Redo of Allan Kaprow’s "18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Re-doing)" @ PERFORMA 07, Deitch Studios, NYC

I caught the 8pm performance of Allan Kaprow’s “18 Happenings in 6 Parts (Re-doing)” at Deitch Studios in Long Island City last night. This redo of Kaprow’s seminal work was directed by André Lepecki and presented as a part of the PERFORMA07 Biennial of New Visual Art Performance.

According to the PERFORMA website:

18 Happenings in 6 Parts was first performed in the Fall of 1959, at the Reuben Gallery in New York City. After a few performances, it was never shown again. Today, it is considered one of the major turning points in the history of performance and visual arts. In 2006, a few weeks before his death, Kaprow authorized a re-doing of the piece based on the dozens of original pages of music and movement scores, notes, drawings, writings, and drafts he had created in the summer and fall of 1959. The re-doing was presented on the occasion of a major exhibition of Kaprow's work at Haus der Kunst, Munich, in the Fall of 2006.

I was excited to go see an attempt to resurrect a bit of performance art history. I have always felt a bit befuddled by the photos of this event and wasn’t too concerned about possible misrepresentation of the original. The program makes pains to clarify that this is not an attempt to display a relic of the past but more to find fresh inspiration from the idea and notes. This redo’s follows the series of redo of seminal performance works as reconceived by Marina Abramovich at the last PERFORMA biennial in 2006.

I get the sense there is a desire in both the performance historians and the remaining living artists of that era to claim their historic stake in the art history books with these redo’s. There also seems to be some audience education going on here. And of course it brings up the issue of liveness and documentation and their relationship for continued discussion.

I am fond of the redo idea. The redo’s shouldn’t be confused with the original nor do I believe a work like I saw last night really stands very profoundly on its own without the knowledge of its historical precedent. I believe there is something special to the liveness of a performance and documentation doesn’t capture it, it just creates something else. Getting to spend sometime with this living history is how performance is perhaps best retained.

Anyway, the walk to Dietch Studios last night allowed us to enjoy a magnificent nighttime view of the Manhattan cityscape. Once we found the space we were handed a page of program notes and instructions which told us where to sit and when. The staff made great pains to make sure cell phones were off and to be clear about the requirement to remain in the performance space for the duration of the performance. I liked that clarity and after entering, hearing the door close behind us and feeling shut in and committed to the event.

I was assigned room one for the first two sections, room two for sections three and four and then put back in room one for the last two sections. There were three rooms total and I decided to go where they asked me. Some folks sat were they liked, I don’t think it changed much.

There were three rooms along a hallway that had been created by wooden frames covered with see-through plastic sheeting. There were old fashion light bulbs lining the top edges of the walls that provided some illumination. It was a mostly a bright space. There were a few additional decorative elements and props used during the show.

The performances were mostly simple movements, choppy text blurbs, sound cacophonies and actions. They played games, showed some slides of some sort, and stood stiffly.

The most sensory impact came from the smells…there was a section when a performer lit and extinguished a number of matches and then sprayed some kind of bathroom cleaning foam on the section of plastic which put a sulfur and cleaner smell in the air. Later fresh squeezed orange juice aromas mixed with the smell of paint as one performer juiced and drank juice and two others painted a canvas.

I surprised how much the style and presence of the performers stood out in the piece. In general the performance was hyper-rational, calculated and stiff, for instance the performers moved around the space with artificially straight walks and only turned sharp 90-degree turns, and so the human qualities of the piece stood out. I wondered how this piece would have changed if instead of stylish young New Yorkers, a cast of country folk from Kentucky or a suburban family from Seattle had played out the actions.

The bell that marked the sections was the loudest and most disturbing thing.

I wondered if anyone who came had seen the original Happenings. I looked for old people in the crowd.

The events unfolded and there was a full 15-minute break twice between sections that created a lot of time for chatting.

I also was aware of being in a room with some of the piece but not the entire piece. I could hear and see bits of what went on elsewhere but the architecture isolated me.

In a section when text was read to me I found myself listening not so much for myself but for the performer’s sake like you might listen to a friend who is trying to get something off there chest. I found that shift interesting, though I don’t know what triggered it.

I find myself listing these fragments of my experience and leaving a bit of detail out, as that was my experience, partial. I left with a sense of ok-ness at the end, feeling satisfied and good but in no way moved. Perhaps the piece was too rational for that. I had some nice social interactions during the breaks with my friends and people I met there, which was defiantly a part of the experience.

I have no idea how you could have captured this performance in a photo.

UK Reviews of PERFORMA 07

There are a number of reviews of PERFORMA07 on this UK Writing from Live Art site...http://www.writingfromliveart.co.uk

Erik

First impression of PERFORMA07 in NYC.

Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci performance at the Clocktower Gallery was my first PERFORMA07 event. I thought I would toss out some first impressions because in my mind I am as curious on the quality and viability of PERFORMA as a sustainable organization as much as the performances it presents.

Here is a description of the PERFORMA biennial in their own words:

Two years ago, PERFORMA established a new biennial for New York City. With its vast array of new performance by visual artists from around the world, it served to contextualize such cutting edge material and at the same time to build an exciting community of artists and audiences, and a strong basis for educational initiatives as well. The biennial underlined the important influence of artists performance in the history of twentieth century art, and its ongoing significance in the early years of the 21st.

What is at stake to my mind his whether contemporary performance can find and hold more of place with the an audience in the United States, whether it can invigorate and inform the performance artists in the U.S. and maybe bring more of an international performance dialogue stateside. There is certainly a much more supportive atmosphere for performance on both the governmental and audience level overseas. And it is certainly difficult for a performance festival to survive in the United State. This biennial, with the star-power, money and whatnot behind it is the best top down chance for an advance I imagine right now.

I think it is important not to just compare PERFORMA’s offering to what is just going on in New York. It is LA, Chicago, and so on were the trickle down influence of a successful PERORMA will have the most important influence. I saw the first PERFORMA in 2005 influence programming at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago which followed the redo’s of the first biennial with a symposium in Chicago on the concept of the redo.

Anyhoo…

There was this sales pitch that I heard repeated by staff and volunteers: that PERFORMA07 was giving us access into a number of building that we otherwise no be able to enter. I didn’t buy the pitch last night as the as the building seemed unremarkable and made me feel like PERFORMA must be struggling for acceptance based on its core product. The morning’s rooftop performance by Christian Jankowski is in his studio and seems more relevant to that train of thought but I wonder if it is really representative of the whole festival, last nights Marie Cool seemed more like marginalization and the product of a tight budget as it was in a space that PS1 now seems to use for internal programs.

I was unable to attend more than one thing yesterday because events are spaced a good deal apart in the city. This format is feels like a product of economics of putting on this festival more than a conceptual decision. Maybe there would need to be more contextual writing paired with the festival to convince me on this point.

The volunteers and staff were unprepared to house manage the Marie Cool performance but generally friendly and happy to have an audience there.

The PERFORMA07 program/calendar is awfully difficult, vague and confusing. I am finding different prices listed for shows from different sources, unclear show times/lengths, and rather bland descriptions. There website is also difficult to navigate and if you download a PFD of the schedule you find they have reduced it to a one page size which make all the information too small to read if you print it.

The Performance Studies international conference is paralleling PERFORMA this year which it great but I can’t afford it. There are some great free talks on the schedule though. I would hope for a bit more public conversation to digest the content of the festivals.

I am curious if their attempts to create late-night hotspots at different bars will work and actually become interesting locations for discussion. Usually these types get together things seem too be to artificial or subject to vagaries of location and trend to succeed. I suppose it depends if the artists, smart folks and so on actually get interested in participating. I suppose if Rose Lee shows up and holds court and raises some questions it might get interesting. As someone visiting the city and generally an outside on whatever scene exists around PERFORMA I don’t particularly feel I could just show up and get much out of it.

The NYTimes has a blog covering PERFORMA07. So far I have enjoyed Claudia La Rocco breezy commentary though it is brief. The NYTimes seems to be making an effort to do write-ups on the shows.

I hear mixed things about PERFORMA for others. Lots of people I tell about the shows have no idea the biennial is going on.

So to wrap up the biennial seems like it has decent content and a generally friendly atmosphere but their organizational stuff seems like a mess and I hope they are able to get it together and hang in there.