The box is a world.
When someone inserts their head into the box they are accepting, if only for a few minutes, the unknown parameters of a miniature, alternate world. This mundane item, the cardboard box, reframes a face-to-face encounter in a way that rewards their risk and encourages intimacy.
After I welcome someone to the box and ask a few questions, which are never the same set twice, my guest in the box becomes a collaborator, helping determine the direction of our temporary reality.
In our shared dark space, where faces are barely visible at this time of day—it’s evening outside the library—one young lady tells me of her recent divorce and leads me through a meditative breathing exercise. Another extracts her head after 15 minutes discussing storytelling, and exhorts the handful of spectators to give the box a try.
Next Sunday, as part of Arts in Bushwick Festival, I will perform at BETA Spaces 2010 group exhibition "HomeSweet?"
I applied for the group exhibition via the 'Artists Seeking Artists' opportunities, and emailed the curator with some initial ideas for a performance proposal. I wasn't expecting anything at first, still wary of the New York reception of performance art in this current age.
My first responses back from the curator/organizer didn't appear to be going anywhere;
they wanted to know more, in precise detail it seems, of what I was proposing/planning to do when I performed and how it related to my previous body of work.
I had to explain that I am now attempting to create a 'new' body of work which 'in-itself', questions the nature and status of the 'new'.
Wasn't hopeful of being accepted, no expectations raised- recalling conversations as to the decline of Performance Art in NYC during the past decade due to financial unsustainability in current resessive economic context causing more and more artists to leave performance behind as a medium in favour of more commercial purchasble media and forms...
Then yesterday, whilst waking up with the rest of the packed house sitting at the Breakfast table drinking Chen Jin's green tea, recieved email confirmation:
Hi,
Excellent! Short sudden shot of panic of now having to deal with another art 'world' and community whom I have no connection to prompts me sharply to go and befriend them at their place, very close to Grace Space I then discover.
My persistance in submitting the applications was encourages by my CEP supervisors insitance that I attempt to contextualize and seek exterior opportunities from beyond the wing of Grace Space.
...Even If the proposals and submitions we're rejected, have the texts and responses to include in an appendix of attempted projects in context, plus feedback on how to improve my applications for the future...
I applied for the group exhibition via the 'Artists Seeking Artists' opportunities, and emailed the curator with some initial ideas for a performance proposal. I wasn't expecting anything at first, still wary of the New York reception of performance art in this current age.
My first responses back from the curator/organizer didn't appear to be going anywhere;
they wanted to know more, in precise detail it seems, of what I was proposing/planning to do when I performed and how it related to my previous body of work.
I had to explain that I am now attempting to create a 'new' body of work which 'in-itself', questions the nature and status of the 'new'.
Wasn't hopeful of being accepted, no expectations raised- recalling conversations as to the decline of Performance Art in NYC during the past decade due to financial unsustainability in current resessive economic context causing more and more artists to leave performance behind as a medium in favour of more commercial purchasble media and forms...
Then yesterday, whilst waking up with the rest of the packed house sitting at the Breakfast table drinking Chen Jin's green tea, recieved email confirmation:
| From: | NLW Arts (nlw.arts@gmail.com)  |
| Sent: | 03 November 2010 00:43:10 |
| To: | xiipal lapiix (xiipal@live.com) |
Hi,
Home Sweet is being exhibited at 1095 Flushing Ave. at a retail store,Better than Jam.
There is a space behind the store, where you you can do your Durational & Interactive Performance.Excellent! Short sudden shot of panic of now having to deal with another art 'world' and community whom I have no connection to prompts me sharply to go and befriend them at their place, very close to Grace Space I then discover.
My persistance in submitting the applications was encourages by my CEP supervisors insitance that I attempt to contextualize and seek exterior opportunities from beyond the wing of Grace Space.
...Even If the proposals and submitions we're rejected, have the texts and responses to include in an appendix of attempted projects in context, plus feedback on how to improve my applications for the future...
For Person Remunerated for a Period of 360 Consecutive Hours, originally made at P.S.1 in New York in 2000, Sierra built a brick wall in the gallery space and paid a low-income worker his usual wage to live behind the wall for 360 hours, receiving food and drink through a narrow opening at the base of the wall. Other works have included instructions for minimum wage workers to push enormous cement blocks around a gallery, to sit in a cardboard box throughout an entire working day, to hold up a wall leaning at 60 degrees, to have their backs tattooed or sprayed with polyurethane, etc. Employing temporary laborers – often immigrants not legally allowed to work – determines Sierra's work as performative, with his ‘'actors' being by necessity and by definition provisional. By making clear indictments of global economic imbalances and abuses, Sierra, as a member of a privileged social class of intellectuals or 'cultural workers,' cannot possibly be part of his own works.
Extracted from http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/blogon/view_essay.php/154/the_legacy_of_performance_art
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