Search

Placeholder Content Image

Live art exists only while it is being performed, and then it disappears. How do we create an archive of the ephemeral?

<p>Live performance exists only in the moment it is being performed. Its ephemeral nature means it is transient and impermanent, and cannot be experienced again in precisely the same way. </p> <p>How do artists hold on to the works that they make? What of the invisible labour that is rarely acknowledged or named? </p> <p>Over the last ten years, performance artist Leisa Shelton has completed a series of participatory artworks which focus on the mutability of the archive: gathering audience testimonies and mapping artistic lineages. </p> <p>Now her new show, Archiving the Ephemeral, brings five works together in a beautifully curated installation. </p> <p>Archiving the Ephemeral is a celebration of the artist, the artistic process and the audience experience. </p> <p>Shelton’s expansive career, built on collaboration, care and conversation, grounds the exhibition. The show reflects her focus on curating and re-framing interdisciplinary work to address the limited opportunities for recognition of contemporary independent Australian performance.</p> <h2>Meticulous design</h2> <p>Marked by a spare, distinctive design, Archiving the Ephemeral is located in the Magdalen Laundry at the Abbotsford Convent. </p> <p>Rich with a bright green wooden industrial interior and aged painted walls, the laundry is a perfect background for the specifically placed items, the carefully lit tables and the long lines of patterned artefacts. </p> <p>Fragile ideas are framed and held within a crafted, artisan aesthetic. Objects are carefully made and remnants are meticulously gathered.</p> <p>Along one side of the space, 132 brown paper packets are laid out in a continuous line on the floor. Each package contains a set of archival materials, burned to ash, which corresponds to an artistic project from Shelton’s career.</p> <p>An accompanying video depicts Shelton’s meticulous process of burning, piece by piece, her entire performance archive to ash. </p> <p>In a methodical and meditative process, the ash is sifted and packaged into the hand-crafted paper bags. The bags are then hand-punched and sewn with twine, typed, labelled and categorised: a kind of devotional honouring of the materials even as they are brought to dust. </p> <h2>A living archive</h2> <p>The exhibition includes an opportunity for each of us to become part of the living archive through conversations with two ground-breaking elders of Australia’s performance art scene, <a href="https://abbotsfordconvent.com.au/news/in-conversation-with-stelarc-and-jill-orr/">Jill Orr and Stelarc</a>. </p> <p>On the night I attend, I sit with Stelarc. We discuss Kantian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant">notions of time</a> as he tells me about his <a href="http://stelarc.org/?catID=20353">Re-Wired/Re-Mixed Event for Dismembered Body</a> (2015). It’s a delightful moment of personal connection with an artist I’ve admired for years.</p> <p>Across one wall are four large hanging papers listing the name of every artist on every <a href="https://www.artshouse.com.au/about-us/">Arts House</a> program from 2006-2016, laboriously typed. </p> <p>On the night I attend, these lists elicit lively conversations among the artists present as we study the names and dates (in my case, slightly desperately searching to see if my own name is there), and recall shows, people, events, stories and collaborations.</p> <p>Much of Shelton’s work is gathered from conversations with audience members about art and artists. </p> <p>In Mapping, a set of burnished stainless-steel canisters, beautifully marked with engraved identifications, sit on a bench underneath a suspended video screen on which artist names appear and disappear in an endless, floating loop. </p> <p>The canisters contain details of profoundly memorable artists and performances collected from 1,000 interviews, dated and stamped. They are hand-welded, sumptuous objects which hold the interview cards securely locked under fireproof glass designed to withstand cyclones, fires and floods.</p> <p>The many hand-written files of Scribe contain multiple documents which can be taken out and read. The sheer number of pages is overwhelming, and the breadth of audience commentary – joyful, moved, connected, inspired – is breathtaking.</p> <p>It’s a poignant reminder of the traces borne out beyond the artist’s own experience of performing a work: an often surreal and lonely moment once the audience has left the room.</p> <h2>A practice of care</h2> <p>Archiving the Ephemeral fosters a practice of care and acknowledgement which extends to the practical ways in which our trajectory through the room and engagement with the artworks is enabled. </p> <p>The Convent is an apt site for such a careful collection. Analogue processes and objects are foregrounded. Typewriters, brown paper, string, awls and aprons are part of the painstaking construction process. Attendants and scribes act as custodians in the space, facilitating a gentle holding of the material.</p> <p>We are given the opportunity to continue the archive as it evolves and devolves around us. As I make my way through the space, I notice my own embodied archival actions - taking notes, speaking to others - as I continue the trajectory of documenting the documents. We are not just witnessing one artist’s body of work. Archiving the Ephemeral focuses on the need for greater visibility, recognition and honouring of Australia’s experimental and independent artists, and speaks to the many collaborations, associations, and intricate connections that mark a significant – if unacknowledged – cultural legacy.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/live-art-exists-only-while-it-is-being-performed-and-then-it-disappears-how-do-we-create-an-archive-of-the-ephemeral-201939" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Placeholder Content Image

The value of a banana: understanding absurd and ephemeral artwork

<p>In September 2020, the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired <a href="https://news.artnet.com/art-world/guggenheim-banana-cattelan-1909179">Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian</a> by anonymous donation. The work – a banana duct-taped to a wall — was first shown and sold at the <a href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/this-art-is-bananas-maurizio-cattelan-presents-first-new-work-for-an-art-fair-in-15-years#:%7E:text=The%20maverick%20Italian%20artist%20Maurizio,wall%20with%20grey%20duct%20tape.">Art Basel fair in Miami Beach</a> in the autumn of 2019 where it generated attention, derision and <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/art-basel-2019-art-banana-memes-1203395572/">innumerable memes</a>. Social media was, for a brief time, overflowing with images of <a href="https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/people-are-coming-up-their-own-duct-tape-art-after-banana-in-art-basel-sells-for-rs-85-lakh-2416655.html">just about anything duct-taped to walls</a>: tamales, beer cans, cabbage, a <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1668205-duct-tape-banana">durian</a> fruit, a sandal, someone’s cat. <a href="https://adage.com/article/digital/brands-are-trying-one-art-basel-banana/2221661">Companies quickly countered with online ads</a> where their products, from deodorants to French fries, were shown duct-taped to the wall with a modest price tag.</p> <p>Comedian reignited a set of questions that seem to flare up with some regularity: what makes something a high-priced artwork when another, seemingly identical, object is not? </p> <p>Since the work was shown at an art fair, it is relevant to consider what exactly is being bought when acquiring an artwork like Comedian. The original banana had to be replaced several times during the course of the fair, once after it was eaten as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50704136">a stunt by another artist</a>.</p> <p>The collectors who bought and subsequently donated the work to the Guggenheim did not receive an actual banana or a piece of duct tape. Instead, what they got was a document, a so-called certificate of authenticity that granted them the right to recreate the work and instructions of how to do so. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/arts/design/banana-art-guggenheim.html">It stipulated</a>, among other things, that the banana should be hung 175cm above ground and that it should be replaced every seven to ten days.</p> <h2>A banana is a banana is a banana</h2> <p>Although the art world has accepted the idea of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/r/readymade">ready-made</a> everyday objects as art, at least since the mid-20th century, Cattelan’s artwork invited a collective focus on the structure of evaluation of artworks. If anyone can tape anything to the wall — as many did — what is the point of a document granting the legal right to do the same?</p> <p>Let’s compare Comedian to another fruit-based artwork: Zoe Leonard’s <a href="https://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/92277.html">Strange Fruit</a> (1992-1997), a large installation of fruit peels, carefully stitched together by the artist. It was made during the Aids crisis and functioned as a ritualised act of mourning and memorialising.</p> <p>After closely working with a conservator who developed a method of halting material decay at a particular point, <a href="http://contemporary.burlington.org.uk/journal/journal/intent-in-the-making-the-life-of-zoe-leonards-strange-fruit">Leonard decided</a> that it was more in line with the work’s idea to have it turn slowly into dust. In contrast to Comedian, replacing the fruit peels was not an option since the specific acts of stitching as mourning was key to the work’s meaning. The material manifestation of Leonard’s organic objects is far from stable – time passes and they change – but it is crucial that it is these precise pieces of fruit that undergo that transformation.</p> <p>Conceptual artists in the 1960s argued that an artwork’s identity is not to be found in its physical manifestation but in the artist’s idea. That idea can, but does not have to, take material form. </p> <p>Following that logic, the material object is a manifestation of an idea, and it is the idea that is bought and sold on the art market. When the object is reproducible or immaterial, the certificate of authenticity ensures the artwork’s identity as an artwork. Comedian is not dependent on a specific banana, any banana could be used without altering the meaning of the work. That, however, is very different from saying that any banana and piece of duct tape is an artwork by Maurizio Cattelan.</p> <h2>Poking fun at the market</h2> <p>Even though the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/06/maurizio-cattelan-banana-duct-tape-comedian-art-basel-miami">US$120,000 (£92,000) price tag for Comedian</a> was by contemporary art standards fairly moderate, it is obviously a huge mark-up for the act of combining two very cheap and readily available materials. </p> <p>The work’s title hints that it is aware of the comedic absurdity of its own evaluation on the art market. Also, the banana’s upward curve on the wall recalls a stylised smiling face, and the banana peel, as we know, is involved in the most basic of slapstick skits. </p> <p>Comedian was in fact not the first time Cattelan poked fun at the market, art dealers and their place within this system. In 1995, he made his dealer Emmanuel Perrotin (in whose booth at Art Basel Comedian was shown) <a href="https://www.frieze.com/article/maurizio-cattelan">dress up as a giant pink penis-shaped bunny</a> for the duration of his exhibition at Perrotin’s Paris gallery. The piece was called “Errotin le vrai lapin (Errotin the true rabbit). By making Perrotin wear a ridiculous and humiliating phallic costume while carrying out his day-to-day work as a commercial gallery owner, the spectacle of the art market came into sharp view.</p> <p>Comedian is not the only of Cattelan’s works that has drawn attention to the Guggenheim in recent years. In 2016, the artist installed the work <a href="https://www.guggenheim.org/exhibition/maurizio-cattelan-america">America</a> in one of the lavatories of the museum. The 18-karat gold toilet is a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the excesses of America’s rich; a piece of satirical participatory art that welcomes people to actually use it. It has reverberations of <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573">Marcel Duchamp</a> and <a href="https://whitney.org/media/760">Sherrie Levine</a>’s lavatorial works. </p> <p>It <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/01/the-art-museum-that-offered-donald-trump-a-solid-gold-toilet">could have been President Trump</a>’s after he requested to borrow a Van Gogh from the Guggenheim but was offered America instead – he declined. It then was taken in by Blenheim Palace in Oxford in 2019 where art critic Jonathan Jones <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/sep/13/maurizio-cattelan-blenheim-palace-review-hitler-golden-toilet-blenheim-churchill">commented, "</a>How does it feel to urinate on gold? Much like peeing on porcelain. But here, among all the photos of young Winston, it also feels like pissing on British history."</p> <p>Soon after, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/20/arts/design/gold-toilet-america.html#:%7E:text=14%2C%20a%20fully%2Dfunctioning%20toilet,the%20birthplace%20of%20Winston%20Churchill.&amp;text=The%20police%20may%20not%20know,palace%2C%20have%20plenty%20of%20theories.">it was stolen</a>. Its whereabouts remain unknown.</p> <p>Cattelan’s works — like other pieces — must be considered in relation to other artworks and the structures in which it operates. The questions they raise are relevant but in part unanswerable: are we to take Comedian seriously, or is it an elaborate joke? And if it is a joke, who is in on it and who, or what, is mocked?</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-value-of-a-banana-understanding-absurd-and-ephemeral-artwork-147689" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Art

Over 60

© Copyright 2024 OverSixty.All Rights Reserved.