And it continues...

Continuing the stages of my sculpture pieces for the installation next week, I decided to look for inspiration in other forms for our sculpture piece for the rest of the term, and that’s when I started getting lost in looking up performance artists.

This is not to say that I’m committing to creating performing a piece that involves sculptural aspects, or that I’ll even present anything in a public performance (I think as interesting as that might be, it’s not necessarily “my thing”, nor a direction my ideas are currently headed).  I was, however, struck by the visual weight and the emotional response invoked by some performance photos that I discovered.

What I began thinking about (since we’ve been talking about “translation” for a while), was the discretion between time and visual reception of a performance. I started to think about what is lost when you merely look at images from a performance, as a opposed to the watching first hand how it is performed in person. There are the obvious experiential differences, but there are also those inherent human capabilities to “fill in the blanks” for what we do not see or witness.

This brings me to Lydia Schouten. Born 1948 in Leiden, Netherlands, this feminist, Dutch multimedia artist uses photography, video, and performance in her pieces.

Sexobject performance, 1979
Metal frame with rubber bands and leather corset
Whipping to balloons, filled with black inkTimespan: 30 min.
Galerie Felison, Velsen, Holland,
Project Arts Centre, Dublin, Ireland

These images just started me thinking about issues/topics I find personally interesting (…like problematizing hegemonic/normative notions gender/sex/sexuality, race, semiotics, religion, etc.).

That’s when I read this article about San Franciscan "boi culture" from New York Magazine, and started thinking about how I can give myself a more specific jumping point for my sculpture.

So the gears are turning. I’m going to give it more thought, but I’m still in the stages of collecting ideas, and thinking about ways of visually presenting something new for my new class project.

(…also, I think that whatever I chose to pursue,  it’ll probably involve spray paint. Lots of it.)

Cited:

- "L Y D I A  S C H O U T E N | Installations." Lydia Schouten · H O M E. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://www.lydiaschouten.com/1_INSTALLATIONS.html>.

- Levy, Ariel. ""Where the Bois Are"" New York Magazine -- NYC Guide to Restaurants, Fashion, Nightlife, Shopping, Politics, Movies. New York Magazine. Web. 27 Mar. 2011. <http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/n_9709/>.