Part 1
Choose your three favorite performance artists and study how are they related. What do they have in common? Is technology an essential component in their work? Answer also this question “What is to be done” in the field of Performance Art.
My top three performance artists are: Marina Abramovic, Petr Pavlensky, and Zhang Huan. Marina is an extraordinary performer, with extremely eccentric and unique sets and ideas. She is a strong female character, which I really enjoy about her. During her performance art, you can tell she has a very strong sense of individuality...she does not care about what others think about her. I think this characteristic alone makes her an outlier from the rest of society. Petr Pavlensky is another one of my favorite performance artists. I admire his courageous spirit for standing up for what he believes to be right in his country. It is so interesting that he does performances that "trick" the government or that make it difficult to stop the performance. I love how he is not afraid of being arrested or beaten for his beliefs. I think this shows how powerful personal belief is. I also love how he has inspired others to stand up for their own political beliefs in their own countries. Finally, Zhang Huan is another one of my top performance artists. He famously says that he "needs to express his powerlessness to the world" and he does this my exposing himself in dangerous situations and artistic messages. He uses his own body to express how he's feeling. He pains himself to express the message...even if it means a painful consequence or experience.
All these performers have an intense sense of bravery regarding their own beliefs. Each one of them separates from the conformity found in society. They all inspire and they all create. They create different, but they use their own bodies as part of the art. Marina, Petr, and Zhang all do courageous acts to draw attention to a certain area of their life. They all take risks and experience rejection, yet they all inspire others to engage to the inspiration of being confident in what you believe.
Technology is not an essential component in their work. All three performance artists use their own bodies to convey their own ideas to the public. Technology may be used to create some aspects of their performance, yet overall they do not use it when they are performing.
I believe that performance art is just beginning in the world of art. I believe that there are so many different people who have confident beliefs and are not afraid to take risks to achieve in what they feel is essential to society. I think an element that could enhance performance art could be virtual reality. A virtual reality performance art where they literally take an audience inside their performance instead of just watching a performance could enhance the feeling and the effects so much further than three dimensional I also believe that more social issues could be addressed through performance art.
Part 2
For my performance art, I decided to put a brown grocery bag over my head, with a picture of an iPhone taped onto the front, wearing all black. My cameraman, Leah, was also wearing a bag on her head except her costume had eyeholes for filming observations. Wearing this attire, I knocked on doors in some of the resident halls to see what their reactions were. I knocked on doors in an upperclassmen dorm as well as a freshman dormitory. When I knocked on their door, I held out a sharpie to see if they would write on the bag. Through this whole experience, it was extremely interesting how people reacted. When filming, I started in Brevard. I knocked on several doors but only one answered. This could be that students were looking out of their peepholes and did not answer because they saw a creep dressed in all black with a bag over their head. The one that did answer, however was mostly confused…she looked over and asked her roommate what to do several times. Curious if freshman would be more forgiving in answering their door to a stranger, I went into Austin hall. Several people opened their doors, and several reactions were filmed. The very first door we opened, did not say anything and slammed the door in my face. Then we walked down the hall to where a guy was walking in the opposite direction. I stopped and he was the first to write on my head (he wrote ‘Hi.’). We had some more responses and some more writings after the first guy wrote. One knock led to a discovery of her own roommate’s name (which I thought was terrible that she didn’t’ even know her roommate’s name yet extremely hilarious). And the finale, the guy opened the door took my marker and then closed it. Overall it was a really fun and enlightening experience, yet it revealed many things about our society. Here were some common themes captured: people asking others what to do, extreme confusion, laughter to relief tension, lot’s of ‘hi’ writings, creepy vibes, and cautious actions.
Even though these reactions were expected, it is an extremely similar ideology to how technology hides who we truly are. When talking to one another via technology, we are blocked by genuine identity. Anybody could be anyone through the use of tech, yet if we get to know them through technology how are we going to understand the real them? Shouldn’t we be confused or creeped out that we do not know who we truly are texting? I thought it was very interesting that only when the first person wrote, other people wrote after him. It’s crazy how conformed our society is to where it takes courage to step out and do something against society’s rules: If someone else isn’t doing it, I wont either. When people don’t know how to react to a certain situation, they turned to other people to try and help them understand what was happening. I thought it was also interesting how no one asked me who I was or why I was doing it. Shouldn’t we be confused why we talk to people more through technology than face to face? It’s ironic that our culture is doing the same exact thing, yet we just don’t see it. With the bag over my head, unable to see people or their reactions built confidence in myself and created many perceptions on how different types of people deal with uncomfortable and foreign situations.
People try to find identify when confronted, yet we obviously see that it’s impossible when technology is in between. However, our society is becoming more and more technology based. Will we reach a point where no one talks to anyone face to face at all? This performance art project was enlightenment towards my view on the relationship between people and technology.
