Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Responding to Reading #1 and The Artist is Present

Reading #1-
The reading was interesting in the way that it turned to the subject of Clown College and the variety of Circus's that were apart of the framing of performance art.  It was something I had never taken into consideration about performance art.  Something that also bothered me about the reading is their lack of description of the pieces, and they did not mention Marina Abramovic at all.  They breifly touched on the feminist performance pieces, although the author did mention it should be disscussed in further chapters.  I just felt that those topics needed to be addressed more fully than a sentence or two to gauage an accurate timeline. 

The Artist is Present-
I absolutely loved this film, I nearly cried at least twice.  I had seen and read about Marina Abramovic before this film but the film really helped fill in some details I had not known.  It also made me want to learn more about how performance art is presented in galleries and various locations that one would present their performance piece.  In the present our culture is filled with so much instant gratification that the idea of just sitting for hours on end may seem to the public as bolonga and not art at all, but that is because they have not tried it for themselves.  I really respect Marina's The Artist is Present piece because the public essentially gets to experience her pressence and she theirs.  Which for me is always nerve racking at receptions where the artist is really present, they are usually surrounded by people who are talking about who knows what and coming into that conversation is not easy. 

Some P-Art

For the move slowly as possible exercise I washed dishes as slowly as possible.
This is the spend an hour writing you name exercise.

For the walk in a circle as fast as you can for an hour I walked around a pond in a big circle several times.

 I chose to walk the majority of the time on the side walls of the pond. 
This is a shot of myself doing the stare at yourself in a mirror for an hour motionless exercise.
Out of all the exercises I would have to say the walking in a circle was my favorite.  It made me think about my stamina in other circumstances.  It also made me think about what is defined as a circle because the pond is not a perfect circle.  Also because I chose to walk the majority of the way on the pond walls I was thinking about my balance abilities.