Symposium: Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance @ SAIC

I attended the Peggy Phelan talk on Thursday and then the performances that were presented on Friday night at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago as a part of their symposium, Re-Do It? Re-Presenting Bodies in Performance.

I enjoyed the event in general and it was nice to see this crowd of performance artists gathered in Chicago.

Peggy Phelan's talk was an often wonderfully lucid report on Marina Abramovich's "Seven Easy Pieces" that were presented in November as part of the Performa05 festival in NYC.

Friday's performances were a mixed bag as you might expect but there were a few stunning stand outs including Gretchen Holmes' performance of Carolee Schnneeman's 1965 "Interior Scroll" and Ian Ray's (aka. S.I.R.) performance "MOMentum" which called back to Faith Wilding's "Waiting" piece as well as several other nice works including pieces by Jo Amado & Isil Egrikavuk, Aurora Tabar, S.G. Murthy, and Irina Botea.

I have been falling behind on reviews lately so I asked a few people to write responses of their experiences. I might add a few more comments later as well.

Erik