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Nenad Bogdanovic: (In)Place of Fear Coming from the fact that there is a phenomenon of fear present since the very beginning of human race, and that it is actual ever since, it was very interesting to observe what artist think about this global phenomena. Participants of “(In) Place of Fear” project represented their own or other people’s fears, and their respectable way of dealing with sources or consequences that make our lives, families and social situation more difficult. They, the fears, no matter if justified or just a phobia and distorted image of reality, are very good material for realization of extraordinary tales, messages and worthy warning to all of us, transformed into artistically shaped video works. Concept of activities standing in the very title of the project invites the artists, even within this gloomy thematic determinant, to optimistic quest to offer us qualitative artistic projection instead of fear. Tekst srpski
Juniper Perlis : Performance art remains a vital source of communication, expression, inspiration and discovery for all those who take part in it. It is a unique form of art making that continues to expand all over the world, disrupting and giving new potential to its practitioners and its audience. The 8 th International Multimedia Art Festival, Serbia, 2006, organized by Nenad Bogdanovic, traveled from Odzaci to Novi Sad to Belgrade, causing a wave of creativity to flow over all of us, and reverberating still. In conjunction with the performance festival, Nenad curated a video festival, “(In )Place of fear.” Using image and sound, close to thirty video artists from more than twenty different countries screened works that address the rising global phenomena of fear. The many works produced a spectrum of formal and conceptual techniques, revealing varied, distinct studies of this ever present, human sensation. Joseph Ravens’ “Ravenous” brings us into a world of his making where the metaphor of the Raven enfolds us in jewels and desire. Using his body, words, projected image and few materials, Joseph performs a story that transforms an external narrative and display into a sensory experience. This transformation is not complete, but leaves us in an in between place where metaphor and real time bodily experience mesh and become indistinguishable. The constellation raven against a background of stars switches from black to white as Joseph wriggles into a black shirt to replace the white one he had just put on. This follows Joseph’s telling of the myth of how the Raven’s feathers were made black. The Raven has been punished for giving into his hunger, his desire. When Joseph puts on the Raven mask and speaks in the Raven’s voice about his insatiable hunger and how he is ravenous, I feel it too. My hunger swells with Joseph’s voices and heaving body. The visceral quality of Joseph’s movements and the immediacy of his actions develop an environment that is all encompassing. As this piece was performed at the three different sites of the IMAF festival, Odzaci, Novi Sad, and Belgrade, many of us got to be present for the very different performances. This diversity within repetition acknowledges the fluidity of Joseph’s performance. The story, the projection, Joseph’s presence and words, invoke an eternity and endlessness reminding me that there is no beginning to sensation, just the it, the sensation. As he sits, shirtless, Radoslav B. Chugaly etches the letters EMETH into tiles. He then smashes the first E and lays his head down on the broken tile allowing, in Odzaci the sweat, and in Novi Sad the rain, to drip down him. In Hebrew, emeth means divine truth or life and meth means death in Hebrew. Radoslav shows us that death is very much a part of truth/life, but that life is not a part of death. Death has the memory of divine truth, still attached to life, which it completes, but there is not a symmetrical balance of dependence. In the symbolic world of his performance, Radoslav can destroy life and truth, but not death. In his three different performance works, all titled “Here” Joan Casellas responds to his immediate environment, with playful and inquisitive action/gestures. The first manifestation, in Odzaci, begins with a recitation in Serbian in which he is assisted in pronouncing words unfamiliar to him. He tears pages from a red accounting book (which reappears in the other two “Here” pieces), and hands them to the audience. No one knows what to do with them. The faces of the audience look around, wondering if they should consider this item precious or not. Joan then balances the book on his head and puts a plastic vase on top of that. He closes his eyes and moves around the periphery of the garden and driveway. Isolated, the activities remain benal, but as he continues this series of works, it becomes evident that it is part of a fuller language, communicating through exploration. What can I do with the things around me and my body demonstrate limits and possibilities? How can these gestures signify as much as possible? In his second piece, Joan puts the red book on a chair and raises it close to a hanging disco ball. He then uses the pages to create a paper pyramid. Crossing to the other side of the room, he chews and spits the remaining pieces at the stack of paper, attempting to knock it down. He rarely hits the pyramid, perhaps due to swallowing vodka to help chew the paper. In his third piece, Joan lifts and carries a heavy round table across a long room, chasing his shoes which he has thrown. It is the accumulation of these acts in relationship to one another that reverberates. Joan is like a child discovering the world and himself in it. The frenetic energy in the room during MP’s performance, MP_per_11 Limited” joins us as one pulsing, throbbing being. The piece began with a still woman and man, both shirtless, their heads next to each other and facing opposite walls. The room is filled with ambient, glitch sound and their still bodies in the strobe lights and music confuse my sense of their movement. A coil around their necks, under their net draped bodies becomes a snake and I think she is struggling for breath. The strobe lights and everyone pushing in closer create a sense of rising panic. The artists begin to roll around a bit, still restrained and then less so, grabbing at each other in a demanding way. Both of them grabbing and thrashing around, with increasing desperation and desire. The sound moves from ambient to a deep techno grunge and it seems we are all united in this moment with noise that reverberates to our bones. Witnesses to this familiar, disquieting struggle, we are complicit in the lust and violence. They struggle with each other, but also with themselves. How much to hold back? Gerti Berg’s three performance pieces in IMAF break the division between what is physically inside and what is physically outside. By swallowing crocheted yarn then retracting it, eating her regurgitated orange, and swallowing her shirt, Gerti turns herself outside in and then back out. I was Gerti’s collaborator for “Hook,” which we performed in Odzaci. We sat across from each other on the ground, crocheting yarn to the length of our bodies combined. We then swallowed this and stood up, then backed away from each other until it had unraveled and come out of us. We both told each other that we felt a tremendous empathy and compassion for one another and then a great loss when the yarn had exited us. In Novi Sad, Gerti hunkered under a bike rake draped with a white table cloth and stuck her finger down her throat to make herself vomit on a plate which she drank from. She had a hard time making herself throw up, and mostly drooled. She looked like she was trying to turn herself inside out. For her final piece in Belgrade, Gerti cut the lower portion of her t-shirt off in one long strip, swallowing it and tying shoes to the end, she dragged the shoes until the t-shirt was pulled out. Gerti sought out external forces to reunite the external element she had just consumed and made a part of her internal being. Gerti’s work is very physically demanding. It demands us as it demands her. Art Circus changed the atmosphere at the IMAF events in Novi Sad and Odzaci to that of a fair ground freak show. Drawn by the macabre and our curiosity, we all wanted to see the human brains in the bucket of formaldehyde. I wanted to squeeze it really hard to see what happened. Other people did as well, poking and prodding. I got angry for a minute that someone was being so ruthless with it, but I wanted to do it too , and it was so dead, no harm could come to it anymore. It was very satisfying to violate the brain. The bucket was next to a life-size color image of Art Circus dressed as fakir, herdsman, and magician and holding brains in their outstretch hands; making an offering. “A game of adjoining with a tree,” performed by Nela Antonovic and Lidija Antonovic grew in complexity with each performance. In Odzaci a child, playing in the park while Lidija and Nela set up, asked if she could participate. She was invited to join and her presence lent authenticity to the relationship between audience and performer. Nela and Lidija portray a mythic crisis and resolution. Nela spits up wood shavings that Lidija, dressed as a tree/serpent distributes to the audience. Nela thrashes all around and Lidija swings branches. The artists then bring the audience to tree, laying out a ladder of branches and showing us how to embrace the tree. We are offered redemption, safety, a place away from fear and loneliness. The blood on Nela’s white dress betrays her need for this safety. In the second manifestation of the piece, Nela injures her elbow on the cement ground before embracing the tree, this time implanted in a patio, amplifying the life affirming quality of the tree. The audience in Belgrade, when brought to the tree to embrace it, stayed put, allowing the energy to flow among those physically connected to the tree. The artists create a mythical world in which we are encouraged to find healing. The calmness that comes over Gabrijel Savic Ra while he is performing, gives his pieces an aura of trust. He opens himself up to the pain and to the audience. In “Consumed by Rose” Gabrijel literally opens himself up by slowly drawing lines in his feet, hands, arms and chest, with a razor. The blood stands in contrast to the white cloth he sits on and his blood sticks to. It spreads across his skin, coloring him bloody. He then replaces his lost blood with the petals of red roses. Eating them slowly, petal by petal. He looks at the audience deeply, creating intimacy through eye contact. In “Algorithms of Nihil” Gabrijel lies his hand, palm down, on a print in a Gaugain monograph. He then drips wax from a candle onto the back of his hand. He melds himself with the image, punishing himself and the book, and simultatneously creating unity. "And the sin is in a man like when you knock a large nail into a wood. If you knock it a couple of times, it is easy to pull it out, if you nail it half way, it is harder, if you nail it all the way - then you have to cut the wood in half. That is the way the sin is knocked into human nature." *from Elder Cleopa book "Way of heaven" Aleksandar Jovanovic begins his performance balanced on a small log, reading the above text. (This was translated for me after the performance) He literally puts the metaphor of the sin being knocked into human nature into action with a large nail and wood. It was a very effective metaphorical action as we could see the great struggle Aleksandar was enduring with the task he set himself. It was his physical relationship to the materials, however, that I responded to most. He was so connected to the wood as if by using the wood to represent himself, he had merged his identity with it. He was very graceful in his movements, balancing and swing the ax to strike the wood, grasping it to pull out the nail. And when he had finished, his satisfaction, and happiness revealed his investment in the metaphor, the true relief in having successfully struggled with sin. Nenad Bogdanovic performed two works during the IMAF8 festival. Each was distinct… sounding, looking, feeling very different from one another, yet they both reveal the artist’s investment in the histories and ideologies of art and art practice. In “A sketch for a movement technics,” performed in Novi Sad, Nenad stands in front of a projected animation of Muybridge photographs as industrial music fills the small space. Intermittently taking sips of brandy and sharing sips with the audience, Nenad gets drunk. He stands on a floor littered with ads for hard drives and says, “Human, or human brain,” while holding a hard drive aloft. The animation and the music talk to another, not quite in sync. Muybridge, the beginning of film, signifies a technological turning point in art, information as truth and the power of the image. As Nenad begins to slur a bit we are shown his humanity. At the end of the performance he smashes the hard drive with a sledgehammer. This physical act is bound to the images of the Muybridge athletes. Dancing to their industrial beats, they are impervious to the brandy, as they are a product of the hard drive, the human brain. This performance offers itself as an alternative to the truth of technology. In “I am a rich artist,” performed in Belgrade, Nenad stands watch, looking debonair in a slick suit, while the audience creates works on paper. They turn these into him for twenty dinar apiece. He then tapes them to the wall, signs his name to them, and prices them for sale. By engaging in the exploitation of artists, Nenad compounds his metaphor. He isn’t just playing a part. He buys the audience’s participation, not with dinar, but with artistic appreciation and value. I was struck by how attached to their “drawings” the participants were. They were invested in the objects they produced, some proud of their originality or color choices. But their choices are insignificant; it is their desire to display their creativity and Nenad’s ability to manipulate this desire which creates meaning. Justin McKeown and Meabh McDonnell were not able to be in Serbia for the IMAF8 festival, but took part via a survey circulated during the festival. Insolent and defiant as ever, the SPARTISTS test our revolutionary caliber with “The SPARTIST Revolutionary Barometer (Serbian and Ex-Yugoslavian Version). Every artist, every performance in IMAF8 offers new possibilities for perception and challenges our understanding of ourselves, and of each other. As it engages the audience, with direct participation or by the physical presence of the artist, performance art demands an investment. It is not possible to be a passive viewer, receiving what is offered. We must all be present and allow change. Being a part of the IMAF8 performance festival allowed me to experience what it is to be responsible for creating change, both as an artist and as part of the audience. As we shared our ideas and inspiration with each other, we built a momentum that cannot be undone. We are an infectious influence. Tekst srpski
Nenad Bogdanovic : Performances made by Juniper Perlis during 8th IMAF, "Hook" with Gertrude Berg at MAS Gallery in Odzaci and "Gua Sha" at Circus Gallery in Students Cultural Center of Belgrade, give us a perception of works created in "correspondence" with basic forms of body-art actions from the end of 60-ties and the beginning of 70-ties last century. On the street, on a concrete bridge in front of the entrance to MAS two women were sitting, facing each other, weaving a white thread used for weaving various hand made decoration for a while. Juniper and Gertrude in their performance "Hook" begun by doing something traditionally associated with life and work of most women worldwide. Their "weaving" with fingers finished after a while as they formed a line of weave, and this would all not be any more interesting to the audience if they did not take the weave and started swallowing it each by different end of it. After a while the thread disappeared in their stomachs, and they, connected by this thread and touching their lips, went on the road. Moving slowly away from each other, they made the thread come out of their mouth. Performance of these two authors carries messages with many different meanings. One of them leads us to an idea of the basic character and material used as a symbol of prolonged oppression and denial of human rights to the feminine population worldwide. One of possible symbolic meanings is also a real possibilities of connection between different personalities, cultures and interests, in a certain social and political ambiance. Juniper Perlis in her performance "Gua Sha", performed at Students Cultural Center of Belgrade, uses traditional technique and medical practice from Asia. Juniper was, on the floor of circular space of Circus gallery, laying naked of pillows. She was applying a special cream on her skin all over the body. After putting it by hand, using this technique, she pressed her skin with powerful, probably very painful, strokes using rounded instrument resembling a spoon. After a longer period of application of this medical technique, her skin was quite damaged and bruised. Looking at this as a person unaware of the medical significance, one could never think that people in Asia cure many chronically illnesses, pains, normalizing their blood pressure. "Gua Sha" unlike similar, recent body-art performances that mostly explored boundaries of mental and physical, sends new vibrations and opens new views. This four hour performance gives positivistic suggestions and offers cures for the body and more, in transcendental educational, cultural and ethical sense. Tekst srpski |
