Corpus Delecti: Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica

Translating Geometric Abstraction into a Language of the Body
          <Clark and Oiticica examined Neoplasticism, Constructivism, Suprematism, and Concrete Art and in the process fused two traditions (Western and Afro-Indigenous)
          <this was a combination of vision and metaphysical knowledge with oral tradition
          <their new combination stressed the meaning of participation as opposed to its form
          <they focused their work on the body
          <their creations redefined the identity of the artist and the idea of authorship

Lygia Clark's Trajectory: from form to experience
          <Clark and Oiticica explored the multidimensions of the human body in their work
          <Clark started out with a series of Neoconcrete geometric sculptures
          <these later turned into two separate pieces called Nostalgia of the Body and Organic or Ephemeral Architectures which centered on the body
          <in 1959-1960 she developed a series of Neoconcrete sculptures called "Bichos"
          <her works and pieces were and observation of the coexistence of opposites within the same space

Head-mounted and Sensorial Works: hoods, masks, goggles, gloves, body suits
          <Nostalgia of the Body used hoods, masks, goggles, gloves, and body suits to make the audience connect the pieces together (relational aspect)
          <Clark tried to show the connection between the body's physical and psychological being through her art

From: http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/dialogo-oculos/

Collective and Participatory Works
          <in the last phase of her work, Clark used relational objects in her works as a means of emotional healing
          <she made no attempt to establish boundaries between her emotions and her works
          <her material confronts viewers about art, perception, and body/mind relations

Helio Oiticica's 1960's Aesthetic of Subversion and Cultural Contamination
          <Oiticica incorporated time and movement as an active element of his work
          <like Clark's works, Oiticica focused on viewer participation more and more with each new work
          <this can be seen in his works entitled Spatial Reliefs, Nucleus, Penetraveis, and Bolides

From: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/oiticica-spatial-relief-red-rel-036-t12763

Oiticica's Leisure Strategies: crelazer and the super-sensorial
          <Oiticica's idealogy of participation and Clark's explorations of the body internally and externally expanded upon each other
          <his creations were based upon two concepts (Crelazer and Supra-Sensorial)
          <his work fused formal investigation with leisure activities

Parangoles: samba and interactive art
          <Oiticica also explored the mythical, primordial structure of art
          <this was represented through a recreation of the self through and initiatory ritual (samba)
          <for Oiticica, samba was a conduit of energy and desire as well as a connector

From: http://travelseelove.com/main/2013/03/02/rio-carnival/vila-isabel-samba-school-1704975/

Body/Machine Hybrids, Interfaces, and Networks: interactivity into new realms
          <Neoconcrete art does not generally focus on technology or any combination that involves technology
          <Stelarc however had an interest in technology and how it could be used to enhance the art world for Neoconcrete art
          <Clark and Oiticica set out to find that participatory art merges conceptual and perceptual, material and immaterial, embodied and disembodied experiences through their art work



BY: Samantha Lassiter

Corpus Delecti: The Melodramatic Seductions of Ava Perón

The Melodramatic Seductions of Ava Perón

     Maria Ava Duarte de Perón was the second wife of Juan Perón who was president of Argentina. she was the first lady from 1946-1952 which was due to her untimely death in 52'. this woman was the voice of the social change and started many movements that influenced woman rights and pushed the envelope in theater by allowing woman to take active roles over the male performers/singers.

Art from: Wikipedia

     Ava was most popular known for her works on stage in melodramatic performances. at the time this type of performance genre was almost unheard of and was not widely used among the culture. it is this art form that Ava brought forth that allowed the evolution of performance. her demeanor as was that of a rebel and the time spent in office was used to speak up for those who didn't have a voice.

art from :Viajeros.com

the performances held at this theater were the most revolutionary as many women took the stage and at the time it was rare to have women taking a primary role in either singing or performing. Such as the woman tango singers they were able to go against popular culture and achieved nearly the impossible while taking the stage and overshadowing the male dominance. overal the melodramtic era in Argentina was greatly influenced by that of Perón and is still highly regarded as a basis for reference in american performance theater today.

by: Robert Lopez

Corpus Delecti Article – Exotic Exports: The Myth of the Mulatta

Retrieved from: www.pixgood.com

Ochún’s Blessing and Curse

            - A mulatta (female) or mulatto (male) is the term used to describe a person of mixed white and black race, typically with one only white and one only black parent.

            - In Cuba of the 19^th century, mulattas were praised as sexual objects for white men, adorned for their beauty and sensuality. Gilberto Freyre, a Brazilian artist of the 1900’s, flaunts that mulattas are the greatest creation in the country and reprimands them, and other women, by saying, “white women are for marrying, mulattas are for fornicating, and black women are for working.”

            - Mulattas are said to transcend reality as mythical, exotic, healthy, and young. Essentially, they are an example of a positive form of racial prejudice, setting such a high standard for beauty. Sought out as a prized possession, however, mulattas were also unfortunate to be desired. They were the result of white males fooling around with their female slaves and impregnating them as a result; this, in turn, was still the way that some mulattas were treated and put down.

            - Other mulattas were seen as free colored women. They were put on a pedestal as a symbol for both wild nature and pure virtue, the antithesis of the common white woman whose role was merely to be wife and mother. But the roles of the mulattas were only to be a mistress and a prostitute for the will of any man. Mulattas were taken advantage of as impure-blooded women, despite their beauty and praise.

Retrieved from: www.dreamstime.com

Harvesting Exoticism

            - Vaudeville Theater bloomed in 1878 and through to the late 1930’s with stereotypical mulattas as entertainment wearing tiny, revealing, fitted clothing, almost to the point of being considered pornographic. They portrayed trouble makers, flirters, and dancers and performed nightly in cabarets where they would sing, act, dance, and gradually remove articles of clothing.

- The majority of performances were raunchy, become more explicit through the eras, and packed with white male audience members as tourism grew larger in the 1950’s. Mulattas were taken so far as to be labeled a result of Cuban culture, Cuban music, and Cuban product.

            - The rumba dance became highly associated with mulattas, identified as sexy and elegant rhythms of movement, just like the women who danced to them.

Retrieved from: www.lajiribilla.cu

On the Journey Back to the Source

            - The end of the 1950’s did not become the end of the intensity of mulatta shows. Dancing was more frivolous, listening to music became an all-nighter, theaters were packed with audiences every night, and the actresses and the audience became more... integrated (if you know what I mean). The nightlife was erratic!

            - In the 1960’s, a cartoonist by the cover name “Wilson” created characters known as Las Criollitas, exemplifying the Cuban perspective on mulatta women with over exaggerated “shapely legs and thighs, wide hips, small waist, pointed breasts..., miniskirts..., tight T-shirts..., [and] platform shoes.” They were also drawn explicitly with “sensual lips, long eyelashes and big eyes.”

            - At the closure of the late 1970’s, Cuban mulatta were having children who were having children, increasing the racial discrimination about the myth of impure-blooded women. Some mulattas’ names were changed to butterflies, unfortunately because they and their families were exiled to welcome younger and fresher mulattas. Not long after, the Cuban economy slipped into crisis and nightlife began to become more scarce. True prostitution emerged from former mulattas, though some strived on to become models for magazines. The crave for exotic women had died down.

Article By: Raquel Mendieta Costa

Translated By: Eduardo Aparicio

Blog Written By: Bretten James

Corpus Delecti Article: From Inscription to Dissolution

This is an article on the work of Ana Mendieta from 1972-1985. She constructed Super-8 films, performances, actions, drawings, paintings, and site-specific. She produced art whose appearance contained what is real as well as the reminisce of life amongst ruins of modern culture.

Performing the self
Mendieta enrolled in painting studies at the University of Iowa which shaped her future studies and her art. Mendieta was able to perform for Hans Breder who used women students as performers for his body sculptures treating the bodies as objects.. This provided the frame for Mendieta's own projects after abandoning painting in 1972. Mendieta started her work with mimicking other identities with her own identity such as becoming a male through the appliance of facial hair. Later Mendieta began doing super-8 films which were repetition of simple gestures completed in everyday life. Also from a series in 1972 when Mendieta focused on the subjection of the body to physical stress she pressed a piece of glass against her nude body and face to cause distortion and show brute force.

The scene of a crime 
During November 1972 to late 1973 Mendieta began to use blood and focus on the controversial subject of rape that followed an incident with an Iowa University student who was raped and murdered. The piece involved her on a table nude and covered in blood with a door slightly open for her fellow students to witness the piece as it was Mendieta's personal response to the incident. Later in 1973 Mendieta began doing more works involving crime scenes that could demand witness and participation by onlookers. With this Mendieta made a connection between art and crime. In an interview she stated that art was her salvation from becoming a criminal due to the anger she felt growing up as an orphan.

Sacrificial Violence
In the summer of 1973 Mendieta began to read Octavio Paz's book on Mexican culture which inspired more ideas in her which involved Paz's theme of sacrifice and relation between man and nature. Mendieta inserted Paz' comments directly into her artistic statements. Such as her work in Oaxaca, Mexico working with animal blood covering her body or laying white flowers and roots on herself to give the impression they are growing from her.

Retrieved from:http://nyulocal.com

The Sacred Imprint
Between late 1973 and February 1974 Mendieta began working with film and blood again with "Blood Writing" as she uses her body to create silhouettes and impressions. Thus emphasizing on the work of a woman's body as an instrument and production of art itself. Thus gaining a fascination with the idea of symbolic relation between eroticism and death. Mendieta continues with using her body to make symbolic suggestion with the use of blood, imprints, and silhouetting. Later piecing each one together to form a crime scene with a shrouding corpse.

Becoming other than oneself
Mendieta begins shifting her work by removing herself as the material object and working directly with the landscape. Such as her piece "Silueta de Yemaya" where she filmed a wooden raft with a white flower silhouette of herself flowing downstream to symbolize a wondering soul. This work was used to articulate the negative dialects of exile.

Ashes to Ashes
In 1975 kept working with the landscape while doing more film such as "Genesis Buried in Mud"  where time passes a the Earth begins to move and reveal Mendieta herself to be buried and rises. Shifting toward the grave and burial focus as well as rebirth and death. Mendieta becomes a muse and her cultural displacement inscribes itself in her work.

Retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com

By: Kyle Woods

Performance Art: From Futurism to Present; pages 228-249

Critical Content

          <culture and current events reflected the art of the time

          <9/11 brought about an emotional and heart wrenching time of art work

 

Retrieved from: http://www.proppi.uff.br/ciberlegenda/balkan-nomadic-baroque

          

Radical action in China

          <in China, the people were affected by the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing (1989)

          <this affected the art drastically and artists began to try and capture the emotion of this event through video and photography

          <art work began to tell stories of anguish and pain, they showed the determination of the artists themselves

          <change from communism to capitalism became a focus for in China and seen by the whole art world

          

Archives and performance

          <politically troubled and war torn environments, such as Mexico, Poland, Africa, etc., began using performance and video to capture the emotion and pain of daily life there

Retrieved from: http://ftp.gac.edu/~lwren/AmericanIdentititesArt%20folder/AmericanIdentititesArt/JacirEmily.html

Political allegories

          <political consciousness is an important part of individual character in the art world

          <paying attention to the politics of ones country leads to inspiration and connection with certain people

          <it gives the artist an idea of what their art should say based on their daily life in different countries

          <this leads to a deep connection to community and place

          

Body as instrument of communication

          <the body is especially important for communication in South Africa

          <this refers to performance art by visual artists

          

Social space

          <French art in the mid-1990s stemmed from politics

          <the art of French artists explore space and the viewer's role in it

          <the audience was viewed as a material to be used in the artistic process

          <the French artists also had a special relationship in using film to measure everyday reality and the world of imagination

 

Retrieved from: http://www.art21.org/images/pierre-huyghe/the-third-memory-video-still-1999?slideshow=1

Post-conceptual art

          <post-conceptual wave focuses on art practice itself where the work is both a question as well as a demonstration

          

Audience responsibility

          <Tino Sehgal believe the audience should participate in the art work as well by making a choice of what they will and will not pay attention to while looking at a piece of art work and within its spaces

          <other artists help the audience by giving lectures or speeches about their work to the audience and telling them exactly what they should look at

          <art is about making decisions by both the artist and the viewers

Conversations with artists

          <in speaking with artists one learns what drives them and what they expect out of the experience of each of their viewers

          <it is also learned that artists within the same sort of living style or culture tend to have similar means of why they make art or what they hope to achieve by doing so

          <artists tend to strive more towards a sense of community with their art rather than individuality

 

Retrieved from: http://artnews.org/spartacuschetwynd/?i=7

Performance into the twenty-first century

          <today performance history as well as what it means now can be seen through the access of the internet

          

Taking centre stage

          <there are many more artists and performers today than there had been in the past

          <the main focus of art today tends to reflects the "fast-paced sensibility of the communication industry" 

BY: Samantha Lassiter

Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present: Pages 203-227

Dance Theater

            - Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane took classical dance and transformed it into duo performance art. They molded the pas de deux into their own style, adding unusual intimacy, costuming, and theatrical design.

            - “Dance was used to punctuate or defuse emotional states or to link one body gesture to another.” – Tim Miller, Buddy Systems, 1986

            - Pina Bausch and the Tranztheater Wuppertal used dance as a full extension of one’s emotions. She redesigned classical, natural, and repetitious movements into dramatic and visceral stories. Her performers were men and women of all heights, shapes, and colors who performed from simple tasks such as walking and turning to extraordinary trust falls and leaps.

            - The physical performance of Pina’s works powerfully affected its spiritual meaning.

Retrieved from: www.cinemasights.com

Live Art

            - Stephen Taylor Woodrow created an exhibitory called The Living Paintings in 1986. This building was dedicated to viewing people who had literally become art statues, covered so deeply in paint and stood so firmly in place that the only recognition of human life was the fact that they blinked or the actors would intentionally break to touch a viewer or shift position.

            - Live models were the new connection between painting and performance for artists such as Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, and many others of the late 1980’s who wanted to see their artwork “come to life!”

Retrieved from: www.thedesigninspiration.com

Retrieved from: www.best-fun-mails.blogspot.com

Identities

            - Multiculturalism art sparked in the early 1990’s when artists explored cultural differences and struggles from real life situations of diversity. Styles of art, dance, and music became very distinct among ethnicities.

            - Unfortunately, satirical and stereotypical racism, sexism, and emancipation sparked causing uproars and sickening sights. The worst of these was extreme public indecency, intimacy, and excruciation of the human body.

            - Performances were mainly set in private apartments, abandoned buildings, or just outside university campuses, but police surveillance increased. As well, censorship watches and arrests increased which looped to heavier protesting about personal body rights. An endless cycle...

The New Europeans

            - In Europe during the same time, networks of theaters were becoming more organized and more available and performances became more disciplined, grand, and polished.

            - Theater for them became more about exploring the body and acknowledging what each piece represents. They appreciated the body in a sophisticated way rather than a sexualized, selfish way.

New Media & Performance

            - In the late 1990’s, artists came up with ways to incorporate technology and technological themes into their pieces such as updated special effect lighting, film projection, and surround sound. As well, mythology and sy-fy became popular themes.

            - Feminist designs and campaigns became more predominant, and a collage of live performances and recorded media became the gradual norm through advancement in technology.

Retrieved from: www.slodive.com

A Widening World

            - Religion and trends overtook history and culture starting in the new century of the year 2000. People became illiterate and ill-informed and rarely any artist spoke up against the judging eyes of the media.

            - Visual performance through photography and artwork appeared as an anonymous, passive-aggressive reaction to media influence. Naked bodies could no longer be appropriately seen and politics consumed daily activity and controlled every action.

            - True art diminished as a result.

Retrieved from: www.personal.psu.edu

By: Bretten James

Performance Art: From Futurism to Present pages 152-177

Performance Art: From Futurism to Present
By: Roselee Goldberg, Robert Lopez

The Art of Ideas and the Media Generation

     The performance movement of media through this time was drastically effected by several major government and cultural movements that allowed artist at this time to redefine what art means and the use of the human body in which it flows. Focus on the artist body was made predominant started from 1969 work "Street works IV" as Acconci acted out using his body revolutionized the performance industry. focus around the dimensions and space around the human body, that is the goal starting from here.

     this image represents how the artist views negative space and the ability to fill this void with human positioning in order to take advantage of the dimensional space. it is this fulfillment only the body can use that paved the way for rituals and explains their popularity today. Such ideas of a living sculpture were the forefront of many artist pieces in this time.Scott Burton pair behavior tableaux consisted of an hour long performance of static poses in order to appease and disengage from the audience through body language.

     This picture represents the use of the body and the different ritualistic performances that increased in number from 69-86. even today the media movement towards the body image and positions are key to the production of new age art. only from here can we hope to see continuing usage of the body as a prop.