#stuart brisley

[shihlun]

Ken McMullen

- Ghost Dance

1983

[xenoboo]

Stuart Brisley, Moments of Decision/Indecision, 1975, Galeria Teatr Studio Pałac Kultury i Nauki, Warsaw, photograph by Leslie Haslam.

[vorvoros]

Stuart Brisley - Moments of Decision / Indecision, 1975

Teatra Studio, Palac Kultury I Nauki, Warsaw, 1975.

I was offered a DAAD fellowship to live and work in West Berlin for a year in 1973/74. At the time the prevailing tendency was to look across the Atlantic. I decided to look beyong the Wall. Hence the subject of this work: Trials of attempting to climb a wall.

The first thing I did was to go to Warsaw where I met Józef Szajna, the Director of Teatra Studio.

I was offered an opportunity to make a work at the studio in 1975.

It was subsequently titled Moments of Decision / Indecision.

The work was situated in a large room half of which I designated for the performance which took place over six days.

I attempted to climb up the wall at the end of the room without aid. The floor was covered in black and white paint in liberal quantities. This impossible task produced a number of actions .

I was naked with shaven head. In the attempts to climb the wall I became covered in paint and lost my sight on each of the six days. At this point the photographer who came with me from West Berlin acted as my guide. Telling where I was in relation to the wall. The title refers to this situation where the photographer made decisions both through the camera and in becoming my sight guide. I was the photographed subject moving at will but unable to see hence the term indecision. There are a number of ways to interpret what happened given the sharp context of the work and the fundamentally separate ideological conditions between East and West at the time.

In English the word attempt is synonymous with meanings such as from which reason recoils, speculation, failure, fall flat.

Some of the resulting photographic images have become art works in their own right.

S.B.

[postconnaissance]

Stuart Brisley’s 1972 performance of ‘And for today ... nothing’ at Gallery House, London

[halogenic]

'Beneath Dignity, Bregenz’ (1977) - Stuart Brisley

“The materials which (Brisley) employed were water, chalk, powder (flour) and paint (black and white). He made five separate statements using each of the materials, working in all for four days.” (x)

[xenoboo]

And for today... nothing, 1972

“You can say what you’re going to do, you can think about it, you can prepare it, and then when you start, it’s all disappeared because it’s actually meaningless… errors make for where the key value lies”  –  Stuart Brisley

[xenoboo]

Stuart Brisley, Incidents in Transit, 1992. Sala Montcada de la Fundacao La Caixa, Barcelona. Photo: Maya Balcioglu.

[postconnaissance]

French revolutionary poster in Michael Newman’s review of Stuart Brisley’s performance work