Performance Art

This project turned out so much better than my last one!

Doing anything in public causes me so much anxiety, so I wanted to do something public, but still be anonymous.  I thought and thought and thought…tossed around a few ideas with my mom, who vetoed most of them.  It finally hit me during class last tuesday what I should do.

I’ve been following the antics of Shia LeBeouf the past few months and his stuff cracks me up!  Some people in  L.A./Hollywood (including a few of my close friends) are all up in arms with what he’s been doing, thinking he’s making a fool of himself…Others, such as James Franco, are sticking up for him: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/opinion/james-franco-on-shia-labeoufs-recent-antics.html?_r=2

If you haven’t been paying attention, Shia showed up to an awards show in the fall looking like this:

Was it a publicity stunt?  Or was he really doing his own form of Performance Art?

I found a couple of things he posted online that details his thoughts on Performance Art and I liked what he had to say:

The week of Feb 9th, he had an art installment in L.A.  He rented a small office, frosted the window and door, and the sign out front said “#IAMSORRY”.  People enter the room only to see Shia sitting in a chair with the same bag over his head, not saying a word.

Yay!  That is totally something I could do!  It would be public, and I would still be anonymous!  No one would know who was under that bag, so it didn’t matter how red my face was.  I just needed to make a couple of changes to what my bag said…I tweeted my plans the night before, although not sure any of my 15 followers actually paid any attention.

I “hired” a good friend as my photographer to document the performance and we headed down to 16th street mall on Sunday.  We set up a chair for me in a high traffic area to maximize my exposure.  I reluctantly put the bag over my head and she snapped a photo before hiding in the background to get candids of the crowds.

Debbie did awesome catching people’s faces and got a ton of photos, but for the interest in space, I’m only including the really good ones…

This next guy cracked me up!  He came running out of a store with an ipad and asked if he could take my photo.  When I didn’t answer, he asked again, so I told him I wasn’t supposed to be talking and told him why.  He said he was an actor and understood.  He took about 12 pics of me and a few of us.  I made sure to smile for the camera… 🙂

These two girls were the only ones that I think actually got what I was doing because the second they saw me, they couldn’t stop laughing.  As they passed me, the Mom said “I wonder if she lost a bet?”.  I was loving that the bag was covering my face.

All in all, I feel like this was a successful project…I’m honestly hoping the next one isn’t quite so public…I’m a photographer, I’m not used to being in the spotlight, I like being behind it.

Technical Exercise 3#

The Assignment: “After receiving a set of instructions from Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, perform the action on campus. Write about your experience of performing the action and of any public response you observed during your performance on your blog. Also include any applicable documentation (cell phone images, drawings, etc.) in your post. Use this exercise as a warm-up before beginning PROJECT #2 [PERFORMANCE]—push yourself out of your comfort zone and question the parameters of how art is made. Can you make art with your body?”

We chose a few pieces to try out, the first being “Shadow Piece, Put your shadows together until they become one.”  We decided to stand in a crosswalk and used a camera to document the process of our shadows becoming one.

The second piece we tried was “Cut Piece.  Throw it off a high building”.  The only “high” building we had easy access to was the parking garage.  This involved climbing a small metal fence to get to a spot where we could see down, and we both tore up something to toss to the below.  Again, this was documented by camera.  (Photos to come)

The third piece was “Touch Poem V. Feel the wall. Examine its temperature and moisture.  Take notes about many different walls.”  We did this throughout our time with the other pieces.

Walls

Concrete, brick, glass and sheetrock.

Why are you so cold against my fingers?

Rough and smooth, smooth and rough.

Sun comes out, warmth again.

I honestly don’t think anyone paid any attention to us while we were out “performing”, except for the few that had to go around us while we were playing with our shadows.

Reading #3

My 2 questions:

Can it really be considered performance art if no one is there to see it?

This is more of a statement than a question, but it’s amazing that deaf people seem to do really well with music.  I love that they can feel the vibrations, making it a completely different experience than what hearing people experience.

 

Ugh!

Project 1 had me frustrated beyond belief.  I don’t do well with being center of attention, I have a fear of getting in trouble, and I was worried this project was going to do both.  I wanted to choose a project in which I could get it put up when no one was really around, but people would eventually come upon it and enjoy it.  I chose earth art for this reason.  My original plan was to go on a hike during the week and and do some rock paintings along the path.  Then it got cold.  And it snowed.  Well crap.

Ok, next idea…still on the earth art idea, so I googled “snow art” and found this:

Yay!  That is something I could do!  I’m not the best at sculpting, but I knew I could easily sculpt a pig, one of my favorite animals.  My new plan was to go to Observatory Park in Denver and make this pig, not on a pole, but on the ground.  I had this great plan to build this pig, and clear out the snow around it in a design, and paint the pig using spray bottles filled with colored water.

I got to the park and it was so cold that the snow wouldn’t stick together.  Well double crap.

Not wanting to completely give up and take an F on this assignment, I took my spray bottles over to the picnic tables and started “painting”.  I had this beautiful design in my head, and it would have turned out great had my purple actually been purple and not brown…and my green bottle actually stayed in one piece and not break in the middle of spraying table #2…at least my blue worked, right?

Or so I thought.  I ran back to my car to snap some photos of my “work” and snapped some photos of the tables and the bench and the few footprints in the snow that I painted.

Once my fingers defrosted, I loaded the photos onto my laptop and to my dismay, I could barely make out what I had done.  Sad day Liz, sad day.

When I had finished decorating the tables, I loved the way the shadows played with the colors.  There was a dying balloon on the second table that I had painted a design around.  I’m very disappointed that my photos did not reflect this.

I know that a huge part of artwork is the process, and I definitely learned a lot during this process.  Practice spraying water bottles with gloves on.  Test the colors on something white before heading out.  Spray more color before moving on.  Spray things that are in the sun, not in the shadows.

And this is when the bottle broke.