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Showing posts with label Kate Mahony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kate Mahony. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
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By the third day of the Totemic Festival, Sigmund Freud’s house was beginning to feel disarmingly familiar. When I’d first walked in on Friday evening everything seemed slightly saintly and hallowed, but by Sunday it felt like the artists owned the place. A pleasant avant-garde infection had spread through the timbers. The visitors to the museum had no choice but to breathe in this shifted atmosphere, having to contend with densely symbolic performance art taking place all around them. Quizzical looks flashed between these visitors, who were either amused or annoyed at the disturbances to their sunny afternoon out.
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
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Sigmund Freud was a odd chap with a lot of very strange ideas. Last night I was standing in his lounge peering at his desk. The room is carefully constructed to give the impression that the man himself has just stood up and left the room for a contemplative walk around his garden. The chair was pushed away with papers scattered across the desk and resting on top of them was a pair of small, thin round-rimmed glasses. It's rather poignant: the room is haunted by his absence.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
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From my first visit, one thing that always impressed me about LUPA is the willingness to engage with the local community. It's arguable that they don't have much of a choice; running a monthly (and occasionally pretty noisy) performance art event out of a garage surrounded by people's flats is the kind of thing that gets the council cracking down on you in a hurry. But I've never sensed that LUPA's community ties are an obligation; this engagement both a source of pride and something that strengthens the work on display. The world of performance art can seem impossibly insular at times; the same hundred or so artists performing almost exclusively to each other in a mutually congratulatory circlejerk.
Saturday, May 18, 2013
Saturday, May 18, 2013
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Boy this was a weird one. You should know that objectivity has officially taken a tumble over the cliff and lies in mangled pieces on the rocks below. This is going to take some explaining. So, I've been going to LUPA for over a year now and I usually head home afterwards with a brain brimming over new images, ideas and just plain enthusiasm. My friends get it in the neck; hearing me excitedly babble about rubber mermaid ladies, or a person with a big clay face, or guys maniacally dancing to Justice. This was the final LUPA in this form (there's a final fete on June 15th), so I finally convinced them to come with me. I wanted them to see what I've been doing with my Friday nights.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
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| Jordan McKenzie and Kate Mahony introducing LUPA 16. |
Another month, another LUPA. It's always nice to get to the back of James Campbell house - every time I go I seem to run into a few more familiar and friendly faces. Thankfully things had warmed up a bit since the last icily cold LUPA, and although the crowd looked slightly smaller than last time that's not such a bad thing as it's easier to get a better view. I was particularly eager to get there on time this week because Cluster Bomb Collective were first up. I've seen them performing at ]performance s p a c e [ in October, and having very much enjoyed that was looking forward to seeing what they'd come up with for LUPA.
Their performance began with Sebastian Hau-Walker standing in a pile of tyres, spraying his head with what smelt like (and maybe actually have been) WD-40. After this he popped on a copper wig, smearily applied some lipstick and began to throw the tyres around the performance area. Like some weird self-constructing army assault course he hopped slightly awkwardly from tyre to tyre. As he made his way around audience members had to hop out of the way to avoid the tyres being haphazardly tossed in their direction.
After his near circumnavigation of the space, he ended up standing next to the garage. The front of it had been covered in a white sheet, with a car faintly visible behind it. Faintly visible projections were playing across the white sheet. Soon we heard the engine of the car rumble into life, and then *vroom* the car burst through the sheet at a surprisingly quick speed into the performance area.
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| *VROOOOOM!* |
I always enjoy performances with a dangerous edge to them. It struck me on seeing this that this car pouncing out of the garage, if not driven perfectly, might well have pancaked a load of bohemian looking arty types in the audience. Seeing a perfectly normal looking car appear like this added a surprisingly surreal element to it. It seems obvious really, but using the LUPA garage as an actual garage is neatly and smartly funny considering that the rest of the time it's home for experimental art shows.
After making such a dramatic entrance, the car seemed as if it was enjoying the attention lavished upon it. Artists began to emerge one by one from it, climbing up and onto the roof, arranging bottles along the top of the LUPA garage. As Sebastian climbed up on the roof, two performers sat on the roof with a brown briefcase. It was filled with soil, and they began to throw handfuls of it over the car, the tiny rocks making a tinkling metallic noise as they pitter-pattered over the bonnet and windows.
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| Sebastian Hau-Walker |
Meanwhile, on the roof Sebastian seemed to be assembling himself into some kind of totemic, shaman-like car warrior. Clutching a length of rusty exhaust pipe in his hand, he began pouring wine into it. These ritualistic ceremonies gave everything else they did importance, the soil and the wine acting like a kind of baptism. Meanwhile, on the car, one of the other performers was rubbing some dried grass between her legs and the other was holding a bottle of wine against his crotch as it if were a glass cock. The contrast between the organic nature of the grass stuffed between a performers legs, the soil they were thrashing around in on the car and the wine now being tossed upon them from an exhaust pipe gave it connotations of some fucked up car-fertility rite.
I was later told that the inspiration for this piece was J. G. Ballard's book 'Crash'. As Ballard said:
"A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer goods, status — all these in one event. I myself see the car crash as a tremendous sexual event really: a liberation of human and machine libido (if there is such a thing)."
This seems to fit pretty well in what I've just seen. The performance made me think of tribal cultures with animist religions; the veneration of spiritual essences within animals, plants and inanimate objects. If there were a modern animism then surely it'd make more sense to worship the spirit of things we actually have connections with like the smartphone, the internet or, indeed the car rather than abstractions like wolves, deer and eagles. This is one of those performances that I enjoy the more I think about it. From my perspective I saw the transformation of a bog-standard hatchback from a utilitarian tool for getting from A to B into a fetishistic religious object, a being worthy of sacrifice, to be feared and loved in equal measure.
That was great, so it's a pity that the following three performances weren't quite up to scratch. The second performance was by Eugene Watson, who read a short prose piece about his body mutating in strange ways. This was done wearing a luchador mask. At the end of the piece, two other men in luchador masks taped a picture to the door of the garage.
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| Eugene Watson |
This piece on body horror, coupled with the 'Crash' inspired themes of the first performance began to give the night a rather Cronenbergy atmosphere. My problem with this piece wasn't with the prose, which from what I could hear sounded quite well written, it's that I don't think that the luchador masks added anything thematically, and the piece of art they put up was very underwhelming.
But this seemed like a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride compared to Sylwester Piasecki's performance. He stood on a stack of free London newspapers and gradually picked them up and put them in another pile on top of the garage. I suppose there's something here about the way the information in these newspapers are processed through a person, but goddamn this was tedious to watch. On and on it went, the only silver lining being that we had a pretty good idea when it was going to finish. When it did finish he tipped the pile of newspapers onto himself. I breathed a sigh of relief that it was finally over.
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| Exactly as interesting as it looks. |
Far more fun was Rosa Farber's piece. She took us on a little walk around the LUPA garage, telling us a little story of her life. The idea fuelling it was how she always felt on the 'left' rather on the 'right'. The way she tells it, her popular, confident friends always seemed to be moving in one way, and her in another slightly different way. Being on the 'right' is to socially fit in, and to be on the 'left' is to be a misfit. As we followed Rosa around, taking a series of left turns she took us through her life, up to studying art now, and how she's felt through these different stages.
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| Rosa Farber mid-story |
I quite enjoyed this, and Rosa is certainly charismatic and interesting to listen to. But it ended quite abruptly for my tastes. She'd built a pretty interesting narrative, and without any clear ending the performance seemed a little unfinished. But then, I guess this is her life story, and that obviously isn't over. Also, on a purely practical level, if you were near the back of the group following Rose, you wouldn't get to hear anything at all. But then if you drag your feet you deserve all you get.
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| A mysterious box. |
Thankfully the final piece by Ipek Köprülü was a lot more interesting. A large box with a video screen on top was carried out. We gathered around the box to have a look what was on it. It seemed to be showing closeup pictures of fish. Shots of their milky flesh, the silvery scales of the skin and so on. After a few minute of this the box moved. Slowly, gradually a black rubberised hand creeped out of it. Soon, a gimp-masked head poked out, eventually revealed a black, rubber mermaid, who lay on the asphalt preening herself and posing for the cameras.
I haven't got the faintest idea what this meant, but damn it looked cool. The lack of any identifying features on the mergimp really added up to a sense of the alien. The way everyone crowded around to have a close look reminded me of being in a zoo, or perhaps a freak show. But she had such tight control of her body language and was so utterly confident that even when wrapped in tight black rubber, she still carried herself with dignity. As she was carried off back to the depths of the garage we applauded.
Not the best LUPA I've seen, but like always definitely worth coming to. Even the stuff that's not so great is at least interesting, and very worthwhile watching. Looking forward to LUPA 17 in March!
As usual, if I've gotten the names mixed up please let me know in the comments.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013
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| Mirei Yazawa and Marius Hermansen. |
It was with a heavy heart that I missed December's LUPA I'm acutely aware that there are a finite amount of these things, something underlined by last night. It was freezingly cold, the kind of temperature that chills so much it hurts. You'd think it'd be difficult to corral crowds to a nondescript garage in Bethnal Green on a night like this, but apparently word has spread far and wide about how fun LUPA is, and it was packed by numbers few other nights of this type can muster. This creates a bit of a problem: if there's too many people there it's difficult for everyone to get a good view of what's going on. The performances are usually so interesting that people huddle forwards to get the best picture, creating a bit of a crush. If you want a decent view of what's going on, you either have to get lucky or fight your way to the front. Perhaps LUPA is beginning to become a slight victim of its popularity.
But anyway, I'm not here to talk about crowd control, I'm here to talk about the performances. First up was the team of Mirei Yazawa, Marius Hermansen, Oda Edjar Starheim and Øystein Monsen. Their piece took the form of a kind of loosely narrative interpretive dance. Yazawa, dressed entirely in white, kneeled on the floor and placed her head inside a large unfired clay urn. One of the team (I'm not sure who) moved around her, massaging her outsize clay head until her features were gradually exposed. When she was freed of her clay prison she rolled around on the ground for a bit as her partner smeared the remnants of the urn onto his head, eventually dancing with each other. Throughout this, a frankly sick as all hell soundtrack was provided by Oda Edjar Starheim singing softly, remixed by Øystein Monsen with a Kaoss pad into a spooky but remarkably danceable song.
It was a quintessential LUPA performance, overtly strange, with no obvious meaning but ripe for interpretation. The relationship between Yagawa and her partner seemed irresistibly like that between creation and creator. The first thing that sprang to mind was the relationship between Dr Frankenstein and his monster: the dance developed a nicely antagonistic tone as it progressed. But, thinking a bit more literally about things, this was the birthing of a woman from clay. The creation of humanity from clay is something found in most of the world's major faiths, extinct and current. Perhaps the most compelling example is the story of Pandora, so this could be viewed as an inverting of an inherently misogynist bit of mythology. The flavour of these universal myths added a nice layer of gravitas to a very enjoyable performance.
Next up was a short comedic song by John Walter. He came out dressed in a green onesie with bobbles stuck over the outside of it. The song concerned someone called Hilary Devey, one of the Dragons on the TV show 'Dragon's Den'. I'd never heard of her before, but I have seen a load of parodies of the show so I guess she's one of the rude rich people the contestants show their inventions to.
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| John Walter |
Something about this rubbed me the wrong way. Not because I didn't know the person he was singing about, not because the song was overtly filthy, but because it felt a little too calculatedly weird and 'monkey cheese' random for my liking. The difference between a piece that's effortlessly strange and one that wants to be strange is difficult to define. But as they say, "I know it when I see it". Dressing up in a weird costume and singing a song about how you'd like to cum on a reality TV star's tits reeks of being desperate to shock without actually having anything to say.
Moving swiftly on, the next performance by Selina O started brilliantly. We gathered around a group of singers in pastel hoodies, and Selina instructed us to all whisper the backing vocals to Soul II Soul's 1989 single 'Back to Life (However Do You Want Me)'. Hearing the entire crowd whispering "back to life back to reality" over and over again created an eerie cultish atmosphere. I was really getting into it a few minutes in and could have gone on all night. Embarrassingly, I was enjoying myself whispering in unison so much that I wasn't paying attention to the actual performers, so I'm not entirely sure what happened.
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| Selina O and her singers |
I'd been expecting an a cappella rendition of the entire song, maybe with some neat vocal emulation of instruments. Sadly this wasn't to be, what we got instead were some abstract vocal sounds made over our chanting. Now, I know that you write about what you have seen and not what you wanted to see, but even so I was a little disappointed that this didn't seem to go anywhere, eventually fizzling out a bit when Selina O told us that the performance was over. I had a great time whispering along to late 80s R&B though.
After this, Nadia Berri blew up a big red balloon that eventually went "BANG". Sometimes simplicity is best. It started as about beach ball size within the LUPA garage, and grew bigger and bigger until it was bulging out of the front. The tension in waiting for it to pop, or wondering if it was going to pop was ridiculous. I didn't want to take my eye off it in case I missed the explosion. At one point someone hid behind me, hoping I'd shield them from whatever catastrophe was surely about to occur. When it actually did pop it was a little bit of an anticlimax. I'm not sure what this was supposed to mean (if anything), but sometimes the emotion and tension you feel watching something as simple as a balloon expanding beyond all reasonable boundaries is good enough on its own.
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| BANG |
The final performance was by Adam James and friends. They trooped out a garage in rags with disturbing melted burn victim masks on, some of them with deformed fake hands and outsized monster feet. As they lined up in a semi-circle, four beers were placed in front of them as well as shots of vodka. A weird thundery cylinder was twirled, apparently being the signal for them to start frantically quaffing their drinks while stripping to their underwear. I should repeat at this point that it was desperately freezing. I don't envy anyone who has to stand around in their knickers on night this cold. Towards the end, the cylinder was twirled, apparently functioning as a signal to stop. Then, a hairy man in the centre of the semi-circle drunkenly sang his way through an off-key rendition of 'Amazing Grace', sounding a little bit like the dying HAL in '2001: A Space Odyssey'.
The rendition may have shaky, shivery and punctuated with the odd burp here and there but it was surprisingly moving, especially so when on the last verse everyone spontaneously joined in. These are the kinds of moments that only LUPA seems to be able to provide; an unprompted demonstration of where our group sympathies lie. Sometimes its easy to take this sort of thing for granted; like a frog in a slowly heating pot of water you become accustomed to the weird. This performance was bizarre enough to let this mask slip for a moment, what on earth must this look like from the outside? A hundred or so people singing a hymn while a bunch of drunken deformed freaks shiver amongst a pile of rags and discarded half drunk beers - pretty damn odd I'd imagine Regardless I enjoy being on the inside looking out rather than on the outside looking in.
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| "AMAAAZING GRAAACE" |
I was very glad when it ended, not because I didn't enjoy the hell out of it, but because I couldn't feel my extremities (usually a bad sign). Plus, I felt really sorry for one of the performers who'd had to stand in her underwear for the entire song. She was shivering and shaking like she'd been plugged into the mains. A pretty damn great LUPA, although I'm pining for some warmer weather for the next one.
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Saturday, November 24, 2012
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| A happy LUPA audience. And no, I don't know what that child is holding. |
First up was a bit of a departure for LUPA; a full set by a band; 'WE'. Usually LUPA performances are by necessity fairly spartan affairs. Artists only have so much time to set up, and only so much space to store their props and equipment. This is probably a good thing; it's always a good maxim not to rely too much on technology for a performance. If something can screw up it will screw up.
There were four people in the band; two drummers up front, each with a single drum to beat on; two keyboard players at the back, one of which occasionally played bass or sax; all of them were singing at various points and frequently swapping instruments. I don't really want to categorise them too quickly, but broadly they play avant garde synth pop, with a (possibly intentionally) fragile and shaky amateurish feel to it. The music reminds me of early 80s experimental synth bands, hearkening back to a time when sounds like this were impossibly futuristic, the soundtrack of a brave new world to come. A good example (and one leapt into my mind during the show) is a scene from the brilliantly weird film 'Liquid Sky'.
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| 'WE' |
Unfortunately there are a few technical problems to the performance. The drumming is sometimes hesitant and nervy, as are their voices. Throughout this performance the band sing in chorus, and occasionally someone will come in little bit early, or hit a drum when I don't think they were supposed to. Fortunately in the context of LUPA I'm more than able to ignore the fact that someone's a bit unrehearsed or the occasional screwup, there's a tacit understanding here that the message or statement is more important than being slick. If this performance was part of a gig line up in a venue I might not be so sympathetic. But we're standing in a car park watching a band performing out of a garage. I can forgive a bit of scrappiness.
'WE' are one of the more interesting and eye-catching bands I've seen playing of late. They wear Klaus Nomi inspired tops with the attendant huge over-exaggerated shoulders and shiny obsidian boxes on their heads. While their sound might be synthy, they look liked they're aiming for a warped form of pop music; lyrically they sing extremely generalised platitudes at the audience, but appropriately enough given that they're named 'WE', they sing in plural: "We are here for you", "We love you" and so on. This is the era of Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj et al and there has been a resurgence of individualism in pop, but WE's outfits serve to wipe almost every identifying mark from the band. Here it's difficult even to tell which gender the performers identify as, the way they sing together means all personal affectations or flair have been surgically excised. It's a conscious roboticisation of pop, something that a sinister hivemind trying to emulate popular culture might try and produce to lure people in.
It's striking stuff, and if they really are trying to depersonalise pop they mostly succeed. At A six or seven song set made this a much longer performance than most LUPA sets. By the fourth song I thought they'd made their point, my feet were starting to get a bit numb and I was wondering what else was in store for the night. But this was a great way to start off a LUPA, and I did find myself feeling a bit sorry for whoever had to follow a performance as elaborate, fun and interesting as this.
One of the first things I'd seen when rounding the corner of James Campbell House was a paddling pool being filled with cold water. It was a cold night and immediately I pitied the performance artist who was going to end up in that. There's an unpleasant sadistic element to watching some performance art, a desire to watch some poor bastard making themselves miserable for my amusement.
The crowd gathered in a circle around the pool as (someone who I think was) Verity Whiter climbed into the pool holding an oar and began to splash the water about. The audience, fearful of getting wet, collectively took a step back. She put the oar down, bent over and began to splash the water with her hands, creating a halo of wet concrete around the pool. After a bit of this, Kate Mahoney joined her and they splashed together, then picked up the oars and silently walked off around the corner. The crowd remained silent, figuring perhaps there was more to this, but it soon became apparent that there wasn't and eventually some polite applause broke out.
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| Verity Whiter splashing about, looking a little bit like she's in Tron. |
I don't know exactly what to make of this. My first reaction was to think that they hadn't made as good use of such an interesting and exciting prop as they could have. A paddling pool full of cold water is dangerous. Admittedly it's dangerous in a safe way, but to an audience it's chaos and misery wrapped in blue plastic. What if we got water on us? The horror! We'd be all cold and wet! That would suck! It's November! Admittedly, worrying about getting a bit of water splashed on you is hardly the stuff that white knuckle nightmares are made of but even so nobody wants wet socks.
Throughout I kept expecting something big to happen, some definitive end to the performance. I think everyone else was too, which is why nobody knew whether to clap or not at the end. Perhaps this performance was a bit overshadowed by what preceded it, or maybe and understandably the artists involved didn't want to spend too long kneeling down in cold water on a chilly November evening. On the plus side, having returned home I find this performance does look very pretty under flash photography, so it at least has that going for it.
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| Kate Mahony soon joined her. |
After this I noticed that a long line of chairs had been laid out along the front of the line of garages. My immediate inclination is to get involved in whatever is going on, so I tried to make a beeline for them. But I got there too late and they'd all been occupied, presumably by people like me with chilly numb feet. As it turned out this was for the best. Before this next performance started, someone started shouting at us from the balconies above us. A very happy, friendly and slightly drunk woman was shouting down at us that we all looked beautiful. Inside the LUPA bubble it's easy to become a little blase and accustomed to bizarre stuff happening. This is why I always like it when random people wander around the corner to find, say, someone covered in snails. She took a photo of everyone and then announced her intentions to come down and join us. It's little happy and inclusive moments like this that prevent LUPA from being just another snottily serious art event with a stick wedged firmly up its arse.
Once these seats were occupied, Ann-Marie LeQuesne marched out in front of the crowd to explain what was going to happen. She launched into a long explanation of what she wanted the audience to do. I was a little apprehensive at this poin as all of this felt awfully complicated. My section of the audience was to march out in front of those seated, and repeatedly take particular kinds of bows in sequence to soak up the applause. Then we were to leave the 'stage' and then wait for a few "heartbeats" and come back on for more applause. Also there was something about a recording of a children's choir which I didn't really understand.
It's very strange how rewarding and uplifting it can be getting rapturous applause even though you haven't done anything to deserve it. As I stepped out in front of the crowd to greet their cheers I almost instantly lapsed into a faux-luvvie mental state and body language and began milking the crowd. I waved and cajoled them into further applause, behaving like a ridiculous egotistical applause-junkie. No wonder people say they can get addicted to this sort of thing. Even in wholly artificial form it's kind of a rush.
We stepped back for the applause and bows multiple times. This cheering and clapping seemed to loosen up the crowd a bit (that or they had gotten a bit drunk by now). The whooping kept going, all of sudden everyone was pitching in and it became a little difficult to stop the process. It's nice to see everyone smiling and enjoying some good vibes (even if to a large extent the whole process was play acted.
When Jordan and Kate stepped back in front of this crowd to announce the next act they duly received some of this applause, although I suppose they are at least deserving of it. I thought it was very strange how genuine and warm this whole experience felt, given that everyone was wildly applauding something that hadn't happened. Is this act some kind of social ritual that has a power of its own? Applause of some sort seems like a universal human reaction to events, maybe LeQuesne recognises this and has worked out that she can tap into it as and when she needs it.
The final performer was Joey Ryken. In a cloud of smoke, lit dramatically from below he ponderously made his way out of the garage. He was dressed all in black, with a very strange mask on, looking like a bargain basement Darth Vader. Just as I was wondering whether we were supposed be taking this dead seriously he popped the mask off and said "just kidding". It's a performance art joke! And a good one at that. Just like that he won the audience over.
Ryken is a very easy man to like, his stage persona is at once overly serious about what he's doing as well as self-mocking and ever so slightly innocently incompetent. It's a good mix, and made for more of a comedy act rather than what you'd expect out of performance art. The subject of this performance was the CIA's MKULTRA mind control program; Ryken wanted to try and reproduce one of their experiments in manipulating peoples emotions using music.
To this end he pulled two volunteers from the crowd, both strangers to each other and placed them inside a mirror box. There were two holes cut into the edge for their heads, and the mirror effect meant that there was nowhere for these volunteers to look except at the other person. Thrown into this disorientating atmosphere was a set of rapidly flashing LED lights placed on top of the box, and a large strobe light that Ryken himself was holding up. The soundtrack for the test was 'More Than A Feeling' by Boston, and when the ends of the box behind the men's heads were plugged up by large speakers the experiment could begin.
What made all this work so well is that Ryken takes it all so seriously. He has a grim, determined look on his face the entire time and gets hilariously indignant when his test subjects begin enjoying themselves and dancing. I found myself wishing I could see what it was like for the volunteers inside the box. As they danced they repeatedly and accidentally pulled the audio lead out of the player, which looked annoying for Ryken but proved to us that these people genuinely were undergoing some form of sensory deprivation. If this performance was just a comedy skit it would have been a success, but the fact that underneath all the humour there is something (very, very vaguely) serious going on makes it feel worthwhile. When the two volunteers emerged they actually did look disorientated and bit confused, it was oddly touching when they hugged each at the end of the test.
I think this was the best LUPA has ever been. There was some serious top flight stuff tonight, performances that make you feel privileged to turn up behind this garage in Bethnal Green and get to watch all this stuff for free. I don't know where else I'd go to watch performance art this eclectic, good natured and (for all it's ridiculousness) largely unpretentious.
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| Ann-Marie LeQuesne |
It's very strange how rewarding and uplifting it can be getting rapturous applause even though you haven't done anything to deserve it. As I stepped out in front of the crowd to greet their cheers I almost instantly lapsed into a faux-luvvie mental state and body language and began milking the crowd. I waved and cajoled them into further applause, behaving like a ridiculous egotistical applause-junkie. No wonder people say they can get addicted to this sort of thing. Even in wholly artificial form it's kind of a rush.
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| The audience. |
When Jordan and Kate stepped back in front of this crowd to announce the next act they duly received some of this applause, although I suppose they are at least deserving of it. I thought it was very strange how genuine and warm this whole experience felt, given that everyone was wildly applauding something that hadn't happened. Is this act some kind of social ritual that has a power of its own? Applause of some sort seems like a universal human reaction to events, maybe LeQuesne recognises this and has worked out that she can tap into it as and when she needs it.
The final performer was Joey Ryken. In a cloud of smoke, lit dramatically from below he ponderously made his way out of the garage. He was dressed all in black, with a very strange mask on, looking like a bargain basement Darth Vader. Just as I was wondering whether we were supposed be taking this dead seriously he popped the mask off and said "just kidding". It's a performance art joke! And a good one at that. Just like that he won the audience over.
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| Joey Ryken |
To this end he pulled two volunteers from the crowd, both strangers to each other and placed them inside a mirror box. There were two holes cut into the edge for their heads, and the mirror effect meant that there was nowhere for these volunteers to look except at the other person. Thrown into this disorientating atmosphere was a set of rapidly flashing LED lights placed on top of the box, and a large strobe light that Ryken himself was holding up. The soundtrack for the test was 'More Than A Feeling' by Boston, and when the ends of the box behind the men's heads were plugged up by large speakers the experiment could begin.
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| The volunteers inside the box, with two helpers making sure the whole thing holds together. |
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| There was a lot of fiddling during this performance. |
So I was a little sad to find out that apparently LUPA has an expiry date, and will be finishing the coming summer. This seems very far away right now, but I'm sure it'll roll around quicker than I anticipate. But then this knowledge just makes me determined to attend every time it's on and enjoy it as much as is humanly possible.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
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Transplanting the outlaw and the transgressive into the bosom of the establishment is a tricky piece of surgery. But tricky though it may be, this is what was attempted at ‘LIPA!’ (Lock In Performance Art). LIPA! is an offshoot of ‘LUPA’ (Lock Up Performance Art), a monthly gathering I enjoy attending that takes place behind a block of flats in Bethnal Green (previous reviews here, here and here). One of the main reasons I enjoy it so much is the hint of the secret and unexpected, the transformation of a dull and featureless bit of concrete into a space where societal norms are temporarily suspended. At LUPA there are no rules (or at least the illusion of no rules), and there's no way to predict what you’re going to see next. It could be a pyrotechnic musical instrument, a superhero walking across a roof in skis or simply two oiled up guys in their pants brutally beating the hell out of each other. It's a special secret and is beautifully and subtly seedy.
So does this survive the journey into the beating heart of imperial, monumental London? Can LUPA retain its personality and punkishness when enveloped in the aluminium brushed and spotlight lit Institute of Contemporary Arts? Unfortunately the answer appears to be no.
I arrived just before 8, weaving and dashing my way through the Trafalgar Square pedestrian traffic, hoping I wouldn’t arrive too late and be locked out. When I first heard about the concept of the ‘lock in’ I became irrationally excited. It’s always been an ambition of mine to be involved in a lock in at a pub. I figured if you were going to try and transplant the LUPA atmosphere to the ICA you’d need to create a hermetically sealed bubble, somewhere that is both the ICA and also LUPA simultaneously.
Unfortunately, what I quickly realised is that this space wasn’t hermetic at all. It was barely even a bubble. I’d presumed that the idea was that LIPA! would take control of the bar area, and be allowed to use it for their own ends for an hour. What actually happened is that although Kate Mahony was dramatically holding one of the doors closed, people were free to enter and exit through the door next to her. My excitement deflated a bit upon realising that people could come and go as they pleased, which nullified the interesting idea of being part of a captive audience.
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| The bar in quieter times. |
I took a table with some friends near the bar upstairs, got some drinks and waited for the fun to start. I know that the artists involved here are capable of grand, bold and dramatic statements, so I figured all I had to do was sit back, sip my (quite expensive) pint and take in the performances. Straightaway I felt the atmosphere was tempered a little bit by the fact that a lot of people were having their dinner around me. It looked like tapas was on the menu and waitresses bearing platters of food zipped around and people politely chatted over their dinner. To put it mildly, it didn’t seem like a crowd ready to enthusiastically engage with performance art.
First up was, I think, Daniella Valz-Gen. The performance began with a game of Chinese whispers, a nice way of uniting a pretty disparate crowd. I was a bit annoyed that after I’d passed on my whisper it didn’t seem to go anywhere. The person I’d whispered it to tried to tell someone who was busy tucking into some kind of hummus based dish. She looked non-plussed and returned to her dinner rather than pass the message along. What a spoilsport! After this, Valz-Gen stood at the other end of the bar and performed a short monologue. At the beginning she explained that she can’t speak very loudly, so we all have to be as quiet as possible. The room quietened down a bit, and the only sound was dinner eating with the attendant clinks, scrapes and chewy squishes. But there was still too much background noise to be able to hear what she was saying. Was this the point of the performance? Whether it was or not the main emotion this aroused in me was frustration. I was frustrated with the crowd for not quite being quiet enough, and (perhaps unfairly) frustrated with the artist for being so quiet! One of the bigger problems I encountered in the upstairs area was that with so many people watching, seated at tables, it was hard to move around the upstairs area without either blocking anyone’s view or sitting down at someone’s table who was having dinner. So I sat, ears straining at the back of the room trying desperately to hear what was being said. All too quickly it was over, but I did later notice the artist walking through the crowds at the bar, rubbing her chest and belly and as far as I could see being mostly ignored by those queuing up to buy drinks.
Many of the artists decided not try and overpower the atmosphere of the bar, but to insinuate themselves subtly into the crowd and gently subvert things. So moving around the two bar areas were JB&TheBubbles dressed in skimpy tight fitting black outfits. They carried around trays of cheap corn-based snacks, which as far as I could tell consisted of Space Raiders, Onion Rings and some kind of sugary puffed corn. I thought this was the best thing there, but then I’ve always had a soft spot for performances where you can eat part of the art. Also I hadn’t had any dinner, so by the time these people were handing out crisps I was a bit peckish. I may have indulged a little too much though, at one point they just left the tray on the table in front of me and wandered off for a bit.
It sounds a bit facile but of everything there this was the one thing that properly captured the something of the spirit of LUPA. These cheap, corn based snacks are unpretentious, tasty and inescapably proletariat. I doubt very much that a Space Raider, Quarterback or Transform-A-Snack has ever travelled down the gullet of David Cameron or George Osborne, so seeing them on a silver platter being served in central central London, where the Important things happen was rather refreshing. It also functioned as reflection of the bar itself, during the piece, kitchen staff at the ICA were busy delivering the highest in bar-based Saturday night cuisine to tables. Of all the things here, it went furthest to cocking a proper snook at the ICA and all too briefly LUPA felt like a subversive oppositional element.
Unfortunately similar projects on the same sort of wavelength didn’t work quite as well. There were a few people standing around in t-shirts that read ‘Pose1’ on them. As the performance went on, and as far as I could see from my quite limited view of the space, they seemed to be moving around the bar striking poses. If this all sounds quite vague, that’s because it was by this point pretty hard to be able to tell what was going on. I’d realised by now that I wasn’t going to be able to see much from my table, so I moved to the top of the stairs. This resulted in me being quite brusquely told to move on by ICA security but when I went downstairs it was a bit too crowded to be able to see.
Frequently throughout the latter half of the night I felt like I was glimpsing bits of performances, a few seconds here or there before they performer was drowned out by the crowd in terms of vision or sound. At one point our table was approached by John William Fletcher asking us to write out names on a piece of paper. The noise in the bar was a bit too loud to understand what he wanted them for, but I figured there’d be some kind of worthwhile payoff. Later I saw Fletcher pull a piece of paper from the hat, and speak for a moment. Once again the bar was too loud to be able to tell what was being said, or to really see properly what then happened. A similar experience happened when Selina O, dressed as a clown came to our table and handed us a card that said “Girl Clown says: you are my best friend”. She then left. I get the feeling that maybe there was a lot I was missing out on, but whenever I went to the downstairs part of the bar it felt like there were things going on upstairs, and whenever I was upstairs performances were going on downstairs. No matter where I was in the place I was missing out on something! Very frustrating.
Eventually with a fizzle rather than a bang it ended and people began to trickle out into the night. A bar on a Saturday night is always going to be a tough place to hold an art intervention, and the geography and division of the ICA bar makes it even tougher. The promotional material explained that the artists would be “taking over the bar”, unfortunately the opposite happened and the bar took over LUPA. It was an interesting experiment, and being given carte blanche to perform in a crowded gallery bar is a great opportunity for exposure. But the problem was that even here at the ICA with a crowd that must be at least open to the idea of performance art, a lot of people there just didn't seem to care that much and this lack of engagement was poisonous to the performances I saw. On top of this, the layout of the place made it practically impossible to get a decent idea of what was happening at any one time. By the time it was over I deeply missed the simplicity and unpretentiousness of the garage in Bethnal Green.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Sunday, October 21, 2012
- 5 Comments
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| Kate Mahony and Jordan McKenzie |
After the long summer break the regularity of LUPA is making these autumn months seem very short. It’s only been three weeks since the last one but it feels like much less. Even so, there is still the thrill of the unknown and transgressive that I always get when I walk into the car park behind James Campbell House.
I’d been working in Liverpool all week, and left there in the middle of a beautiful afternoon, with sunlight gently dappling over the Mersey. As the train neared London clouds gathered. Passing the meniscus of the M25 a steady, oppressive drizzle began, which escalated quickly into mean, sour-faced rain. But even with the misery of the world outside, and even with my tired, weeks end work fatigue I never once considered skipping out and staying in my nice warm house. I've been to enough of these things now that I don’t think it’s really possible for me to have a bad time here.
Umbrella in hand I headed down to Bethnal Green to find a slightly smaller crowd than usual. Had the weather pared the audience down to the hardcore LUPAnauts? Was the glut of people last week purely because the weather was nice? I guess maybe the attraction of standing in a chilly, exposed concrete car park watching avant-garde performance art is limited to a select few, and if it’s raining those few become fewer. I kind of respect LUPA a bit for refusing to cancel if things are a bit wet and I’d like to think that literally whatever the weather they’d press on. Watching performance art in the middle of a raging blizzard for example, would be amazing.
Adding to the slightly diminished atmosphere was the fact that apparently the council had sent some builders to work in the same area. So, just nestled to the side of the performance space was a cordoned off area, with people in high visibility jackets working away. I generally enjoy it when the real-world intrudes upon these events – I’d like to be in their shoes. To round the corner of a block of flats and find something like LUPA going on must feel like you’ve accidentally tripped the curtain into the Twilight Zone.
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| James L.S. and Sean Francis Burns |
After the usual friendly introduction from Jordan McKenzie and Kate Mahony we’re onto the performances. First on was Sean Francis Burns and someone in a hoodie whose name I don't know (please comment if you can fill me in). They stood on a wooden palette, and Burns recited what sounded like a manifesto of performance art. I’m not educated enough to recognise exactly where it came from. As the manifesto was read out, the person standing next to Burns gently coughed a few times, first quietly, then more loudly. It looked realistic, and I had one of those nervous moments where you wonder if everything is going wrong on stage. But as the manifesto kept being read, the coughing became ever more dramatic and serious until he was doubled over and wheezing. When the recitation finished, they silently left the space.
I’m not entirely sure whether understanding of this piece hinges on whether you recognise what Burns is reading out. It certainly seemed important. For all I know, this could be the performance art equivalent of reading out the lyrics to ‘Yesterday’ to a crowd of Beatles fans. I was able to work out that it was a manifesto setting out what performance art can be, how it can work and what kinds of thing it’s able to achieve though. So armed with this information, what’s the significance of the violent coughing fit going on next to it? Is her reaction a condemnation and rejection of what's being recited, a quick visual and dramatic shorthand for how they feel about this definition of performance art? When I watch things like this I’m well aware that there’s going to be references that go over my head, but even if I don’t understand what’s being reacted to, I like to think I can analyse this reaction in isolation on its own merits. But here, the stimulus and the reaction were so intrinsically linked that I felt I could only appreciate this piece on a very basic, dramatic level. I’d never say that performance art should be accessible (or ‘should’ be anything for that matter), but something about this felt exclusionary to those not in the know. A private joke for the in-crowd, and that rubs me the wrong way just a bit.
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| Lynn Lu - Walking the Line (I didn't get a picture of her at LUPA as I felt that whipping a camera out in the car would have been a bit intrusive. |
Next on the bill was Elena Coleman, but before her there was something else I felt I had to do. Throughout the hour Lynn Lu was giving private, personal performances in a car to the side of the lock up. This is the kind of thing I love. There’s something about a one-to-one performance that sucks you in, your reactions and input feel almost as important as what the artist is doing. So as soon as I heard that this was going on, I knew come hell or high water that I was getting into that car.
I got to find Lynn Lu sitting in the driver's seat, she immediately asked me to tell her about a romantic moment I’d had in a car. Part of what I like about these one-on-one performances is that there's an unavoidable and immediate air of intimacy between two strangers. On some level we’re performing for each other, so who is the artist, and who is the audience? It's a neat, quick and effective way to create a fun feeling of liminality.
Put on the spot I told a tragic story of romantic post-festival smooching; a sunny drive through the countryside ruined when my animal loving girlfriend ran over a cat, which became plaited around the axle of her car. The romantic mood vanished as she watched, horrified as it twitched its last on the tarmac. I explained how even with the obvious horror in front of me, some deep, sick part of my brain began curling my lips up into a giggle at the sight and my pathetic efforts to hide this by coughing. She got annoyed, and we later broke up as a result. I thought it wasn’t too bad a story considering I knitted it together on the spot from bits and pieces that have happened to me and others. After I told her this she told me to close my eyes, put headphones on me and played me a short song. Then she smeared some kind of sesame seed tasting sweet stuff on my lips and I got out of the car.
Now, if I say I felt a bit short changed afterwards I mean it in the nicest possible way. I enjoy being placed into situations where I’ve got improvise something in a hurry, it reminds me of drama training. It’s a good way of harnessing some inbuilt creativity without having any time to worry about whether it’s worthwhile or not. So on this level, I felt pretty good about myself that I could concoct an alright monologue with a beginning, middle and end with no preparation. On the other hand I stepped into that car, and pretty much did all the work. The artist’s entire role here was to ask me a question, play me a song and then rub something on my lips. Later in the evening, I asked someone else who’d been in there what they’d said, and they said that Lu told them a story about her life. So, maybe I missed the point of this a bit with my jabbering about the darkly humorous side of roadkill.
Even so, I did deeply enjoy the experience. I’m a big fan of pieces which engage senses that wouldn’t normally be stimulated at once. The sudden and unexpected sweet taste in your mouth at the end was a sensual and faintly erotic experience, a jolt of surprise as you feel fingers touch your lips. Taste is something that is relatively rarely exploited as a medium for artistic expression, but worked very well here.
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| Elena Coleman & snails |
Upon exiting the car I was dismayed to find out that Elena Coleman's performance had already started, and even worse, looked great! She was speaking in the centre of the space with her arms covered in snails. I had joined mid-way through a monologue that I didn't quite get the gist of, which was a pity. With a polka dot black and white top, bright blue lipstick and her gastropod assistants she cut quite a figure. I later gathered that this monologue concerned her efforts to grow tomatoes, and how she was stymied by an invasion of snails.
The snail is very much a creature of contrasts. It is soft and hard at the same time. Protected by a hard carapace and simultaneously tragically fragile under a misplaced human foot. Despised by gardeners but loved by chefs. Coleman handled her snails with what felt like maternal care. They slithered up and down her arms, and whenever one would lose it's grip she'd gently bend down, pick it up and put it back on course. It's interesting to try and view this from the point of view of the snail; a pilgrim travelling over the surface of the vast human body, unable to understand where it is as one whole, much as we the audience are only seeing a small part of the artist's history and personality through her monologue.
As the performance finished she gently peeled the snails from her skin and placed them against the wall of the lock-up. I meant to check afterwards if they'd survived the rest of the night, but I forgot. I hope they didn't get crushed by mistake.
Remember those builders I told you about? It was at this moment in the night that I found out that they weren't builders at all! It was artist Corinna Till who, with an assistant had been masquerading as builders all night while secretly setting up various pieces of art behind our very backs. It's an interesting trick to play on the audience, relying on the psychology of hiding in plain sight. It's a well known confidence trick that if you look like you belong somewhere then you can pretty much get away with whatever you want. It's also a bit of class commentary on the LUPA audience. The artists were in the garb of manual workers, and until they'd been revealed as artists they were all but invisible to us. When I first saw them I was a tiny bit annoyed, how dare the council work here and now, during LUPA of all things. As the other artists performed it felt like we'd come to a consensus that everyone was were going to pretend they weren't there, to treat them like black-clad stagehands in a play.
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| Corinna Till and someone whose name I don't know. |
It's darkly ironic that we find it so easy to ignore people outside of this middle-class arty bubble, especially as they're wearing high-visibility gear. For me this performance shone a spotlight on our perceptions of who is performing worthwhile tasks. While we're cooing over someone standing on their head reciting Ulysses, there goes someone unheralded and ignored who's fixing the plumbing in the corner. I always find it a little dangerous when art becomes too recursive and begins eating its own tail. For one thing it makes things impenetrable to those not 'in the know', with the eventual effect that even if you do have something clear, valid and artistic to say, no-one's going to see it. So when our viewpoint shifts and we suddenly perceive these builders as artists it's a neat way of underlining a simple maxim: don't disappear up your own arse.
A maxim that neatly applies to the final piece of the night. Alex Bradley's piece involved a small essay being projected onto a sheet, while he stood some ways behind it shining a torch into his face and slowly walking backwards and forwards. Depressingly, the most I was interested in this performance was when they were setting up the projector. While aiming it, they managed to project huge words onto the buildings around the lockup. "Cool!", I thought. What a clever way of expanding the available space, of extending the reach of the performance to the urban surroundings. But in the end, the projection was just onto a bedsheet held a few metres away from the projector.
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| Alex Bradley |
Considering the amount of space the Bradley had to work with, it was a very static performance. As a a vaguely cryptic monologue worked it's way onto the sheet he slowly moved around. I kept waiting for something to happen, figuring his slow movements were prefiguring something dramatic to come. But nothing did really happen and things remained uninterestingly static and limited. There were a few titters from the audience at the archly funny comments on the projection, but this was a pretty cold and unfriendly piece, especially in comparison to the accessible and open artists I'd seen perform earlier in the evening. Perhaps it would have worked better in an indoor space, as even with a interesting ambient soundtrack it utterly failed to create a compelling atmosphere.
So a bit of a damp squib to end the night, but then you can't win them all. It's always a pleasure visiting LUPA, and I look forward to what they have in store for their next performances.
Please let me know in the comments if I've screwed up anything factual!
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