VIC THE MAN CHAN - YOU CALL THIS FUCKING HUMANITY!!!

Victor's opinionated performance (YOU CALL THIS FUCKING HUMANITY!) resonated with anxiety. It was a series of theatrical actions that depicted premeditated sliced up memories. The audience were quite far from his performance as his aggression towards his piece created a territorial ambiance. I agree with the piece's effectiveness within the context of the viewer. I personally felt displaced trying to create a logic with this piece. Nonetheless it was an eruptive performance that provoked me to get closer.

GROUP 2 PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

Francis Cruz directed the people to stay close to the walls before the performance occurred. It took a while before people got a hold of their patience and waited for the performance to happen. He slowly entered in the space; he crawled while he embodied a hybrid animal that was very ambiguous in terms of its movement and nature. The hybrid animal carried a bag. He brought out a banana peel as offering to spectators, one by one he threw them in different directions. I find the use of banana peel(s) as an element of theater. The prop embodied a sense of humor and a comical aura. I saw the expression of people awaiting for interaction and their faces animated like children. I think that the element of surprise, playfulness and theatricality made this performance piece solid as a whole.

Francisco-Fernando Granados transitioned anapologetically beside me, peeled petals of a white rose while he recited an incantation. "Osama" one of the few words he recited while he peeled the petals one by one. It felt like a ritual, a prayer, an action or a meditation towards this romantic gesture. The petals that fel down seemed like loss, passing of time and the diasporic swarm of petals lying; waiting to die. I find the beauty in this piece lies in it's simplicity and its ephemeral qualities such as the materiality of the flower. The duration also depended with the material which I think played a strong role.

Heather Ohlin called everyone's attention to help her while being in a rude character. I felt that the aggression suddenly calmed down after somebody offered their assistance. Both Heather and the other assistants who volunteered slowly carried the giant mirror towards a random direction to place it down. They all crouched in front of the mirror cuddling and smiling in front of the mirror as if pretending a casual bonding. I felt that the sarcasm towards the group dynamic was very powerful. Her being directive, demanding people to help her and realizing that it all comes to one position as if a portrait was going to be shot. In the end she gathered everyone to carry the mirror in order to reflect a social collaboration.

Lindsay Page established a circle of people to write randomly over her body. She commanded that people could freely write whatever they felt like writing. It started off with her arms, legs, chest, back and all over her body. I felt that I was violating a private space, almost like graffiti but an invitation to participate. Her naked body seemed vulnerable and fragile; after the writing was revelaed. She asked people if they could lend her an article of clothing from each person to cover her up. I felt very hesitant to lend something. I think this hesitation was a very strong element in her piece that subverted my emotions very well. The sucess in this performance lies in its gradual approach to its process and procedure while holding everyones attention to engage.

Jennifer Somerstein presented a video piece that narrated a scenario of people with messed up voices. The artist herself played the actress in the video who possesed a manly voice while the male actor had a very femenine voice. In the end the problem was solved with the exchange of breath using a paperbag. The narration was very straight forward but the logic of the scenario was very interesting and playful.

Ruben Castelblanco executed a video piece that totally engaged my body to move. The rythm within the video piece was very distorted yet composed. The vignettes of scenes showing a man staring blankly, playing the drums and going back and forth in the same position raised questions of sequencing. My suspension of disbelief was held for a while before realizing that it was a looped video. Although that realization was probably what stopped me moving physically and started to engage me crebraly instead was compeling.

Mariana Villasenor impovised a communal naked piece that was very shocking; In terms of my perspective coming in late after the performance has begun. I was caught off guard entering the space full of people (classmates) naked. I felt that the piece would totaly be different If I were there to expreience the beginning. I am still in a state of shock seeing it. Jennifer Norquist says "we shocked the Cruz Brothers."

Jennifer Norquist played with organic materials, She placed them in a triangular manner. She slowly transported pieces and placed them in the center of the space to form a mound that looked like a nest. She gathered traces of the other performances that were left on the ground and incorporated them as if it was referring to the chain of performances that happened. I think that the materials were organizely displaced in terms of its existence in space. I think this decision was very strong as the materials worked with its space and environment being inside an institution.

Individual performance proposal

The Discrepancy of Reality

In this performance I plan to use styrofoam balls as my sole medium. These styrofoam balls will be stuffed within my clothing to create a textural landscape through my lower body. While the styrofoam balls strongly declare its materiality that the performance is occuring, I intend to improvise short random activities that will accompany my piece as it progresses to the end. My goal is to examine the truth and boundary between the fictionality of the performance, either the reality or theatricality that is being used to conjure such thing. It is like the idea when a person puts its red nose to declare that he or she is a clown.

My budget will be around $50 which includes the props and documentation

Lighting is not necessary in my piece as it will try to critique theatricality and reality.

Any given space can be accomodated with my performance as it only needs minimum requirements in order for the performance to exist.

C.V

fractured
October 16, 2007 Concourse Gallery

Red Show
December 14, 2007 Concourse Gallery

enGendered
Feb 5, 2008 Concourse Gallery

pressure to perform
March 21, 2008 ViVo


Mixed messages
April 7, 2008 Concourse Gallery

Nomadic Convergence
Nov 25, 2008

My mother worked in a factory
jan 26 2009, Brow Gallery

Net(work): a performance art fair
March 20, 2009 ViVo

I am interested in deconstructing the notion of performance art as being real, in a sense that it declares its reality or truth based from real life. I agree with it's physicality or the performer as real and the performance as something fictitious or constructed. Therefore my performance will try to examine a very crucial element in performance art which is "reality" and in what sense is this reality projected; real or not. I think that performance art declares this act of performing which proposes a space or a time line in which performance art could exist. In what ways could this be engaged or problematized? perhaps performing an exorcism of reality through theatricality or vice versa. In this performance festival, problems with signification, temporal autonomy and technological mediation are the chosen topics. I see my performance operating under the problem of signification and my props as a symbol of diaspora which is the general theme of the show.

DID YOU KNOW

CRUZ BROTHERS / RED RIBBON

(TRANSITIONAL ACT : #1)

In this ACT #1 the Cruz Brothers swallowed three meters of red ribbon. Sharing half the amount of length within their mouth as a storage space, they gently pulled the ribbon out of their mouth exposing the soaked ribbon. It was clear that anticipating the audience to perform the closure of the performance was by cutting the ribbon. It took three people to completely cut and finish the performance. The Cruz Brothers claim this symbolic act as a signifier for a starting transition, a celebration of an event and a shared spectacle.

INSTALLATION / TRACES /

It is almost absurd to claim that all the installation / performance pieces did not relate at all. I feel that finding a similarity within the pieces might be too forced. Although most pieces incorporated human interaction (which contradicts my claim that everything did not relate). This activation of spectatorship either required a physical connection or a cerebral engagement.


If I were to describe the totality of the pieces in one word, I'd say it's all about being HUMAN.

Archival Relational performance #3

Untitled (Free) : Rirkrit Tiravanija

"for Rirkrit Tiravanija, art is what you eat. The New York–and–Chiang Mai–based Thai artist became famous in 1992 when he made Untitled 1992 (Free), a sculpture–performance–guerrilla action wherein he emptied out the office of the 303 Gallery in Soho and installed a makeshift kitchen, complete with fridge, hot plates, rice steamers, tables, and stools. He then cooked Thai curry; anyone could drop in, serve him- or herself, and eat. For free." http://nymag.com/arts/art/reviews/31511/

Rirkrit erodes the relationship between art and spectator as most of his works are based from human participation and heavily deals with social interaction. Rirkrit redefines what a gallery could be other than being a social space to interact. I think his works are genuinely genius, very simple and effective. I like it's banality and its concept of meshing art and life as one communal activity.

Archival Community Based performance #2

Nanay : a testimonial play

Nanay in Tagalog (Filipino language) means mother, which also sounds like "Nanny". The play is part of the Push festival here in Vancouver which played this February. Nanay is a testimonial based play about caregivers from the Philippines who work as nannies here in Canada and all over the world. Testimonial based means that the script used in the play was based from an archived 15 year reasearch of real testimonies from abused domestic caregivers. The play was structured like a tour where we were guided by a moderator through different rooms, represented as perspectives. The working caregiver's perspective, migrating displaced cargiver, separated children and the employers perspective. The order of experiencing the play varies from what time you bought your ticket. I liked how the performer was three steps away from the spectator as it felt very intimate and heart wrenching. Watching the performer clean dishes and mummble about her life was so banal yet engaging because of our distance. Although the play was ontop of their issue some sides were not presented equally like the benefits and positive outcomes of working and leaving their country.

Archival Durational Performance #1

White Light/ White heat by Chris Burden

In his exhibition Chris Burden requested a triangular platform to be constructed in the southeast corner of the gallery. For the duration of the show Chris Burden stayed up there without eating, talking or coming down for 22 days. Spectators are faced with belief with the artist being present and performing. The endurance and presence of Burden is also questioned. I think this piece stimulates our trust towards the artists commitment or perhaps our trust with art itself. I personally am not sure if he did stay up there as nobody saw him up there and nobody saw him go down.

http://www.feldmangallery.com/pages/exhsolo/exhbur75.html

Group # 4

Group #4

8-bit music was being played live like a marching song meets robots in cheerleader uniforms. A bearded man entered the screen, he walked in a mischievous manner. He started ripping paper and suddenly I saw a small silhouette of a small girl trapped in a bright like cage. He pounded the cage with his fist hammering the top of the cage as if freeing her. The small girl ended up being eaten by the mischievous man.

Group # 2

Group # 2

The shadow play started with a woman plucking leaves or petals from a plant or flower behind a decorative back drop. She began to recite, "He loves me, he loves me not". Suddenly a veiled man handed over a teacup to the woman and filled it. A transition occurred with overlapping images of bright planets as if the tea was contaminated with magic mushrooms. The hallucinogenic patterns of lines and textures were deliberately shown while a dragonfly started to hover from the side. The woman grew wings and started to fly.

Group # 1

Group 1
It started out as a narrative that projected a face that spat out a spring creature that started to wander around. The dreamy landscape was projected with lines, bubbles and color films. The music that played complimented the performance very well as it accompanied the narrative hand in hand till the end. The overall performance was very haptic and tactile, I felt the objects and props were very tangible.

Three Performance Artists

Zhang Huan - http://www.zhanghuan.com/
Chris Burden - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2007/05/14/070514craw_artworld_schjeldahl
Matthew Barney - http://www.cremaster.net/