Performance

I am currently working on a big art project that will probably take me the next nine or ten months to see to completion. And that’s only for its ‘inaugural’ iteration. I have the feeling that it may turn into a longterm body of work that may keep me engaged in some form or other for years to come. But maybe I am getting ahead of myself, let’s see. In any case, while it’s too early to show, I am very excited about. I feel that everything is starting to fall into place.

That work sits at the intersection of systems, activism & performance art. While I have thought quite a lot about systems and activism in the past year, and have also written a couple of blog posts on those topics, my interest in performance is more recent.

So, after attending a talk about performance art earlier today, I thought I’d put some spontaneous word associations on paper to help order my thoughts or maybe provoke new ideas – Anything that came to mind or seemed somehow relevant, or anti-relevant.

In no particular order (or is there?), here we go…

| Body | Space | Time | Tool | Exploration | Question | Challenge | Explore | Interest | Context | New | Extraordinary | Serious | Play | Children | Action | Risk | Further | Trying | Different | Taking | Giving | Something | Anything | Stillness | Exploit | Pace | Duration | Scale | How | Or | Or | Or | Discover | Happen | What | You | What | Can | Creative | Potential | Exploring | Beyond | Know | Be | Aware | Body | Matter | Reconnecting | Basic | Awareness | Head | Learn | Work | Feeling | Conscious | Playful| Tempting | Creative | Strategy | Failure | Embrace | Without | Even | Especially | Conceptual | Movement | Performance | Repetition | Art | Permutation | Parody | Enactment | Mimicry | Sometimes | Often | Re- | Simplest | Action | Successful | Importance | Ritual | Photography | Documented | Contradictory | Discourses | Directions | Pulling | Icon | Document | Simulacrum | Fake | Honest | Live | Act | The | Interest | Example | Love | Life | Portrait | Self | But | Play | How | Past | Present | Series | And | Work | Subject | Unaware | Here | System | Falling | Touch | Subverting | Medium | Plank | Gravity | Matter | Using | | Sculpture | Body | Instructions | Audience | For | Whom | Including | One | Also | Present | Interface | Coloured | Identity | About | Hourly | Real | Sketch’| Man | Marks | Imprints | Of | Make | Absent | Is | But | Traces | Using | Organic | Matter | Energy | Risk | Becoming | Image | Representation | Challenging | Connotations | Constructed | Actual | Dada | Response | Absurdity | First | Relevance | World | Now | Investigate | Current | Flow| Non-Art | Spectacle | Reclaim | Independence | Dominant | Celebrating | Interpretation | Hierarchy | Room | Way | Learning | Score | Public | Space | Quietly | Random | Stranger | Select | Go | Date | Time | Location | Position | Note | Number | Power | Alienation | Aware | Being | Deconstruction | Moment | In | Against | Aid| Tried | Failed | Again | Better | Slow | Human | Again | Again | Teaching | Body | Just | Move | Be | Think | Now | x

Maybe I should read it out aloud, to myself – speaking of performance…