From the archive: World Performance Art Final
I have decided to take a look back at my favorite papers from my time in graduate school. Many of these detail intracacies from my fieldwork that did not fit into my final thesis, others explore other things. They are not perfect. But they are the foundation from which I continue to grow and learn. I have decided to be proud of them. One per week in the month of May. Enjoy.
“The heart of improvisation is the free play of consciousness as it draws, writes, paints, and plays with raw materials emerging from the unconscious. Such play entails a certain degree of risk” (Nachovitch 2010, 9).
Saga’s Savage Scenes | Although the piece I am analyzing took place in summer of 2017, the inspiration of this work stems from the art movements of bricolage, surrealism, Dadaism, and the Happenings. One reason for this continued exploration of these ideas in Iceland is the idea of Iceland in isolation and receiving a “second-hand knowledge.” Saga Sigurdardóttir is an Icelandic “performing artist in the making.” Her piece Savage Scenes took place in July of 2017 in Reykjavík Iceland. To begin this paper, I will share my field note experience as an observer of this piece. Then I will share Saga’s notes regarding the work, and bring in theoretical writings from class and outside of class to round out my discussion of the piece.
Performance | I attended the piece with my cousin who was visiting Reykjavík from Wisconsin. It was quite the struggle to find the entrance to the studio. After walking into a restaurant and getting redirected, we found it and walked up four flights of grey concrete stairs. Everyone was gathered on the landing of the grey concrete stairs and it was clear that most people were artists or dancers and everyone was quite friendly—with each other. Saga came out and welcomed us into the space, we filed in about 25 in total, mostly female. There were 5 males. Everyone besides us, everyone in the audience were Icelandic. We sat on the skirts of the room on chairs or risers with mats. The room was white with grey floor and there was a skylight that was closed. First she lined up (diagonally) a:
Guitar
Microphone
Fur
Disco ball
Old school roller skate
Skateboard
Chain (hung)
Rope (hung)
Stick
Stereo
Tennis racket
She lay in line with the objects, closed her eyes and opened the ceiling with a remote. The sky light in the ceiling opened slowly with a great amount of noise. As I watched, I noticed her eyes flickering, making sure it was still opening, and it reminded me of when I did my greenhouse dance and we lay posed among the plants for 15 min waiting for the crowd and the ceiling.
Once it opened, her breathing deepened—slowly, she began rolling over onto the skateboard and she played with the affordances of that object. Her hair got stuck in the wheel and she tore out a huge chunk—she continued playing with the objects down the line rolling over disco ball, etc. In one movement she was on her knees and she placed the tennis racket into her sternum and contracted over it. In place (remaining contracted) she raised and slowly moved over to the guitar--- standing now, she transferred/adjusted her contraction to the standing guitar. Later she was laying on the floor, balancing the guitar on her body with different methods, and letting it drop hard onto her calves and body, her breathing deepened as she tried to still her body flat. She did this for about five to seven minutes, attempting to get the guitar to stand upright on her stomach. A third movement—she was swinging from the rope and with the stick, she slapped the gold chain and it crumbles. She went over to the broken chain and sang, “broken links are golden” as she drops the chards onto the disco ball. She began singing to the disco ball “you are round and so am I, in my feminine traits.” She took the rest of the chain and uses it as a lasso…fast and then slow. It then draped around her shoulders so that one end was at her waist and the other dragging on the floor as she walks—she piled up all of the objects, hung the disco ball, goes and sat on the stereo speaker (music goes back to Ava Maria, which was the first song) and she closed the ceiling. She stood and thanked us. The audience clapped: a calm but extended clap. She then encouraged us to leave through a different door than the one we entered through. We came into a gallery of photographs of the objects from the piece in different scenarios. We were free to leave as we pleased. https://vimeo.com/233974553
As you can see from the Vimeo posted by LHI this performance, including the song, were all completely improvised. The performance in this video is not the same performance that I viewed, although it is the same studio and same objects, and she is wearing the same clothes that I saw her performing in.
Figure 1 Savage Scenes by Saga
Saga’s conceptual framework | In her notes she writes that she uses “bricoleuse practice – a playful practice with found materials.” According to the Tate Modern Museum, “bricolage is a French wording meaning roughly ‘do-it-yourself’, and it is applied in an art context to artists who use a diverse range of non-traditional art materials (Tate.org).” The Tate goes on to say that the approach
“became popular in the early twentieth century when resources were scarce, and aspects of surrealism, dada and cubism have a bricolage character. But it was not until the early 1960s, with the formation of the Italian movement arte povera, that bricolage took on a political aspect and it was used by artists to bypass the commercialism of the art world. Arte povera artists constructed sculptures out of rubbish in an attempt to devalue the art object and assert the value of the ordinary and everyday” (Tate.org).
Saga also relied on the idea of the savage mind. ‘Savage’ stems from anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss: “savage thought as a qualitative state of mind belonging to all humans…untamed human thought” (Saga 2017). In this performance her main questions where: “how do we practice hope through play? Where can the savage mind take us? What does it produce? What value does such an endeavor hold? Sensual? Practical? Poetic?” (Saga 2017). This exploration that Saga underwent in this performance ties directly to a few of the concepts we discussed in class. First, it relates to Nachmanovitch and Free Play. Second, it ties to Burroughs’ interview in The Third Mind. And third, this performance relates to the Happenings.
Burroughs | Saga states in her write up that it was “My ambition is to meet objects as if for the first time, to learn more about their qualities and possibilities more than my familiar mundane knowledge holds” (Saga 2017). This sentiment is similar to Burroughs ideas expressed in his interview in the Third Mind. “What I want to do is to learn to see more of what’s out there, to look outside, to achieve as far as possible a complete awareness of surroundings. Beckett wants to go inward […] I am aimed in the other direction: outward” (Burroughs 1978). Just as Burroughs and his wanting to look outward, Saga wanted to let “objects seduce me, and rather than to ‘meaning,’ I am drawn to the depth of the object and to their secrets” (Saga 2017). Going deep into the greater meaning of the world around yourself is highlighted in Burroughs instruction for writers (and artists): “For Godsake, keep your eyes open. Notice what’s going on around you” (Burroughs 1978). We get from each of them that a deep exploration means paying attention and learning from the objects or the world and not trying to box in ideas of the world through your own pre-conceptions and understandings.
As I relate his ideas to Saga’s work I want to ask the question: Is cutting possible in movement with objects? In all of the examples this course brought up about cutting it was always words: song lyrics or literary words. But I feel that when Burroughs stated, “Out of hundreds of possible sentences that I might have used, I chose one,” that this relates exactly to Saga’s goal of “meeting objects as if for the first time.” This type of playfulness with objects in her performance ties this intellectual practice of cutting to the practice of improvisation. The fact that she performs this multiple times in improvisation allows her to explore different paths that she maybe did not try the night before.
Play and Improvisation | Saga also states that she has been intrigued by the concept of play in her work and as stated previously, her main question was how can play bring hope? Whether or not she answers this question through her practice, Nachmanovitch says, “play is without ‘why.’ It is self-evident” (Nachmanovitch 2010 45). In this there is a validity to Saga’s childlike approach to her work in Savage Scenes. And through this childlike approach and the great number of possibilities, comes the idea of hope. Furthermore, her very use of the idea of the savage mind was a way to explore the human ability to create and invent. In a way her exploration proves that “improvisation is intuition in action, a way to discover the muse and learn to respond to her call” (Nachmanovitch 2010, 41).
Saga’s work was structured: she had a set space, set objects, and a set amount of time. She also had a set goal: to explore. Nachmanovitch writes about how important good technique and structure are for a successful improvisation and play. “Improvisation is not ‘just anything’; it can have the same satisfying sense of structure and wholeness as a planned composition […] structure ignites spontaneity” (Nachmanovitch 2010, 69 and 83). Saga created a limitation for herself in the work to structure the play based on her training as a dancer and performer and the texts she read for this project. In this way, her work is both unique every time it is performed, as well as being informed by past performance art works: such as the Happenings.
The Happenings | An idea that ties improvisation, Saga’s work, and the Happenings together is the idea that both melt away after the performance. No one who was not at the show I attended will ever see the same show I saw. According to Kaprow that is one of the elements to this art movement we now dub: Happenings. First he discusses: Assemblages, Environments, and then the Happenings themselves. In his wild book Assemblages, Environments, and Happenings Kaprow writes that, “They (assemblages and environments) are at the root the same—the only difference is one of size. Assemblages may be handled or walked around, while Environments must be walked into” (Kaprow 1965, 159). While most of this section refers to paintings, he does get into the use of other materials in the creation of art.
I relate this to Saga’s decision to lay on the ground and attempt to get the guitar to stand upright on her body. She attempted different parts of the guitar over and over as it fell with a crash onto her hip bones and chest. Eventually she got up and used that guitar for something else. Kaprow says, “If an artist is alert to what is becoming worn out through too much usage…he can always count on being in a position to examine the fresher alternatives that still lie untapped” (Kaprow 1965, 162). Kaprow is advocating for the vast amount of possibilities that exist in ordinary objects. At this time in art Kaprow asserts that there was an increase and clear decision in using perishable objects “to abandon craftsmanship and permanence” (Kaprow 165, 168). Through this comes a reinforcement that Saga’s performance work is tied to the dada, surreal, cubist art forms of the 1960s. She uses the impermanence of improvisation and everyday objects to explore these same ideas through her body and space rather than a canvas. He calls this idea of using objects as a “constant metamorphosis” of the human imagination (Kaprow 1965, 169). Again, we see Saga influenced by these ideas in her desire to let the objects change her.
He next comes to his section titled “the event” which encompasses what he refers to as places for people. He says that Happenings “grew out of” the Event (Kaprow 1965, 169). He continues to explain that Happenings were small gatherings in classroom, small galleries, and the audience would be very close to what is being presented or performed. Now there are some “rules of thumb” about Happenings that Kaprow highlights:
The line between art and life should be kept as fluid, and perhaps indistinct as possible
The sources of themes, materials, actions, and the relationships between them are to be derived from any place or period except from the arts, their derivatives, and their milieu.
The performance of the Happening should take place over several widely spaced, sometimes moving and changing locals.
Time should be variable
Happenings should be performed only once (in each place, in same way)
Audience should be eliminated (not passive)
It has evolved as a collage of events in certain spans of time and in certain places
Now not all of these were true of all Happenings, but as the art form developed it was imperative to create guidelines. As such, Saga’s performance piece really only fits 2,3,5, and maybe 4 and 7. So was Saga’s Savage Scenes a Happening? That is truly only for her to declare, and as of now she has not. However, her work is influenced by Kaprow’s ideas and that is very clear in her use of impermanence and material culture and exploration. One Happening that really struck me as similar to Savage Scenes was Birgitta Eklöf and trumpet player Bengt Ernryd. As Kaprow describes it: “A dialogue took place. It was not jazz and poetry. She simply said things to him and occasionally he played small sounds back to her” (Kaprow 1965, 289). This reminds me of the improvisation between Saga and her objects. An instance that comes to mind is when she swung and the gold chain chattered in the performance I attended, and she had to move on with her work including that. Another example is when she tore her hair out in the skateboard wheel and I was sure that she had planned on that occurring due to her composure.
Iceland + Second Hand Knowledge | To tie this all back together to Iceland. There are a few things that are important to note. Iceland is an island nation in the North Atlantic. Reykjavík is the northerly most capitol city in the world. For about five centuries or so until the 1900s, Iceland was a nation faced with severe isolation. While the rest of Scandinavia traded, developed separate languages, etc, Iceland was hanging on in between earth quakes, volcano eruptions, and harsh winters. Even once Iceland re-entered the global world, its geographical location resulted in a large degree of isolation. Thus, Iceland’s art scene received all its knowledge in a few ways: paper trail, traveling and training abroad, and the rare visitor. This is what Anna Vujanovic calls “Second-Hand Knowledge.” The implication of this concept is that those places on the ‘peripheries’ do not have first-hand knowledge and thus do not impact the cultural scene of the world in the same way that places on the center do. Vujanovic pushes back against this idea. She claims that second-hand knowledge gives freedom to artists to explore more, as they are not bound by strict ideologies of their art form. She also argues that places on the periphery have their own first-hand knowledge that is often overlooked or deemed non-important.
While I argue that Vujanovic is correct in many ways in the Iceland dance community, in the instance of the inspiration behind Saga’s piece, I think we see the result of this “second-hand knowledge.” We see this through Saga’s own writing on the piece. She was inspired by the art movements of bricoleuse, dadaism, definitions by Lévi-Strauss, as well the idea of an Event or Happening. She learned about each of these movements, not by being trained in them in Iceland, nor by first-hand experience—but through her training abroad and reading on these ideas. However, Vujonavic’s point about the peripheries having freedom comes across in Saga’s performance as well. She took some of these concepts and then did what she wanted with them. She combined them, changed them, and perhaps redefined them—in large part because she did not feel bound by a strict discipleship to any of the ideologies or strict art forms she explored.
Conclusion | Overall Saga’s piece highlights the experimental and playful elements of art as we have discussed throughout this course. She uses a lot of the concepts from eras and movements we studied throughout this course and she gives credit to many of these ideas. Other ideas, like her tie to the Happenings, can be interpreted based on the nature of her improvisational work. Her work also demonstrates the unique way in which Iceland receives its knowledge of art movements and redefines them. Saga’s Savage Scenes is a wonderful representation of how art movements spread across the globe at their own place—and how these movements shift in their new local manifestations. Even though this piece occurred the summer of 2017, I would argue that had it taken place in New York in the 1960s, it would have fit into the scene quite well.
Works Cited
Burroughs, W.S, and Brion Gysin. 1978. “Interview with William S. Burroughs.” In The Third Mind. New York: Viking Press.
Kaprow, Allan. 1965. Assemblages, Environments, and Happenings. New York: Harry N. Abrams, INC.
Nachmanovitch, Stephen. 2010. Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.
Sigurdardóttir, Saga. 2017. “Savage Scenes.” LHI.
Tate.org. n.d. “Art Term: Bricolage.” Tate. Accessed March 5, 2018. http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bricolage.
Vujanovic, Ana. 2009. “Second Hand Knowledge.” Creative Knowledge.
