Vikki Hill

Affordable Art Fair

2011-11-09T21:45:00.001Z

Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London.

2011-08-16T20:58:00.000+01:00

Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London.: "I’m huddled in the front room with some shell-shocked friends, watching my city burn. The BBC is interchanging footage of blazing cars and..."

Vintage cut-outs

2011-01-21T13:50:00.000Z

These are a selection of some small scale mixed-media cut-outs and prints made with vintage design in mind.

Paintings in Progress

2011-01-21T13:46:00.000Z

Mixed media - acrylic, oil, ink, papers, found objects

The Pink Choppers

2011-01-21T13:06:00.002Z

http://www.myspace.com/lovepinkchoppers/music

Photography by Catherine Cronin
Design work by George Stickney

Demonstrations - Placards and Banners

2011-01-21T12:30:00.003Z

NewVIc students and staff protesting over axed EMA support
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12221225

East London solidarity protest against racism

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=21606

Recent paintings

2010-10-31T20:24:00.002Z

Eilidh

Vamu Children

Photographs by Lawrence Impey

2010-10-31T20:12:00.006Z

http://www.lawrenceimpey.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lawrenceimpey

Regents Canal

Hanging exhibition

At the Grapes

"Accidental 17"

2010-10-31T14:21:00.007Z

A collection of art from artists with diverse backgrounds and art styles, ranging from painting, drawing, photos, sound installation and sculpture

Thursday 29th July 2010 from 7pm: Buyers night

Friday 30th July 2010 from 7pm: Exhibition party

Venue: 17 St Pauls Crescent Camden, LondonNW 1 9XN

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

2010-02-08T10:34:00.010Z

http://subjective-rejection.blogspot.com/

Curated by Anna Ricciardi

21st - 27th August 2009

Islington

Arts Factory,

2 Parkhurst Road, Holloway, London, N7 0SF.

Private View: Friday 21st August, 7pm- 9pm.

Discussion: Thursday 27th August, from 8pm.

With Paul Clinton, writer and critic; Jessica Farnham, writer;

and Dr. Karen Wallis, artist and writer.

Richard Baines Dave Ball Richard Bannister Roberto Ekholm

Hayley Goodsell Vikki Hill Paul Kindersley Andrew Larkin

Tina Liveras Toby Lloyd Rachel Marsden Dara McGrath

Neil McNally Jonathan Miles Sam Moseley Tanya Rhodes Grace Schofield Ljudmilla Socci Sally Spinks Karen Wallis

Vietnam series 3

2009-02-14T15:36:00.004Z

Squareroots

2009-02-13T21:36:00.006Z

Squareroots has been initiated by artist Shih Yun Yeo and shows work by seven international artists. Below are my 5 selected mixed media studies. See the rest of the work at http://www.instinc.com

The building blocks of painting

2009-01-27T00:55:00.001Z

Oil painting from lovely life model

RAIL

2008-09-09T16:43:00.006+01:00

RAIL is:

Vikki Hill (vocals, guitar)

Simon Wring (bass, mixes, percussion)

George (guitar)

Listen at:

http://www.myspace.com/raillondon

Watch at: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vW0_-qtt_WY

Writing a dissertation....

2008-09-09T16:33:00.002+01:00

14 Stations of the Life and History of Adrian Howells - Battersea Arts Centre, 17th May 2008

2008-05-25T20:52:00.007+01:00

The Ethical Agency of One-to-One Performance

On the 17th May, after having spent an hour in a one-to-one performance entitled ‘The 14 Stations of the Life and History of Adrian Howells’, I found myself sitting on a wooden bench tucked behind a grand staircase with coloured light reflecting on my skin from the stained glass roof above me. I was crying. I felt completely overwhelmed and shocked that I could be caught off guard by a sudden flood of emotion. My usual barriers had breached and I was doing my best to repair them, with soggy tissues and embarrassed laughter. My unexpected reaction left me feeling exhausted and shaking as I began to reflect on what had caused me to respond so physically.

Throughout the performance, I had been taken (at times led by a firmly grasping hand) to various sites in Battersea Arts Centre, from the bar to the entrance; to a dark, creepy crypt; storerooms and corridors; winding up stairs until we finished in a brightly lit back room high above the streets. At each site we visited, Adrian Howells alternately confessed stories of his life, showed me objects and images, performed actions, talked with me and invited me to participate as we navigated our way through his autobiographical reappropriation of the 14 Stations of the Cross.
It was as we climbed the stairs after the 12th station (He Dies) that I responded automatically in the positive to Adrian’s questions of, ‘are you alright?’, that I realized I was not ‘alright’, and in fact felt extremely emotional. During the 11th Station, He is Made to Suffer, I had poured a bucket of freezing water and ice cubes over his naked, kneeling body – an act in which I felt somewhat divided about participating in. The knowledge that I was about to cause pain to this person and that perhaps by refraining from the act I could reduce his discomfort, had been overridden by an acknowledgement that this was HIS responsibility – it was his choice to perform. I was also aware of a deeper sense of curiosity and a child-like malevolence. Did I want to inflict pain on him? Did I feel that he deserved this punishment for Jim, for Jordan, for Colin, for his mother, for his selfishness? These thoughts evaporated as he stood before me, naked and shivering and took me by the hand - he wasn’t performing. I felt responsible.He led me down a pitch black corridor constructed of old shelving units, reassuring me of our direction. This was the 12th station, where Jesus dies on the cross. We entered a small room, with rubbish, debris, waste scattered on the floor. As he gingerly, still naked with bare feet, clambered to a pile at the back I traced his footsteps and prayed he would avoid the sharp nails and splinters I could see on the floor. Balanced at the summit of the rubbish, naked, cold and wet, he held my gaze as he sang in a pitiful, anguished voice Celine Dion’s song ‘All by myself’. A vivid picture came to my mind from when I was at university, of an ex-partner in midst breakdown… his room full of rubbish, completely absorbed in his own imagined reality, so lost and frightened. I wanted to do something to help. As I watched the pitiful singer in front of me, I experienced another split in my reaction. The inviting dry, fluffy towel was within inches of my grasp, and I could have easily walked over to him, put it round him and relieved some of his suffering from the icy cold water, perhaps even from his mental pain as he relived his breakdown in front of me. But I didn’t. I sat and watched and felt complicit in this strangely intense personal theatre of pure misery and hopelessness.
Let’s return to the stairs, where I realized I wasn’t ‘alright’. I felt my cheeks getting hot. We climbed to the top of the stairs, hand in hand, Adrian finally wrapped in the warm towel. It was the 13th Station He is Given to His Mother. We watched an old family video of his mother holding him as a baby. I was only partially aware of what he said and what was being shown as I battled with my burning face and sweaty palms, quite disturbed by my lack of emotional control. Below the television screen was a tray with tea lights and Adrian invited me to light a candle for my mother. He remembered her name ‘Joyce’ from an earlier conversation we had had. I bent down, and offered to light one for his mother too. I can’t remember her name, but I think it was Sheila. I felt dislocated. I couldn’t let myself dwell too much on my mother, knowing that it could quite possibly send me over the edge into tears, so I attempted to compose myself. When I stood up, I inhaled a deep breath of relief.

We continued to the final station – Jesus is laid in the tomb. Adrian opened the door into a white room, brightly lit by flood-lamps and climbed into the large, mahogany bed. He asked me to wrap the duvet around him and spoon behind, which I did. I was immediately comforted by the smell and touch of the thick duvet, an object I always associate with safety - safety in my parents’ house, safety from the cold, safety from the outside world. I felt that this redemptive act, of giving comfort, was meant for me as much as for him. As I lay on the bed, I relaxed, drifted off. He got up, leaving me there by myself to listen to a poem played on a small speaker by my head. I only remember the first line. It was something like ‘You don’t have to be good’. I was told that I didn’t need to try so hard, that I should value myself as I was. Burying my face into the pillow I thought of all the times as a child I had spent in church, how I had known from the age of 6 that God was the most important person in the family, how many times I had been told that God loved me ‘even though’ I was a sinner.

I got up and stood at the end of the bed, where Adrian introduced the ‘surprise’ 15th station. The Resurrection. In the bright, white room he handed me a flying saucer sweet. Before we ate them, he said, “Next time you eat one of these, I’d like you to remember me”. The symbolism was not lost on me and I laughed out loud at this sacrilegious celebration we were having. He poured out 2 glasses of cranberry juice and asked me to remember him once again as we drank together.
This one-to-one performance produced multiple affects, and through the use of critical narrative and anecdotal theory, it’s possible to exemplify the productivity of such an encounter for the spectator/participant. Two coextensive frames of agency will be discussed, the first being that of ethical responsibility and engagement - a debate that draws upon the work of Emmanuel Levinas. As previously recounted, 14 Stations contained several events that produced a splitting of emotional, personal and physical responses, creating ethical dilemmas for the spectator/participant (for example, voyeurism, pouring of the ice, giving of the towel, wrapping in the duvet). All of which are underpinned by a notion of responsibility - responsibility for one’s own actions/reactions, and responsibility of the other.
In Ethics and Infinity, Levinas writes that he understands responsibility as “…responsibility for the Other, thus as responsibility for what is not my deed, or for what does not even matter to me; or which precisely does matter to me, is met by me as face.” (95) The confrontation with the face of the other acts as a reflection of the self, of one’s own humanity and this, in the context of the performance, is heightened by the considered use of eye contact, physical contact and close proximity. Levinas continues to say that, “…since the Other looks at me, I am responsible for him, without even having taken on responsibilities in his regard; his responsibility is incumbent on me.” (96) The ‘incumbency’ is located within a hiatus between the necessity of responsibility as care for the other and the subjective response towards the other. Within the obligation to act lies the ethical dilemma. The ethical agency of 14 Stations employs subjective choice – if one chooses to act, then one becomes complicit in particular scenarios, if one chooses not to act, then one becomes a voyeur, a witness. Through self-conscious awareness of choice the spectator/participant reflects on personal ethical decisions and produces connections with lived experience.
In Precarious Lives, Judith Butler writes of vulnerability, loss and grief and takes these as points for reflection on ethical and political life. She approaches the question of a “non-violent ethics, one that is based upon an understanding of how easily a life is annulled.”(17) Drawing upon Levinas’s work, Butler positions ethical struggle within the awareness of the ‘precariousness’ of life of the Other. Implications of mortality and of violence are echoed throughout 14 Stations, through the obvious relation to the brutal death of Christ and through the confessions and revelations of injurious actions and words; rejection, betrayal; physical pain and mental suffering. The vulnerability of Howells’ body, illustrates the precariousness of the Other as a site of grief and exposure.

This brings us to the second frame of agency (interconnected with the discussion of the ethical) which is one of autobiographical recollection. By recounting my emotional response through the narrative of the event, I hoped to capture the manner in which the performance vividly called forth personal histories. The propensity of the one-to-one performance to mobilize the spectator/participants histories was repeatedly dependant on moments of precariousness – moments of vulnerability, loss or grief. These moments, when recounted or performed by Howells, produce unexpected, empathic recollections that directly relate to one’s own experience of ‘precariousness’. This doubling, or reflection, is the encounter with the ‘face’ of the other - a revelation of the bond that exists between beings, and an acknowledgement of one’s own humanity through vulnerability.
Vikki Bell in her recent publication, Culture and Performance, questions the effects produced when vulnerability and grief are revealed to the other, how through, to quote Judith Butler in Violence, Mourning and Politics, the “enigmatic traces of the others” we become aware of our dependence on relations. Bell asks that, “…might not this feeling of exposure lead one to comprehend one’s self as multiply connected and indebted?” (24) As I progressed through the 14 stations, my experience of ethical dilemma, the recollection of past events, the sharing of stories, the acts I performed and the confessions given generated autobiographical memories within me that were very much connected to relations with others.
Nicholas Bourriaud explores the possibility of art being a relational encounter in Relational Aesthetics. He writes about his investigation of “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space.” (14)
I find his assertion to be a paradoxical statement. How can one experience ‘art’ in its social context without asserting private, personal and independent responses or judgments? This performance has the potentiality to bring both the social and the personal to the surface. When Howells recounted a narrative of a past, childhood incident, I - as complicit audience - felt persuaded to make a ‘judgement’ against or towards him, (or his behaviour). This ethical act was very much based upon my own recollected childhood experiences and the ‘judgements’ made about me, and by me – within a social context.
When discussing the performance within the realm of social interaction, it is the possibility of interruption that transforms moments of the performance from spectacle to participation and creates a potentially dialogic space. Howells periodically attempts to open up opportunities for communication through the sharing of stories and intimate confessions of unrequited love. His offer of autobiographical details connects to experiences had by the spectator/participant, and exposes a gap of exchange within an intense, and at times disturbing, hour. Autobiographical performance can often be labeled as narcissistic and self-indulgent, yet 14 Stations invites the spectator/participant to speak of their own ‘self’. Deirdre Heddon in Autobiography and Performance (2008) writes in her analysis of autobiographical performance that she has most often encountered…

“…performances that strategically walk the fine line between essentialising the individual and assuming a common ‘we’; between insisting on lived experience whilst also recognizing the historical, cultural and discursive imperatives enabling that experience; between ‘the past’ and ‘the future’. Talking from the experience of the ‘self’, whilst also subjecting these experiences to critical scrutiny, performers enable or instigate a dialogue, recognizing that the act of performance is an act of communication.”
To conclude, The 14 Stations of the Life and History of Adrian Howells opens up possibilities for connections and relations, particularly in its employment of ethical questioning and autobiographical recollections. The productivity of the work lies in its ability to activate the subject in the construction of relations. The performative force or agency of the encounter does not diminish in its rehearsal or staged-ness, as multiple relations are produced anew each time it is performed, engaging new autobiographical and ethical responses within each individual participant/spectator.

PHONO - A one-day multimedia exhibition in celebration of analogue

2008-04-30T18:43:00.008+01:00

Date:
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Time:
3:00pm - 10:30pm
Location:
The FoundryStreet:
86 Great Eastern StreetCity/Town:
London, United Kingdom

With work by:
Vikki Hill
Simon Wring
Amy Visram
Nadia Visram
Emily Alexander
Cornelius Brady
Lisa Brown
Sharlene Channer
Philip MarstonSteve McInery
Stefanie Posavec

Plus DJs

Private View

Photographs and 'Manual' (2008), by Vikki Hill

The Big Freeze

2008-02-24T17:08:00.007Z

On Saturday 16th Feb “frozen in time” missions happened in both London and Toronto. They were inspired by the Frozen Grand Central mission and organized via Improv Everywhere Global.
http://improveverywhere.com/

The London event took place in Trafalgar Square at 3.30pm and had an estimated 1,000 participants.

We turned up at Trafalgar Square at about 3.25pm, quite aware of the tense expecation that chattered around the crowd. A bugle sounded - the sign for the freeze to start, and a quiteness fell over the Square, wrapping the participants in silence. 5 minutes was not long to be standing in a pose, and as we did, others walked around taking photographs, filming and looking at the giant tableaux. My favourite comments were "What is going on?!". "Why is everyone standing still?", "Ooooh - it's like that New York thingy!". Although requested to continue moving at 3.35pm when the signal was given to break, a large cheer went up from the crowd and it was hard not to join in. There was a definite feeling of elation - a post performance buzz. It had felt quite spiritual, and I was hit by a keen and rare sense of having taken part in a large group action, where our individuality was irrelevant, and the power was in the numbers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS65a-RKTQk&feature=related

Vietnam & Angkor Wat - DK Eyewitness Travel Guide

2008-02-02T20:21:00.005Z

Some of my photographs and research were used in the publication of the Ho Chi Minh section of the above publication for Dorling Kindersley, 2007. The credited photograph appears on page 56 as the View of Dong Khoi from Diamond Plaza.

Discuss the use of ‘play’ as restored behaviour in Tino Seghal’s This Success/This Failure (ICA, Jan-March 2007).

2008-01-27T18:57:00.000Z

‘Such consciousness of what we do and feel each day, its relation to others’ experience and to nature around us, becomes in a real way the performance of living. And the very process of paying attention to this continuum is poised on the threshold of art performance.’ (Allan Kaprow, 1979)

Berlin-based Tino Seghal’s exhibition This Success/This Failure, previously exhibited at the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria, and more recently at the ICA (29th Jan - 11 March 2007) was the final part of a trilogy of shows at the London venue. This Success /This Failure was a performance where children from local schools were exhibits, participants, facilitators and audience. The school children, aged between 7 and 10 years old, were based in the lower gallery of the ICA throughout the day. The students were from at least two different schools during each day except Sundays when the participants were from a variety of backgrounds. The reason being that the children were more likely to reinvent themselves (and the space) in a more outgoing, creative manner than if they were participating within preconditioned peer groups. Workshops were held in the morning to contextualise the event for those involved (children, teachers, educators, family members). The educational experience for the children was intended, as Seghal stated in his talk at the Goethe Institute with Dr Carey Jewitt, to be a “twisted trip to the museum” .

The instruction given to the participants was that they should “create their own means of play” , the request excluded the use of toys, phones, footballs, drawing/writing materials etc. As the ‘content’ of the exhibition, the young people were asked to use their imagination and creativity whilst interacting with the visitors and each other so that they could, according to the press release, “create a living art piece, over which they have ultimate control” . A living art piece certainly, but it would be questionable as to how much ‘control’ the children had within the institution, considering they were given instructions to adhere to, and were not allowed to leave the space. The ‘control’ the children experienced was in their negotiation of play and the, at times, humorous manipulation of the visitors. The responsibility (and a certain freedom) that the children experienced within the constructs of the art piece, somehow highlights the lack of freedom and control of all participants involved, yet Seghal states that the children “are empowered because they are taken seriously ”, they know that the artwork and the visitors are dependant on them.

Throughout each session, the children would interact with the visitors, playing more traditional games of Stuck in the Mud, Chinese Whispers and Wink Murder to showing magic tricks and coercing visitors into performing for them. As one young boy noted, “The best thing was trying to scare the adults.” At the end of each 45 minute interaction, the children were instructed to approach the visitor(s) and state the following: “My name is…., and I have decided that this piece of work is a success (or a failure).” The assumption that in this technological age children no longer play games without toys seems slightly naïve, as most of us who work with or have children in our families know. As Baudelaire noted, “Children bear witness through their games to their great faculty of abstraction and their high imaginative power. They play without playthings. ”

Seghal’s intention is to explore and antagonise common notions of political economy, relational engagement, consumerism, technology and communication. In a culture where material objects are so esteemed, he attempts to construct an economic system which mirrors that of the museum. Critiquing the desire for the production of ‘things’, Seghal transforms the material object into a temporal relationality materialised in the body. He refuses to document his work through film or photography and attempts to keep all paper work to a minimum, reducing the production of ‘objects’ that could be seen as art commodities. The ‘matter’ produced is comprised of language, human interaction, movement and engagement. His position echoes that of Peggy Phelan when she states that “performance’s only life is in the present ”, and that the recording, documentation or reproduction changes the event into “something other .” Although he insists his work be labelled as ‘installation’ rather than ‘performance’, Seghal maintains that viewers must directly interact, through dialogue and movement, rather than relying on documentation to experience the work. The materials used (human beings), the structure (pre-chosen conditions and instructions) and the product (relational situations) are essential elements of performance.

This Success/This Failure critiques many aspects of live art experience and audience expectations of the gallery space. The work is rich in references to performance and Situationist artists of the 60’s and 70’s. Allan Kaprow explored how life experience could be the medium of his art practice by creating situations, interventions and structures drawing on the banality of everyday events and actions. Kaprow wrote in his 1983 essay The Real Experiment that, “Lifelike art did not merely label life as art. It was continuous with that life, inflecting, probing, testing, and even suffering it, but always attentively. ” It is this experimental, playful approach to the everyday which Seghal harnesses and manipulates in This Success/This Failure to create a dynamic space open to dialogue, change and disruption.

He uses ‘play’ as a mode of transformative effect within the gallery and (by employing similar strategies as used by Kaprow), he marks out a structure of interaction through the use of previously written instructions given to participants. Instructions (or rules) are essential components of most kinds of ‘play’ or ‘games’ that we see and experience as everyday occurrences, whether in the playground, park, street or home. In his classic study Man, Play and Games, Roger Caillois defines the four main designations of play into “competition, chance, simulation…vertigo. ” He attempts to define these and to pose which is more dominant. It is worth noting that This Success/This Failure contained all four aspects of play, and that the children (and visitors) drew upon a common experience of games to collaborate with each other. That Seghal chose the activity of ‘play’ to explore relational behaviour and interaction seems an obvious and simple choice, the disturbance to our perception is the location - the gallery– a space where noise, laughter, children and movement are by and large absent. The gallery space has, as Brian O’Doherty writes in his seminal text Inside the White Cube, “a presence possessed by other spaces where conventions are preserved through the repetition of a closed system of values. Some of the sanctity of the church, the formality of the courtroom, the mystique of the experimental laboratory (….) ” The reverence of the ritualistic space is interrupted, a rift occurs, when children are running about screaming and laughing. Visitors were placed in a position which, for some, was extremely enjoyable (perhaps educational), yet for others, was extremely uncomfortable. Being forced to play with the children caused a range of emotions from a touch of embarrassment to utter awkwardness, and through the disruption of normal expectations of art (a passive, ocular experience), the visitor is made to reflect on their own behaviour, and to challenge personal boundaries.

In 1938, cultural historian Johan Huizinga explored the role of play within society in his book Homo Ludens. His observations could well be used as an exhibition press release for not only This Success/This Failure, but for much of Seghal’s art practise.

“A free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise of other means.”

That play is removed from the production of object or profit, is fundamental to Seghal’s conception of relational artwork and his negation of material production. Roger Caillois also points to a characteristic of play being the fact that it “creates no wealth or goods. ” The rules of play are formulated outside of the everyday, ordinary routines and activities of productive work. What then, does play produce? Play, for both humans and animals, explores and develops social relations. In its multiple variations, from competitive games to character improvisation, play is performed in a space outside ‘normal’ life activities such as working, sleeping and eating, yet it draws upon the actions of the everyday and recombines them to create an exploratory event. American Anthropologist, Gregory Bateson commented upon the behaviour of two young monkeys playing together at San Francisco Zoo, noting that they were “engaged in an interactive sequence of which the unit actions or signals were similar to but not the same as combat.” The monkeys practised skills needed for survival within the group by using pre-known actions. It could be said that they rehearsed these skills, just as children rehearse the observed behaviours of others in their family and community.

Role-play, mimickery and make believe games are the primary means by which a child will imitate adults, and through the exploration of actions and reactions, learn appropriate, socialised behaviours. We can look at the case of Traian Caldarer the 7 year old Romanian boy who, in 2002, was found after living in the wild for 3 years in the forests of Transylvania. Having been looked after by wild dogs, he lost the ability to speak and displayed behaviours common to the pack, such as growling and chasing cats. The behaviours observed by this child, would then have been appropriated and normalised so that he could function as part of his new community. No doubt Traian Caldarer would have experienced imitative play as a kind of socio-symbolic tool which, through repetition, conditioned his behaviours; his actions and reactions. Kaprow observes that, “Human beings participate in these scenarios (participation performance), spontaneously or after elaborate preparations, like actors without stage or audience, watching and cuing one another…” There is an obvious similarity in the approach both humans and animals adopt towards participation in play, and how, by observing those around us, we learn skills for physical and emotional survival.

The repetition of everyday actions and behaviours outside the ‘frame’ of normal cultural interaction can be seen in play, ritual and performance, and it is within the blurred overlapping of these categories that artists such as Seghal and Kaprow position their work. Allan Kaprow in his aptly titled book, The Blurring of Art and Life, highlights the transformative effect of choosing a particular behaviour or action and ‘performing’ it within a different context. He noted that, ”…everyday routines conceived as ready-made performances change because of their double use as art/non art…” It is the double use of play in This Success/This Failure which creates tension and questions the assumed, or ‘normal’ behaviours of the visitors. Derrida emphasises that forms of communication need to be “repeatable – iterable” if they are to be affective. Repetition of a common behaviour, as a physical language shared within social groups, can be used as a powerful form of gestural communication.

Notions of repetition are embedded within Schechner’s explanation of ‘twice-behaved’ or ‘restored’ behaviour. Schechner points out that our daily life is filled with “routines, habits and rituals” which are, equally, a fusion of pre-behaved behaviours. We ‘perform’ these behaviours repeatedly, usually unaware of the causes of these actions. Those routines and habits that we repeat are hugely varied and can range from the rituals at a wedding or religious ceremony to the way we offer a cup of tea to a visitor. These behaviours do not ‘belong’ to any one of us, but are a combination of previously experienced behaviours. Schechner explains that:

“Restored behaviour is living behaviour treated as a film director treats a strip of film. These strips of behaviour can be rearranged or reconstructed; they are independent of the causal systems (personal, social, political, technological, etc.) that brought them into existence. They have a life of their own. The original ‘truth’ or ‘source’ of the behaviour may not be known, or may be lost, ignored, or contradicted – even while that truth or source is being honoured (…) Restored behaviour is the key process of every kind of performing, in everyday life, in healing, in ritual, in play, and in the arts.”

The magnitude of Schechner’s theory of restored behaviour is such that every kind of behaviour can be said to fall within it – every behaviour is constructed from previously behaved actions. We have already mentioned the blurring between life and art in the work of various art practitioners, and Schechner notes this within his definition of restored behaviour. Restored behaviour is integral to performance - just as each behaviour is restored, so each performance consists of restored behaviour. Schechner’s doubling – the ‘restored restored behaviour’ exists within performance, where the performer draws upon their knowledge of previous behaviours from life experience to re-enact them consciously within the context of an event and where particular behaviours are indicated as different. “Because it is marked, framed and separate, restored behaviour can be worked on, stored and recalled, played with, made into something else, transmitted, and transformed.” Schechner also points out that the doubling of restored behaviour within performance has been blurred not only in theatrical events, but also within everyday life. He wrote that opinion regarding the nature of the theatrical had changed so that…

“…the political action, conflictual or aharmonic behaviour on both the personal and the “social drama” levels, role playing in everyday life, emotional training using acting exercises to help professionals (police, airline personnel, etc.) to deal with a crisis … are all evidence to the increasingly complicated interactions between, and continuing convergence of, theatre and ritual.”

During such training events, participants draw upon their own knowledge of social behaviours to gain experience of learning how to react to challenging situations. When adults play at being themselves, a doubling of the restorative behaviour occurs once again. If, as Schechner states, restored behaviour is the “key process” of every kind of performance, then it deserves further analysis, and we can look to play as a model for this. Play can be defined as performance (role-play, make believe), as ritual (Halloween dressing-up), as healing (play therapy), as art (making, painting, building) and as part of everyday life; the interchange of these words and their meanings reflects the relationship between performance and life. Play can fit into each of Schechner’s 3 categories of performance (ritual, aesthetic and social), yet it is in the form of social drama that we commonly experience it. In “social drama all present are participants, though some are more decisively involved than others. ” (Seghal’s work is hinged on this very notion of participation – each individual is implicated in the action).

When playing, children explore and imagine their own social dramas.
They draw upon observed behaviours and transform them (through the restoration of behaviour) to fulfil their own needs. The child in the sandpit creates a diorama and arranges characters within a miniature world to re-enact the intricacies of relations between fictional creatures. The animation of toys through fantasy make-believe exists in parallel to reality. Huizinga wrote that the space of play is ‘outside’ everyday life, and the existence of a parallel fantasy world, gives the child a ‘safe’ place to explore relations. Fantasy can be empowering for the young child who has very little control over social situations, enabling them bring into being an interior world, creating symbolic systems of communication and meaning.

If play as restored behaviour exists ‘outside’ of everyday life, and denotes a type of freedom, an exploratory release, what then changes when the play is situated within the context of the gallery? The context of the space becomes as much the content of the work as the action happening within it. When questioned as to why Seghal situated his work in an ‘art space’ rather than a ‘non-art space’, he replied that if it was to be located within a school, it would be a ‘workshop’. “It wouldn’t be a work of art because a work of art needs a reception. ” For Seghal to generalise en masse that art does not exist outside of an art location or at least not without an art audience as ‘receptors’ (or perhaps he meant that art in schools/community settings does not count as proper art), is questionable, if not slightly arrogant. Admittedly, we would need to know more of his definition of art, but his stance seemingly detracts from his relational aspirations of community and dialogue, bringing into question the relationship between the artist and his participant/performers, as producer and produced. Seghal’s work is so intimately entwined with the economies of the gallery space and the art world, that it would be interesting to decontextualise it in this sense, and relocate it to a public space – Gillian Wearing’s Dancing in Peckham, 1994 comes to mind.

If we return to the restored behaviour of both the children playing at playing and the adults playing at playing, what happens to both within this participational performance? Schechner writes that the rituals and games that are part of everyday life are created collectively, and through the repetition and re-editing of these behaviours, we perform our lives, and we perform ourselves. The awareness of, and way in which, we perform ourselves is the basis of every kind of performance – in everyday life and in the theatrical. Schechner puts it in “…personal terms restored behaviour is “me behaving as if I were someone else,” or “as I am told to do,” or “as I have learned.”” He explains the ‘multiple me’; that through modest observation, one can analyse actions and reasons for behaviours and realise their repetitive quality which stem from learnt, or socialised behaviours and rituals. Kaprow discusses this awareness of self-performing in Erving Goffman’s work. He notes that,

“…routines of domesticity, work, education and management of daily affairs, which because of their very ordinariness and lack of conscious expressive purpose do not seem to be art forms, nevertheless posses a distinctly performancelike character. Only the performers are not usually aware of it.”

It is precisely this awareness of the self performing self that Seghal employs - the construction of an art work which presents a challenging mode of engagement and content (play, human beings as art objects rather than inanimate objects or images). The viewer has little choice but to be made aware – to be self-conscious – of personal boundaries and behaviours. Within the context of the gallery space, visitors had to readdress their own expectations of ‘proper’ art, behaviour and meaning - a process that the children also underwent, with the added support of the workshops, feedback sessions and discussions with educators. The alteration from pre-conceived social norms towards an openness to engage with the situation presented is transformational. Kaprow stated that “self-knowledge is where you start on the way to becoming “the whole”, whether this process takes the form of social action or personal transformation.” Seghal’s practise challenges personal behaviour; the awkwardness (the self awareness) that are created on the one hand and enjoyment and sense of fun on the other, are produced by the unwrapping of restored behaviours through play and relational engagement.

The problematics of This Success/This Failure, as a relational artwork, are perhaps to do with a lack of acknowledgement of the existence of ‘relational’ experiences in daily life. Whether the children gained as much from the supposedly ‘transformational’ experience as the artist did in terms of his own production of self-promotion remains to be seen. The awkwardness that the viewer experiences may not simply be due to the awareness of a restored and socialised behaviour, but may also be in part due to the performance of the children – they, not dissimilarly to zoo animals, do not have control, and are under the instructions of another. Seghal’s assurance of an educational benefit seems slightly more to do with enabling the performers to ‘perform’ their roles, rather than as an agency within itself. As one educator wrote:

“Although the concept of no objects and human interaction within the gallery space was effective with some groups it also proved unsuccessful and unpleasant with other groups. With no objects to engage them and no imposed authority from official teachers there were children who ended up being aggressive, badly misbehaved, discourteous and at times verging on violence with each other. I do not think this was entirely the fault of the children but perhaps proves an anthropological discovery that this environment can both be detrimental to some children’s behaviour whilst positively nurturing personal attributes in others.”

That challenging behaviour (to use this term within an educational context) arose throughout the exhibition perhaps only reaffirms the fact that human beings explore relations through play to test the boundaries and expectations of social groups. The exhibition promoted confidence for some of the children involved and would certainly have been a place for them to reflect on their own notions of art within the gallery context. To conclude, I feel it is only appropriate to record some of the thoughts of the young people who participated so wholeheartedly in the project.

“God, some of these adults' are really hard work.”

“I got everyone to be a ballerina ‘cos I wanted to make that man do it.”

‘‘I learnt that art can be about communication and doesn’t have to be a painting”

“For the imagination is the biggest, best, millionest object that we have and it’s usually entrapped within and by objects” (from a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome)

Footnotes
Allan Kaprow, Performing Life (1979) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, p196
Tino Sehgal in conversation with Dr Carey Jewitt, Goethe Institute, London, 29th January 2007
ICA Press release, Jan 2007
Ibid
Tino Sehgal in conversation with Dr Carey Jewitt, Goethe Institute, London, 29th January 2007
No. 22, Selection of children’s statements from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007
Charles Baudelaire, Morale du joujou in Baudelaire: Oeuvres Completes, ed. Marcel A. Ruff, Editions du Seuil:Paris, 1968, p358
Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Routledge: London, 1993, p146
Ibid
Allan Kaprow, The Real Experiment (1983) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, p206
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, The Free Press: New York, 1961, p12
Brian O’Doherty Inside the White Cube, 1976 (Expanded edition) University of California Press: London, 1999, pg14
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Beacons Press: New York, 1955, p13
Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, The Free Press: New York, 1961, p21
Gregory Bateson, A Theory of Play and Fantasy, (1954) in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Paladin Books, 1973, p152
Allan Kaprow, Participation Performance (1977) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, p 187
Allan Kaprow, Participation Performance (1977) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, p 190
Jacques Derrida, Signature Event Context in Margins of Philosophy, Chicago:Chicago University Press,1982, pg315
Richard Schechner, What is Performance? In Performance Studies, Routledge: London, New York, 2002 p28
Ibid p14
Ibid p28
Richard Schechner, From Ritual to Theater and Back in Performance Theory, Routledge: London, New York, 1988, p122
Richard Schechner, Toward a Poetics of Performance in Performance Theory, Routledge: London, New York, 1988, p171
Tino Sehgal in conversation with Dr Carey Jewitt, Goethe Institute, London, 29th January 2007
Richard Schechner, What is Performance? In Performance Studies, Routledge: London, New York, 2002 p28
Allan Kaprow, Participation Performance (1977) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, pg186
Allan Kaprow, The Real Experiment (1983) in The Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press: Berkeley and LA, 1993, p217
Educator 7, General observations collected from educators from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007
No. 4, Selection of children’s statements from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007
No. 13, Selection of children’s statements from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007
No. 19, Selection of children’s statements from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007
No. 23, Selection of children’s statements from Observations of the Project, ICA, March 2007

Bibliography
Bateson, G. (1973) Steps into an Ecology of Mind (Paladin Books)
Baudelaire, C. (1968) Baudelaire: Oeuvres Completes, (Paris: Edictions du Seuil)
Bishop, C. (2005) Installation Art: A Critical History, (London: Tate)
Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational Aesthetics, (Dijon: Les presses du reel)
Burns, T. (1992) Erving Goffman, (London: Routledge)
Caillois, R. (1961) Man, Play and Games, (New York: The Free Press)
Derrida, J. (1982) Margins of Philosophy, (Chicago: Chicago UP)
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, (London: Penguin)
Huizinga, J. (1955) Homo Ludens, (New York: Beacons Press)
Kaprow, A. (1993) The Blurring of Art and Life, (Berkely and LA: University of California Press)
O’Doherty, B. (1999) Inside the White Cube, (London: University of California Press)
Phelan, P. (1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, (London: Routledge)
Schechner, R. (2002) Performance Studies, (London: Routledge)
Schechner, R. (1988) Performance Theory, (London: Routledge)

Play People - Goldsmiths Lab Project

2007-12-15T13:59:00.000Z

Allan Kaprow 'The Blurring of Art and Life', 1993

Kaprow's use of real life experiences as 'ready-made' art objects, was his way of exploring the meaning of life. Influenced by the American philosopher John Dewey, Kaprow stated that 'Art is not separate from experience' and that it's environment 'is a process of interaction'.

“Such consciousness of what we do and feel each day, its relation to others’ experience and to nature around us, becomes in a real way the performance of living. And the very process of paying attention to this continuum is poised on the threshold of art performance.” (196)

Kaprow's interpretative approach is experimental and participatory. He offers up situations/operations/structures/feedback/learning as inventive methods of art making. The comparison to how children play and experience the world is apparent, as they mirror, test and probe human responses and behaviours. This idea of 'playing' and 'testing' can be seen in the recent work at the Tate Modern by Carsten Holler 'Test Site', where the audience was invited to slide. Roger Callois in 'Man, Play and Games' writes about play (and in this case, sliding) 'producing delight and overcoming fear'.

The Play People are a model of an approach to art-making and to the Lab. We can see the Lab as a test site where we can play with ideas of practice and theory - testing and interrogating. They also represent a community or collaboration, just as we are in our group, with each character bringing their own individual histories and abilities. Finally, as Ola pointed out, there is an obsessive quality to our approach to art practice for many of us, with games or hobbies experienced in early childhood taking shape into personality traits and agency in later life.

I would like to add Allan Kaprow's 5 definitions to artwork, to discuss where we may situate ourselves, or in fact, if we can work across them all...

1. work within recognizable art modes and present the work in recognizable art contexts
2. work in unrecognizable, i.e., nonart, modes but present the work in recognizable art contexts
3. work in recognizable art modes but present the work in nonart contexts
4. work in nonart modes but present the work as art in nonart contexts
5. work in nonart modes and nonart contexts but cease to call the work art, retaining instead the private consciousness that sometimes it may be art, too (175)

Family Pictures

2007-12-09T20:12:00.001Z

Ink studies from old photos

Encountering ‘The Body’ of Installation Art within Spinoza’s Ethics.

2007-12-03T17:40:00.000Z

“Reality is inexhaustible, and there must be infinite ways in which it can be thought of.” (Stuart Hampshire, Introduction to Ethics)

To engage with a work of art is traditionally a primarily optical experience, one that necessitates the act of ‘looking’ at an object or image. What happens when we go beyond the purely visual, when art invites a physical engagement and we, as viewer, experience the work as participant, rather than spectator? What affects are activated by encountering a work which communicates through audio, visual and kinaesthetic means? How does installation attempt to engage participants? These concepts are evident in contemporary practice, as well documented by Nicolas Bourriaud in his text Relational Aesthetics , yet it is also worth revisiting the historical development of engaged installational practice.
Influenced by Dada, Surrealism, Futurism and the Gutai Group in Japan, it was in the late 1950’s that installation pioneer Allan Kaprow established the distinction between participants and viewers within art discourse. Not confined to the gallery space, his early happenings, also termed ‘assemblages’, took place in lofts, houses and farms. In his 1963 happening ‘Push and Pull. A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hoffman’, Kaprow furnished two rooms and displayed instructions which invited the visitors/participants to rearrange the rooms as they so wished. It stated that:
Anyone can find or make one or more rooms of any shape, size, proportion, and color -- then furnish them perhaps, maybe paint some things or everything. Everyone else can come in and, if the room(s) are furnished, they also can arrange them, accommodating themselves as they see fit. Each day things will change.

Kaprow removed himself from the space, playing no part in the happening but did note that some older women began to clean the rooms, apparently appalled by the mess. Activated by audience participation, the space functioned as an alternating environment, shaped by individual and collective decision, taste and choice. This early example of physical, participatory practice highlights the attempt to merge art and life. Kaprow thought that “…if we bypass ‘art’ and take nature itself as a model or point of departure, we may be able to devise a different kind of art… out of the sensory stuff of ordinary life.”
Kaprow’s happenings, along with practitioners such as Kurt Schwitters, Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Guy Debord, Adrian Piper and Judy Chicago attempted a radical redefinement of art through the use of the everyday; political agitation; collaboration and the use of non-art spaces. They can be considered as the forerunners to contemporaries such as Argentine-born Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (whom Bourriaud exemplars, amongst others ). Tiravanija invites the audience to engage with the art process by cooking pad thai (noodles) for them at exhibitions and recreating his small East Side apartment in a gallery, inviting people to use his ‘home’ to sleep, eat, shower or simply meet and chat). The space was open 24 hours a day. Tiravanija wants to open spaces for dialogue, where new, albeit fleeting, communities can meet, exchange and engage despite the, at times, isolated nature of contemporary existence.

It is within this context that we can situate Installation art. A blend of expanded sculpture, theatre, performance art, land art and site-specific work. Claire Bishop states that Installation art “…differs from traditional media (sculpture, painting, photography, video) in that it addresses the viewer directly as a literal presence in the space.” The sensory experience of the observer/participant is fundamental to the conceptual realization of installational practice. Bishop continues, “…installation art presupposes an embodied viewer whose senses of touch, smell and sound are as heightened as their sense of vision.”

This multi-sensory experience, combined with the relationship between viewer/participant within the physical space, suggests an immersion somewhat similar to how we experience daily life. This merging, or bringing together, of art and life, is a reoccurring element of installation. It enables the viewer/participant to enter a terrain, a common-space of experience, by utilizing familiar elements of the everyday (spaces/ relationships/ experiences/ knowledge). In Spinoza and Us, Gilles Deleuze explains that there is a “…common plane of immanence on which all bodies, all minds, and all individuals are situated.” Deleuze states in Immanence: A Life, that the plane of immanence is ‘virtual’, yet it is “actualized in an object and a subject to which it attributes itself.” The virtual, or conceptual, plane of immanence can be encountered through installational practice as it impacts upon the participants capacity for being affected through a common shared experience of the ‘everyday’. Spinoza proposes that “If something is common to, and peculiar to, the human body and certain external bodies by which the human body is usually affected, and is equally in the part and in the whole of each of them, its idea will also be adequate in the mind.”

Swiss artist Christoph Büchel’s complex installations consist of seemingly chaotic, yet meticulous, arrangements of household and everyday objects that he uses to construct hyper-realistic fictional environments informed by today’s social and political concerns. His constructed realities produce feelings of claustrophobia, panic and paranoia. In 2005, Büchel’s installation, entitled Hole , directed visitors through cramped spaces and passageways where CCTV footage of a suicide bomber was juxtaposed against the bombed-out, destroyed shell of a Swiss tour bus and a psychoanalysts room creating a narrative in which to explore current tensions surrounding terrorism, American hegemony and fundamentalism.

In 2005, Büchel collaborated with Gianni Moti on the Guantanamo Initiative and documented their attempt to rent Guantanamo Bay from Cuba on the grounds that the US occupation is illegal, again emphasizing the contradictory and distressing situation of America’s action in it’s ‘war against terror’. Büchel’s recent, and extensive, exhibition, Simply Botiful (2007), at Hauser & Wirth Coppermill demanded viewers to engage with the work by physically negotiating the space, squeezing past people into tiny bedrooms, crawling through holes in the walls and floors, climbing up and down ladders, clambering into a fridge freezer, crawling around tunnels and an archaeological dig site, being surrounded by pornography and picking through vacant offices, workshops, cafes, lorries and containers. Bishop points out that, “Many artists and critics have argued that this need to move around and through the work in order to experience it activates the viewer, in contrast to art that simply requires optical contemplation.” Büchel creates microcosmic narrative environments through his use of space and his awe-inspiring manipulation of everyday materials in which the participant’s activated engagement is a necessary factor for the realization of the installation.

The body is situated on the plane of immanence. The body is not necessarily a physical being, but could be any conceptual essence: ideas, connections, molecules. The body is “composed of an infinite number of particles” . Deleuze expands on Spinoza’s ‘dynamic’ definition: “a body affects other bodies, or is affected by other bodies; it is this capacity for affecting and being affected that also defines a body in its individuality.” Entering into Simply Botiful, my ‘body’ was affected as my emotions fluctuated through feelings of surprise, unease, disorientation, disgust, dismay, curiosity, inspiration and a kind of submersion. Yet there was also an awareness of how my ‘body’ and the other body (of viewers) could affect the ‘body’ of the work – by physically and emotionally interacting with the space (adding/removing objects, climbing, crawling, queuing, exclaiming, laughing, discussing, questioning).

In The Ethics, Spinoza proposes that, “If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, then when the mind subsequently imagines one of them, it will immediately recollect the others also.” This is true of Buchel’s installation, where the participant is affected by a multi-sensory encounter that connects and relates to everyday life, political issues, social concerns and collective experiences. The body (in this case, the mind) relies upon the function of memory to make associations, as one thought passes to another, through transitions between ideas and images. Russian artist, Ilya Kabakov suggests that the “viewer therefore encounters these works ‘like his own personal, highly familiar past’, while the installation as a whole, is capable of ‘orienting a person inside itself’ appealing to his internal centre, to his cultural and historical memory”

Kabakov’s ‘total’ installations, such as In the Closet (2000) and The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment (1981-88) also employ common experience within their constructed environments for their capacity to affect. For Documenta IX, in 1992, Kabakov’s The Toilet consisted of a small restroom with six toilet stalls which had been filled with furniture including a bed, table and dresser. The suggestion was that the occupier had recently left and may return at any moment. Kabakov refers to his work as ‘total installation’ due to the presentation of an immersive scene into which the viewer in submerged, a tactic employed by installation artists to ‘affect’ since its conception in the 1960’s. He writes that: “The main actor in the total installation, the main centre toward which everything is addressed, for which everything is intended, is the viewer…. the whole installation is orientated towards his perception, and any point of the installation, any of its structures is orientated only toward the impression it should make on the viewer, only his reaction is anticipated”
Let us return to Spinoza’s definition of the body. The dynamic proposition that we have explored refers to the capacity to affect and to be affected. This is combined with the kinetic proposition which is concerned with velocity. Spinoza explains: “Bodies are distinguished from one another by reason of motion and rest, speed and slowness, and not by reason of substance.” Deleuze and Guattari also employ the composition of velocities in their second definition of the plane of immanence in A Thousand Plateaus. They state that: “There are only relations of movement and rest, speed and slowness between unformed elements, or at least between elements that are relatively unformed, molecules and particles of all kinds (…) Nothing subjectifies, but haecceities form according to compositions of nonsubjectified powers or affects.”

These alternating velocities of acceleration and deceleration, create connections, moments if you like, of recognition. Spinoza proves that we can never truly conceive of the body in its infinite entirety of complex relations, yet there are moments of awareness when we can glimpse, or sense, a greater perception. This is what Deleuze does when he situates “us in the middle of Spinoza” . How can we visualise these relations of shifting speed and slowness? If we take the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern as our given ‘plane’, we can see how two contemporary practitioners have manipulated everyday occurrences to affect a body through common memory and shared experience, to compel participants into different degrees of motion and rest.

Carsten Höller, born in Belgium and with a doctorate in agricultural sciences, works with a wide variety of media including video, installation, drawing, architectural plans, photographs, performances and sculpture. His concern is with physiological reactions and human perception with each work giving an impression of a scientific experiment set up to explore humanistic issues. Höller incorporates viewers and transforms them into integral components of his work. Many of his sculptures and installations induce feelings of doubt, fear and uncertainty… along with feelings of fun, laughter and joy. The seventh artist to take part in the Tate Modern’s Unilever Series, Höller has installed five huge tubular slides which run down from the gallerys’ main levels and end at a communal ‘landing pad’ which splits the Turbine hall in two. Having experienced Höller’s slides before in 1999 at Kunst-Werke in Berlin, I was eager to see how the slides would work in the Tate and whether the experience would be equal to the memorable event of being whisked outside of the building, down a story at high speed and literally flung out onto a crash mat in a silent gallery space full of unsuspecting German art admirers.

The use of the slides ‘affect’ participants perception and behaviour. Höller continues by saying that “these works can create very interesting situations where, due to the effect of the work, you start to behave in a different way. It’s almost like creating a micro-society of a different form of behaviour.” Spinoza demonstrates that bodies are affected by motion and rest and highlights the relations between bodies and their capacity to initiate or cease movement. He states: “A body which moves or is at rest must be determined to motion or rest by another body, which has also been determined to motion or rest by another, and that again by another, and so on, to infinity.”

How does Höller determine a body into movement? It happens through the environment he creates, the act of sliding and the inter-relations of the viewers - the participatory acts of queuing; putting on protective pads and caps; watching others descend; laughing or screaming on the slide; the reaction of others when you land; waiting for friends and witnessing their expressions and sharing the experience. Roger Caillois writes in Man, Play and Games about the pursuit of vertigo. It consists “of an attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind. In all cases, it is a question of surrendering to a kind of spasm, seizure or shock which destroys reality with sovereign brusqueness.”

The act of sliding, can be a fearsome experience, yet it is also something which most of us have experienced as a child and can recall climbing the steps only to gleefully abandon oneself to gravity and shiny metal. Höller’s use of a common idea, particular to the human body, returns to us the memories of an everyday childhood event that “induces a form of delight that is reflected in the facial expression of those arriving at the bottom of the slide.” Test Site happens when the user participates in the sliding experience. The immediacy and tangibility of entering into the art work activates the senses whilst giving us an acute awareness of high-speed motion. Höller attempts to activate both the body and the mind. He states that “the site of the test is not only in the Turbine Hall; it is also that little part in the user and viewer that is stimulated by the slide: a site within.”

Just as a body can determine another body into motion (as we have seen with Test Site) the fourth Unilever Series installation, The Weather Project (2003) by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson could be said to slow relations between bodies down. Eliasson used hundreds of mono-frequency lamps, a spray of mist and a mirror to producing a dazzling image much like the sun at sunset or sunrise creating an huge chill out space inside London’s main art gallery. Eliasson has harnessed the elements of weather throughout his career (water, light, temperature) and employed them to create phenomena that replicate nature, whilst simultaneously drawing attention to the constructs of the work to empower an awareness of perception. Spinoza writes that “the knowledge of an effect depends on, and involves, the knowledge of its cause” , and in the same context, Eliasson’s installation makes us conscious of the moment, the situation, and invokes a space (or gap) to consider the capacity to affect and to be affected. He is interested in “ our ability to see ourselves seeing – or to see ourselves in the third person, or actually to step out of ourselves and see the whole set-up with the artefact, the subject and the object – that particular quality also gives us the ability to criticise ourselves ... [and gives] the subject a critical position, or the ability to criticise one’s own position in this perspective.”

The situation created by Eliasson alters preconceptions of space/time where the movement and behaviour of viewers is decelerated. As people lay on their backs, sat in groups, gazed in contemplation, they became the subjects of the work. Eliasson explains in a conversation with Hans Ulrich Oberst that a role reversal is created when the viewer is stimulated and engaged with the work. The object of the work is the viewer/participant and subject of the work is the context in which they are engaged. The body interacts with the space, and an awareness of the body (and the world/nature) is heightened through sensory consciousness.

As with the majority of installational practice, Eliasson’s work operates within the common territory of shared experience. A sunrise or sunset – an event shared by all beings (or bodies) that exist on the plane. Eliasson considers how “the object, through its codes and connections in culture, influences the spectator or person engaging with the object” due to their prior knowledge of a recognisable experience. The interchangeable capacity to affect occurs between the viewer and the work and relations of speed and slowness are concerned with the connections between particles and elements. Deleuze compares the “composition of speeds and slowness on a plane of immanence” to the way “a musical form will depend on a complex relation between speeds and slowness of sound particles.” Just as music is composed of sound particles, installation is composed of visual and conceptual particles - extensive in their relation and affective capacities.

The combination of the dynamic composition (capacity to affect and be affected) and the kinetic principle (relations of motion) create Spinoza’s definition of the body. If we look to The Ethics, we can construe that the body (installation), composed of dynamic and kinetic properties, can be of use to the human body. Spinoza proposes that, “Whatever so disposes the human body that it can be affected in a great many ways, or renders it capable of affecting external bodies in a great many ways, is useful to man.”
Spinoza reminds us that we are never capable of fully realising our capacity to affect or to be affected. On one hand this feels like a cautionary word of warning, yet on the other it liberates and unleashes a confidence and potential for explorative creativity. Affective capacity is necessarily greater than that which we are conscious of. This knowledge is the basis for inventiveness, for play, for possibilities. Höller says that, “art is full of possibilities. That’s the whole idea. Even if something is not yet there it could possibly be. That is one of the basic premises of art – why we do it.”

If we agree with Spinoza in that the body has an affective capacity, then we can also presume that these capacities can vary in power to a greater or lesser degree. In the third section of The Ethics, Spinoza tells us that a body’s power of acting can be increased or decreased by another affective body. Taking the idea of a common notion as a base, Deleuze explains that “if we encounter in experience a body that does not agree with ours, it has the effect of affecting us with sadness (diminution of our power of acting).” Conversely, when we are in agreement with another body, we experience joy which is seen to increase our power of acting. Spinoza defines the passions of joy and sadness using them as an explanation for our experience when we pass into either greater perfection (joy) or lesser perfection (sadness). We could look to both Höller and Eliasson’s installations as examples of joyful encounters where a common experience was used to create a participatory space that, in its ability to open dialogue and exchange, produced an increase in power in the mind and body of the viewers.

Without relying on a purely subjective response to an artwork, we could ask whether an installation as an affective body produces a sadness, or, an encounter that does not agree with us? London-based Japanese artist Tomoko Takaheshi creates installations out of piles of carefully collected rubbish. As with Büchel, she positions the objects in a kind of organised chaos, with the space often looking as though a tornado has recently passed through the room. Takahasi often asks the public to donate objects, as she did with Park Light, an installation in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington in 2000 where she collected masses of disused sports equipment to create a performance. For her Turner Prize nomination (2000), her exhibit Learning How to Drive, was created from a narrative of discarded maps, traffic cones, signs, lights, driver’s manuals, children’s toy cars, tools, instructions and plants. Although Takahashi’s hectic environments comment on social activity and shared experience, the viewer encounters the work as an observer, rather than participant. Whilst she states that “everything has its own life and I want to make things more themselves, to liberate them from imposed rules” as a viewer of her installations, there is a real sense of frustration that you can’t clamber through the piles of objects, sit in the middle of them and have a good rummage around! The white lines taped to the floor direct you to walk ‘around’ the work, gallery guards politely tell you to step back, cameras record your movements and the body is affected. Not through the subject/context of work in this case, but by the larger ‘body’ of the gallery space or art institution.

Installation’s historical roots are based upon a desire to break from the sterile, controlling environment of the commercial gallery where the viewer can look but not touch. Takahasi’s work contains many positive affects (common notions, ideas, experiences, political and social questions), but the viewing conditions and lack of physical immersion produce an encounter somehow lacking in a fully affective, participatory engagement. This could, of course, be said of much of the art that we can view in our galleries and museums, and why I feel that the immediacy of work by artists such as Kabakov, Büchel, Höller and Eliasson relates so intrinsically to Spinoza’s demonstration of the affective capacity of a body.

Deleuze uses the terms ‘longitude’ and ‘latitude’ to help us visualize a map of the body that exists on the plane of immanence. Longitude refers to the relations of motion and rest (speed and slowness), illustrated through Test Site and The Weather Project. Latitude refers to the capacity to affect and to be affected. He adds that “the longitudes and latitudes together constitute Nature, the plane of immanence or consistency, which is always variable and is constantly being altered, composed and recomposed, by individuals and collectivities.” In The Ethics, Spinoza calls upon individuals to look upon life (or a body, an experience) as a series of complex relations (or assemblages) composed of velocities and affective capacities so we can gain a ‘truer’ understanding, or knowledge. Spinoza’s writings were concerned with the way to live a life, to exist in the world and to realise our full potential, but The Ethics also enables us to think about art as a joyful, affective encounter. We conclude with Deleuze, a Spinozist, whose thoughts about shared experience (common notions) echoes the intent of installation practitioners concerned with engagement and participation:

“The common notions are an Art, the art of the Ethics itself: organizing good encounters, composing actual relations, forming powers, experimenting.”

Bibliography
Bishop, C. (2005) Installation Art: A Critical History (London:Tate)
Bourriaud, N. (2002) Relational Aesthetics, (Dijon:Les presses du reel)
Caillois, R. (1961) Man, Play and Games, (Illinois:The Free Press of Glencoe)
Colebrook, C. (2002) Gilles Deleuze (London: Routledge)
Deleuze, G. (1988) Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Lights Books)
Deleuze,G (1990, trans copyright 1995) Negotiations: 1972-1990 (New York: Columbia University Press)
Deleuze,G (2001) Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life (New York:Zone Books)
Deleuze,G (2004) Desert Islands and Other Texts (LA:Semiotext(e))
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (first published1988, reprinted 2004) A Thousand Plateaus (Trans. B.Massumi) (London: Continuum)
Goodchild, P. (1996) Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire (CA:Sage)
Grynsztejn, M. (ed) (2002) Olafur Eliasson, (London:Phaidon)
Harris, E. (1992) Spinoza’s Philosophy: An Outline (New Jersey: Humanities Press International Inc.)
Höller, C. (2006) Source Book, (London: Tate Publishing)
Kabakov, I. (1995) On the Total Installation, (Bonn: Ilya Kabakov and Cantz Verlag fur due Abbildungen)
Kaprow, A. (1958) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life (Berkeley: University of California Press)
Kaprow, A. (1966) Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (New York:Harry N. Abrams Inc)
O’Sullivan, S. (2006) Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari: Thought beyond Representation (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan)
Rappolt, M. (2006) Should Carsten Höller shove his mother down a five-storey slide? in Art Review, Issue 04, October
Schneider, E. (ed) (2001) The Mediated Motion – Olafur Eliasson (Cologne:Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz & Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König)
Spinoza, B. (first published 1677, edition 1996) Ethics (Trans. E.Curley) (Penguin:London)

Accident Series

2007-12-03T16:00:00.000Z

Following the Hit and Run in Maida Vale, I became a bit obsessed with my broken bones! These 2 series were based upon the idea of an accident, broken feet, and dreaming of floating without pain.

Contour Bodies

2007-12-03T15:23:00.000Z

Below are a sample of life studies exploring contour and form.

Books

2007-11-27T22:43:00.001Z

Example of a paper cut-out book made for Sup Cat (who ate a mouse in the middle of the night...)

Collage and Cut-outs

2007-11-27T21:54:00.000Z

These are some examples of collages made for particular people and events.

They are made from found, Japanese and hand-made papers.

Newham Short Film Production Scheme 2006

2006-07-06T23:38:00.000+01:00

5th July 2006 - Simon Wring (Director) and Vikki Hill (Producer) shortlisted to final 12 for Newham Short Film Production Scheme 2006. The scheme promotes and develops Newham as a sustainable major film making and film cultural centre.

Juice Bar

2006-07-05T12:11:00.000+01:00

Tokyo, a mixed media and oil painting by Vikki Hill can now be viewed at Juice, 49 Mac Thi Buoi Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Tel: 0084 8829 6900.

Tokyo was originally part of a trip-tych based on women from Asia - Afghanistan, Indonesia and Japan. The painting was composed as an extention to the sketchbook Vikki kept when visiting in March 2005.

Di* composition

2006-06-27T04:08:00.000+01:00

Di*composition
24 June 2006

Wonderful District host a show by a group of art students from the British International School. The artists have been working around themes of composition and destruction, growth and redevelopment. They have chosen to base their work around the Opera House, a renowned French Colonial building which signifies a multiplicity of meanings. From an icon of harsh times, a bastion of European culture and a tourist meeting point, the Opera House is centrally placed in a down town, District 1 location. Wonderful district lends itself to collaboration and discourse and the students have worked in a group to formalise and produce their ideas. Their outcome is a comment on their environment, our community… a constantly changing, evolving and developing city that heralds an exciting future whilst maintaining its strong and political history.

Artists: Hanh Nguyen, Minh Ho, Eun Ji Chaung, Linh Pham, Dini Muana, Triana Hernandez

Artist advisors: Vikki Hill, Betrand Peret, Sandrine Llouquet

British International School of Vietnam - Students work

2006-06-26T13:29:00.000+01:00

Magnification - A2 Exam Final Piece.
Oil Painting on canvas
Jim Abril

Magnification
A2 Exam prep sheet.
Jim Abril

Prince Andrew walking
in front of mural designed
and facilitated by IB Diploma
students, painted by KS3
Secondary students.

Vietnam Mural in Street Kids
School Library, Pham Ngu Lao,
HCMC, Vietnam.
Designed and painted by
Secondary students.

Triana Hernandez,
IB Diploma student.
Cermic pot - flowers and teeth.
Related to female sexuality,
Feminism and Surrealism.

Minh Ho IB Diploma Student.
Mixed media poly-block prints.
Surfaces.

IB Diploma Art trip
to Singapore.
Workshop with Shih Yun Yeo
in her studio Instinc

Triana Hernandez,
IB Diploma student.
Ceramic pot - flowers and teeth.
Related to female sexuality,
Feminism and Surrealism.

Eun Ji Chung
IB Diploma student
Surfaces
Mixed media sculpture
based on water

Eun Ji Chung
IB Diploma student
Surfaces
Large scale wall mural
One of three
based on water

Hanh Nguyen
IB Diploma student
Surfaces
Mixed media sculpture
Effects of advertising
and media on society

Australia Chamber of Commerce
Young Designers Award
Winner and runner up
entries from BIS.

Ha-Kyung Moon
Year 11
IGCSE Mock Exam
Bustling Market
Acrylica on canvas

Life drawing workshops

Eun Ji Chung
IGCSE Exam
Dappled sunlight and
strong shadows
A1 acrylic painting

Year 10 Sketchbook

Year 10 sketchbook

Year 10 sketchbook
Trip to Islamic Arts Museum
Kuala Lumper

Year 10
Expression
A1 Acrylic paintings
Self-portraits

Year 10
Natural Form
A1 Chalk and charcoal studies
Enlargement

Year 10
Expression
Self Portraits
A1 Pencil drawings

Year 10
Natural Form
Mixed media sculptures
(wire, hand made paper,
natural and found objects)

27 Duong 5 - Private View 18 Feb 2006

2006-06-26T08:14:00.000+01:00

27 Duong 5

recent work by vikki hill

sound by simon wring

The work shown in this exhibition is a celebration of people and places; countries and cultures. The ink drawings on the ground floor refer to cities that are, or have been, important to me in various ways. They are stories of journeys taken.

City Series, 2006
Ink, mixed media collage

London, 2006

Kabul, 2006

Singapore, 2006

The Tokyo painting was originally part of a tryp tich based on women from different parts of Asia – Japan, Indonesia and Afghanistan. The painting is an extension of my journal that I kept whilst away. Pattern and repetition are predominant features in my work. This is reflected in the Bangkok photographs that also show the surface of the streets.

The circular paintings from Singapore were documents of my trip to the island and became a journal in themselves. The 2 drawings (rubbings) document my house and my neighbourhood. The making was assisted by my young neighbours.

Duong So 5
Crayon on paper

Upstairs houses a series of 9 paintings and their felt ‘reflections’. The idea was conceptualised last year on a visit to Hoi An, where the surfaces and textures of the walls and buildings fascinated me. I made the pieces during the New Year celebrations and each refer to an aspect of Vietnamese culture - myth, legend, song. The moon reoccurs in each piece. Felt-making is labour-intensive, and the focus of these is the process, colour, pattern and repetition.

Wall Series, 2006
Series of 9 mixed media pieces

Felt Reflections, 2006

The sound is by Simon Wring. He has collected and manipulated sounds from the neighbourhood that reflect the work shown.

The Flip-flop Game, 2006
Oil and mixed media on canvas

First Day (21 March 2006)

2006-03-21T14:06:00.000Z

Merci a Sandrine et Bertrand pour l'aide.