If you cannot see this video, click here. This is Fau Ferdinand's solo performance sequel titled "All nOObs are Sailors 2" and was performed on Friday, October 19th, 2007. This video-clip was recorded and edited by Dizzy Banjo.
Curatorial Statement by Wirxli Flimflam (Jeremy Owen Turner)...
Since 1999, Vancouver 's LIVE Biennial of Performance Art has been at the forefront of biennales dedicated to the practice of performance art. The theme for this year's LIVE Performance Art is "public" and in order to continue LIVE's innovative legacy, I have chosen to bring the institutionalized practice of gallery-related and legitimized performance art into the public (yet occasionally corporate) and much-hyped mainstream virtual world, Second Life.
Running parallel with the PERFORMA Performance Art Biennale in New York , 2007 is the year where virtual performance has officially entered the realm of "real" institutional legitimacy and popular appeal. Timing is of the essence since it is predicted by media moguls that by the year 2011, most online inhabitants around the world would have at least flirted with virtual worlds as part of their everyday routine.
This ambitious curatorial project was made in collaboration with an in-world gallery called Ars Virtua and an institutional broadcast venue, The Western Front.
It is hoped that this mini virtual-performance fest is a catalyst for future avatar performance art events to come.
- Jeremy Owen Turner – LIVE 2007 Director of Avatar Development, Vancouver , B.C., Canada .
It is extremely important that Aboriginal people show up in The Future. Images of Indians, silent and unnamed, can readily be found in history books. But, judging by our lack of presence in pictures of things to come, we apparently don't have a role to play in a technologically advanced society such as our own. I fear that if we cannot see ourselves in The Future, we will not be there. Conversely, however, if we can visualize our participation in this multi-mediatized world, there is a good chance that we will become active agents in it and that we will help to shape new (and newer) medias as they arise.
Nothing can represent The Future better than a real-time, interactive, 3-D space where fantastic people populate improbable architecture as they fly, teleport, and telepathically communicate their thoughts and dreams. Where do Native people fit into such a space? And, more importantly, where do we want to fit in that space?Parson's performance will touch upon several themes that have been central to contemporary Aboriginal art in recent years. These include stereotypes (and the ignorance and stagnation that these imply); colonization; appropriation; the environment; the Other, the body and the gaze. However, what sets this work apart is the effective use of the medium-Second Life-to convey her particular take on these subjects. For example, a real-life version of You Want a Piece of Me? would have required Bea to bake and serve a five-foot, three-inch cake decorated to look like herself, and still it would not fully express the idea that she was being consumed. In Second Life, she is able to actually be the cake, and to slowly disappear as her party guests consume her.At the same time, Parson's performance attempts to answer some of the questions posed above. Simply by virtue of performing in a virtual space, she is claiming that we have a place there.
The piece also comments on the idea of "there". As the purported environmental custodians of their various continents, Aboriginal people have often been psychologically tied to the land they inhabit (in both our own minds and in the minds of non-Aboriginals). In a digital place dispossessed of land (if we can rightly say that Second Life is dispossessed of land) perhaps the Indian can shed the burden of stewardship and focus on some other things that interest her.
Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance (October 18-22, 2007, Vancouver), an encounter between traditional forms of performance art (endurance/duration) and new forms of social practice and intervention. Produced in conjunction with the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art, the program looks to the overlaps between practices, modes of thinking, and opinions about contemporary performance. Viewers are invited to participate, enjoy and intervene in four days of individual performance art, social intervention, and discussion surrounding performance art practices that forge new relationships between artists, site and community. Facilitating the creation of new work by artists from across Europe and North America, Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance will consist of individual and collaborative works (situated at the Western Front, online, and in various outdoor locations in Vancouver), online discussions, a round-table discussion event at the Western Front and a panel discussion at Emily Carr Institute. Works will address public intervention, alternative economies, the limits of the body, and cultures of fear in the post 9/11 era. This series of events is organised by Western Front Performance Art. Guest Curator Natalie Loveless.
No comments:
Post a Comment