Carnivale The September Performance Relay

Tom Penney

Where does art sit in between the singularity of the art outcome, residue or object and the

contrasting multiplicity of process, performance and participation? Can performance frame

and unite the two? The September Performance Relay was a four week event taking place

inside the Think Tank at Curtin University that I coordinated to help answer these questions.

Artists in groups of two took it in turns to respond to and transform the evidence and

remains of artists who had used the space previously into a body of work with both process

elements and residual outcomes. At the completion of the four weeks, an opening was held

in which videos of process alongside residue were displayed in a carnivalesque space. I

intended to question the dualistic nature of art as a whole. Initially intending to examine

this issue from a somewhat Deleuzian perspective of rhizomic or intertextual links and

nodes, I have moved into focusing on Bakhtin’s idea of carnival to place the event into

perspective. Performance, becoming synonymous with carnival, became a catch-all state or

space that allowed singularities and multiplicities to exist together.

It has, of course, become accepted that artworks not only consist of objects. After the peak

of Abstraction in 1950s America (and even in movements like Futurism and Dada), the art

world more widely began to accept and embrace that its artworks existed in two parts. The

singularity of the art object, behaving autonomously, was also mercy to (and was even

undermined by) the extended processes, experiences and discussions that happen before,

during and after production. Even viewers, ideally converging on the singular art object to

glean from it a universal, basic and aesthetic experience were subject to their own readings

based on their individual circumstances and their position within a language system.

Postmodernism has developed strategies to undermine the structures and systems

developed within modernism that favour elitist and hierarchal models, especially in

painting. It has been the intention of the September Performance Relay to work in a more

fluid and interconnected space than usually expected within an institution, but without

necessarily negating art objects in a contrary fashion. Between reside and process, the event

has intended to find a mediating space between singularities and multiplicities respectively.

Painting especially has been employed to symbolise the top of a hierarchy or point of

singularity, however the way it has been treated in the Think Tank space has reduced it;

interspersing it with more multiple and diverse territories.

The September Performance Relay took as its most perceivably unconnected or isolated

forms; the aesthetic practices of painting and ceramics, and combined them with and

mechanisation and performance. It was great to see two practices mostly dominated by

“silent” object-making resonate with these habitually conceptual or socialised territories.

This is definitely a positive thing and suggests that stigmas between disciplines need not

exist despite any prejudices between them. Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner’s collaboration A

Series of Interruptions (Images 1 & 2) saw the development of a painting “machine”. Barretto

hovered around the environment, maintaining a Warholian sense of authorship without a

necessary “touch”. Paint was poured down tubes that dripped onto rotating canvases.

Steiner sat at her pottery wheel, becoming part of the overall machine as paint was

spattered on her fresh bowls. The result was an interesting mix – of the sense of authorship,

painting and gesture we see in modernism, and the interference of machine or tool; a

referencing the technology and mass-production that spurs much of postmodern theory.

This “mechanised Pollock” was both a spectacle to watch in its unfolding, and produced

charming aesthetic objects.

Image 1 Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (machine setup)

Image 2 Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (residue/outcomes)

I return to the 1950s here, where tensions between genius and mechanisation are

heightened, to discuss the duality of the work of Jackson Pollock (Image 3). For me he sheds

light on an art that consists of both process and outcome, creating a transgressive or total

art. Although heralded for the production of the “autonomous” art object, Pollock’s work

also existed as evidence of performance (Image 4). Not only was the outcome a singularity

offering a “universal” aesthetic experience in the modernist sense, it was also the result of a

pouring process derived from the methods of American sand painters. The work is usually

only given credit for the former purpose, it being displayed in clinical gallery spaces. In our

Think Tank space, the paintings and ceramics Ben and Claire produced were displayed as

objects, but in a more dynamic space that shed light on their process (Images 5 & 6).

Painting was displayed in a rotating motorised frame, alongside videos of the performance.

A perspective was offered that placed the work in both an object-based and time-based

setting. Theorist Roy Ascot favours the non-material side of Pollock, describing the result as

“an “arena”’ a meeting place, of behaviour, myth and idea.” (Ascot, 9, 1984). I agree, for I

think the work synthesises process, individual self and cultural reference on top of its

aesthetic value. This is what I’d hope the Think Tank could achieve and frame, and what I

aimed to forward with my own contribution.

Image 3 (left) Jackson Pollock, Blue Poles, 1952

Image 4 (right) Jackson Pollock in his studio, 1950, Courtesy Hans Namuth Studio

Ben Barretto and Claire Steiner, A Series of Interruptions, 2009 (final presentation)

Image 5 (left) ceramics displayed near video of process

Image 6 (right) Painting rotating on motorised frame

For my own contribution, keeping in mind the theories of Roy Ascot who creates a

“framework for approaching interactive artworks... [bringing ] together certain characteristics of

Dada, Surrealism, Fluxus, Happenings, and Pop Art” (Shanken, 2003) I also began thinking about

the space from a Deleuzian perspective; a place where disparate activities could be linked,

and their analogous features and potential states brought together into a new, piecemeal

art conglomerate. This did happen to some degree with Ben and Claire’s work, but my own

contribution with Shannon Lyons attempted to bring together not only art disciplines, but

ideas and behaviours from other time spaces as well as our own. When we dressed up in

costumes to paint the portrait of drag queen, Panache (Images 7 & 8), the result became a

fusing together of a medieval witch hunt with pop-art, gender-bending, painting and

occultism. The analogies I drew between these ideas were based on drawing metaphors

between witches and dark magic with the position of artists who use “impure” methods of

making art. These are artists who are not focused on aesthetic, spirituality or painting and

rather technology, pop, appropriation and conceptualism. These methods on a wider scale

are often met with mistrust or readings of anarchy, leading them to be “dark artists”. Our

act of painting was an appropriation tool to steal the “beauty” of Panache. This “beauty”

was represented in the drag queen as a state of being “other” – a transgressive or non-

binary-oriented (hermaphroditic) archetype that exists in a state of the liminal. By

attempting to portray this state on canvas, and by displaying the queen almost like a found

object or symbol, it became a metaphor for the condition we were seeking within the Think

Tank space itself, to portray two elements of a binary but transgress them.

Images 7, 8 Tom Penney and Shannon Lyons, Images from Untitled (Painting Panache) 2009

From reading Roy Ascott and Gilles Deleuze, it has become important to me that the artist

occupies a liminal or “between” space. This is a facilitating space navigating a world of

concepts, ideas, language and people, and the solid world of objects, materials and physical

law. Bengt af Klintberg from Fluxus (to whom the model was to be “in flux”) describes this as

a state between “stone and water” (Stiles, 2000). This location propels the artist into a

transformational space in order to become a connection maker – with the possibility of

taking any number of analogous or completely unrelated ideas from any number of

geographical, time, spiritual, scientific or material spaces, and highlighting their

relationships, apparent connections or (previously unforseen) potential as connected

bodies.

In a discussion with Markela Panegyres, she told me that Deleuze and Guattari’s ideas of the

rhizome had also influenced her work Thirteen Actions that she devised in the space with

Roslyn Cadee. Panegyres worked with PVC pipe and her own body (Images 9 & 10),

explaining to me that electrical wire flows through the pipe; her body here becoming a

central element in an expanded networked structure; a structure that is reflective of both

the way the Think Tank space has operated and societies of people operate in general. From

my perspective, this, on another level, is the same way the networks of cells operate in our

body to form consciousness (Thomas, 2009). It is almost as if Panegyres’ body represents

this central conceptual or disembodied element – the consciousness or “body without

organs” of a space that is material. This shifting of scale and metaphor (from the body to the

space and to society), finding similarities within multiple systems and mirroring them with

art analogies, brings Panegyres’ work to operate with the transformational and the topic of

boundaries – where are things the same, and when are they other things? Collaborating

with Roslyn Cadee, Panegyres used the opportunity to question the point at which her

practice was compatible or resonant with another person’s. We might look to Bourriaud’s

alter-modernism to realise that things could be linked by universal models, while retaining

their own individual elements or “cultures” (Bourriaud, 2009). Panegyres and Cadee, coming

to terms with each other in the space (Images 11 & 12), developed a sense of definition in

discovering where their practices may or may not intersect within a broader conceptual

framework or space.

Images 9, 10 Markela Panegyres and Roslyn Cadee, Thirteen Actions, 2009 (Installation of pipes)

Image 11 (left) Markela Panegyres and Roslyn Cadee, Thirteen Actions, 2009

Image 12 (right) Roslyn Cadee, Untitled, 2009

(Markela and Roslyn quote each others’ work to investigate boundaries and compatibility)

In working together and building off each other as a team, the space began to reflect the

dialogical of Bahktin. Transformation and performance, linking and quoting became

facilitated through discussion. The space was self-referent and talked about itself. Painting,

machines, pancakes, a wooden frame, a wall drawing left over by Glasgow residents Clare

Stevenson and Alex Pollard, and the space itself, became motifs that were re-used and

quoted by us all. The use of an external discussion space, a blog site

(http://thinktankgallery.blogspot.com/) was used to help people see each others’ work and

continue discussion. It became a totally networked space. A network of course requires

nodes and it requires links. Photos and evidence (singular outcomes used to inspire the next

artists) became nodes, and the activity of discussion and quoting, and then making and

performing, became links that drew them together. From this perspective, I cannot say that

either the nodes or the links are more important, only that they needed each other. Our art

required both outcome and process to exist within the intended framework.

The outcomes and processes were however, mixed and not always discernable. This

confusion was important, and it is here that I mention the carnivalesque nature of the entire

period that became, at the end, synonymous to performance. This word, “performance” has

indeed been used right from the start to title and frame the experience. At the end of the

four weeks we displayed the work in a piecemeal, conglomerate, untidy style. We left tools

and mess around to confuse viewers as to what was process and what was outcome. The

space was inhabited by people dressed as witches, and anyone wishing to view the work

had to dress in costume. Pancakes, refreshments and a craft-tent style pseudo-relational

aesthetics work where anyone could glue googly eyes to objects became part of the

festive/carnival atmosphere. The space was deliberately awkward and topsy-turvy –

paintings that moved on their own, photos of drag queens, tacky portraits, stale week old

pancakes and cheap store bought costume created a post-apocalyptic scene, a

deconstructed state from which could spring new potential. This mirrors the relay’s use of

the word “performance” to suggest a common ground, blank canvas, or “zero space” to

frame and allow all other methods of production to operate inside it in an open-ended

manner. Reading RoseLee Goldberg’s account of performance art one might see that this

process is usually “anarchic” (Goldberg, 2000, p.9). This may be so, but many artists like us

are deconstructive in order to reconstruct and reconfigure.

Image 13 (left) Performance Relay Opening, 2009 (mess and residue)

Image 14 (right) Performance Relay Opening, 2009 (everyone in costume)

Image 15 Performance Relay Opening, 2009, Googly Eye Workshop (created objects)

Image 16 Harry Court and Tanya Lee, Pancakes, 2009 (week old remnants)

The Think Tank’s version of “performance” was one with no hierarchy, but it was not

necessarily anarchistic. Performance was not against anything, it harboured all things that

took place. It wasn’t a shallow rhizome; it was both diverse and meaningful. All things were

treated equally, rather than holding prejudice against object making which is common in

performance as a counter-modern strategy. In the context of Bahktin’s carnival, Shanti

Elliot writes “Carnival shakes up the authoritative version of language and values, making

room for a multiplicity” (Elliot, 1, 1999). I celebrated this diversity of art methodology as such

a multiplicity within the space of the Think Tank. If within carnival paupers can become kings

and vice versa, operating together without distinction; pop and conceptualism became

kings, and painting became a pauper – traditional approaches were butchered imaginatively

and enthusiastically by myself and Shannon’s naïve abilities with the brush and Ben’s use of

the painting machine, rigging canvas up to motors and using a frayed canvas that dragged

on the ground, creating a sort of “Frankenstein’s painting”. Essentially, one had to negotiate

art objects, time-based elements, and performance together in a mixed bag. Everything,

process and outcome, became privileged as part of a gestamtkunstwerk where distinctions

between the two were never clear, and rightly so.

As a result of the September Performance Relay, I have seen possibility in making the

statement that a different kind of performance exists. This is a broad idea of “performance”

that has no owner and does not necessarily own itself. It isn’t against anything but it is a

state of deconstruction that revels and celebrates the “other” and all things mashed

together, even where they oppose one another. In terms of the Think Tank this was a state

of mind, of activity and of framing that navigated both object making and process. The

painting of Jackson Pollock became a three dimensional space with more than one artist

behind the “picture plane” and more than just a discussion with a single Native American

tradition or the artist behind the work. It was a space that discussed itself through all the

artists who used the space together and all the experiences and ideas they were quoting.

One might ultimately say that art sits in between the singularity of the art outcome, residue

or object and the contrasting multiplicity of art process, performance and participation, but

I feel inclined to say that a state of mind, of thinking, and the space to privilege this

cognition, can transgresses both and contain all things together, rather than be victim to the

undecided “between”.

References:

Ascott, R, Art and Telematics: towards a network consciousness in: H. Grundmann, ed. Art

+Telecommunication, 1984, Vancouver: The Western Front, pp. 25-67.

Bourriaud, N, Keynote, accessed 21/10/2009 at

http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/aaanz05/abstracts/nicolas_bourriaud

Elliot, S, Carnival and Dialogue in Bahktin’s Poetics of Folklore, 1999 (e-book) accessed

21/10/2009 at https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/2327/30(1-

2)%20129-139.pdf?sequence=1

Goldberg, R, Performance Art From Futurism to the Present, 2001, Thames and Hudson,

London

Shanken, E, From Cybernetics to Telematics: The Art, Pedagogy, and Theory of Roy Ascott in

Ascott, R. Telematic Embrace: Visonary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness,

2003, (ed. Edward A. Shanken), Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stiles, K, Between Water and Stone; Fluxus Performance, A Metaphysics of Acts, excerpted in

Tracy Warr, ed., The Artists'Body (London: Phaidon Press, 2000): 211-14 In the Spirit of

Fluxus (1993): 62-99.

Thomas, P, April 2009, Nano-Midas, lecture at Curtin University Art Department

Other Reading:

Bishop, C ed. Participation, 2006, Whitechapel & the MIT Press, London

Deleuze, G & Guattari, F, A Thousand Plateaus, 1980, University of Minnesota Press,

Minneapolis

Peeren, E, Intersubjectivities and Popular Culture: Bahktin and Beyond, 2008, Stanford

University Press, California