As the KinesTHESES curator, I am interested in the tactile-kinesthetic propositions Body Maintenance offers for an audience of thinking bodies, and how these propositions activate and influence participants’ self-conception. This entry of the Toolkit offers some background information on why I invited Sakiko to be a part of KinesTHESES, and how, having experienced Body Maintenance, …
By Jenn Snider and Alison Cooley To cap off the 2014 Festival Blog, Alison Cooley proposed that she and I (Jenn Snider) have a conversation about lo bil’s performance The Clearing, which took place all day Saturday November 1st, from 9am until 8pm. By collaborating on the public archiving of a performance premised on the …
Narrative engagement and the process of mattering Read More »
By Jenn Snider On the last day of the festival, November 2nd, 2014, Roberto de la Torre opened the final set of performances. It is safe to assume that most who gathered that chilly late Fall afternoon didn’t know what to expect from de la Torre. Having had the opportunity to speak with him a …
By Jenn Snider Back in 2012, Maria Hupfield performed Fixed Time as part of the 9th annual 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art. In that piece, Hupfield used her body as means to confront the ways memories interfere and/or aid in performance art documentation. She utilized strategies of oral storytelling alongside common everyday objects and …
By Jenn Snider At first blush, Linda Rae Dornan’s performance Calling the Cukoo exists at a crossroads of language, the body, and aurality. Standing in the center of the performing area she breathes a wheezing flow of partial words. With bright eyes, she emphasizes the nearly-there as an expression of potential in her communication. Dornan …
By Alison Cooley claude wittmann has only one egalitarian action on the list which he promised to develop over the course of Radio Equals. Fittingly, the action on his list is exactly what he has been doing all week: Have a conversation about equality while trying to be egalitarian. wittmann introduces us to the Swiss …
By Alison Cooley The floor is littered with objects in Theo Pelmus’s performance. Part installation, part stage set, the scene includes two projections on opposing walls of a small kitsch Pieta sculpture (bits of gold leaf and a stuck-on butterfly clinging to it in the wind), small bottles of baby powder, wine, and honey, a …
By Alison Cooley Terrance Houle beckons his audience closer, drawing a square around himself. I’ll admit to having let my curiosity get the better of me ahead of time—I know he’s enlisted some others to assist in his performance, and he tells me I’ll want to make sure I’m at the front. I’d interviewed Houle …
By Alison Cooley Basil AlZeri, clad in a white dress shirt, hands neatly folded across a pristine white-clothed table, announces that his performance will be called “The Death of Performance Art.” It seems absurd to me that no one has ever given this title to their work before—a cursory Google search yields only a lot …
By Jenn Snider Aidana Maria Rico Chavez enters the room whistling a happy tune. Hands clasped behind her back, she casts her eyes across the crowd. All facing toward the center scene where a blue gingham picnic blanket, a few mason jars, a skipping rope, and some cardboard lie waiting, the audience sits, smiling back …