DAY FOUR

Tomorrow I (Kate) will be doing one on one videotaping of each of you saying something that matters to you, whether that be a quotation, or your own thoughts.

This audio and/or video will be used within a piece of music/sound that will play throughout the performance on Saturday.
Think of what you would like to say - this is opportunity for many people to hear your voice!
I would love your input as to what sort of sound you'd like incorporated with your words...what music or noise stood out or made an impression on you today?

Here is some great physical theater that uses : props, costumes, movement, sound and language...all things that WE will be using in our performance as well.

DAY TWO - from start to finish from Kate Barutha on Vimeo.

DAY FOUR from Kate Barutha on Vimeo.

DAY THREE

Brainstorming for Saturday's performance:

- Our own interpretations of freedom.

- What is freedom?

- Why is identity important?

- Black or Myself.

- We are all stardust.

- Humans must acknowledge their power and utilize it.

- How does identity give you power?

- Identity both gives and takes power.

- Identity connects us to one another.

- We are all little tiny puzzle pieces, together we are whole.

- Understanding the differences between labels, stereotypes and identity.

- Identity either can help us to understand the "Other"or prevent you from understanding it.

- Understand that you can't understand the other completely.

- Inner identity & outer identity.

- Gender - first labels cast upon us.

- Can't have an Identity without other people

- We rely on others to help us understand who we are.

- They help us validate who we think we are.

- Seeing the other in yourself and seeing yourself in the other.

- Understanding & questioning stereotypes.

- Recognizing and respecting stereotypes as symbols.

- What are the questions important enough to ask?

- Understanding that the other will always stay unfamiliar.


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AGUSTO BOAL

"Theatre is a form of knowledge: it should and can also be a means of transforming society. Theatre can help us build our future, rather than just waiting for it."

The Theater of the Oppressed, established in the early 1970's by Brazillian director and Workers' Party activist Agusto Boal, is a form of populartheater, of, by and for people engaged in the struggle for liberation. More specifically, it is a rehearsal theater designed for people who want to learn ways of fighting back against oppression in their daily lives. In the Theater of the Oppressed, oppression is defined, in part, as a power dynamic based on monologue rather than dialogue; a relation of domination and command that prohibits the oppressed from being who they are and from exercising their basic human rights. Accordingly, the Theater of the Oppresses is a participatory theater that fosters democratic and cooperative forms of interaction among participants.

Theater is emphasized not as a spectacle but rather as a language designed to:

1. Analyze and discuss problems of oppression and power

2. Explore group solutions to these problems - This language is accessible to all.

Bridging the separation between actor (the one who acts) and specator (the one who observes but is not permitted to intervene in the theatrical situation), the Theater of the Oppressed is practiced by "spect-actors" who have the opportunity to both act and observe, and who engage in self-empowering processes of dialogue that helps foster critical thinking. The theatrical act is thus experienced as conscious intervention, as a rehearsal for social action rooted in a collective analysis of shared problems of oppression.

This particular type of interactive theater is rooted in the pedagogical and political principles specific to the popular education method developed by Brazillian educator Paulo Freire :

1. To see the situation lived by the participants

2. To analyze the root causes of the situation

3. To act to change the situation following the precepts of social justice

DAY TWO

Our class's improv poetry from today's class:

I am an artist because if I wasn't...
...I'd still be where I use to be
...I wouldn't know who I am
...I'd be like everyone else
...I'd go crazy
...the world around me would petrify
...memories would be lost

Home is...
...wherever I am
...changing
...rocky
...my own
...where I belong
...freedom
...not a jail cell
...far away

In my world I...
...am happy
...have time for breakfast
...am a real boy
...am the ambassador of acceptance and truth

When I leave this world, I will make sure...
...I have asked a lot of questions
...I have made a difference
...that I have learned to play the ukelele
...that I sing for thousands of people
...that I do not regret having not tried something
...that I get published
...that my dreams come true
...at least one person remembers me

Our poemmaking reminded me of ethnopoetics, (a method of analyzing the linguistic use and structure in oral literature such as:poetry, myths, prose, narrative, folk tales, ceremonial speech and other forms of extended utterances in stylized registers; it is description in a way that pays attention to poetic structures within speech.
Please go to this great link to read and experience this type of poetry/expression:

http://www.ubu.com/ethno/poems.html

The Body as Raw Material from Kate Barutha on Vimeo.

DAY ONE

Mattress Factory Tour

YAYOI KUSAMA
REPETITIVE VISION

1996
glass, Formica, mannequins, decals,
long term loan

"One day I was looking at the red flower patterns of the tablecloth on a table, and when I looked up I saw the same pattern covering the ceiling, the windows, and the walls, and finally all over the room, my body, and the universe. I felt as if I had begun to self-obliterate, to revolve in the infinity of endless time and absoluteness of space, and to be reduced to nothingness..."

-Yayoi Kusama, "Fortress of Shooting Stars"

Since you all love the use of mirrors...here are some more artists who use mirrors:


ROBERT SMITHSON
NONSITE - ESSEN SOIL AND MIRRORS

1969
Essen soil and mirrors
12 mirrors / each 3'x 3'

MIRROR WITH CRUSHED SHELLS

Sanibel Island Florida, 1969
sand and shells
three mirrors, ea 36" x 36"



MIERLE LADERMAN UKELES
THE SOCIAL MIRROR

1983
mirror covered New York City Department of
Sanitation truck

The Social Mirror is a 12-ton, 28-foot long DSNY collection truck reconfigured with glass panels. This unique work of art was a highlight of the inaugural New York City Art Parade in 1983, and is a permanent, mobile public-art work that the Department proudly uses in parades and various special events.

"The Department's gritty and essential day-to-day operations in keeping New York City clean and safe may not seem to be a muse for inspirational artwork, but Mierle Ukeles' talents turned a collection truck into one of the Department's crowning displays. The Department is truly proud of her work," said Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty.

DANIEL BUREN
THE EYE OF THE STORM
2005
A sit specific work referencing the dynamic aspects of Frank Lloyd Wright's building, the Guggenheim Museum

______________________________________________________


JAMES TURRELL
DANAE
1983
Drywall, paint, ultraviolet & incandescent light

"Danaë is the first time I put light on the other side of the aperture. I have made pieces that took all their light from outside the space, like the one at the Whitney."

- James Turrell

...and some other artists who use LIGHT !

DAN FLAVIN
“MONUMENT” TO V. TATLIN XI, 1964;
“MONUMENT” TO V. TATLIN, 1966;
“MONUMENT” TO V. TATLIN, 1966—69;
and UNTITLED, 1970.

UNTITLED
1987


BRUCE NAUMAN
VIOLINS VIOLENCE SILENCE
1981-1982
Neon tubing with clear glass tubing suspension frame, 60 1/2 x 66 1/2 x 6 inches

ONE HUNDRED LIVE AND DIE
1984
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Since we all had differing opinions about artists personal spaces (rooms, beds, studios, etc) presented in a museum....here's some more artists who have done it!
(Do you like these any better than Thad's room? Why?)


TRACEY EMIN
MY BED
1998
Mattress, linens, pillows, objects
And some people who also questioned this "art" - Satirists jump into Tracey's bed, Semi naked pair 'reacting to self-promotion' of art prize entry

CARTEN HOLLER
REVOLVING HOTEL ROOM

Art critic Jerry Saltz spends the night in the Guggenheim Museum in Carten Höller's work, "Revolving Hotel Room" in the exhibition, THEANYSPACEWHATSOEVER

Here are excerpts from his review/report in New York Magazine published Nov. 9, 2008:
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: Look at those curves! Who wouldn't want a one-night stand with the Guggenheim?
By Jerry Saltz

I jumped at what seemed like an unbelievable chance to carry out my fantasy: an opportunity to spend the night with my wife on a rotating queen-size bed fitted out with satin sheets on the sixth ramp of Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum. The work, Revolving Hotel Room, is Carsten Höller's major contribution to "theanyspacewhatever," a show devoted to the amorphous non-movement known as Relational Aesthetics. Höller's "room" has no walls, is out in the open on a large round Plexiglas platform, and has a guard posted nearby. If you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the guard follows you. Intimacy under these conditions seemed dicey, but I had to try. And then, two days before our night in the museum, my wife's travel plans changed. She was going to be out of town that night. D'oh!
Relational Aesthetics is a public-oriented mix of performance, social sculpture, architecture, design, theory, theater, and fun and games. These artists view museums as imperfect Edens, playgrounds, battlefields, and sites for seriousness. Over the years they have inserted kitchens, couches, mannequins, and mirrors into institutions. Exhibitions and museums are a medium to experiment with and explore. To them, audience interaction is everything.
Höller's hotel room-booked solid at $259 to $799 per night-is the highlight of the show, and is too good to miss. After my wife canceled, I went anyway, alone. Arriving was fun: I was greeted at the door, got signed in, and was shown to my room. As the guard, Joseph, watched, I hung up my coat, unpacked, and set up my bedside table. After showering in what looked like a swanky executive bathroom upstairs, I changed into pajamas and a robe, and began roaming the museum (at one point sneaking into a classy office to put my feet up on the desk and pretend to call Bilbao). I lay down on floors and stood in empty galleries. At first, it was all a delight. Then it got weird. I felt very alone, as if I were in one of those last-person-on-Earth films. Paranoia set in, as the museum turned into a modernist minimum-security prison, a panopticon, and instead of feeling in control via looking at art, I felt like I was the thing being looked at. OMG, were there cameras trained on me? Probably. So I went to bed. As I lay there, I heard strange sounds-fans whirring, echoes reverberating. I couldn't sleep, despite earplugs and an eye mask. I began counting all the shows I'd seen here over the decades. Eventually, that did the trick, and around 2:30 a.m., I drifted off. The next thing I knew, Joseph was tapping his walkie-talkie on the bed, saying "Get up." I had slept the sleep of the dead. I took off the mask and saw that the lights were on and workers were moving about. It was 7:30. As breakfast (tea, croissants, pain au chocolat) was wheeled toward me, I noticed that I felt refreshed-that the Guggenheim, where I'd been a thousand times, looked utterly new to me. I was in love with the place. The museum had become a cradle of sorts; the environment seemed whole and enveloping. I had the strange feeling of having merged with the structure, like we really had slept together. The next week, when I returned to the show by day, I noticed that when I passed by the bed where I spent that night, I was filled with tender feelings. It was like walking in a city and looking up at a window in a building and remembering a long-ago night when you'd had sex there. Weirdly, however, I was also filled with something like jealousy. I felt like "my museum" was sleeping with everyone else. I found myself wondering why the Guggenheim hadn't called the next day.

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We haven't seen much performance art YET.... but here's an amazing example of how to use other students, props, costumes and sound to create a strong piece :


KAT SOLETO
from the MICA interdisciplinary sculpture class, "Performance/Action/Event"