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 …
By Jenn Snider “Okay, so I’ll go and check the mirror, but can you tell me if my eyes are uneven?”Anya Liftig has just asked me a confusing question, but as soon as I look at her I understand. She’s asking me if her eyeliner looks okay. I bend in and examine her handiwork.“The one …
By Alison Cooley A few ideas stick out from the third Performance Art Daily panel, themed “Approaching Architecture.” I am likely to carry these with me through the rest of the festival. The first is Gary Varro’s initial interrogation of the whole theme of the panel: where does the notion of architecture manifest in our …
Architectural Poetics and Performing Structures (Performance Art Daily) Read More »