Demonstrations (2016-2020) [multi-component output with contextualising information]
- Submitting institution
-
Bath Spa University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 3363
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- 44AD, Bath, England; Modern Art Oxford, England; Tel Aviv University and Confucius Institute, Israel; Roja Art Lab, Latvia; and multiple other events and online performances.
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of first performance
- -
- Year of first performance
- 2016
- URL
-
https://doi.org/10.17870/bathspa.c.5024246
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Demonstrations is a set of artist works that combines thirteen online videos with twelve live-art performances which ‘trace’ DIY actions using scores, video documentation, participation and event. Videos and live performances are used to ‘record’ politically ambiguous gestures invoking resistance and participation. Critically experimenting with online platforms that express creative, social, and political opinions, the videos appear on a dedicated YouTube channel called Demonstrations. Alongside this channel, the works are also presented live to audiences. The live performances reference the videos from the channel, using smartphones or other technology, while verbally and gesturally addressing audiences with ambiguous propositions: repeating ‘you may or may not’ wish to do this or that. Recordings of the live performances are then uploaded to the YouTube channel.
The research addresses two key questions. The first explores what might be called un-working in relation to common tropes of labour and disobedience. When trying mundane and ambiguous gestures does process in such irrecoverable works remain workable, or more specifically operative? Secondly, is ‘recording’ effective in works that seem ambiguous as to what ‘may (or may not)’ be done? These questions were investigated through a bodily method of tracing ‘process’ when struggling with resistance. To question process, a key phrase reoccurs in both the video subtitles and performed enunciations: ‘you may, or may not, prefer… to do, or not do, this or that’. This approach resonates with work as something communally ‘inoperative’ (Blanchot, Nancy). The process becomes inoperative by thus tracing possibilities of community, online and in person, that seem impossibly open, incomplete, changing. Evolving between 2016 and 2020, the first four videos were presented at a solo exhibition on the website Skelf. Twelve performances were presented internationally, at artist-run galleries, such as Kosar Contemporary (UK), a university workshop in Tel-Aviv, and a residency in Latvia.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
