RE : L I V E
THE

HISTORICAL

REGARDING
AND CONTEMPORARY RELATIONSHIP
OF P E R F O R M A N C E A R T A N D V I D E O

for the camera

The Suicide of Labra C

Condensation

• Momentum
cinematic

* Judy and Mimo

Herman Nitsche...

A PART

OF T H E L I V E

SCREENING

NOVEMBER

17

8

PANEL

NOVEMBER

22

8

PM

©VIDEO

IN

BIENNIAL

OF P E R F O R M A N C E

PM

ART 2 0 0 1

RE:

LIVE

REGARDING THE H I S T O R I C A L AND
CONTEMPORARY
R E L A T I O N S H I P OF P E R F O R M A N C E A N D V I D E O

SCREENING
NOVEMBER
17
PANEL NOVEMBER
22
© V I D E O IN
P A R T OF T H E L I V E
BIENNIAL
OF P E R F O R M A N C E
ART
VANCOUVER
BC 2 0 0 1

CURATED

BY

ANDREW

POWER

AND

JEN

WEIH

Introduction
In her essay "Premeditated: Out of Body Experience" Karen Henry writes:
"Contemporary performance in Canada grew up hand in hand with the
use of video and radio technology by artists in the cross-disciplinary fervor of the 6o's and zo's. With the advent of portable video and the ability to shoot, edit, and re-shoot over the same tape, artists became very
fluid in front of and behind the camera ..." As Henry clearly identifies it,
the relation between video art and performance art is quickly understood
as a kind of mutual enablement; but we wonder if that relation is not
also a bit tricky, particularly at that moment where one practice dissolves
into to the next. What are the mutations, digressions and even dysfunctions that arise from their interpenetration?

also consider that "surveillance" cameras are often employed by artists
themselves. Video, one might say, has recently rendered performative that
which was previously simply visible. Or has it?
So there are the questions that hath begot re: live: how have video and
performance co-evolved? How have their respective boundaries shifted
and resolved? And where are they headed, in terms both convergent, and
divergent?

Acknowledgement
Thanks to the panelists, as well as the other artists, whose work is
exhibited. And thank you Vancouver for your fecundity.

This has been a question for artists (both those performing and those
whose subject includes the performative) since the initial adoption of
video technology. The question now becomes more interesting as we
acknowledge that, at least for some practitioners, video and performance
are certainly co-evolving, and - arguably - converging.

Apologia

re: live compares a few works of performance on video (and vice versa)
from the 1970s, to some works of the more or less present, where the
conventional deployment of video in galleries and on television finds
itself amongst newer variants, such as surveillance and telecommunication.

jen Weih and Andrew Power

As curators, we suggest that performing artists in the seventies tended
toward a transparent use of video as recording medium. Documented
actions, as such, were the key thing - even if the camera was the only
witness. The emphasis was on the happening event, and the community
of interest that the recording of the event might serve.
More recently video has insinuated itself almost materially into performance. For some contemporary works, things wouldn't be happening quite
the same way without the artist's engagement with recording technology
- consider, for example, work "performed" to surveillance cameras. And

re: live is not canonical. Please feel free to forgive its omissions and to
question its assumptions.

Tapes

space. (Live music was improvised by Lewis Kaye and Prasad Bidaye.)
Technologically Enabled.

Martha Rosier; Semiotics of the Kicthen; 1975; 7:00
With determined fixity, Rosier demonstrates the names, and occasionally
the uses, of a variety of handy utensils in this mid-70S horror video.
Conceptual.

break

Emma Howes; Kitchen Dances; 2001; 6:45
Playing to the frame, Howes accompanies Nina Simone in her kitchen
with some dexterous moves. Radical.
Rodney Werden; Say; 1973; 3:00
Perhaps an interpolation on directing, including some of its uglier
aspects. An off-screen voice commands verbal compliance of the poised
butch on the stool. Mean.
Charmaine Wheatley; Centrefolds; 2001; 2:15
As we see through a spy-cam in her visit to Winnipeg's Centrefolds,
Wheatley freaks the staff (and elicits cheers from the patrons) with her
own show from gyna-row. Tricky.
Tagny Duff; Rideau Centre Mall; 1998; 2:15
Wired for sound, and not much else, Duff has about three minutes to
greet nice Ottawa shoppers before getting nailed by security. Traumatic.
Meesoo Lee; Fool; 2001; 5:00
Baby you're a fool to cry. Lee can't quite let go in this slo-mo paean to
his structural member. Poignant.

Vito Acconci; Theme Song; 1971; 32:00
Prone on the floor and accompanied off-screen by some musical hits of
the day, Acconci entreats the object of his ardor (presumably the viewer)
to get it on. Charming.
jinhan Ko; Tell Me What You Want To Hear; 1996; 3:00
Speaking through the screen and exhausting his own enthusiasm, Jin
spins a litany of unattached affirmation with a remarkably limited vocabulary. So good.
Joelle Ciona; Condensation (installation excerpt); 2000; 5:00
Using the issue of her own body, Ciona steams it up inside a see-thru
box on a frozen lake in the majestic lonely Canadian mountains.
Elemental.
Kim Tomczack; Herman Nitsche at the Western Front; 1978; 5:00
Shot on film by Canadian video artist Kin Tomczack, Nitsche is at it again
heaping fresh animal guts onto blindfolded hapless naked stooges.
Includes um-pah orchestra. Messy.
Warren Arcan; Six Gun Sufi (performance excerpt); 1997; 5:00
A long dark honky tonk of the soul where a Cowboy-Indian
sings and speaks of love and death. Wanted.

Marlene Madison; The Suicide of Laura C. (excerpt); 2001; 7:00
Riding a fluid track of montage, Madison's existential suitress morphs
lithely toward cinema in this noir assemblage. Silky.

Installed in studio

Michele Kasprzak and Michael Steventon; Momentum Performance
Documentation; 2000; 2:45
Nurse Kasprzak and Spaceman Steventon co-operate in multi-media
3

Judy Radul; Judy and Mimo from The Specialist; 1997; loop
Excerpted from a photo / video installation, Radul commemorates her
sort-of fun date with Mimo (one of five actors hired to play her beau), in
the spectacular placelessness of Banff. High altitude.
4

Questions
On Performance
Maraget Dragu in her essay Eye Am, Eye Am Not writes: "Performance art
is inherently anti-consumer, anti-capitalist, and anti-art market. It is
ephemeral and non-product. You cannot sell something that cannot be
possessed."
In its emphasis on the apparent inadequacy of naming as the generator
of meaning, Martha Roster's Semiotics of the Kitchen might be considered
a work influenced by the anti-art, non-product ethos of Conceptual art.
What are the parallels between performance and Conceptual art concerning the notion of productlessness?
In Kitchen Dances, Emma Howes abandons the dancer's stage in favor of
the framed view from a video camera. What are the conceptual and formal impacts of portable video technology on the site and stage of performance?
Presenting his face at approximately life size within a video monitor, the
relentless suitor in Vito Acconci's Theme Song has a prodigious focus on
the lens, and therefore on his object of desire. What are the opportunities that video provides for a unique communion between performer and
the individuated audient?
On Video
Dan Graham in his Essay on Video, Architecture and Television writes:
"Video is a present-time medium...The space/time it presents, is continuous, unbroken and congruent to that of the real time which is the shared
time of its perceivers and their individual and collective real environments. This is unlike film which is, necessarily, an edited re-presentation
of the past of another reality/an other's reality for separate contemplation
by unconnected individuals. Film is discontinuous, its language constructed, in fact, from syntactical and temporal disjunctions (for example, montage)."

Despite its apparent documentarian simplicity - a realtime, still camera
shot - the "drama" of Rodney Werden's Say can be understood as an
analysis of the power relations that inhere between director and actor.
How can Video on performance' address the subject of "film language"?
Marlene Madison's The Suicide of Laura C is rather tenuously attached to
the category of performance: the only explicit link remaining to the "original" performance of the script is buried within a complex montage. Why
is there tension between the tendency toward cinematic elaboration and
the conventionally upheld 'veracity* of performance documentation?
In Herman Nitsche at the Western Front, Kim Tomczack - a well known
artist in his own right - distills approximately eight hours of ritual performance activity into five minutes of cacaphonous atrocity. What are the
issues that emerge around authorship when a videomaker 'documents'
the work of a performance artist?
On Mediation
Randy Lee Cutler in her essay Lusty Eyes: please adjust your set writes:
"We have long been seduced by the spectacle of the Real or looking at
chaos from a distance. But how are we implicated in our desire to see
more, faster, deeper and anonymously? Two modes of interpretation, scientific method and psychoanalysis explain some of this thirst for authenticity without accountability. As a clinical condition, the lust of the eyes
represents the seduction of 'objectivity' and the triumph of surveillance
technologies."
The surveillance camera footage of Charmaine Wheatley's Centrefolds provides a deliciously surreptitious glimpse into the panic and the glee that
ensues when an unauthorized stripper appears in the midst of a men's
strip club - but our scopofilic pleasure is muted by the artist's apparent
vulnerability. How can performance / media artists develop and use
strategies to promote the 'accountability' of the anonymous viewer?
In Meesoo Lee's Fool the recording of the performance is time-dilated to
synchronize with the overall duration of a Rolling Stones song, rendering

the actions meditative and poignant. What is the value of post-production techniques available to inflect, perhaps to 'rewrite', the emotional
readings already at play in 'source material'?
In Judy and Mimo, Judy Radul constructs what might be termed a 'simularcrum of the performative', a moving image that suggests the careful
banality of many 'special' moments in our contemporary touristic con
sumer culture. Is it possible that the act of videotaping - in public - is
itself more an act of performance than the actions recorded?
On Real
In her essay Against Interpretation Susan Sontag writes: "Real art has the
capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content
and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art."
The frigid discomfort apparent in Joelle Ciona's installation excerpt
Condensation is in some respects obscured by the sophistication of the
work's accomplished representation. Employing three simultaneous camera views the tape overlays analytical precision on the crisis the artist's
body endures. Is it possible that Sontag's "Real" is enabled by a concern
with aesthetics and formalism?
Tagny Duffs Rideau Centre Mall could be considered doubly naive: it
employs unedited handheld footage from the perspective of an un-implicated viewer; and it evidences a remorseless, sincere attempt to transcend intractable social conventions. But in both cases it seems resonable to assume the artist is fully cognizant of any naivete. Does anxiety
provides a vector of escape from the inherent complexity of representation?

Panelists
Warren Arcan has been involved in Vancouver performance since the late
eighties. He currently lives on Galiano Island, where he's working on a
video project called "About Love, or My Battle for the History of the
World." He has a partner Gen A.), a child (Weston A-A), a dog (Jesse),
and a little garden (nitrogen-rich soil).
Tagny Duff is a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary artist and producer
working in performance, video, audio and text. She has created numerous
site-specific performance and video works since receiving a Fine Arts
Degree from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (1997), and her critical
writing and essays can be found in various art magazines, journals and
catalogues.
Meesoo Lee started making short videos using a camcorder and 2 VCRs,
inspired by the DIY ethos of zines, "lo-fi" music and underground cinema. He is old enough to remember when music videos were something
new and exciting, before the proliferation of VCRs, camcorders and neighbourhood video stores... One of his favourite music videos dates back to
his elementary school years: "You Might Think" by The Cars. His work
has been shown at the Western Front and Images Festival Toronto.
Judy Radul is an artist and writer. A consideration of forms of performance
and performativity provides a basis for her practice, which includes live
actions, video, installation, photography and audio works. Recent exhibitions include The Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Chambre Blanche,
Quebec; and The Vancouver Art Gallery. Recent publications include contributions to "Live at the End of the Century: Aspects of Performance Art in
Vancouver" Grunt Gallery, 2000, and "Art is All Over" Emily Carr 2001.
She is Assistant Professor at the School for Contemporary Arts, Simon
Fraser University.

Facilitator
Randy Lee Cutler is a Vancouver based educator, curator, writer and performer. She is engaged in the ruptures between disciplinary models and
the exploration of alternative possibilities for being in and interpreting
the world. She teaches critical theory and media studies at Emily Carr
Institute of Art and Design. She has taught and lectured extensively in
the UK and Canada.

Curators
Andrew Power is a nice person. He makes videos, and occasionally sings
and plays the guitar (but only for the camera).
Jen Weih is exhibitions coordinator at Video In Sudios. She also makes
art with sound, objects and moving images.

Theme Song
• Say

Kitchen Dances

• Fool

Tell Me What You Want To Hear

Semiotics of the Kitchen
documentary

Centrefolds

Six Gun Sufi

Rideau Centre Mall

0

for the audience
T i n CANADA C O U N C I L I Ls C O N S U L D O ACTS
FOR THE AKTS J DU C A N A D A

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