It was difficult not to photograph the performance. From the viewpoint of a photographer, which I feel I am, there is obvious reasons for this. It was a real test, a real challenge. One that I did not enjoy much, but that is besides the point.

I had an inclination to photograph. I've lived for photography for a long time. Photography often gives a sense of purpose. As the world passes by, the camera marks time like a highlighter, it helps to remember different segments of life by braking them up. Furthermore, if we create something specifically to photograph it, one can use this process as a tool to step out of the every day, to explore paths which do not belong to logic, and for good or for worse, to escape these paths.

The photographic print acts as a marker within the marked, a place to know where to continue, to develop an idea further, to push all these boundaries. As for the Existere performance we didn't want to push or emphasis the 'nakedness' and decided not to use visual documentation. In that sense it made sense not to photograph. I am glad we have a piece of writing about it. As well as having created the glass installation. It is a beautiful piece with a life of its own. It’s an art work that has come out of thinking about documenting something in an alternative way. Whether it really conveys a true sense of performance is a question. I never thought of the performance when I blew on the glass or even as I read the text. But as the performance becomes about something a bit different than the actual concept of it, so does the documentation in itself

To an extent I feel at a loss for not having seen the performance. It is in some way a shame. But I have totally accepted this fact. To be perfectly honest, I don’t really feel like thinking about it anymore. And this is interesting: I think documenting is about archiving which is also about letting go and moving on. Photography acts as a paradox because in one way it tries to freeze moments and hold on to a past, but in another, it also acts as a bridge in helping to detach oneself from a certain happening.. Like war or death memorials; they are there to remember but at the same time they help us to let go. Perhaps it is the same when we note something into our calendars: It allows us to forget without forgetting.

It is not as if we didn’t document the performance, on the contrary. We made an installation to commemorate it and there are verbal memories floating around. And of course Rye wrote a meaningful text which I almost understand. I like the fact that I don’t fully understand it, because If we are debating the documentation of performance, I still don’t fully comprehend what one should have documented, which part? Was it the naked people after all, was it the comments of the audience and the participants, the sounds, the original ideas, the atmosphere? I ask myself whether it is more important to place emphasis of the documentation on what the idea is about or about what is becomes.

In the case of Existere, I felt that the audience enjoyed the work as a joint effort of a massive, delicate collaboration. Only very little of the original thought sickered were apparent to them. To the audience the work became about something different than we may have anticipated. If I want to make a statement through art or if it is an act of expression, this matters. In this regards it is interesting to reflect on what the piece became about and perhaps even to build on this in our future project, rather than building on our original ideas.

Existere was a huge collaborative effort (in which I probably collaborated the least because I am a space cadet and ironically don’t like performance art). I think we created a sense of community. I think each individual felt safe and challenged a the same time and this perhaps gave a sense of belonging. Which in turn gave a purpose, a meaning. To create a sense of purpose and meaning was incorporated in our thoughts of the existential struggle. And it is positive that this particular concept was born, perhaps not to the audience but the matter that made up the actual work – the participants. Art is surely a form of communication. I think we created a work which does not only attempt to communicate an idea to the outside but interestingly the work itself communicates with itself 9by this I mean the participants and the way they are with each other, during and after the performance. One could almost say that we created the work for the work itself.

It is interesting that we mainly used digital technology (Facebook, email etc) to gather participants and convince people to take part in our performance. We gathered them in a virtual space and brought them to the physical surroundings of an eerie dairy. The space in which we choose to create our work is also an aspect we could take further. We can celebrate that it no longer is essential to have a gallery to test grounds of planted ideas. An exhibition could remain entirely virtual. Or it could manifest itself in different physical spaces and only come together in a virtual world.

These are thoughts which were born out of the God of Existere and the paths of possibilities which are possibly worth perusing.

I have mixed feeling about our performance, and it seems very difficult to reflect on the final performances.

When I think back, it triggers many memories and experiences of the summer. The more I try to focus professionally on to the art subject and documentation of it, I feel pressure, uncertainness rising.

The endless discussions, finding models, handling models, testbed , no money and the risk that it may not happen for whatever reason left traces. The process experiences clearly dominate the actual performance memories.

Concerns and breezes of anxiety became daily companions. The Awareness that everything may rumble down in an instant sits deep in me.

It seems like on the 16th 17th 23rd of July we invited visitors to have a glance at our poetic sensitive world; in which we revealed deeply personal feeling. The performances should remain in my memories as the highlight or result of hard work, but it isn’t. It feels like we just opened a door.

Perhaps it is because these expressed emotion, thoughts revealed in the performance are still present on daily bases. It‘s difficult to think about documenting a project, which is still quit deeply emotionally embedded.

Consciously documenting it’s to hold on to it for the future, in a way you expect it being part of the past.

In this case, our concepts is very much present on daily bases. Perhaps we would need a form of the documentation that shows the longevity of the subject.

The comments on the glass could be different ones, each time another fades over a longer period of time.

As you know, I think this could be ‘re’performed, in the right place on the right time…

Existere in Reflection

Guys, these are thoughts that I began noting down after the performances and whilst I was in America. I've tried to expand these thoughts since then but this entry just represents my initial reflection. I'll work on adding those other thoughts.

Existere in Reflection

Working towards the performance led us into a debate of how we best represent the events as well as the problems of documenting performance art in general. Our decision not to document the performance sculptures had a profound effect on how I, and I think we, experienced the work, how I reflect on it and how I engage with it now that the events have passed.

In preparing the project I had not appreciated how certain decisions would impact my experience of the performance, notably our choices to perform in the work ourselves and to not document the performance sculpture photographically. From the moment of the first performance until the last I found myself feeling somehow unfulfilled. It was a difficult sensation to digest and make sense of at a time when I expected to feel satisfaction.

The process was very different to anything I have encountered. Working with largely non professional performers we were challenged to construct and plan a physical and durational performance that would be flexible enough for people of all physical and artistic sensibilities to be involved with. It was also important for us to convey a feeling of the concept to the performers. As we, JocJonJosch, were all performing in the piece it was vital that this was all achieved during the rehearsals and preparation. Once the performances began we took up our role as performers, and were forced to let go of the control that we had held in our position as 'directors' and 'artists', accepting an unpredictable and uncontrollable course.

We became locked in the work, almost as if we were the oil strokes on a painting, the steel in a sculpture or a pixel in a photograph or video. Unlike a typical gallery or even theatre experience, we surrendered any further control of how the piece might be understood by the visitors; each performance sculpture was different in form, sometimes numbers of participants, always amount of audience, duration, sound, light etc…

Initially I felt frustrated at not being able to step outside of the performance and experience the piece as, and amongst, the audience. By taking part in the performance we were restrained from talking with visitors and explaining and discussing the work further, we were not able to hear their thoughts and appreciate their affirmation of the work's quality and value.

This compulsion to control the piece and its understanding (to visitors) as well as the desire for recognition and respect was poignant. The project had developed into a far more meaningful experience through this particular performance process; I had unexpectedly experienced the observations of the psychological state of our subject matter and the form that represented those ideas through the process of the project and participation in the performance.

As an experience and process, the form of the performance no longer held any value to me, it was the process and experience that had become significant.

I think we each have our own take on what the symbol of a house represents. Both in terms of the performance and on a more general level.

I’ve been reading a book called the poetics of space.

‘In the house, Bachelard discovers a metaphor for humanness’.

I thought there is a lot of relevant material relating the house in a broader context and our own thinking. I’ve randomly copy pasted a few below.

The poetics of space/ Caston Bachelar

From the Introduction by J.Stilgoe:

Talking about the house …

“…Always container and sometimes contained, the house serves Bachelard as the portal to metaphors of imagination”

“Out of the house spin worlds within worlds, the personal cosmos Bachelard describes…”

" if the house is the first universe for its young children, the first cosmos, how does its space shape all subseqent knowledge of other space, of any larger cosmos?”

The poetics of space/ Caston Bachelar

“the house is a nest for dreaming, a shelter for imagination”

“….the impact of the house on the human, what is the impact of the human on the house.”

Page 6 from the book

“The house’s virtues of protection and resistance are transported into human virtues. The house aquires the physical and moral energy of a human body. It braces itself to receive downpour, it girds its loins. When forced to do so, it bends with the blast, confident that it will right itself again in time, while continuing to deny any temporary defeats. Such a house as this invites mankind to heroism of cosmic proportions. It is an instrument with which to confront cosmos…”

“Much is to be said about the psychologist of the imagination if to ‘social’ he adds ‘cosmic’ reading. He comes to realize that cosmos molds mankind, that it can transform a man of the hills into a man of islands and rivers, and that the house remodels man.”

“A house constitutes a body of images that mankind proofs illusions of stability. We are constantly re-imagining its reality: to distinguish all these images would be to describe the soul of the house; it would mean developing a veritable psychology of the house.”

Can the contained be contained?

I guess you may remember that I had this idea on doing a piece on Sol Lewitt in Spoleto. It was about documenting his wall drawings but in a way that it becomes a work in itself. Sol was in some way fascinated with mathematical equations. One of his famous pieces is a cube without a cube. (have a look on net)

Somewhere in Spoleto there are these towers in whch there is a rectangular room where he wrote, scribbled and drew lines on all four walls.

I had wanted to make a piece which would be named ‘a room in a box’; to photograph every part of all the walls and making a box which would enable someone to replicated the rectangular room anywhere in the world.

Sol Lewitt was was all about idea and concept. If you buy his artwork you may simply end up with a set of instructions on how to make one of his artworks. The instructions were often quite simple and could be used to produce the piece anywhere in the world.

I have been fascinated with boxes for a long time. A flat in a house is also a set of boxes. Obviously it is more, each flat is a universe in itself, one that transcends geometrical space. Each Universe seems to be contained by another one. And I was interested in the inversion of these Universes. A larger room being part of a smaller one.

I thought of the process of inverting containment and un-containment. Through photography we constantly try to capture and contain something. A camera is essentially a box too. That box contains millions of potential images, each produced at a click of the shutter. Not only does light become dark matter on the negative but the image is inverted twice, printed on its head and mirrored at the same time. I wonder if in years to come most people will have forgotten that photography had gone through this process as the physical negative is rapidly disappearing.

In relation to this inversion process I thought of a funny idea. To make a camera which physically becomes its own picture and its own frame by literally turning it inside out. In other words, to construct a wooden pinhole camera, use liquid light (instead of photographic paper), expose onto the back of the camera, develop, take the camera apart to make: A portrait of a photograph presenting its true self.

A New Day

I guess we all know that nothing lasts forever.

We witnessed yet another testimony of this in the current crisis in Japan. When I pictured earthquakes as a child, I always imagined looking at the ground whilst you see it cracking, being drawn apart. Have to choose which side to run along. The unstable ground symbolized uncertainty and the anxiety that comes along with it. In order to overcome the anxiety we would have to start again. Even though subconsciously we all know that by building we are constructing the 'shadows of their own destruction' (Sebald…)

When does a house become ones home? You could claim it is the moment you move in but I think a home increases in its ‘homeness’ the longer we reside in it. My house in Greenwich has slowly become more of a home as I did it up and started growing on it. And perhaps it grew on me in reverse. I feel slightly anxious as it will be demolished. From the moment I moved in, I always wanted to do a project based in this house, I felt it was a last temporary stop to something that I would bring to a finish. Is this the illusion that the symbol of a house gives us? It stands for the end of a day journey, a place for rest, stability. And yet we have to walk out of it to make the cliches around it fall apart.

What is left of all this? We sometimes have memories and pictures of all these things. As for our performance we may not even have pictures but simply voices retelling the story of what has been.

I know I have been going on a bit and I would have loved to have edited my text, not much times left.

So here a short proposal or idea what we could do for the exhibition in Basel if we don’t simply want to use current work. It references some of the iedas above and one we’ve had together or some issues I’ve tried to explain:

To use the floorboards (referencing what the house is built upon: the ground) as a type of photographic canvas (using liquid light).

Using this canvas to show the house it was built upon. Questioning the stability of the house, whilst keeping part of the real house.

Making a box/ frame out of the floorboards, hence the house will be in a box made by a part of itself. The memory and part of a house has shrunk into a smaller part of a universe.

Realization: we could use my house (there are lots of floorboards we could use) As it will be demolished.

Alternatively for Basel I thought it would be interesting to use the little huts next to the gallery to realize this idea. I have the floorboards for one of them.

Another idea would be to use contemporary images from Japan, referencing current issues.

Marina Abramovic, Documenting Performance

I found this short interview with Marina Abramovic after thinking about performance, it's quite interesting and relevant.

Performance re-described.

I've been thinking of the performance (and with Son in mind) in terms of an extended art piece, wondering how the piece will exist after the initial performance(s). This seems to force considerations of documentation, interpretation and re-presentation of the piece. I guess performance is different to photography, video, sculpture and painting because it of its temporariness and because of its power to engage all the senses (as Jon mentioned).

I think another significant difference is that in the other disciplines you are left with a physical object that more or less remains the same as time passes, allowing for the piece to be referred to physically and exhibited in galleries etc… With performance what you're left with is your memory and impression of the event which I think is really interesting, this is where the art work continues to reside, in the heads of the audience.

Performance is riddled with problems of re-presentation and longevity but maybe that's partly because we try to arrest something (physical) that is not meant to be arrested. However, maybe we could give the performance longevity by accepting its physical temporariness and engaging with the audience's memory of the performance where the work does continue to live. By exploring these ideas in terms of retelling and re-describing, the performance may continue to hold currency through the language of performance and memory. There would not be any notable physical art piece (such as the human House) but rather a perpetual performance of re-describing that puts the emphasis on the memory of an individual and their interpretation of the original work.

Seebald

"For somehow we know by instinct that outsize buildings cast the shadow of their own destruction before them, and are designed from the first with an eye to their later existence as ruins."

From the novel Austerlitz, by W.G.Seebald.