweating. Then I lay down on the photo paper to which the sweat of my body created a faint figure. I lifted the paper on the wall. I made a new picture every day for two weeks. Pictures kept darkening on the wall, and after two weeks the first figures had almost disappeared.”

[tom-isaacs]

Indig/urrito - Nao Bustamante

"Indigurrito" is Nao Bustamante's contribution to the many performances that commemorated the 500 anniversary of the conquest of America. The title mixes the term "indigenous" with "burrito," the name of the famous Mexican wrap. In the performance, Bustamante challenged the white men in the audience to go onstage to express their apologies for the years of oppression of indigenous peoples by eating a piece of a burrito that Bustamante had strapped on to her hips. With humor and sarcasm, Bustamante addressed the issues that the 500-year commemoration brought to collective attention. Her piece also denounces how art institutions forced artists to pay tribute to the date if they wanted to get funding.

(The video documentation of Indig/urrito is hilarious and amazing)

[tom-isaacs]

Ruach Redux - Tom Isaacs

Ruach Redux is currently being exhibited at Articulate Project Space as part of ‘per.doc’, Articulate’s fourth Decade Show. 'per.doc’ features some of the performances and associated projects undertaken at APS over the past 10 years. My installation is located in the same room where I performed Ruach (2011).

My artist’s statement for Ruach Redux was included in the ‘per.doc’ exhibition catalogue:

In 2011 I was invited to spend two weeks working in the Articulate project space with the aim of producing work that responded to the site. During this time I devised a new performance piece called Ruach which I performed in the back room. For this performance I spent three days and nights in the space practicing breath meditation, capturing my exhalations in white balloons which slowly accumulated, filling up the space. My goal with this performance was to objectify the act of contemplation, to take something invisible—breath, spirit, energy—and make it visible. Ruach is a Hebrew word which means breath, life, or soul. In the book of Genesis it is the Ruach of God which is breathed into the first man, giving him life. Much later, the prophet Ezekiel witnessed the Ruach of God animating the bones of the dead, restoring them to new life. This Ruach is literally the breath of life. At the time that I performed this piece I still believed in God and believed that I was filled with his spirit. As I put it then, “I was created by God in His image and His Ruach lives within me. And for a time it was in the Articulate Project Space, 497 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt.” I am currently agnostic about the existence of gods and souls.

In addition to making something visible, the original performance of Ruach took something ephemeral—breath, duration, performance—and made it physical and enduring (although not permanent). The balloons were, in effect, a form of documentation, albeit a temporary one (as I suppose all human attempts at documentation are likely to be on the grandest time scale). If I had kept the popped and deflated balloons from the performance I could have exhibited them as an indexical document. In their place I have chosen to exhibit the leftover unused balloons which remained at the end of the three day period. Alongside these artefacts I have selected one photograph of the performance by my good friend Alex Wisser.

[tom-isaacs]

I'll be minding per.doc at Articulate project space from 11am – 2pm today. Come say hi and check out some performance documentation.

[tom-isaacs]

Lake Shift -  Antti Laitinen