By Alison Cooley Serena Lee begins Layers Channels Paths History by dividing the audience into sections of green, brown and “nothing.” The unexplained designation recalls Jane Elliot’s “Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise,” sets a political tone. Establishing boundaries between audience members, Lee has already begun to map out our relations to each other. Someone shoots …
By Jenn Snider There is a strong tradition of using the preparation and service of food in art as a method of connecting and enacting the power of social ritual and politics (think, for example of the well-known series by Rirkrit Tiravanija, which began in 1990 with pad thai, or the more recent A Party …
An edible experiment: Fausto Méndez Luna’s generosity and symbolic etiquette Read More »
By Alison Cooley I can hear a whip. I’m unsure if it’s against the floor, or against a body, but I hear guttural reactions to it from outside the studio. When I first enter Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s durational performance, it is her gaze, not the whip (which is actually a jump rope) that strikes …
Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro: History’s Yearning Read More »
By Jenn Snider Éminence Grise Pulling back the grey curtain I step into the viewing area and find I am just a few feet away from her. Tucked into a small closet separated from the festival crowds, Berenicci Hershorn’s performing space is articulated by gauzy walls of plastic sheeting and the effect defocuses her from …
By Jenn Snider I’m looking for Christian Bujold. It’s after 3 pm, and he’s scheduled to be performing but I can’t find him anywhere. Popping my head into rooms and looking down hallways, I turn a corner and nearly take a stick in the eye. He’s here, with his back to me, picking up a …
When performing private architectures, he prefers to linger, but not too long Read More »
By Jenn Snider When I enter the performance space, Didier Morelli is climbing the wall, rubbing the blackboard with his face. Morelli: “John. John. You didn’t leave me a dry eraser. I’m having to use my face.” He is removing the remnants of John Court’s festival performance from the board. His cheeks and lips are …
By Alison Cooley As we enter the final day of the festival (and Jenn and I scramble to document the works we’ve seen in the past day), I wanted to share my BINGO process. We have one square left! It’s hard to quantify a lot of these things, so I’ve tried to go with the …
By Alison Cooley I have lost my notes detailing the gathering of small gestures which make up Vanishing Borders, a performance by Switzerland-based Iraqi artists Ali Al-Fatlawi and Wathiq Al-Ameri. I cannot sketch out the procedural building of a relation between these two, whose actions in concert and poetic counteraction with each other betray a …
By Alison Cooley claude wittmann’s performance, Radio Equals, has been recurring daily at 3 pm, and was broadcast on 93.1 fm. The preceding is a short dispatch in response to today’s final session. wittmann’s final action, Landsgemeinde happens today (November 2, 2014) at 4pm.
By Alison Cooley Francesca Fini’s performance space is a theatrical set. Her props and environment impeccably arranged, dramatically lit. Red, white and pinkare the scene’s characteristic colours. There is a bandaged white face on a table, a red suspended platform dripping a red popsicle over a fishbowl, an apron riddled with Eva Hesse-like protrusions. Fini …