CHANNELING AKA RETREADS - Keith Hessian


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Title: Untitled Performance 1202031805
Credits: Context - Keith Hessian
Performance - class

Description:

Inspired by Yves Klein's "Body as Palette," a more appropriate title for the outcome of this performance would be, "Body as Negative Stencil," but I would prefer to abstain from apply a label to other than the date and time of occurrence. The class was led to a room where they were confronted by myself stripped, lest a pair of purple girl's panties, stationary with arms out stretched in front of a suspended 8 X 4 board covered with newspapers. Upon a table positioned between the audience and the suspended board sat red and blue cups containing blue and red paint respectively, red and blue flyswatter, red and blue feathers, and two trays containing red and blue paint. These items were separated on the table symmetrically by color. Two disposable cameras and a video camera sat on top of a second table located closer to the entrance of the room. At this point the class was free to do as they wished, though given the context and time restraints it was quite clear what was expected.

Outcome:

This event successfully engaged the audience as performers as well viewers. I suppose the questions I had envisioned raising regarding the blurring of the distinction between audience and performer, subject and object took a backseat to my role in the staging and execution of the performance, and I am pleased with this. I did not want to make explicit or apparent any significance I may have attached to any of the objects or conceptual themes of the event. I am more interested in the viewers?reading of an event given its context.

The Role of Process in the Unfolding of the Ideas & Conceptual Origins of the Finished Work:

I first approached this assignment with the intention of combining my proposal for the second project (human composter) with Bob Flanagan's fragmented body video installation. This; however, turned out to be impractical as I did not have the means to acquire the necessary hardware to realize the project as I envisioned it. I hope to return to this idea in the future. I next set my sights on Yves Klein's "Body as Palette." Initially I had merely intended to parody his piece by inverting the gendered roles; but due to time and safety considerations, I decided not to pursue the acquisition of a flame-thrower. This idea of inversion and my subsequent research into the work of Yves Klein spurred thoughts of incorporating the audience as the actors and creators of the object in the piece and formed the conceptual framework of the performance. I wanted to remove myself from the creative process as much as possible and question the rights to claim authorship of the performance and objects created, as the only presence I had during the performance was that of a body object. The idea of removing myself from the actual act of creation led me to believe I also should have little to do with documenting the event as well. This would serve duel purposes of removing my control over how the event was perceived and remembered as well as providing those who did not wish to engage in the performance "proper," to have an opportunity to perform an act essential for the recollection of the event. I decided to simply provide the tools for documentation and hope that someone would opt to use them.

The objects that were provided on the table and the color scheme arose from practical considerations. As the audience would not expect to engage in an activity involving the potential to soil their selves (sorry about your sweater,) I tried to provide objects that would keep the paint far enough away from their bodies to incline their participation. Ideally under the correct circumstances, I would have preferred to simply have a few sealed cans of paint in front of me with a screwdriver to open them (forcing the audience to make a more difficult decision,) but this would have proven far too messy for this situation. Having to provide objects to paint with, I chose to use objects symbolic of commonly perceived mutually exclusive dichotic boundaries. The flyswatters and feathers were practical for the application of paint, but also connoted the relationship between pain and pleasure, man and nature (if you really wanted to read deep into it.)