We are so excited to invite you to the first of many Performance Is Alive events this fall! On Saturday, September 7th, we will present an encore screening of our video program originally presented at Satellite Art Show during SXSW. This screening program will be followed by a pre-fair party celebrating the upcoming Satellite Art Show NYC. Among the 15 video projects, our screening program features the work of award winning filmmakers, Tif Robinette + Ian Deleón (aka PULSAR) for their film, Velvet Cry, a story inspired by the 18th century hoax of Mary Toft. An unexpected character is positioned to execute karaoke in Ryan Hawk’s video, Sweet Surrender. Jessica Yatrofsky and NY FEM FACTORY’s video stars Lil’ Touches performing the story of a scorned woman “calling out” a former lover in Cunt Keeper. Award winning artist, Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s, The Sign, explores the visual culture of shame in relation to the body. FEATURED VIDEOS
Scarlett by Christie Blizard (San Antonio, TX) • Mattress Power by Charles Chace and Ginger Wagg (Carrboro, NC) • The Sign by Chun Hua Catherine Dong (Montreal, Canada) • Velvet Cry by Tif Robinette + Ian Deleón (Gainesville, FL) • Un muro que parte el cuerpo en dos by Kiyo Gutiérrez (Guadalajara, Mexico) • Sweet Surrender by Ryan Hawk (Houston, TX) • The Little Hand of Love by Pei-Ling Ho (New York, NY) • Contingencia by Manuel López (Daimús, Spain) • Mountains, Joshua Tree by Jenna Maurice (Denver, CO) • Men Do Not Nourish by Maryam Nazari (London) • The Pelvic Theatre Presents the History of Hysteria by Alison Pirie (Brooklyn, NY) • Hábito by Rocha & Polse (Barcelona, Spain) • WE ARE ALL WHORES by Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires, Argentina) • Cunt Keeper by Jessica Yatrofsky and NY FEM FACTORY (New York, NY) EVENT DETAILS Location: Grace Exhibition Space, 182 Avenue C., New York, NY 11206 6pm Screening program followed by a discussion from Satellite Art Show team 7:30pm-11pm Drinks and Dancing Cost: $10 donation (proceeds go to fund the performance program at the fair) Can't make the pre-fair party? Please consider sending us a tax-deductible donation here. We hope to see you soon!
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Reflections of Performance/ Thoughts while performing, They tried to bury us proverb. Alive at Satellite Art Show Austin | SXSW Week 2019 By Christian Cruz @morenahelado Before I knew it, I was 5 min late to start my performance and a small audience of five people were waiting for me. I quickly got into the empty space within the dirt mound and sat legs crossed. The black mulch was wet and cold as I moved it onto my body. Soon, Quinn Dukes came to help me push the dirt onto me, planting me, like the flower I intended to be. The soft grunts and deep breaths from Quinn, plus the growing audience let me know her help had become part of the performance. “Mmmm dirt,” someone sitting down at the pews in front of us remarked. —“Yes, it smells good,” I added. “What about the smell of nail polish, though?” I continued while smirking. That’s when the performance started for me. Quinn was still pushing dirt over my shoulders when I whispered to her if she could do me a favor. She moved from behind me to my side. “Will you please bury these for me?” I pointed to my head scarf and gloves I had abandoned near the mound of dirt. I didn’t want her to take these items, now that I had an audience. It seemed more natural to accept Quinn as a part of my performance. She eagerly obliged and buried them into the mound. I said thank you before she walked away. I started very excited: painted each nail on one hand, blew on my fingers, painted each nail on the other hand, blew on those fingers, looked at both hands, posed with hands on my face, and made eye contact while smiling when doing all these things, then repeated. For the most part, people were very warm. They smiled back and looked me in the eyes for the length of time I stared into them. I looked over to those entering and exiting and grew to have lots of control over the space. Every once in a while someone entering the fair, would not feel comfortable with me looking at them. They quickly moved through the space while covering their face, only giving me a small glimpse of them every other step. It was evident they simply didn’t like to make eye contact and that I made them uncomfortable because they were not comfortable with themselves. Another group of people were less shy and more annoyed. This group did not walk behind the pews like most people did but walked in between the space of the audience and myself. They walked through the space as if I didn’t exist, not just once but thrice. Each time I followed them with my sight, smiling and painting my nails. It made me think how sometimes, people decide they dislike performance art before they so much as give it a glance/chance. Alive At Satellite
March 13-17, 2019 Satellite Art Show Austin Museum of Human Achievement, 3600 Lyons Road, Austin, TX 78702 Performance Is Alive performance space Curated by Quinn Dukes | Contact: quinn@performanceisalive.com Performance Is Alive continues to offer Satellite Art Show viewers a rare opportunity to experience bold, unapologetic and socially conscious projects through the boundless manifestations of performance art. In collaboration with Houston-based artist and organizer, Julia Claire Wallace (Creative Director of Experimental Action Festival), our live programming celebrates the work of emerging and established Texas-based artists while integrating the performance video works of a global performance community. Artists will activate our live programming with interactive performances, durational gestures, audio scoring and projection mapping. Performance highlights include Houston's seminal performance artist, Jim Pirtle’s exploration of PTSD treatments through ice, projection and multi-media. Michael Anthony García's work investigates the alienness of being a person of color while creating tulle clad sculptures to a live a cappella soundtrack. Durational performances include Christian Cruz, who will be brown and unbothered during a piece entitled They tried to bury us proverb. Sarah Sudhoff confronts the politics of breastfeeding while confronting loss and failure. Hailing from New York, Nicole Goodwin immerses her nude body in flour to examine racial identity. Also from New York, Prism House + Matt O'Hare will debut "Separator", a 40-minute multichannel video and audio composition. We are also proud to present films, experimental video and performance for camera documentation at Satellite’s official screening. Selected artists are both locally and internationally based, maintaining our efforts to merge performance communities. Among the 16 projects, our screening program features the work of award winning filmmakers, Tif Robinette + Ian Deleón (aka PULSAR) for their film, Velvet Cry, a story inspired by the 18th century hoax of Mary Toft. An unexpected character is positioned to execute karaoke in Ryan Hawk’s video, Sweet Surrender. Jessica Yatrofsky and NY FEM FACTORY’s video stars Lil’ Touches performing the story of a scorned woman “calling out” a former lover in Cunt Keeper. Award winning artist, Chun Hua Catherine Dong’s, The Sign explores the visual culture of shame in relation to the body. LIVE PERFORMANCES BY Christian Cruz (Dallas, TX), Serap Erincin (New Orleans, LA), Michael Anthony García (Austin, TX), Nicole Goodwin (New York, NY), Prism House + Matt O'Hare (New York, NY), Henry G. Sanchez (Houston, TX), Jim Pirtle (Houston, TX), Sick Din (Brooklyn, NY), Sarah Sudhoff (Houston, TX), Antonius-Tin Trung Bui (Houston, TX), Julia Claire Wallace (Houston, TX) SCREENINGS Christie Blizard (San Antonio, TX), Charles Chace and Ginger Wagg (Carrboro, NC), Chun Hua Catherine Dong (Montreal, Canada), Tif Robinette + Ian Deleón (Gainesville, FL), Kiyo Gutiérrez (Guadalajara, Mexico), Ryan Hawk (Houston, TX), Pei-Ling Ho (New York, NY), Manuel López (Daimús, Spain), Jenna Maurice (Denver, CO), Maryam Nazari (London), Alison Pirie (Brooklyn, NY), Rocha & Polse (Barcelona, Spain), Natacha Voliakovsky (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Jessica Yatrofsky and NY FEM FACTORY (New York, NY). Full schedule here. Performance is Alive brings yet another ambitious, 4-day performance art program to Miami Beach for Satellite Art Show. This year's program features interactive performances, durational works, a panel discussion with slumber party, performance video screenings, lectures and because performance is never entirely predictable, the unknown! PIA artists are encountering the complexity of migration, oppressive patriarchal constructs, trans identity, mental health care, silencing, race relations and many other human rights issues threatened by the Trump administration. So join us for the only non-stop performance art uprising during Miami Art Basel! #AliveAtSatellite #notbasel #performanceisalive
It is with great pleasure that we jump back into one of the founding components of this site, the Artist Feature! Multi-media artist, Trevor Amery, joined the #AliveAtSatellite programming during Miami Art Week at Satellite Art Show. His performance initiated with the cross-country journey from California (where he is completing his MFA at UC San Diego) to Miami Beach, Florida. In our interview we discuss the importance of community within Amery's practice and he recalls the terrifying capsize experience while performing Baidarka. - Quinn Dukes
Away from the Miami convention center and the massive white art fair tents was the Artist-Run Satellite Art Show at the now derelict Ocean Terrace Hotel, an art deco building awaiting demolition or redevelopment. The unairconditioned corridors and rooms-turned-galleries of the old hotel were nevertheless a breath of fresh air on the heels of a day at the sparkling big money fairs. Each room of the Ocean Terrace Hotel had been transformed (to a varying degree) by the gallery, nonprofit, or artist-run space that occupied it. The decidedly non-white-cube conditions of the building demanded an installation approach. Most rooms dealt not only with the walls of the rooms themselves, but also made use of bathrooms, floors, ceilings, windows and doors. In this sense (and augmented by the heat and humidity of a Miami evening) Artist-Run was an exhibition that consciously engaged the body of the viewer. Likewise, explicitly performative events that took place in the hotel were intimately intertwined with the space itself. A few examples are summarized below. Beast Boutique, Yellow Peril Gallery (Providence, RI) Artist Jennifer Avery’s Beast Boutique was a composed clutter of photographs, photocopies, and hybrid doll-stuffed-animals-garments. She called it “the chaos of the forest”. Walls, floor and all corners were inhabited. Upon entry into the boutique, the artist would ask if the viewer would allow her to choose a garment for her, assuring, upon a friendly sizing-up, that she would “choose the perfect one.” Through this interaction, the viewer noticed that the installation was, in fact, populated with these wearable artworks in brightly-colored, frankenstein-stitched silk, lace, wool and fur, often displaying vestiges of their former use as more conservative garments. Some were full masks, others shawl-like necklaces adorned with oversized talismans made of stuffed-animal parts. Hand-made stuffed dolls (all alike) were lined up along walls and in corners looking like a cross between 19th century children’s toys and the mummy cats of the ancient Egyptians. Walls were plastered with images of these props and the artist (fully painted and adorned as a human-animal fairytail character, performing in a wooded setting), layering objects with images and creating a complex visual mythology. Beast Boutique was at once scary and exuberant. It had the enclosed, non dream logic of a fairytale and the sense of humor of a neon forest. Stupid Bar // Open Space at Artist-Run Miami // images by Q. Dukes Stupid Bar, Open Space (Baltimore, MD) Stupid Bar was the creation of Baltimore artist-run gallery Open Space at Artist-Run in the Ocean Terrace Hotel. This was an actual bar complete with a few varieties of drinks, a stripper’s pole and constant Karaoke performances. It was impossible to tell whether these were performed by friends and associates of the gallery or visitors to Artist-Run, as everyone was invited to participate while enjoying canned beers and cocktails and reading the myriad handmade signage adorning the walls and shelves of the installation like so many neon signs and beer posters at a dive bar. Because of the hotel room setting, Stupid Bar also held a tinge of nostalgia for a teenager’s room where a secret party might place after parents have gone to bed. A large chalkboard hung on the wall immediately to the right upon entry stating: “Postmodernism is just a cool word for Postmodernism.” Another in red, green and black advertised the fact that all drinks were $11 while another commanded, “Notice this notice.” In spite of the jokey atmosphere of Stupid Bar, it was a locus for the free spirited exuberance of TSA’s Satellite Art Show, a taste of what actually makes people love art. Stupid Bar’s funny signs, its dildo microphones and underwear-clad gender-bending karaoke divas generated something profound that viewers and artists could participate in and sink their teeth into. As Paddy Johnson put it in Art F City, “[Artist-Run] gives artists a voice, and somewhat counter-intuitively that’s most needed here in Miami, during the biggest art fair week in the country.” Stupid Bar was a gathering place and a way station for this energy. - Alexandra Hammond, Miami Art Week Correspondent rtist-run shout outs!
Interview with Carlos Martiel By Quinn Dukes This year performance art pervaded Miami Art Week 2015 (for better and for worse). Most notably at the non-traditional, multi-destination, Satellite Fair organized by Brian Andrew Whiteley and the curatorial project "Time Sensitive" curated by Jesús Fuenmayor at Pinta Miami. As you can imagine, the sheer density of events, shows and performances prohibited us (Alexandra Hammond + myself) from being able to view the full performance roster at either fair but we were determined to catch Carlos Martiel's durational work at Pinta Miami. Martiel caught my attention last October for his durational performance, "Segregation" at Samson Projects (Boston) where he stood motionless between two layers of barbed wire. Upon entry, audience members were separated by country of origin and viewed the performance from opposing sides. Martiel notes on his website, "One of the entryways permitted the entrance of U.S. born whites and Europeans. The other, permitted the entrance of blacks, latinos, asians, and middle easterners, as well as any individual who was not European or U.S. born white. People were not allowed to mix for the duration." Similar to "Segregation", Martiel's arresting performance at Pinta Miami offered viewers an opportunity to deeply contemplate personal and political freedom both as an individual and within a larger, social contstruct. As a former pupil of Tania Bruguera, his performance philosophy should come as no surprise - but I find Martiel exceedingly daring - willing to acknowledge and face consequence. This is no easy feat within commercial performance/performer relationships. Following his Miami performance (Dictadura), I reached out to Martiel to learn more about his pre-performance preparations and post-performance insights. I am honored to share our conversation with you as a part of this week's Artist Feature. -Quinn Dukes QUINN DUKES: What led you to create Dictadura? CARLOS MARTIEL: At first, when I was invited to make a performance work for PINTA in Miami, I wanted to do a project that had a relationship with Cuba, given the number of Cuban exiles who are in this context, most of whom were fleeing Cuba from the current political regime. During the research process for the project, however, I decided to include a larger number of countries in Latin America that have also had some form of dictatorial regime just like the case of Cuba. But unlike Cuba, the vast majority were supported by the School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. In the United States, many people have no idea about the history of Latin America, or the macabre role the United States played in inflicting pain to the Latin American family, with its foreign policy of transforming Latin American military apparatuses into one of torturers, murderers and dictators. It was because of this that I created the project. I remained still, retained by the neck to a steel collar bolted to the base of a flagpole, forced to stare at the alternating flags of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, where dictatorial regimes have had support in some form by the School of the Americas. Each flag was placed for an hour and in historic chronological order, just as if the dictatorships were happening in real time. QD: How did you prepare for the durational aspect of the piece? CM: I really don’t have particular rituals for the preparation of my work. Usually I try to spend an hour alone, before making my performances, but it's not something I can always do. I believe that no preparation is sufficient to deal with the types of works I engage with, the challenge is actually at the time the work is presented in real time and the strategies that you develop internally as the work is happening, for example, careful breathing to avoid discomfort, uneasiness or tingling so that I stay focused. QD: Stillness and duration are commonly core elements to your performances. What draws you to these two methods? CM: I grew up in a society that lives on the edge in many respects, an island surrounded by water, people who endure a lot of financial hardships and even complete lack of basic needs, but must continue to live one way or another and not give up. This has influenced much of the durational aspect of my work. I have also studied and I am very familiar with African cultures and rituals of initiation, where one has to test the physical and psychological limits of the initiates. I believe that we should approach as much as possible to our limits, because only from there life can be seen through different eyes, and perhaps felt with a different kind of skin. QD: Where there any challenges to performing in the context of an art fair? CM: This was my first time participating in a fair doing a performance. It is a difficult experience because some people involved in organizing such events do not understand the nature or dimensions of a performance. For example, they wanted to reduce the performance which was suppose to last 21 hours, divided into seven days, only to three days for economic reasons ... I did not allow that to occur. If one wants to keep an initial idea and be consistent with what one is proposing, you have to be very firm. The relationship with the audience is also very different. I was surprised for example that people came to my performance and took selfies like if the performance was something to hang on a wall like a painting. QD: How did you connect with Pinta Miami? CM: I received an invitation by curator Jesús Fuenmayor to participate in his “Time Sensitive – Pinta Projects”. QD: I see that you have presented performances across the globe. In your experiences thus far, does the reception of your work change per location? Can you offer a few examples? CM: My work does not go in one direction, it is a fluid experience that changes depending on where I live, but also changes depending on the context where the performances take place. I think change gives richness and variety to my work, and better enables me to avoid common clichés. For example, on several occasions I have worked with the theme of emigration and immigration, but I address these topics from different perspectives each time. In Cuba, I made “Where My Feet Do Not Reach” in which I was interested in the idea of traveling through the subconscious of people who could not leave the island. For the Liverpool Biennial, I performed “Horror Vacui,” in which I dealt with the same issues from the point of view of the immigrant who is to assimilate into a different culture. In this context, I sewed onto my skin different parts of a classic English suit. In “Simiente,” a work I performed in Chicago, I wanted to unite in one body the blood of different immigrants living in Chicago, a city that has a large population of immigrants, but all segregated. QD: Is your practice exclusively rooted in performance? If so, what brought you to this methodology? CM: For the time being, I am working with my body and the possibilities that it brings as living matter. I am open to work with other media but it depends more on the ideas than a specific practice. For example, while I was living in Cuba in early 2007 I made a series of drawings with my blood. I would go to public clinics and ask the nurses to draw blood from me, clandestinely, so that I could use it in my work. Sometimes the nurses would refuse or they would not retrieve an adequate quanitity of the blood that I needed for my drawings so this created a big frustration for me. One day, I realiized that time and the body are extrememly important elements for the type of work I wanted to realize and so I decided to make my first performance. Since then, I’ve been working with the body and performance as my practice. QD: Are their any current performance practitioners that inspire you? CM: I really do not receive inspiration from performance artists, I am moved by the reality around me, I am inspired by human contradictions, social problems that I cannot believe have not been resolved yet like immigration, police brutality, racism, to just mention a few... I am inspired by writers like Eduardo Galeano or singers like Mercedes Sosa and Lola Flores. But I do think that there are perfomance artists whose work I find attractive given the content and the vivacity of the work. For example, Paulo Nazareth, Tania Bruguera, Regina Galindo, and Santiago Sierra. Special thanks to Martiel's translator: Jorge Sánchez images from Carlos Martiel's performance Dictadura at Pinta Miami, 2015. // images courtesy of Q. Dukes
Bushwick-based Wild Torus’ baccanale at The Pharmacy (one of Satellite Art Fair’s 2015 Miami art week locations and an actual former pharmacy) culminated in 5-7 naked performers writhing and wrestling (lube, paint and flour-covered) on a square dance floor covered in garbage bag-like plastic tarp. Viewer-participants (participation is encouraged at Wild Torus happenings) were offered black trash bags to cover their art-fair finery so that they could stand at close range without being completely dusted by flour or splattered with paint and lube, which was being doled out in plastic wine glasses by two young men with shaved heads. These attendants were encouraging in spite of what could be read as an intimidating appearance: tall, wiry, shirtless and vaguely punk, wearing jean cutoff shorts. They encouraged viewers to pour the fluids over the wrestling, contact-improvisational knot of bodies on the mat. Flour and fluids: poured on by turns, lubing up the orgiastic mass and then powdering it down. On the wall behind, a video projection of the live action spanned nearly from floor to ceiling, offering the option to experience the scene at hand as a mediated spectacle. This was Miami art week after all, and many of us who were visiting art fairs had spent plenty of time in recent days looking at and snapping shots of artworks through the screens of our smartphones. For a performance collective that specializes in viewer participation, the video projection was an apt comment on touristic looking vs. bodily engagement. Both were available modes of interaction with the work, though most viewers seemed to be compelled by the live action. One might rightly question the relevance of Wild Torus’ work more than 50 years after Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy, Allan Kaprow’s happenings and countless other examples of live art with multiple bodies. But for those of us too young to have attended these now historic performances, the relevance is that we get to experience such a performance in real time and in the flesh. It is one thing to know that such events have taken place in the history of art, and entirely another to negotiate the the social situation generated by the live action. And in spite of the orgiastic, chaotic character of Wild Torus’ performance, it is the subtle social negotiations that make it interesting. Within our culture of internet pornography, media spectacle, and a half-century of body art, the shock value of coed naked wrestling is negligible. What remains potent is the negotiation between Wild Torus members and audience members as they are invited to participate in the performance ritual. Does one feel coerced, uncomfortable, excited by the invitation to pour flour and paint on the performers? Does one put on the garbage bag poncho so that one can stand close to the action, or does one keep one’s distance so that one’s clothes and shoes stay clean? Does one, in fact, jump into the action on the mat? These options are all available for the viewer / participant. Even more than the content or choreography of the Wild Torus performance, it was the exposition of these choices that was of interest. The performance highlighted the fact that we are constantly negotiating our engagement with other bodies in space and that the boundaries of this engagement are up to us. - Alexandra Hammond, Miami Art Week Correspondent for Performance Is Alive |
CONTRIBUTORSIan Deleón Archives
July 2023
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