Faith Wilding SAIC Perfomance Department Head

Faith Wilding emigrated to the United States in l961 from Paraguay. She received her MFA at CalArts where she was a founding member of the Feminist Art Program. Wilding is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work addresses aspects of the somatic, psychic, and sociopolitical history of the body. Recent publications, lectures, exhibitions and performances focus on issues of cyberfeminist (women and technology) theory and practice, with particular emphasis on biotechnology. Wilding has exhibited and lectured widely in the USA and Europe. Her audio work has been commissioned and broadcast by RIAS Berlin; WDR Cologne; and National Public Radio, USA. Wilding has published in MEANING, Heresies, Ms. Magazine, The Power of Feminist Art, and other books and magazines. She is the recipient of two individual media grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Currently, Wilding is a faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the MFA in Visual Art Program at Vermont College of the Union Institute and University.

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fwild/faithwilding/

4Womanhouse
1971-72. Landmark collaborative feminist installation in a house in Hollywood, by Feminist Art Program at California Institute of the Arts. Womanhouse examined and commented on the content, forms, and history of gender roles and of women’s maintenance work in the home; and delved into the complex dynamics and relations that have constituted women’s separate sphere in the division of labor. Left to right: “Crocheted Environment”, “Dining Room”, Womanhouse catalog cover.

4Waiting A 15-minute monolog, scripted and performed by Faith Wilding in the Performance program at Womanhouse, “Waiting” condenses a woman’s entire life into a monotonous, repetitive cycle of waiting for life to begin while she is serving and maintaining the lives of others. The full text was published by Ms. Magazine in 1972, and in the Appendix of “Through the Flower” by Judy Chicago.

Waiting | HTML | PDF | DOC
A Poem by Faith Wilding

CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT THE ARTIST

Performance artist Paul Wong

60 UNIT: BRUISE (1976)
Distributed by Vtape.

Part performance, part document, Paul Wong’s friend Kenneth Fletcher withdraws sixty units of blood from his own arm, then carefully injects it via syringe into Wong’s naked shoulder. A purple bruise spreads slowly over the artist’s skin.

Intended then as evidence of their friendship, the work has taken on different overtones. With the dangers of mixing bodily fluids now known, sharing needles is a shock on screen.

Fellow video artist Richard Fung writes: “Six years before ‘gay cancer’ was reported, and almost a decade before the identification of HIV, 60 Unit: Bruise portrays a homoerotic blood-brother ritual with allusions to drug culture. But from a vantage point of two decades into the AIDS crisis, when new strains of hepatitis are constantly being identified, the audacity of its play between youth and decadence, pleasure and danger becomes a document of irretrievable innocence. It evokes nostalgia for a present no longer possible.” (Fung 38)

Fiona Wright, SAIC Visiting Artist

Fiona Wright (b.1966 London) is currently based in Newcastle upon Tyne and is best known for her solo performances since the late 1980s, using choreography and writing. She also makes duet performances with Caroline Bowditch as ‘girl jonah’.

Fiona Wright’s new one-woman performance On Lying narrates and constructs a self or a body or is it Fiona? through lies, fictions, and unmediated glances. We watch as she risks a temporary disappearance of identity, takes advantage of fragility, and sends herself ahead of herself. Wright has created an oasis of meticulous uncertainty where we can reflect, embody, and act on unexpected turns of memory, loss, and recovery.

Lin Hixson, Director, Goat Island Company, Chicago

salt drawing (following)
A solo performance for a solo spectator.

A five minute performance for only one audience person at a time.
Advance booking advised. Limited audience capacity.
The performer waits for you to follow. The equivalent mass of her own body weight is measured in salt; the 54kg of salt is a deadweight, too heavy to lift, twice her weight as a girl. Just a handful is the (approximate) (average) amount of salt contained in one body. She works as navigator, setting a course and piloting the action through time and space, erasing and re-tracing the movement. The solo audience is invited to follow a brief moment of choreography, to view the picture of the performer faithfully starting again and always betraying the difference.
Fiona Wright has been making mostly live, solo performances since the late 1980s, presenting extensively in the UK and Internationally. Her most recent work has a focus on small and limited audience contexts; short performances for the audience, become repeated over time as long works for the performer. Her work is driven by a fascination with the image of the lone figure and the uncertainty and incidental intimacy in performance. Her performances are personalised and yet unconfessional, with a focus on the particular body of the performer. Over the years this work has often been described as “subversive” and even “rare”. Some say images of control and strength seem to flicker with moments of fragility.

BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art

Video

Playing Time: 8 min 22 sec

Publication Date: 30/09/2004

Description: A section taken from the new movement-based performance directed by Newcastle based artist Fiona Wright: ‘three: dances’ is driven by a fascination with incidental intimacy in performance and images of strength flickering with moments of fragility.

Level 1 Performance Space

©Fiona Wright
soundtrack composition: Ben Ponton
© 2004 copyright control

Language: English

Related Artist: Fiona Wright

Related Gallery: BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art [www.balticmill.com]

URL: http://archive.balticmill.com/index.php?itemid=31111

Copyright © BALTIC www.balticmill.com, Gateshead, UK. All Rights Reserved. Enquiries: archive@balticmill.com

Henry Darger

In the Realms of the Unreal

Darger’s work contains many religious themes, albeit handled extremely idiosyncratically. In the Realms of the Unreal postulates a large planet around which Earth orbits as a moon and where most people are Christian (mostly Catholic). The majority of the story concerns the adventures of the daughters of Robert Vivian, seven sisters who are princesses of the Christian nation of Abbiennia and who assist a daring rebellion against the evil John Manley’s regime of child slavery imposed by the Glandelinians. The latter resemble Confederate soldiers from the American Civil War. (Darger, like his father, was a Civil War expert.) Children take up arms in their own defense and are often slain in battle or viciously tortured by the Glandelinian overlords. The elaborate mythology also includes a species called the “Blengigomeneans” (or Blengins for short), winged beings with curved horns who occasionally take human or part-human form. They are usually (but not always) benevolent toward the Vivian Girls.

Attempting Alchemy #1

Stills from performance

Artist Joseph David Belknap Aug. 2007

Health Care for Artist? Moore says YES!

Have you seen Moore’s new film? What is your take? This excerpt is from Moore on CNN.

Japanese Self-Defense Video

I really thought that this should have been performance art piece. AMAZING the layers of social, gender, cultural issues this film presents.

Bill Viola

Bill Viola.

VENICE, ITALY.- Bill Viola has created a major new work to be presented at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. Entitled Ocean Without a Shore, 2007, the three-screen High Definition video and sound installation was inspired by its setting – the 15th century intimate Venetian church of San Gallo.

Ocean Without a Shore presents a cyclical progression of images that describes a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death. Located near the Piazza San Marco the church of San Gallo was formerly a private chapel, and Viola directly incorporates its internal architecture into his piece, using the three existing stone altars as video screens.

Of the work Bill Viola states, “Ocean Without a Shore is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in San Gallo become transparent surfaces for the manifestation of images of the dead attempting to re-enter our world.â€

“The video sequence describes the human form as it gradually coalesces from within a dark field and slowly comes into view, moving from obscurity into the light. As the figure approaches, it becomes more solid and tangible until it breaks through an invisible threshold and passes into the physical world. The crossing of the threshold is an intense moment of infinite feeling and acute physical awareness. Poised at that juncture, for a brief instant all beings can touch their true nature, equal parts material and essence. However, once incarnate, these beings must eventually turn away from mortal existence and return to the emptiness from where they came.â€

Over 24 performers and a technical team of 20 participated in the creation of Ocean Without a Shore. Kira Perov, Viola’s wife and long time collaborator, Harry Dawson, director of photography, and Brian Pete, editor, made essential creative contributions to the production.

For over 35 years, the work of Bill Viola has focused on universal human experiences. Viola is renowned for creating installations, videotapes and sound performances that present manifestations of the human form undergoing various state of transformation and renewal. His work has been instrumental in the establishment and development of video as a contemporary artistic practice, while his writings and lectures have disseminated his ideas to a wide international audience. Viola’s work continues to break new ground, both technologically and aesthetically, and has inspired a generation of media artists and filmmakers.

The exhibition is curated by critic, curator and American art expert David Anfam, who is also commissioning editor for Fine Art, Phaidon and a member of the board of the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. The new work is jointly presented by galleries Haunch of Venison, James Cohan Gallery and Kukje Gallery.

this article is from ART DAILY.ORG one of my favorite sites Check it out!!!

Bas Jan Ader, “Farewell to Faraway Friends,” color photography, 1971.

(UC Riverside, Sweeney Art Gallery, Riverside) Bas Jan Ader is both well known and little known as an artist. He died, or disappeared in 1975 at the age of 33, in a boat somewhere off the coast of Cape Cod. He was attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a 13 foot sailboat. Why? For Art; as a performance that would challenge the boundaries between art and life. Ader’s work pushed the (then) limits. He experimented with film, photography, installation, and performance.

Ader was born in Holland in 1942. He settled in Los Angeles in 1963 after sailing across the ocean from Morocco. This journey took eleven months. Once in Los Angeles Ader studied art and philosophy and became an active member of the Los Angeles art scene, exhibiting his works in numerous exhibitions and teaching at UC Irvine among other places.

Many artists working in Los Angeles during the 1970’s were interested in the relationship between art and life; between performance and photography; and the difference between the art object and documentation of an action. Ader’s work fit within this conceptual framework. His performances and actions were well documented and presented as finished films or photographic works. Although conceptual in practice they were also visually sophisticated. He was aware of and interested in the work being made by contemporaneous artists such as Ed Ruscha, Gordon Matta Clark, Robert Smithson, and Chris Burden. Like many of these artists, Ader was interested in his presence and alterations to his surroundings. His body, face or shadow figured prominently in his works as subject and the object. (taken from http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles1999/Articles1099/BJAderA.html)

“Seascape” Gregory Witt