Kira O'Reilly
Succour, 2002
In this performance, O'Reilly begins wrapping a tight lattice-work of sticky tape around her legs. Proceeding around her leg she cuts a diagonal line into each square of flesh that is exposed creating a pattern on the body. She then continues applying tape and cutting the pattern onto her abdomen and breasts. At the conclusion she removes the tape leaving the network of very evenly applied cuts. One of the things this work makes me think of is the torture method of 'a death by a thousand cuts.' Though the cuts are shallow, and she does not seem to be in serious pain, it would be such a raw feeling to be cut all over like that. It's such a controlled and precise action though, the cuts are applied to her body almost as someone would draw flowers on wrapping paper.
"This action begins where words fail me...Using processes of measuring and cutting, the skin is (re)marked like a text or a drawing, etching a history that can be followed on the surface of the skin, like a palimpset. Tenderised, it brings sharply into focus a visual and visceral vocabulary that invokes notions of trauma (a wound) and stigma (a mark) towards a 'spoiling' and opening of the body to explore an alterity or otherness."
- Kira O'Reilly, Notes from the National Review of Live Art, RealTime no.52
Watching this did make me think of writing and inscribing, about different types of mark making, and the way that scars and wounds create patterns on our bodies. It reminded me of 'Crash' by JG Ballard which I read recently, in which there is a real obsession with the body being marked and injured via mechanical means. Where the body is imprinted with even, exact wounds by the metal objects around it.
Inthewrongplaceness, 2005
"There is a room in a house that is Home. One at a time people come into the space for the merest of time, five minutes. They have been told they can touch the human animal and the non-human animal. First they are instructed to put on a pair of latex gloves and then to spray ethanol onto the gloves. They are also reminded that they can just look and stay a while."
I move slowly with the piggy body
Kill no. 000053, 48.5kg
Bits of me go inside her ;
My head disapears into the rib cavity
Where the soft organs have been recently excavated.
She is body without organs
I dance with her.
I am stoked, prodded, probed to within fractions of decency by one
I don't look at anyone.
I keep moving with her.
Our bodies pretend to turn into one another, a funny piggy girl,
A dead sow lady, she still has her eyelashes.
Mine Close.
-Kira O'Reilly, notes on the performance.
This performance fascinates me on many levels. The merging and blending of the human and animal bodies into one form, as though they are making love or dancing or just holding one another. The contrast of dead and living forms and flesh, the way that the room is set up with rich decor and flowers to look like an exclusive hotel or a still life, the way that the audience are invited to touch the 'human and non human animals,' its a visceral and suggestive performance. It makes me think of the use of animal flesh in my tripe/cocoon series and wonder about the future incarnations of that performance.
Stairfalling, 2009
I only saw a few photographic stills of this work but it interested me in that it it showed a violent and sinister action, slowed down, exaggerated and made almost ridiculous. In it O'Reilly enacts a fall down a steep flight of stairs at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. The pace of the fall is choreographed so that the entire descent takes 3 hours. It doesn't come across to its full extent in the photographs, but I imagine live this would have been excruciating and fascinating, a drawn out enactment of a frantic, sometimes accidental, sometimes homicidal act.
SenVoodoo
Arterial, 2005
I have read about this performance before in an article by Anne Marsh, so it was fascinating to see the video. In it two women shrouded in white walk in slow measured paces towards one another along a white platform. They both have their arms outstretched and drip even, regular drops of blood onto the floor creating a long river behind each of them as they draw closer together. It is a very stark and beautiful, with the droplets of blood tracing the path they are walking. The women seem drawn to one another, yet when they meet in the middle they turn away. There is a feeling of intimacy between these two figures, but there is fear too.
The notes in the DVD case said this:
"Arterial is a performance about loss and mourning. It has universal relevance and is recontextualised with each new siting. With its use of the primal medium of blood, Arterial also confronts issues of fear, infection, disease and death." SenVoodoo are a performance duo made up of Ana Wojak and Fiona McGregor who have performed throughout Sydney as well as internationally.
"Blood in our time is a dangerous medium. Amidst war, real death, detention and persecution blood is spilt. How can artists enter into this realm and make a point? Make a difference?"
-Anne Marsh, 'Extreme Acts: Live, Remade and Remediated,' Eyeline no 69
I think it is worth questioning how trauma works in performance art. When violence is so much a part of broadcast media and everyday experience, what does it mean to choreograph performances that confront violence, pain or trauma? Can these works be relevant socially and politically?
Karen Finley
Shut up and Love Me, 2004
"Shut up and Love Me deconstructs desire into a series of unlovely impulses, climaxing with Finley rolling naked in her golden pond. Of honey. This is a female libido run amok- raunchy, messy, inappropriate, even grotesque. This is sexual power both flaunted and mocked. At the core of this work is Finley's observation that women are defined by their sexuality, then demonized for it."
This work went for around 45 minutes and involved dance, a disco striptease, storytelling and cavorting in a pool of honey. In this performance Karen Finley tells stories of sexual encounters and pursuits, lapses into animalistic outbursts and performs exaggeratedly sexual dances. It is upfront, comical and complicated all at once. While watching it I felt at various times aroused, unsettled, sick and amused. So all in all, brilliant.
I really wish I could make work of this quality, that involved a narrative, could make people laugh, and yet still be very affecting.
Sonia Richli
Untitled, 2003
This performance was staged in a public place and involved the artist, painted green and positioned behind strands of barbed wire. Many of Sonia Richli's performances seem to involve suspension or restraint applied to the body, followed by periods of stillness and endurance.
Paradise Lost, 2004
The days I spent reading articles and watching DVD's at the Live Art Development Agency were really inspiring. There was such a good range of different work and opinions and I think it will inspire me to keep momentum up with my performances.
The White Building
Unit 7, Queens Yard
White Post Lane, Hackney Wick
London E9 5EN
www.thisisliveart.co.uk
