Performance

As part of my project will be involving performance pieces I have began researching through books, magazines and the internet which hopefully will help me to understand qualities of creating performance art.

'The Performance Studies Reader' Edited by Henry Bial. Published 2004 by Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group. London and New York. Part V, Performativity- 'In order for Austin's performative to be effective, it must have certain performance-like qualities: namely, there must be an audience (listener), and the speech act must conform to a pre-established pattern.'

Part V1, Performing- 'For every kind of performance there is a different kind (and often many kinds of performing.' Performing happens in everyday life, in the home, in the workplace, in sports and games, in the arts, and in scared and secular ritual. Any time you take on a role, tell a story, or simply enact a bit of restored behaviour, you are performing.'

'If we recognise that virtually all human behaviour involves performing, then we can think of the theater as a kind of laboratory where actors and directors stage experiments to help us better understand ourselves. '

Videos

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As part of my research work I have began taking videos of the everyday life connections between the opposite sex. The 2 videos here show how close two of the opposite sex can get without even realising. The video to the left shows the two people almost touching revealing tension which I would have never thought about before between two strangers on a train journey.

I am getting very interested in physical connection between people, especially those who do not know each other. I find it amazing how much connection we have with each other and I am curious to find out if that makes a difference to our life. I guess I could only find that out if I start avoiding the opposite sex. I would have to avoid them in most situations for example bus journeys, tube journeys, walking down the street, at college, at work, in a shop and every other situation I am in which involves a male.

I do realise that this will be going away from my original starting point of Judaism as a whole. However it was inspired by a Jewish law which it still can relate back to.

Diane Borsato

One of Borsato's piece of work is a collection of photographs and text called 'Touching 1000 people.'

'Performance intervention and photographs

Montreal/Vancouver, 2003

DESCRIPTION

I read a study that suggested that when people are subtly touched, it can affect their behaviour and well being. For a month I went out of my way to delicately bump, rub past, and tap 1000 strangers in the city. I touched commuters, shoppers, cashiers and taxi cab drivers on the street, on the metro, in shops and in museums. The exercise was like a minimalist performance. I was exploring the smallest possible gesture, and how it could create an effect in public.

The action was performed for one month in various locations in Montreal in 2001, and repeated for ten days across the city of Vancouver in 2003.'

This performance piece has inspired me to create my own performance piece by using my knowledge of Shomar Nagia to not touch or talk to any males for a certain period of time. I will document it using photography and video and text. I want to try and feel the significance of Shomar Nagia by doing this. However before I begin this I want to understand the importance of the law and understand why people who follow this law do it.

Borsato's work seems to have an underlying message to it about how human connection makes you feel and the importance of it therefore contrasting to my work. However our intentions to challenge ourselves are both similar which is why her work inspires me.

IDEAS

I have been thinking of ways in which I can challenge the law of Shomar Nagia:

1. Interviewing those who follow the Jewish Law and those who do not (both Jewish and not) in a video.

2. Challenging myself to follow the law by not touching males for a certain period of time to the extent where I will avoid males at all cost including talking to them.

3. Looking at both still and moving images of body parts/people almost touching. For example two hands close together, almost touching and looking at the tension between them.

I also thought about trying to touch males who I knew kept the Jewish law without them knowing. However out of respect of those who keep the law I have decided to not go ahead with that option.

I have started to observe myself in certain situations when surrounded by males. I think it would be interesting to keep some sort of diary or recordings of my challenges. It would be interesting to see how many times I touch a male (by mistake) when on a tube or bus or walking down a street. I could start to keep a tally of that for every time I am in a certain situation.

Marina Abramovic

I have been looking at the work of Marina Abramovic. Her work are performance pieces which challenge the tension and complications within a human relationship with the opposite sex.

Frieze Magazine Blog:

'These formal layouts, and the content of some of the works themselves, speak of ritual and highly stylized types of interaction. I’m not sure how I feel about this, since it seems to me like religious affect. Of course, you can extrapolate religious or spiritual themes from her interest in the limits of consciousness as perceived through the body when it is pushed to extreme limits through pain or duration. So too her interest in the singularity of the self in relation to another individual or to a group. But I can’t help thinking of flagellantism and various extreme penitent Catholic orders when I see some of Abramović’s work, which for me gives it an uncomfortably pious aspect. This sense of piousness is an effect of the solemn register in which the work exists, its demonstrative gravitas. (This register admits little levity, which seems sad to me, since our bodies and how people interact can be pretty funny – a key part of being human.) There’s also a studied austerity in the work, a kind of quasi-monastic aesthetic: the simple wooden table and chairs in The Artist is Present, for instance, or the hard wooden block that the performer lies on in Nude with Skeleton. It makes me think that this is art made by someone who at some level still believes in the sacred aura of the secular white cube art space.'

Her work makes me think about the complications within a relationship. The law Shomar Nagiah is about removing the complications within a relationship by channeling them in the right direction. Her work has therefore made me think about ways which I can show tension in a relationship without touching, i.e body parts almost touching on two people.

I am also interested in the performance side to art. I like the reality factor within in as well which is something I want to look more into for my final piece.

Interview idea

I have thought about it and decided that a good way to look at the importance or non-importance view on physical connection is to speak to people about it. Speak to human beings who have had or haven't had connections to other human beings. Therefore I will interview those who keep the Jewish law where they have had no connection to the opposite sex and those who have probably not even known that a law as such existed. It will be great to see the different reactions and opinions.

Inspired by human connection

The picture above is a painting I did of the outlines of two bodies joint at the side. This is just an idea of physical connection between two human beings as an aesthetic which I want to look more into.

basic sketches of human connection

The aesthetics/physicality of human relationship

I have started to look at artists who deal with the body and skin as I want to look at the aesthetics/physicality of human relationships/connections other then just mental relationship. I want to eventually look at the images from the two different perspectives of 1) the Jewish law of Shomar Nagia 2) a non religious perspective.

Challenging the law

Tono Stano

Stano was in a group of photographers who's worked dealt with the problem of human relationships and sexuality.

With the mutual interaction of the force of the figures, he achieved atmospheres that were sometimes full of an almost ominous or purely instinctual tension (Adam and Eve, 1984). At other times they are stylized curves of motion, gentle and lovingly fragile (The Kiss, 1986). Or, by contrast, they attain an ironic extremity (Right-angle Flight, 1985–86). By distinctively manipulating bodies and objects, he would partly reveal the story.

I am interested in Stano's importance of human connection with the opposite sex in comparison to the law of Judaism. I am now questioning the different realities in which people live in.

Contact between men and women

I have been thinking about the contact of men and women in Judaism.

Negiah (Hebrew: נגיעה‎) literally "touch," is the concept in Halakha that forbids or restricts physical contact with a member of the opposite sex (except for one's spouse, children, grandchildren, parents, and grandparents). A person who abides by this Halakha is colloquially described as a Shomer Negiah (one who is "observant of Negiah").

The laws of Negiah are typically followed by Orthodox Jews, with varying levels of observance. Some Orthodox Jews follow the laws with strict modesty and take measures to avoid accidental contact, such as avoiding sitting next to a member of the opposite sex on a bus, airplane, or other similar seating situation.

I want to firstly get the opinions of those who are Shomer Negiah. I want to understand the benefits on missing out on human contact. I want to get to understand why they see beauty in not having contact with the opposite sex.

I also want to get the opinions/reactions of those who have never heard of Shomer Negiah before. For people who have been brought up never even thinking about not having contact with the opposite sex. I think to many people, especially because of the society we live in today, it will be a shock and hard to come to terms with.

IDEA

I have decided that I want to look at Halakha (the laws and practices of Judaism). I think that there are a lot of misconceptions about the laws and actions of the Jewish laws and therefore I want to look more into them and challenge them. Some are the laws I want to look at are Kashrut (keeping kosher), shomar nagia (the contact between men and women) and Tznui (modest behaviour i.e clothes worn).

Crucifixion Artist

I have been looking at other religious art. It's claimed Sebastian Horsley is the first Westerner to undergo a crucifixion as part of an annual tradition in the Philippines. He was nailed to a cross for more than half an hour and the whole experience has been recorded for posterity through art. Horsley has produced paintings of his crucifixion.

As a painter he never wanted to paint things as they were, but the way he felt and sensed they were, and the only way to achieve this was to undergo experience. When he painted sharks in 1997, he went into the sea in a cage and looked at them face to teeth. So, when he decided to paint the crucifixion, he decided he needed to be crucified. 'How can you paint the crucifixion without being crucified? To me it makes perfect sense to get close to it,' he argues.

Edward Ben Avram

Most of Ben Avram’s oil paintings and watercolors portray Israeli cities, religious festivals, and Bible stories. He paints in creamy sensual tones incorporating symbols such as doves, a menorah, and Shabbat candles.

In contrast to Bak and Levine, Avram's paintings portray the bible in a lighter, more dream like sense.

Reflective note

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/hide-seek/episode-guide/series-1/episode-1

After watching the documentary above about child Holocaust survivors, I thought about the importance of Jewish identity and how meaningful it is to me.

So far I have learnt so much about both myself and my religion which I have been ignorant to in the past.

It has made me want to look back at Jews during World War II and how their exile has affected the population today.

Samuel Bak

Samuel Bak is a painter, writer and a Holocaust survivor.

Baks styles and influences:

-The possibility of repair, the repair of a broken world, the Tikkun olam (a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world.), is an important meaning contained in many of his still life works.

-Bak's childhood frustration with the story of Genesis, and his admiration for the genius of Michelangelo, blend in his post-Holocaust visiting of this theme.

-Still lifes—in times in which life is never still, never sufficiently protected, nor granted to everyone—attracted him as metaphors full of symbolic implications.

-Chess as a theme of life has always fascinated Bak. In the DP camps and in Israel, he often played chess with his stepfather Markusha. Underground II, 1997, portrays chess pieces in a sunken, subterranean evocation of the Vilna ghetto.

-A solitary boy can also be seen in his works. The boy represents his murdered childhood friend, Samek Epstein, and the memory of himself as a child during the Holocaust.

He speaks about what are deemed to be the unspeakable atrocities of the Holocaust, though he has hesitated to limit the boundaries of his art to the post-Holocaust genre. He created a visual language to remind the world of its most desperate moments.

The images below mirror the broken emotion of Bak's past due to the dull colours used and the distorted effects which he paints with. The images have many connotations of Judaism and the Holocaust hidden within them which shows his recognition of his religion and what he has been through:

The four images below are a collection called 'Elegy for childhoods'. These images show Bak's damaged child hood and like his other paintings have an eery and chilling feel to them:

Jack Levine

Jack Levine was an American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives. Following the death of his wife in the 1980s came an increased interest in Hebraism, and with it a proliferation of paintings with themes from the Old Testament.

On the death of his father in 1939, Levine's oeuvre turned away from the satirical, social-realist style for which he was becoming known. Paintings such as King David (1940) invoke Biblical and religious themes, and reflect on his Jewish heritage and upbringing.

http://jacklevine.net/

The images below by Levine are inspired by the Old Testament:

Although Levine's paintings seem to give off a traditional feel to them I feel that the images have a strong sense of character and emotion to them due to the distorted features and proportions of the figures.

Dura Europos synagouge

I have found images from the Dura Europos Synagouge which is said to be the one of the oldest synagouges in the world dating back to 244 ce. Because of the wall paintings the synagouge was mistaken for a greek temple. The images are drawn from the Hebrew Bible and include narrative scenes and single figure portraits. They include the Sacrifice of Isaac and other Genesis stories, Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law, Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, the visions of Ezekiel, and many others. Several different artists seem to have worked on them. The discovery of the synagogue helps to dispel narrow interpretations of Judaism's historical prohibition of visual images.

Finding these images have made me more interested in the stories from the Bible and how they have been interpreted.

Article - looking at jewish art.

I have decided to start looking at if and how art relates to Judaism.

The First Jewish Artist

The sanction that would more aptly serve as the slogan for much of Jewish art perhaps should be, "Remember the stranger, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt." Paired with the repeated biblical command to remember the stranger and the Israelites' wandering-- and the insecurity that came with that homelessness-- stands the idea that God's presence remains eternal and protective, ideas that infuse Jewish art.

Amedeo Modigliani's
Portrait of Maude Abrantes, 1907

The Biblical Bezalel--whose name literally means, "in the shadow or protection of God"--was the Jewish artisan appointed specifically by God to build the Tabernacle (Exodus 31:2). So if one defines Jewish art as the works of Jewish artists, one of the earliest works of Jewish art lay in God's command to Bezalel regarding the construction of the Tabernacle.

The Bible details the beautiful work of Jewish hands in the building of the First Temple in Jerusalem under the direction of King Solomon. It is described as overlaid with gold and decorated with cherubim (I Kings 6). The Talmud describes the beauty of the Herod's Second Temple, declaring, "He who has not seen the Temple in its full construction has never seen a glorious building in his life" (Tractate Succot 51b).

In spite of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 C.E. and the beginning of a 2,000-year Jewish exile, Jewish art flourished in the early post-exilic period, inside and outside the land of Israel, including the Dura Europos and Beit Alpha synagogues. The synagogue in Syria's Dura Europos, an ancient city along the Euphrates, contains well-preserved frescoes from the third century that portray human figures in biblical scenes.

The sixth-century mosaic of Israel's Beit Alpha synagogue depicts human figures in a scene from the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22), as well as signs of the Zodiac. Talmudic texts also acknowledge the existence and tolerance of graven images. Synagogues like those at Beit Alpha and Dura Europos show that images were not just tolerated but utilized by the Jewish communities.

(http://www.myjewishlearning.com/culture/2/Art/History_and_Theory/Jewish_Art_History.shtml)

my Jewish roots

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I was looking through some old photographs which made me wonder about my Jewish roots. However these roots are difficult to track due to Jews being exiled and the Holocaust.

This is something which I have always been interested in and is something which I do not think I could get to the bottom to within the time period I have to complete this as I would not want to rush such an important thing. It is something however which I am inclined to look into beside the other projects which I am taking on so hopefully in the near future there will be more of this to come.