Performance #3 rework: "Warning Feminist on the Loose"

For this rework piece I wanted to bring in these warning bells to show the sign of the storm. Me and my opinions being the storm. I felt this would be almost more empowering because I am in complete control. I have no one putting me down, or the degrading song in the background. I am brewing in the plastic wrap and ready to explode on the patriarchal society. I didn't notice that the tornado warning I chose was actually in Iowa, which is ironic and just added to the identity of the piece even more. I also wanted to change the filter because I thought it would emphasize the danger and storm feeling and focus of the lighting and shadows in the piece and their movement.

what makes me happy

sunshine
pugs
chocolate
masturbation
strawberries
my family (sometimes)
my make up
my wigs
nature
the wind
swimming
my nipple piercings
seeing people love themselves
art
HGTV
netflix
steak
weed
culture
my partner
landscapes
thai food
music
traveling
architecture
a good pair of heels
lingerie

Performance #3: "Pretty Women"

Score Performance #3:

The audience is placed in a circle

-two lights on either side of the circle

I am carried in by two male bodies and set in the circle

Repeat the “we need feminism speech” while cutting off the

One side of the room have pretty women playing

Other side have the repeated speech of we need feminism

I in the middle wrapped in plastic wrap try to undo myself completely

Bold= what the women say

Italicized= male’s say

We still need feminism because when people get married it is assumed the woman will take the man’s last name.

Because when women are assaulted, they are often the ones who feel ashamed.

We still need feminism because we teach women how to prevent rape, instead of teaching people to not view women as objects.

Because women are told that walking alone at night makes them “an easy target.”

Because, sometimes, a movie’s rating (PG-13 versus R) depends on how much a female appears to be enjoying sex in a certain scene.

We still need feminism because our bodies are still being legislated,

because McDonald’s still asks us if we want a girl or boy toy,

because we use terms like “bitch” and pussy” to imply weakness.

We need feminism because FGM (Female Genital Mutilation), the act of cutting off and restitching female genitals to prevent pleasurable sex — and can happen to girls as young as 5 months old — is still practiced in 29 countries.

Because more than 120 countries don’t have laws against marital rape, and still allow child brides — some as young as 6 years old.

We need feminism because infanticides, the act of killing children within a year of birth, can be attributed to millions of fewer females than males in Middle Eastern countries,

and because in Afghanistan women going to college can be considered justifiable grounds for disfiguring.

Being a feminist does not mean you think women can’t speak for themselves, it means you realize that, even though some may be lucky enough to, there’s still many who can’t.

“Don’t be slutty, don’t have sex. But be sexy. If you’re too sexy though and you get raped then that’s your own fault because you’re not actually supposed to listen to us about being sexy, even though we tell you your value is derived from how sexy you are. If you get into a position of power, we will assume that you used your sex appeal to get there and not your brains and we will mock you even though we told you the only thing that mattered was your sex appeal. Make yourself accessible to us, but holy shit stop being so desperate and needy. Don’t be a tease. If we want to have sex with you, Don’t friend zone us, even though we just fucking told you not to have sex.”

This performance I thought long and hard about. I really wanted to do the plastic wrap because I thought that it refereed to the trapped feeling with in society with not only protecting the virginity of my body but preserving it's innocence, which is that main goal of being a female right? I wanted to completely burst out of this entrapped feeling that I get when I read men's ideas on women and the patriarchal society that I am apart of. The visual aspect you see me struggling, naked full face of makeup. The nudity is to reflect on the preservation of the body, like what sandy said "Kind of like a barbie getting ready to be bought off the shelves." That what I feel a lot of times, especially with growing up in a society when women must and can only look a certain way. It was created a lot of ideas that as growing up I made sure I fit or else I wouldn't be liked. I was a sexual object, something pretty to look at, something to use, something that was fun for a second and later would be dumped to the side and used by many more, just alike the barbie. It wasn't until I came to college that I realized there is a lot more to me and my female identity than what society has created. I used the words because it reminds us exactly why we still need feminism, why this break through challenges us but it very much needed to understand and grow the identity we've been forced to subdue. However I did get the sense that the words didn't make as powerful as I would have hoped, however if I just have two people reading it I feel like I could get the same type of overwhelming emotion. I had the song "Pretty Women" playing along because it created a fun and joyful atmosphere, however underneath the skin it's very demeaning and cat calling. It mimics most of what we deal with now and days the jokes that go along with being a women. I am tired of being an object. I am tired of being pretty for other people. I am tired of being shamed for loving myself. I am tired of being called selfish because I care about my person. I am a human being. And I am a women, and I'm so proud to be able to break free and leave the sheds of social ideals.

Performance #2: Duet for Bottle and Wine Glass

I was very conflicted with this piece, I was really focusing on the actions and making sure that I completed what was on the score sheet rather than the actual performance itself. I liked how it turned out though and how everything came together. I loved peoples reactions and ideas to how to add meaning to the bottle, because before doing this performance I didn't really find any meaning which might have been why I didn't connect with this piece as much as the other. I love the action and the different tones, however like what was suggested we should have elongated it to emphasize the sound in its own uniqueness. I think that this piece would be more in depth if we focused on the little things like more wine, white cloths and draw on the more innocence and virginal ritual. I did however feel the chance equation when I fell off the table, I felt that it actually added to the performance and made it more really rather than robotic and mechanic. That sometimes we mess up but we just have to keep it up and keep going with it.

Reading Response

1. All three three of these stem from the same sort of idea about breaking the social constructs of art. They all want to tear down the idea of “high art” and bring it back to the minimalist aspects of daily life. Futurists emphasize change, flux, and indeterminacy in their work. The act of liberating themselves from the social norms. Dada believe thats its the fundamentals of culture that need to be changed, that logic has imprisoned the mind to look at art either as good or bad. Lastly the Fluxus look at art as an everyday occurrence in life, that the very simplistic nature of art is the form that is shown naturally.
2. During the 20th century many artists are put down for their conventional art and united as a force against the social constructs of high art. The main goals of using the body was to use the most natural, everyday contact piece that we can think of, which is the body. It taps into the primitive and minimalistic sense because it doesn’t necessarily focus on aesthetics but the sound, movement and actions surrounding the body.
3. Performance art was not a medium at this time because people thought it was controversial and pushed the barriers of social acceptance. A lot of works done during this time were in secret or were consequences because of these art practices.
4. Conceptual art is when ideas are the main focus of the work rather than the actual aesthetic or pleasing the audience.
5. I’d say that conceptual art really confronted the Late Modernists by twisting their beliefs into something that deems true like the ideas over appearance. That there is a lot more to a piece of art than the way it looks, by creating a classist system in art itself is demeaning and unacceptable since it tells people which ideas are deemed better than others. I think these artist rebelled because they were fed up with being criticized for their work that is just as good if not more conceptually aware than a painting by itself.
6. I believe that performance art has been so left out because people cannot categorize and understand the ideas of someone else. It is a lot easier to see someone ideas and feel it being pleasing to you or displeasing but watching a performance of it creates a different dimension where one is enveloped within the performance itself. This makes it harder to deem a performance wrong or right and therefore is looked at as all bad because they can’t understand if there even is a difference at all. It is easier for humans to categorize than just accept the differences.
7. The futurists focus on the liberation of oneself to the established social norms. By creating movement in this sense they are creating new art forms, not new art. Matter is constantly changing just like the movement in our body, experience nature as a process and the most basic process of nature is the movement of a body. On the other hand Dada confronts the social construction itself and question it’s legitimacy. By using chance and movement, they are turning to the absurd, naive, primitive effects created by chance.
8. Living art became so popular in the 60’s because the idea of the happening. That the performers and the audience are apart of the momentary movement, sound and smells of this performance. A happening is the in moment feeling that one can only experience at that moment in time.
9. Chance operations are extremely important to the artist process because it stops from being too aesthetically pleasing and the ego of the artist. It mimics nature in that it is always changing and at random therefore is a force of nature that the artist cannot control. This being said the force of nature is than deemed as art in the performance to make it more apart of the everyday experience.
10. John Cage is a primary influence as well as duchamp because he mimicks the same principals of the Zen metaphysics, in the process and change that the world is constantly in. This unifying force integrates all life activities within the concept of nature.  Duchamp brings up “retinal art” by describing art that was only visual, this was in comparison to his ready made work. He said that the difference between the “retinal art” and his ready made is that it reflected his sense of irony, humor, and ambiguity.
11. Klein used people's bodies as living paint brushes and he stated, “at my direction the flesh itself applied the colour to the surface and with perfect exactness”. Manzoni in a very similar way to Klein believe it was essential to reveal the process of art, however Manzoni believed it was based on the affirmation of the body itself as a valid art material, the everyday reality of the body the functions and forms. Schneemann’s Meat Joy used blood of meat carcasses instead of paint to cover the bodies.
12. Joseph Beuys a german artist who believed that art should effectively transform people’s everyday lives. He focus on the idea of revolutionizing human thought. Used passion plays and objects to create metaphorical protagonists in his performances. I think that he chose to do this piece because it is the basis of america itself, the very primitive and basic idea of being apart of nature, in this case the coyote. He used this piece to become a transformation of ideology into the idea of freedom itself.

Performance #1: "Slide"

This piece was at first a very straightforward action. Play slide with paint, okay cool... why don't we vibe it up a little? I learned a lot about testing the different senses and the boundaries of that. I thought it would be a great idea of mixing the two different viscosity and creating the oneness between the two. While doing the actual performance, my goal was achieved. By the end my hands were covered in clay like blood stained hardened peanut butter, and I LOVED IT. I was so extremely satisfied and joyful with how this who performance turned out. I thought that the lack of clothes and the simplicity of that created the environment to be directed towards the hands. I have always loved being naked and testing the gender fluidity with that and making sense towards a body is a body and nothing more. There is no sexual connotations, no desires, no emphasis but rather hollow flesh that contains the soul. Going away from the visual aspect, I loved the smell of the peanut butter and that it left this wafting uncomfortable-ness in the air, at least for me because the smell of peanut butter can be pretty overwhelming at some parts. And finally the sound, I was concerned with the product dripping off and not being able to continue the sounds I wanted throughout the whole piece, however we just decided to go for it. When we do perform this piece again I really hope to add more of the substances, especially with the idea after every time one of us messes up. I think than it will create the constant sound I was hoping for... Ben I'm looking at you, let's do it again and let's get MESSY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7sves3VP8o

i am afraid of...

dark
being alone
small spaces
drowning
not traveling
missing out
commitment
my mind
things that go bump in the night
rejection
comfortably
my art
snakes
sharks
deep water
natural disaster
zombies
not being myself
hurting others feelings
love
trust
disappointment