Daily Practice.

Everyday I hold my breath; I reject life and stop the physical intake for as long as I can. The need to document such a practice never really occurred to me. I feel that the idea is so much more important than the actual act of holding my breath that this performance need not be documented but purely experienced and thought about. Perhaps if I were told that someone wanted to exhibit the word I would request that the text "reject that which gives you life" be visible some where, and the viewers could then perform on their own, or just think about it.

This work is to be seen as a comment on the living vs. the living. It can also be seen as an anti-consumer piece, however it’s not my intention to communicate this- not that that’s ever stopped anyone from appropriating his or her own thoughts before. This of course is the beauty of all art, opinion and experience.

(lose) control (of) yourself

Personal Documentation.

Painting A White Wall White

What is considered a 'waste of time'? At what point do we stop the mundane and evoke the chaos within?

By taking a small paintbrush and a large bucket of white house paint to paint an already white wall white, I attempted to illustrate the painstaking precision we put into the everyday, the events in our lives that occur on the regular and we allow for them to. I want to challenge the viewer to stay with me and watch white paint dry to the exact colour it’s being painted on. I intended to slowly build a sense of urgency as the realization that this monotonous act was going to take quite a while and they may not have the time to invest in such process.

An interesting observation I made after everyone had gone and I was left to finish the piece in solitude was the paintbrush actually wore away, this excited me because I realized the paintbrush became a symbol of spirit and how the continuous process was wearing it down. The final foot of the wall had to be completed via finger painting because the brush finally disappeared. The entire process took approximately four hours. I’d like to try this piece on a larger wall again using a small brush and painting with the same colours- I think the questions that one begins to ask themselves when participating in this performance are important ones that cannot always be asked of someone else, but must be called upon from the self. 

Festival Info

Performances by Molly Kreppel, Connie Freitas, Tomorrow Rising, Genesis y.m., G Am Ani, Emilio Rojas. The Fragility of Time and Space was a Festival that occured on March 31st 2010 at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. The fragility of time and space was a concept developed within the questions of time as a non-linear component of performance art, and as well as how the space occupies time just as much as time occupies space.
Short Description :

Emilio worked with the length of tape cassettes and using their physical properties to entrap and guide the audience, the physical time of the cassettes and real time were confronted.

Molly Kreppel danced aggressively and sparatic to a loop of a children song sped up, the time recorded was altered and made weak.

Tomorrow Rising painted the gallery space white during the Festival. Dealing with space and time within performance itself.

Genesis y.m. sanded down smooth a 24 by 42 cm rectangle on a white wall separated by a shutter light. Dealing with the time of the day (the sun outside causing the shadow light) as well as the time it took to sand down this portion of the wall, well the audience stood waiting, and the difference or effect of that time spent.

Connie Freitas combined video with performance, using voice and image with silhouette play between the form of her body against the forms in the video, while dealing with the concept of time as a fragile impassable matter.

G Am Ani sat partially nude within a plastic veil while reading, with tomatoes available to be thrown, smashed etc. on her at the audience’s desire, the space within her veil as well as the space in which the tomatoes were thrown was the focus of the audience.

Artist Bio

A procession of chance moments has brought Tomorrow from Toronto to Vancouver to practice expression in far too many mediums creating a chaos that often results in panic attacks and breakdowns. Fortunately after two decades of this pattern Tomorrow has begun to channel this turmoil into what some may refer to as “art”. However that’s just today, tomorrow may bring something entirely different.

Education

2009- Present                        Film, Video and Integrated, ECUAD, Vancouver BC

2005- 2009                            Diploma in Media Arts, Sheridan College, Oakville ON

Ritual, Duration, and Relation. Solo

Solo Performance

G
(duration)
G’s performance included two props, tweezers and a mirror. Throughout the entire piece she continued to hold focus on herself and the almost obsessive plucking. I feel the piece (perhaps inadvertently) echoed Marina Abramovic’s Art Must Be Beautiful, as well as matters of femininity and race and the parallel between beauty and pain.

Emilio
(ritual)
Emilio had us; the audience, enter a dark room lit only a soft spot light- he then proceeded to light a candle and whip himself. By whipping himself it added a sound element to the piece that I found very effective in bringing us into the ambiance of the performance. As Emilio climbed up the ladder he chewed biscuits and spit them out the entire way up (I’m not sure how high the ladder was, 12ft?). Upon reaching the top he read out names, that at the time I wasn’t sure what they were, but he then announced “Dictionary of Fallen Angels” and dropped the book. Again, the sound drew us further into the performance. He then climbed down the ladder and ate the cookies that he had spit on the ground. The piece told the story of colonization

Quan
(ritual)
Quan’s performance was a ritual in a more traditional sense, it started soft and quiet then grew into somewhat of a panic. Or perhaps the sound of someone else crying sends me into a panic? The only thing I will suggest to Quan is maybe working on an ending. I think that’s an area we could all work on. I’d like to end without saying “finished”.

Molly K.
(ritual, potential for duration)
Band-aids and ballerina slippers, I understand that the two go hand in hand, but I can’t help but feel there is some juxtaposition in the in the habitual thinking of the two. It was interesting to see the process that goes into such a seemingly delicate practice.

Pierce
Ah! Prior to our performances I took a joke of Pierce’s seriously when he said he was going to put the cigarette out in his eyes. So when he lit the smoke I started feeling extremely anxious and scared, but also highly intrigued. My viewing of this performance was most likely much different than most of the class because I was anticipating the self-inflicted burn. I like that Pierce’s explanation for his method of extinguishing was F.T.W. or Fuck The World.

Lisa
Humming the song from Cinderella Lisa, dressed in a veil and skirt made of plastic picked up flowers and slowly when through the metamorphosis from high-spirited princessesque girl to someone being swallowed up by a bag (the once skirt) was at times quite unsettling, however that’s paired with thought provoking.

an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object

Group B
The group utilized the sheet by folding it so the folds effectively created the outline of an umbrella, then took turns walking up to the screen and having their shadows take shape and “hold” the umbrella. The repetitive act of walking forward, stating the weather, and walking away created an almost hypnotizing experience that we were quickly drawn out of with the splash of water.

Group C
By creating screens that touched the ground and went up well over their heads they created a cinematic experience. The use of different sounds added some humor and at times made it seem surreal because the sound was not what you’d normally match the visual with (I think there’s a word for that at this moment escapes me).

Group D
The idea of being fed by light made me think of exactly what a shadow is- without the light it cannot survive and I found it really interesting how this aspect of shadows was used. By using different angles and a moving light I felt as though I was at a play, this was heightened by their choice to not use a sheet or screen.

Performances I wasn't around for...

In the Jan Fabre's performance It Is Kill Or Cure, he positioned himself in front of six journalist, each with a loaded gun and invited them to shoot at him. The performance was part of a installation that featured a drilled through coin with John F. Kennedy on it.

Invitation to It Is Kill Or Cure.

Yes, I'm aware you can crop images, I just like the side of the book scan... I also like scanning.

  Photo from the performance.

Caption reads: It's Kill Or Cute, Franklin Furnace, New York, 1982

In Chris Burden's Shoot he and a friend walked into a gallery that he had invited guest into, his friend then walked about fifteen feet from Chris, pulled out a .22 rifle and shot Chris in the arm.

When asked why he did this piece he responded "I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist".

Still from "Shoot"

Alex Grey's Meditations On Mortality began in a dark room with the sounds of monks chanting. Alex covered in black body grease and his wife Allyson covered in white body grease walk onto a large ying-yang positioned on the floor. Alex sitting opposite of a white skeleton, Allyson lit twelve candles around the circle (in the same place numbers are on a clock). A strobe light started and the two met at the edge of the circle, embraced and the grease on their bodies blended. The strobe light then stopped, the chanting started again, and the two exited the circle.

Still from "Meditations On Mortality"

End Transmission.