Framing statement.
A Site-Specific performance involves a sophisticated cognitive process. Imitating relevant ideas and emotions towards a space is represented by an expression of memory, thoughts and a collection of ideas created by the artist and the audience. For instance, researching the history of a site can essentially present us with a critical reasoning for a performance. This progression of research is then translated into action.
The differing opinions that exist within the audience help develop the atmosphere around the performance. Without the public, some ideas lose meaning because they require audience participation.
The importance of the space in a Site-Specific performance may be seen as a vital role when building the foundation needed to create the piece. However the role that it does play is accentuated by the influences it provides to the artist. The space essentially works alongside the artist by becoming part of the performance rather than the space in which the artist has to work, ‘I suggest that the conventions and techniques of the auditorium may be inappropriate or inadequate to the task of addressing ‘site’ (Pearson, 2010, 1, 26). It reveals information about its own historical background, which helps the artist incorporate real events that may have occurred there or during the time period it has been around for.
Site Specific Art charts the development of an experimental art form that creates performance in an original way. There are many different types of Site Specific work. Some can be considered simple yet effective (such as two people standing naked in a doorway, letting people walk between them, Marina Abramovic and Ulay – Imponderabilia). Others can stand for something like a cause or protest, such as Mad For Real – Soya Sauce and Ketchup Fight. In 2000 these two artists (Cai Yuan and Jian Jun Xi) threw Ketchup and Soya sauce at each other in the middle of a protest to show that in the middle of everything, many protests really only come down to fighting for the same thing, in different ways, so they become misunderstood. Many different people see a variety of ideas and stories being expressed with a range of performances.
My performance is a durational piece which means simply, the piece only ends, after The Usher Galley has closed to represent the fact that this issue of wasting money we do not have, that is world-wide, never ends. It will always be a problem even when people feel they have made a difference, the situation will still be on-going.
Analysis of process.
What is art?
The question that arose during the process of devising the performances was: how does an artist connect to their piece and what actually makes something a performance? The conclusion that the class came to was that a performance is something that creates emotion, whether it comes from the audience or the performer. Some people consider rehearsals to be part of the performance and the reaction that would come from an audience comes from the performer themselves, even when they work solo. In some cases when the performer only has themselves as the audience it can be considered to be a performance. Many people believe that everyday acts create the shows that represent that individual’s life.
Martin Creed explained that art evokes different responses on individuals depending on where the art is presented. His project ‘Work no. 850’ was shown at the Tate Modern in London between 1st July – 16 November 2008, ‘an artist doesn’t create art. An artist creates things that people see as art.’ (Martin Creed, 2008, Artist. Interview on ‘Work no. 850’). This particular piece of art was not a painting on a canvas, nor was it a sculpture that stands in the centre of a room. This piece was a representation of how he explains life. He tells us that he sees death as being still, motionless and lifeless, so for something to be alive it would need to be the complete opposite.
Martin Creed encouraged athletes to run through the Tate as fast as they could, ‘life is always moving, so if living is the opposite of death then what is the complete opposite of still…moving as fast as possible.’ (Martin Creed, 2008, Artist. Interview on ‘Work no. 850’). If these athletes were to perform somewhere natural like a running track or the street then no one would think twice about it, but because they were running somewhere out of the ordinary, it caught public attention. However, the running was not merely there for attention, it was used to symbolise how fast life moves. This was then viewed in many different ways by the public and made them question what is acceptable in the world and what is frowned upon by society.
The Usher Gallery is the county museum for Lincolnshire. It is a fusion of the Usher Gallery and the City and County museum in such a way that they can work more effectively together than hitherto. There were many different items in the gallery that seemed, at times, repetitive such as the tea sets. Each set told a different story so it felt necessary for it to be there. While I felt as though the ratio of tea sets to the gallery space was excessive, many people did find the tea sets to be the most meaningful part of The Collection. Art is all about the opinion of the viewer and how that artefact spoke to them and made them feel. This correlated to Work no. 850 by displaying both a repetitive nature and a hidden meaning below the surface of what the members of the public can actually see.
The one piece of art in The Usher Gallery that did speak to me, was the dress made out of the world map. To me it represented how fashion is seen all over the world and how it stood for how unique each culture is and that something so different like the clothes on our backs can define who we are as a society or even as an individual.
What is a Site based performance?
The techniques created when doing a site specific performance are those which cannot be used in any other theatre based productions, unless of course audience participation is used throughout. A site performance revolves around what the audience feel towards what they are seeing, and the concept of feeling included and involved is important when the purpose is to make them think about their life and the world they live in.
With the tasks that were set, it made us (as viewers of the art) really examine and try to get into the concept that goes into creating what we were observing. Some of the artefacts we studied helped with this idea of understanding the story behind them by being interactive. One particular piece actually encouraged us to create our own concept of art by having a large box of small different coloured cubes allowing us to make a mosaic pattern. Many different interpretations of what art can be expressed as were created by members of the public and left for the next person to observe and compare to their own mosaic creations.
This concern to reassess the relationship between art work and its site is largely provoked by the ways in which the “site-specific” has been uncritically adopted as another genre category by mainstream art institutions and discourses. (Kwon, 2002, 1, 13).
The relationship between the artist, the art work and the space (in which it is being performed) has to be noticeable for people to understand why exactly it was created otherwise it would have no relevance. There are many different ways to describe what a site-specific performance is and how important the spacing is when devising a performance; many people still try to define what truly makes a performance site based.
Marina Abramovic stated that with every performance she does or with every exhibition she puts on, especially with The Artist is Present, people always ask her the same question: Why is this art?
A performance or artefact is only presented as art when the public brand it as a piece of art work. Even for the person asking the question, they ask, why is it art? Meaning that they see it as art even if they don’t realise, for the reason that society has already proclaimed it to be art.
Inspiration.
(Fig. 1. Stockwell, 2010, cited in tagfinearts.com, undated)
(Fig. 2. Stockwell, 2010, cited in deal-big.biz/big-deal, undated)
One of my main ideas came from two particular pieces of artwork in the Usher Gallery, ‘Afghanistan – A Sorry State’ and ‘China Gold’ both pieces by Susan Stockwell. I felt drawn to these pieces as soon as I saw them for the main reason that they spoke about the idea of money. Not in the description but in the art work. Both pieces are the image of the country in their title but instead of using a map, Stockwell used dollar bills to create the surface of the country and then red thread to divide it into sections of the country.
The one that spoke to me more was ‘Afghanistan – A Sorry State’. This country is created out of dollar bills yet it is a country with very little money. It made me think about how much money I spend on a daily basis and how much money I waste. There are people out there who cannot afford anything let alone wasting money on something they will probably never use or throw away.
The performance that I presented asked this question: Do you realise how much money you waste, if any? The point I hoped make with this performance was to try make people understand that you should be more careful with what you spend money.
The concept of my idea is to sit in the room with the two artefacts and a large pile of different currencies. I considered to then rip it up into miniscule pieces, one page at a time. This would have created a large pile on the other side of me. Once there is no more to rip up, one small piece at a time is moved and stuck it to a large canvas on the other side of the room. When every piece was stuck to it, the image created would be the world map. However, this was my intention, but was briefly discussed and had a large amount of research to continue to backup the idea, this was then changed to fit around the knowledge of certain countries rather than every country. Audience participation was used, by asking if they would join me in ripping up the pages, to find out what they perceive money to be and how willing they are to rip up real currency. If the message is clear it would mean that the audience walk away questioning whether or not they waste their own money.
Through my research I discovered a book that helped inspire my devised performance, this was K Foundation Burn a Million Quid which was an action on 23 August 1994, where K Foundation burned cash in the amount of one million pounds sterling in a disused boathouse on the Ardfin Estate on the Scottish island of Jura. (Brook, 1997.)
This is not about money. It is about how our ideas impose reality and how, in turn, that reality imposes upon us. Well, we don’t as much spend money as much as it buys us. (K-Foundation, 1997, 66).
They describe money as this object that controls everyone who has some. That we as people are powerless to it, and that we don’t own it but it owns us, which is true when you stop to think about the things we buy that we don’t actually need, we buy it because it is only five pounds, which to some people is nothing and yet to others it is everything. But when those five pounds add up it creates thousands of pounds, even millions.
The idea of my performance develops every week, but with the same backbone and the same concept, to get people thinking about what they spend. The point I am trying to get across will be enhanced and more meaningful and real if I used real money instead of just a picture. Therefore my idea of destroying real money came from K Foundation Burn a Million Quid project.
K Foundation explain one million pounds has endless possibilities, however I do not have enough money to have endless possibilities with, and the effect that the audience feel towards my performance wouldn’t be as profound if I ripped up fifty pounds, or even one hundred pounds, so to express my thought and to make sure people realise how much this happens, I would need to exchange my English currency into another that has a small amount represented with a single note. This is why Stockwell’s artefacts make a huge impact on my process with use of the dollar bills. The exchange rate is 0.59p to every dollar, so it feels necessary to use a large amount of one dollar bills to emphasise just how much we waste. One dollar at a time would be ripped up into many pieces that would then each represent a dollar on its own; each dollar would then be turned into roughly five hundred dollars. These pieces shall then be placed one at a time in front of a specific question relating to wasting money.
Everyday closer to the performance date my piece will be modified and changed to make it more understandable and eye opening than the original idea it started out as. It is about oppression in society; to get audience members to participate I decided to allow children to rip up some of the money so I can document just how different the younger generation see money compared to older generations.
My performance.
In a Blink of an Eye is the name of my performance; it represents the human relationship with money. It explains that we do not know what we have until it’s gone, how in a click of a button, every penny you have ever saved can disappear. Not only will In a blink of an eye draw attention to the fact that people waste money but it asks the question, do you? Do you as a member of the public realise just how much money you waste in a month or even a week?
(Fig. 3. In A Blink Of An Eye. 2014)
This photo was taken to become a visual representation of the message I was trying to explain. The burning of the money symbolised the money that we waste every day.
People saw K Foundation Burn a Million Quid as controversial and one person claimed it to be like burning people’s dreams right in front of them and said that it was a really rotten act. Others said that it was no less than genius. No matter what performance you do, there will always be critics, each one stating whether or not they loved or hated it, for every one person that comments saying how incredible it was there will always be one person saying that it was pointless and had no meaning.
It is very easy to say that my performance doesn’t mean anything, or the point isn’t clear enough to be a good performance, however this statement can be said about any site-specific performance. When Marina Abramavic stood naked in a door way opposite Ulay, the audience didn’t even know that was the performance until after it had finished, so it is easy to not understand why people do what they do in a site based performance, but once their eyes are opened they wish to know more about it, people are curious of what they do not know.
Performance evaluation.
(Fig. 4. Un-named, 2014)
The performance caught the attention from many different people around The Usher gallery, some of which were from different countries, so it became a challenge to explain to some of them that I was not merely focusing on England and America but indeed the majority of the world as a whole. It became, for the most part, tricky to explain to one audience member, what my message was and how my idea was trying to help people. This particular observer was a young woman who was a twenty year old art student who was originally from America; she stated that she saw it as an attack on the USA. Once I had explained the concept of my piece she was very interested in what I had created and wanted to know more about the situation at hand. Many more people followed afterwards, asking questions about the performance and asking if they could join in, some of them were more difficult than others and asked questions I had not prepared for. One of which was simply: Why should it matter to me?
I asked everyone that acknowledged my work, that if they could describe what they felt towards seeing someone be so carless with money, even though it is not their specific currency, how would you describe that feeling in one word. Many people said obvious answers that I would have expected, such as: wasteful, wrong, irresponsible, strange and even cringe, whereas others gave answers that were quite shocking, such as, exciting (because it is something they have never seen before) envious (because they wish they had money that they could just rip) clever (because it is a different way to express an opinion/protest).
Many of the multiple choice questions that were available for people to answer included:
- What is the amount of money the average Brit spends on fast food each year?
- What is considered the lowest amount of money a British person can spend on food per week?
- On average, how much money does the typical English household waste a year by throwing away unwanted food?
If the audience members were to get a question right they would be rewarded with a single penny that I had collected from somewhere outside, essentially handing back the penny that they had dropped at any point in their life. They would then be allowed to keep it, spend it, throw it away or put it in their pocket, give it to someone on the street, or even give it to charity. Some people decided to give it back to the process of my performance and even back to myself so I would be allowed to keep it.
(Fig. 5. Un-named, 2014)
(Fig. 6. Un-named, 2014)
The performance that I devised helped open many people’s minds by asking them to look at how much money they spend without counting it all up. Many people even came back with their friends, which helped my idea of giving my audience members knowledge to pass on to others which they essentially did.
Works Cited:
Abramovic, M. (2010) The Artist Is Present. [performance art] New York, USA: Museum of Modern Art, 14 March-31 May
Abramovic, M. and Ulay (1977) Imponderabilia. [performance art] Bologna: Museum of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, June.
Artforum (2008) Martin Creed, Work No. 850, 2008 (interview and footage) [online video] Available from http://artforum.com/video/mode=large&id=21622
Brook, C. (1997, 66). K Foundation Burn a Million Quid / London: ellipsis London.
Creed, M. (2008) Work no. 850. [performance art] London, UK: Tate Modern, 1 July-16 November
Figure 1. Stockwell, S. (undated) Afghanistan – A Sorry State. [online] Lincoln, Lincolnshire: The Usher Gallery. Available from http://www.deal-big.biz/big-deal-1-0-artists.html
Figure 2. Stockwell, S. (undated) China Gold. [online] Lincoln, Lincolnshire: The Usher Gallery. Available from http://www.tagfinearts.com/susan-stockwell/china-gold.html
Figure 3. Pearson-Fletcher, C (2014) In A Blink Of An Eye [Photograph; burning one hundred dollar bill on a black backdrop.] (Accessed on 21.3.2014)
Figure 4. Walsh, A (2014) Un named [Photograph; eight dollar bills lined up on a wooden surface.] (Accessed on 13.5.2014)
Figure 5. Shorten, N (2014) Un named [Photograph; wide shot of girl ripping up U.S dollars on a wooden stage, next to a line of questions in front of an African style painting.] (Accessed on 8.5.2014)
Figure 6. Shorten, N (2014) Un named [Photograph; girl surrounded by U.S dollars and pennies on a wooden stage.] (Accessed on 13.5.2014)
Kwon, M. (2004) One Place After Another, Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mad for Real (2000) Soya Sauce Ketchup Fight. May Day, Trafalgar Square, London.
Pearson, M. (2010, 1). Site – Specific Performance /. Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan
Suderburg, E. (2000, 5-23) Space Site Intervention: Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.