ST PAUL St Gallery Three, AUT- PILOT Project One- "Point to Point,"

correlation |ˌkɒrəˈleɪʃ(ə)n, -rɪ-|

noun

a mutual relationship or connection between two or more things:

• [ mass noun ] the process of establishing a relationship or connection between two or more things.

• [ mass noun ] Statistics interdependence of variable quantities.

• Statistics a quantity measuring the extent of the interdependence of variable quantities.[1]

Point-to-Point is an exhibition that explores correlation being the relationship between two or more things. The show negotiates the process of establishing a relationship between the spectator and artwork, relationship within the work itself, and relation with the artwork and artist.  This is reflected within the exhibited works through the varied media and intentions each artist manifests in conversation to this show. Artists Gabriella Challis, Eunbin Park, Eloise Worrall-Bader, Sally Bollinger, Mereama Matia and Evie Aldridge exhibit artworks pertinent to the theme of correlation, which is presented in several idiosyncratic examples.

Now faced to articulate what the thinking and ideas behind the exhibition were is concisely wrapped into one multifaceted word, which cohered within each artist’s studio practice. ‘Relations;’ being the way in which two or more objects, concepts, or people are connected.[2] These are relationships between audience and image, bodily relationships, relationship between space and time, relationship between viewer and perception, relationship between physical and emotional, relationship between form and reality and so on. Relation can be adhered to almost any conversation surrounding multiplicity, which is problematic when composing a cohesive show.  Taking in the fact that each artists brings their own façade of thinking and conversation to an exhibition, whilst also each cognitively illustrate their own interpretation of the theme. This clarifies reasoning to having a more defined and established theme to contextualise each artwork in having a cohesive viewing experience.

Two facades of analytical thinking where established from this umbrella idea. Firstly being perception and experiential within relations, and secondly a cognitive possibility was movement and sequence being the translation, location, and structure change within each of these artist works, although this second idea did not perpetrate as it failed to uniformly fit all of these artists and their intentions. 

Correlations was a word that immersed within critical research and analytical reflection into ‘relations.’ Originally noted for the potential and inherent elucidation of the word ‘correlation,’ being the connection or relationship of multiple things, emerged with more underlying ideas that correlated accordingly within each artists studio works. Correlation is a conversation between the viewer and the artwork, relation within the artwork itself and the conversation between the artist and the artwork. Analytical thought was also given within the statistical conditioning of correlation, being that two or more variables can be describes as a numerical value. These being ‘positive,’ ‘negative,’ ‘strong’ or ‘direct’ modifiers used before correlation in context. For example there is no direct correlation connecting the relationship that one viewer has with an artwork and the relationship another viewer has with the same artwork. They are separate events, which don’t rely on each other. This exhibition theme is clearly articulating the process of establishing a relationship or conversation between multiple components within each exhibiting work whilst also critiquing the interdependence of variable quantities. The following quote by Marcel Duchamp analytically illustrates that it is the audience who brings sense and cohesion to the exhibition theme as it is by audience these correlations and conversations within the work form. “The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.”[3]

Each artist illustrates various interpretations in responding to correlation. Some very literal whilst others remaining concealed or obscured.

In entering the flow of the gallery we firstly approach the artwork of artist, Evie Aldridge who exhibits biomorphic minuscule installation objects. These appearing concept free in their own cognitive abstract form, are suggestive objects that evoke living anthropomorphic figures.  Within their individual ambiguous shapes, colours, and markings, viewers are invited to project their own opinions and interpretations on them.  Correlating similarly to fellow exhibiting artist, Sally Bollinger, these idiosyncratic objects are very much about the relationship between the objects/artwork with the audience, as there is a searching out and projecting of connections and relations.

Intricate detail is given to these objects, which draw the viewer down into the installation layout. In the gallery context the forms were lost within the floor obscurity, which I believe did not perpetrate this idea successfully. The installation components I believe did not do the work justice; maybe more consideration to how the viewer approaches and identifies the artwork and how the forms operated in this space would have manifested a more cohesive installation within operating in correlation to the exhibition ‘Point-to-Point.’ For example maybe condensing the objects would have brought more cohesion into them having correlations/relationships within one artwork rather than having a spread out colony formality which gave tension between these groupings of objects.  Condensing the forms or a more appropriate space in the gallery also would change the way the audience approaches the artwork, being not installed in a point of passage would clearly define what the artwork was also.

Second exhibiting artist Gabriella Challis critiques the correlating relationship of perception within psychology and social cognation within sociology. The ‘esemplastic’ nature is shown by experiment: being an ambiguous image has multiple interpretations on the perceptual level. The work illustrates but also questions social perception, meaning we become aware of the unconscious impressions and inferences we fabricate about people and ultimately ourselves.

The work, which undeniably is an engaging piece on a multiple of levels, encapsulates the audience to be immersed within the work for sustained periods of time, as the viewer attempts to correlates the perception given with the images. There is a very literal Point-to-Point correlation within the idea, being how you think others perceive you, how you perceive yourself, and how others actually perceive you. Correlations are drawn between ‘their perceptions with your perception’ as the viewer identifies and correlates with the images. This Point-to-Point correlation establishes conversation with the audience to consider their own self-awareness.

The work appearing minimalistic in formality was bound with an extensive amount of effort and conversation within sociological encounters. The work I believe did not manifest itself in a way most successful, being rich in content but poor in execution. The work appears to have given secondary thought to the installation logistics of this piece.  The formality of the work could have been taken in numerous different presentations, being for example if the artist wanted multiple viewer access, identical banks of photographs and books could have perpetrated this successfully. Recorded conversations or computerized interactions are all possibilities they may have manifested the key ingredients more successfully.

Artist, Eunbin Park looks at the aesthetic quality and physicality of paint within its relationship to surface structure. The artwork responds within the idea of the experiential as the surface forms an idiosyncrasy drapery that has a provisional installation quality, repudiates any form of surface structure. Conversation between the relationship of painting and sculpture, and relationship to object are drawn, protruding within the very raw gestural way of responding to the paint and installation affects.  

Right of this installation the artist has installed three small canvases, which correlates an interesting consideration and conversation surrounding the aesthetics of painting.  These small artworks represent colour palates appearing in flat planes of contaminated pastel colours. They work effectively in creating sense and authority to the conversation surrounding the very raw painterly affect in the work to the left. To perpetrate the idea of the gap between something finalized and something in the process of being finalized, or the correlation between imperfection and perfection may have been more successful having given more detail to illustrating the ‘perfection.’  Being more attentive to details such as the canvas quality and having pristine planes of solid colour would have solidified this idea for me personally.

The forth-exhibiting artist, Eloise Worral-Bader looks at the transcendence being the existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level. An intimate relationship is conjured between the artist and objects forward of entering a metaphorical conversation; giving ‘souls’ to these inanimate objects. The energy field of relation unfolds and grows as it now speaks to an audience. As the viewer approaches these self effacing objects we are immediately liberated within a Point-to-Point impartial correlation as we search for a rational linkage.

The sculptural faced of the artwork appears neither functional nor comparable to reality although it denotes primitive relations within the construction.  Relations and correlations can be identified contiguously within this work as artist and object, viewer and object, or relation within the objects that are moving and changing together as we ‘Point-to-Point’ are interpreting these anthropomorphised objects. 

The fifth exhibiting artist, Sally Bollinger exerts the everyday mundane, which questions and plays with expectations. The mundane being at it simplest form conveys that content is less important than the affect.

There is an obscured searching out for connections or Point-to-Point correlations although it seems oblivious to what it may be you are searching for, be it be segments, lights etc. There appears to be no frame in the projection of this work, which eliminates any literal relation to size or form, rather it references the whole wall. Bringing forward focus to the images, light is drawn to an open platform for interpretations, which ultimately plays with emergence. Whilst some of the lights are revealed as faces it is not all resolved, having effect on the audience is more important than the fulfilment of a possible narrative.

The final exhibiting artist, Mereama Matia directly interfaced the socially constructed way of life with people’s perception to societal ways of living.  The political placement of the artwork correlated a very literal point-to-point relationship. Your eye is initially in a preliminary phase engrossed within the typology of animated writing conspicuously entering each screen.  Emotively charged spoken in a frank manner, we are given intimate details of living and how people feel living in such places as South Auckland. The writing is slow enough for us to coincidently observe the passes by in behind the text coercing us to connect these emotions of living in South Auckland whilst we are watching South Auckland.  There is a distinction to be made between the mental proximity and physical proximity that people’s opinions of South Auckland don’t actually correlate with how we watch South Auckland- they are two different things, which don’t rely on each other.

Each of these exhibiting artist has looked at conceptual and technical modes of researching and analytically responding to the exhibition theme. Taking in the fact that each artists has brought their own façade of thinking and conversation to the exhibition, illustrates reasoning why the flow of the show may not have been as cohesive as initially preconceived.  Whether it could be resolved in the change in layout of the gallery, as some spaces did not manifest the artwork to its full potential or a change in theme. It also is very hard to appropriate a theme to such diverse different bodies of work. In hindsight maybe an arbitrary theme that each artist responds to would have been more cohesive. A different gallery space or layout may have completely changed the flow of the show.  For example I believe that if Eunbin’s work were directly at the opposite end of the gallery to where the spectator enters the space, this would draw the viewer through to the end rather than her work being the centrepiece in the middle of the show dislodging the flow. In the end there are multiple possibilities to changing different propositions and logistics within the works, the theme, the layout and so on that may or may not have adhered more cohesion of the whole show.

Pilot is a supportive environment for experimenting and risk taking. Nothing was lost and all was gained.

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[1]             Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford Dictionary of English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1851.

[2]                   Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford Dictionary of English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4494.

[3]             Dalia Judovitz, Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 149.

ST PAUL St Gallery Three, AUT- PILOT Project One- "Point to Point," 

Gabriella Challis- Photo Courtesy of artsdiary.co.nz

Gabriella Challis- Photo Courtesy of artsdiary.co.nz

Gabriella Challis 

Points of departure…. Points of connection

As a starting explorative work to continue to devolve in my on-going trajectories and practise this year, I initiated my first work on the bounds of a sociology experiment. The work is personified from multiple view points and perspectives of people describing bluntly and truthfully how they describe their appearances.

I had been interested in a commercial which a forensic artist would sit backed opposite to the sitter with a drafting board, also would the sitter be sitting back to the artist. The sitter would describe her facial features to the artist whilst he was conjuring an image she was describing.  The sitter would later spend time with a third arbitrary person who would eventually describe the initial sitters facial features which he would appropriate to a second drawing. The sitter would then following these two events be exposed to the two drawings which the forensic artist had sketched, one which the sitter had described of themselves and one a third person had described of the sitter. The one the sitter described of themselves would embody all the imperfections and negative emotions they carry on themselves, where as the sketch the third person described would emotively describe the person appearances accurately to there persona and visual identifications. It becomes acutely obvious that we are our worse critics. 

Something so emotively close to my own insecurities and imperfections, made me question how people describe their appearances and how close they really precede from the truth. 

So within this work I have asked a selection of people to describe themselves honestly and openly without any name to themselves. I then took a polarised photograph of their portrait.  Something I had not foreseen was how difficult it is to put how you think you look in words and emotions. So this became quite a time intensive work as people spent time with the work having forward conversation with themselves and the book describing intimately their appearances. The choice of book was obscenely arbitrary and completely bland of inferring motive’s. 

Presenting this work also became part of the initial experiment in our exhibition as I felt in no way was the work finished, maybe looking now it actually benefited the presentation of the work to have more potential and left open ended. The installation of the work was in two parts, the book sat flat and open on a white plinth approximately 1.5m from the wall which in order of the description, polarised photographs of each person were presented at directly appropriate to eye height with no further comment. 

The work and installation which i felt was a bases of experiment became entertaining and engaging in a multiple of levels, people felt they needed time with the artwork as conversations had already begun. Interests in the correlation between their perception and your perception were established and protruded. Critics felt that the work offered a much more intricate detail than what initially meets the eye. A relation to social work and sociology was made in how we understand and read photographs especially the format in which I choose and its approximate relation to Facebook, “selfless” and social media. Critics felt the participation of the work with-stands time as the simplistic work was very engaging and inviting the audience to become apart of the work whether there was a relation to the person or not. It was noted the the logic in how we read the work is opened up in a very elegant way being very post structuralist/ contemporary/ and outward. Lecturer Andy Thomson gave a few artists such as Andy Warhol and Thomas Struth to investigate portraiture, photography and their relation to reality.

2013-2014

Being in my final year of the BVA degree at Auckland University of technology I have new objectives in being able to operate as a critically aware artist. Making artwork and analytically reflecting conceptually and technically on the process and outcome of the artworks will become the developmental process of the foundation of insights, knowledge, and skills acquired to become a self directed artist. By extending, connecting and deepening into my on going practise as an artist I will become more so profoundly sensitive to visual language and critical perspectives.

With my previous trajectory of identity being a common manifest of this years direction and on-going art practise I wish to devolve in depth this idea.
In my final exhibition in 2013, my key areas of concern were identity as a state of becoming rather than a state of being. This was illustrated within the exploitative conditioning of repetitive means to illustrate change in ones identity. The contextual statement as follows illustrated an analytical understanding to the exhibiting works.

Within the 1950’s, identity immersed as a popular social science term, which was notably assigned to particular cultural, racial or sexual differences, but to the self-existential category.  Thus rather than critically suggesting a stable sense of selfhood, alternatively the term also was used to appropriate a problematic ‘identity crisis’ or a ‘search for identity,’ deriving from the individual’s alienation in the preface of a more profoundly anonymous society.  Its appears a search for identity along with an increasing self-reflexivity became more apparent in modern society, with the self being a common manifest within a contemporary art context.  Contentiously assuming that identity is a fixed, transparent concept, and somehow solidified within the mind, if not in reality, is far fixated from the truth condemning this assumption. Rather identity is futile, a construction of different layers and elements that are articulated through discourses and narratives.

Exploring identity through art underpins a tangible source of expression. Through exploring the human body we become engrossed within ones identity whether being notorious or concealed, we become oblivious to the problematic and contingent formality of identity.  Identity is always in a state of becoming rather than a state of being, with a multitude of elements always changing in time. A search for identity through repetitive means illustrates the change in ones identity through time. We become aware that this ‘search fort identity’ is an attempt to represent ones identity, which will not fully deem accurate at any given moment. 

2014

Behind the masks we wear

These following works are a further investigation into the contingences and the formality of identity. The works, which are a continuum exploring the preconceived notions that the portrait of the face resides an accurate display of ones identity.  As further development to the conceptual and technical possibilities within the original work ‘Behind the Masks we wear,’ I have used a repetition of searching for an identity that will never be captured. This appearing both visually and conceptually within the attempt to diminish the prominent facial features of any being that resides recognition to an identity. Appearing also conceptually in the attempt to repetitively direct a formality of time, time in which changes ones identity, time in which changes the artist or viewers interpretation of representing that identity. Both create an immersing gap between the ability to accurately perceive and inventively interpret ones identity and then to perform and inevitably misrepresent ones identity at that given moment, as time reacts before thought.
This series of work is not to amplify the problematic contingencies of identity and the recognisable gap between the represented and the actual reality, more so is it to acknowledge that identity is futile and caught within time. The work resides that although identity is always within change, a core importance of ones identity stays the same through time, equally represented within these work, illustrating the defiant feature that we can assume stays acutely the same but prominent and accurate facial features which defines a recognition to a particular person are diminished in the lack of ability to fully represent accurately.
The work assembles a construct, which engages the viewer to fulfil a participatory role in the work. The viewer becomes immersed in an active part in assembling their own role in collating ideas within what is diminished in the artists hand. This sustains and contains the viewers direct interest in deciphering their prolonged interest into what seems not fully comprehendible, rather than telling the viewer information of what is already known within the relationship to reality. An altered angel within the figure questions the viewer to decipher collectively the repetitive materiality contingencies, with a slight altercation within each work, possibly suggesting a search for something is restricted from being revealed within each work, reiterating this idea of a ‘search for identity.’ 

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic is a prolific artist whose subjectivity has heightened as an author, material and image through her embodiment by her self-portraying physical presents. It is her acclaimed and ambitious use of the body that breeches her own physical and metal limits that ultimately challenge, shock and move the audience.  A state intensely charged by the audiences direct personal participation shifts from a work that appears evidently biographical to inevitably a work that forces the gaze back within audience’s own bodily existence.

Artist Marina Abramovic has a phenomenal oeuvre for performance contriving from her personal identity she activates in space. Performance has a powerful immaterial energy, an energy that has the power to transform.  Performance for Abramovic is all about state of mind, she concludes in her performance The Artist is Present, that excruciating physical and mental discipline is indispensable for something that appears so close to doing nothing but is demanding all of you, which she must use nothing but her own presents and energy. 

The Artist is Present, which was exhibited in MOMA in 2010, changed the face of performance art, derived from re-enactments and historical documentation, which represents a retrospective of Abramovic’s career.

Specifically articulating the centrepiece of the show at MOMA, a performance based on Nightsea Crossing (22 performances, 1981-1987) made in collaboration with former partner Ulay (Uwe Laysipen). Abramovic’s ambitious plan lead her to sitting within the museums atrium, in a staged theatrical square, where she would sit everyday, all day, from March until the end of May 2010.  An empty chair invited the public to sit opposite Abramovic and engage with her for an unlimited period of time. The audience were individually immersed in the artist’s presents, with no overt communication or contact.  The exchange of immaterial energy within the performance from the audience fuelled her work to achieve a luminous state of being, to which she calls ‘an energy dialogue,’ with her audience.  It is in the conceptual and visual clarity that the public becomes immersed in an active role within Abramovic’s performance. The physical and psychological space surrounding the artist is stripped away to create rupture, an abstracted environment, within which a moment of affirmation forces the audience in seeing the world differently an encounter which exchanges emotion and causes eventual catharsis.  Abramovic’s silent expressionless presence communicates no sense of abjection, psychological fracture or fear rather it transpires a combination of duration and direct exchange of experience and the possibility of transformation.

The work, which has been criticized as narcissism, Marina elaborates that her entire work is about herself and the deeper she goes into herself she gains a deeper understanding and becomes more universal. When the audience sit in front of Abramovic the work is no longer about the artist, because very soon the viewer begins to see a mirror of there own self.  

Discuss two or three contemporary artists that engage with the notion of personal identity and subjective experience. In relation to the Kate Love article in you ‘Reader’, why might these artists and the concept of experience be dismissed as autobiographical or lacking in authority?

This essay will discuss in depth and analyse two contemporary artists Marina Abramovic and Valie EXPORT, who engage with the notions of personal identity. It will consider specifically one key work of each artist, which employ and operate with subjective experience. Discussing firstly in relation to the Kate Love article “The Experience of Art as a Living Through of Language,” this essay will consider why these artist and the concept of experience might be dismissed as autobiographical or lacking in authority. In reference to Kate Loves article, this essay will engage in the contradicting perspectives of German philosopher Giorgio Agamben who claims experience has been destroyed in contemporary life. Negotiating through her own performative transcript within multiple registers of discursive conversation between a student and lecturer, and the description of an encounter with a photograph by Gabriel Orozo, Kate Love immersed within the dialogue and notion of an “activated space,” being “that precise moment when consciousness meets language meets world…” [1]

Articulating the work of Kate Love “The Experience of Art as a Living through of language,” to understand the philosophy and linguistics of experience we must scrutinize and approach the deconstruction of experience. Kate Love makes reference to Giorgio Agamben, who questions the concept and correlations to how and why experience and knowledge became separated and whether it is possible to talk of an infancy of experience, a voiceless experience? 

We are oblivious to question experience, which can be sought only with an acknowledgment to the fact that experience is no longer accessible to us. Modern man has been deprived of his biography; his experience likewise has been expropriated.[2] 

Walter Benjamin accurately diagnosed that the 'poverty of experience' was a characteristic of modernity, which has been thought to originate in the catastrophe of the First World War.[3]  In the repercussions of war, experience has never been contradicted and accounted more thoroughly than by strategic experience by tactical warfare, the mechanical warfare of bodily experience, experience by inflation, and moral experience by those in power. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben, editor of Walter Benjamin's complete works, suggests we are aware that the destruction of experience no longer necessitates catastrophes, as that mundane daily life will suffice. [4] For Agamben, the everyday life experiences are being 'expropriated', for which contemporary man's average day appears to embody virtually nothing, however pleasurable or unusual, tedious or traumatic they are, none will translate nor suffice into experience.[5] Agamben adheres to the term employed from Walter Benjamin, to make clear a definition of experience to form a sense of this time in the deconstruction of experience, exerting the two German words for experience, Erlebnis and Erfahrung.  Erlebnis is reflected in the word’s etymology to have something that is literally lived through in the sense of ‘to have an experience,’ rather Erfahrung is a term Benjamin employs when he speaks of the ‘poverty of experience’ in the context that it is Erfhrung that changes you. Leland de la Durantaye’s explication and articulation of Agamben’s oeuvre of terms suggests that experience is not merely something that has been lived through, but that which it changes you. [6]

To articulate how might the concept of an experience be lacking in authority, comprehensively in the relationship to the Kate Love article we are imitated to the ideas of Giorgio Agamben. For Agamben, experience has its necessary relationship not in knowledge but in authority, by which the potency of words and narration suggest, “no one now seems to wield sufficient authority to guarantee the truth of an experience.” [7] Kate Love questions whether this appears accurate in a contemporary art context, which encourages art to form from within personal subjective experience. Proposing on the contrary to Agamben’s claim that no one can claim the truth of an experience, Kate Love suggests that there is a consensual view in which to have lived through and encountered an experience, subsequently underpins an authentic knowledge or authority of that experience. [8]

Kate love suggests that a critical and analytical reclaiming of experience is a rational method through to politically activating a space and underpinning a negotiation between the art, artist and the viewer. Kate Love notes that this experimental methodology would have immense power through words, which appears neither fully comprehendible inside of language, nor outside of their capacitating ability. [9]

Kate Love considers two contradicting art forms, which she articulates, suggesting that both extremities fall short in ability to transform and enrich existence or making. The first as being too empirical and personal, work that is essentially about the ‘self’, this which represents only a mere margin of population and hence disengages the rest of the world. The second she suggests as merely visually concerned, which ignores the emotional and spiritual reality of the artist and viewer, the work being both conceptual and intellectual. [10]

For Kate Love, exerting in work that engages and appears of reference to an experience ultimately takes us to the limit of our knowledge, which acts as a form of criticism on the world it inhabits. Kate references an ‘activated space,’ a negotiation between the artists experience and an object of reality. Both which are physically pushed the two to their ultimate limits, enriching the language through which experience is operating in.[11] The space between the artists and the viewers response is where the value in art is enriched, a value that comes within the responsiveness and openness to new limits enriched in the experience. That is to say that this value is remotely from the subject rather the value in the function and experience on the viewer and artist. It is in this moment or encounter that space is activated and the world begins to be transformed.

Marina Abramovic is a prolific artist whose subjectivity has heightened as an author, material and image through her embodiment by her self-portraying physical presents. [12] It is her acclaimed and ambitious use of the body that breeches her own physical and metal limits that ultimately challenge, shock and move the audience.  A state intensely charged by the audiences direct personal participation shifts from a work that appears evidently biographical to inevitably a work that forces the gaze back within audience’s own bodily existence.

Artist Marina Abramovic has a phenomenal oeuvre for performance contriving from her personal identity she activates in space. Performance has a powerful immaterial energy, an energy that has the power to transform.  Performance for Abramovic is all about state of mind, she concludes in her performance The Artist is Present, that excruciating physical and mental discipline is indispensable for something that appears so close to doing nothing but is demanding all of you, which she must use nothing but her own presents and energy. 

The Artist is Present, which was exhibited in MOMA in 2010, changed the face of performance art, derived from re-enactments and historical documentation, which represents a retrospective of Abramovic’s career. [13]

Specifically articulating the centrepiece of the show at MOMA, a performance based on Nightsea Crossing (22 performances, 1981-1987) made in collaboration with former partner Ulay (Uwe Laysipen).[14] Abramovic’s ambitious plan lead her to sitting within the museums atrium, in a staged theatrical square, where she would sit everyday, all day, from March until the end of May 2010.  An empty chair invited the public to sit opposite Abramovic and engage with her for an unlimited period of time. The audience were individually immersed in the artist’s presents, with no overt communication or contact.  The exchange of immaterial energy within the performance from the audience fuelled her work to achieve a luminous state of being, to which she calls ‘an energy dialogue,’ with her audience.  It is in the conceptual and visual clarity that the public becomes immersed in an active role within Abramovic’s performance. [15] The physical and psychological space surrounding the artist is stripped away to create rupture, an abstracted environment, within which a moment of affirmation forces the audience in seeing the world differently an encounter which exchanges emotion and causes eventual catharsis.  Abramovic’s silent expressionless presence communicates no sense of abjection, psychological fracture or fear rather it transpires a combination of duration and direct exchange of experience and the possibility of transformation.

The work, which has been criticized as narcissism, Marina elaborates that her entire work is about herself and the deeper she goes into herself she gains a deeper understanding and becomes more universal. When the audience sit in front of Abramovic the work is no longer about the artist, because very soon the viewer begins to see a mirror of there own self. 

            Similarly to Marina Abramovic, Valie EXPORT is a prolific contemporary artist who transformed herself into a brand identity.  EXPORT’s art explores the nexus of relationships including experience, politics and personal identity. EXPORT continually uses the body in performance as a means of investigating physical and psychological limits and challenging false egalitarianism of gender and sexist ideologies that subsequently characterise society. EXPORT explores and radicalises questions surrounding the artist representation of mental states and the conditioning of reality. Through her means of performance, experimental films, and conceptual photograph trying to separate the female body from eroticism, EXPORT created contradiction by exploiting her body directly without mediation. Her paradoxical affirmation of the self and body by a masochistic fragmentation and exposure, ultimately confronts the public with a provocative, aggressive and invasive attempt to question their physical and mental identity.

 Articulating one of EXPORT’s most emblematic performance works, Tap and Touch Cinema 1968. EXPORT provocatively sought to reverse the cinematic experience and voyeurism of watching sexually portrayed images of women. [16] For EXPORT, the interaction of the human body and its media image motivates her performances to communicate a direct analogy between the cinema screen and the human skin. This confrontation challenges the perceived cliché of the representation of women passively displayed as an object of pleasure, creating a relationship with the body on proximity and intimacy rather than voyeurism and visual mastery of the cinematic experience.

Rather than the viewer anonymously engaged in spurious pleasure, EXPORT entices the public to feel her breasts the ‘real thing’ within a strapped on box over her bare chest reminiscing a cinematic theatre. [17] Dependent on soliciting public participation collaborator Peter Weibel invited members of the public upon the streets in Vienna, to exclusively access her body for physical public molestation.  EXPORT who resembled a mannequin wearing a wig activates a space which the beholders hands caressed her breasts, an act of sexual freedom. [18]For export, the tactility of this performance was framed to directly confront social prescriptions prevailing patriarchal ownership of women.[19] This subjective experience is an example of how reinterpretation can activate the public, a powerful affect and encounter that forces the viewer to confront their own bodily existence.

Marina Abramovic and Valie EXPORT both use their body as a means of expression, which underpins an attempt to deal with something repressed. This subsequently with all the narcissism and autobiographical details that surrounds it returns to the surface of an experience. Exploring the temporality, contingency and instability bound within their bodies, each artist explores the notion that identity within and beyond cultural boundaries appears to be ‘acted out,’ rather than being an inherent quality.[20] Breaking down these boundaries between art and life, in proposing to erase the division between the everyday and the artistically produced and more specifically between the audience and artist. 

For it is performance that critics such as Peggy Phelan, cognitively argue that for the authentic witnessing of a performance, and the cathartic physical experience for both the audience and the artist themself, appears to inevitably guarantee that authentic knowledge and inviolate interpretation of that experience.  Phelan critiques that experience is merely about the disappearance, rather than preservation in performance that retains and transform one to an authentic knowing. Performance creates immediacy and unpredictability, being ephemeral and ideally spontaneous, with no repetition and no predicted ending, rather a place of experience. [21] This place of experience and encounter of an artwork opens up dialogue, an utterance or a place of becoming. We are forced to thought. A fundamental encounter that is not an object of recognition, or a representation of something already in language, rather an object of encounter.  Our knowledge of meaning and our habitual modes of being and subjectivities are challenged and ruptured. [22] For this encounter of rupture, a moment of affirmation occurs which obliges us to see the world differently.  Life becomes a history of these encounters, always necessarily occurring beyond representations. Art brings these two concise moments of rupture and affirmation together, breaking one world and creating another, bringing the possibility of something new. [23]

To summarise it is apparent that there is an enduring presumption in the transparency of lived experience, which guarantees the authority of an experience.   We must acknowledge and believe that there is no apparent interface between experience and language to have sufficient authority to guarantee the truth of an experience. For awareness does not get wrapped up in language rather the whole system is enacted. That is to have an experience with an immediate relation to truth, will always necessitate the value of communication and representation of an experience, therefore guaranteeing an authentic knowledge.

Meaning on the contrary to Agamben’s claim, it would appear that experience still retains authority, for it is the realness, immediacy, and authenticity that guarantee the truth of an experience.[24] You only begin to encounter and articulate what its means to have truly lived an experience and to adequately assemble a conceptual model of what it feels like to experience, when you are enabled to experience the world as a living through of language. [25]

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[1] Kate Love, “The Experince of Art as a Living Through of Language,” After Criticism: New Responses to Art and Performance, ed. Gavin Butt. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 171.

[2] Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History:Essays on the Deconstruction of Expereince, trans. Liz Heron (London and New York: Verso, 1993), p. 13.

[3] Benjamin, Andrew E., and Peter Osborne, eds. Walter Benjamin's Philosophy: Destruction and Experience. Psychology Press, 1994.

[4] Agamben, Infancy and History, 13.

[5] Agamben, Infancy and History, 14.

[6] Agamben, Infancy and History, 13.

[7] Agamben, Infancy and History, 14.

[8] Love, “The Experience" of Art,” 158.

[9] Love, “The Experience of Art,” 171.

[10]Love, “The Experience of Art,” 165.

[11]Love,” The Experience of Art,”171.

[12]Klaus Peter Biesenbach, ed., Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 17.

[13] Bliensenbach, Marina Abramovic, 19. 

[14] Bliensenbach, Marina Abramovic, 15.

[15] Bliensenbach, Marina Abramovic, 40.

[16] Roswitha Mueller. Valie Export: Fragments of the Imagination (Indiana: University Press, 1994), 15.

[17] Tracey Warr, ed., The Artist's Body (New York: Phaidon, 2000), 114.

[18] Mueller, Valie Export, 18.

[19] Sally Banes and André Lepecki, eds., The Senses in Performance (New York: Routledge, 2007), 168.

[20] Warr, Artist’s Body, 11.

[21] Warr, Artist’s Body, 14.

[22] Simon O’Sullivan. Art Encounters Deluze and Guattari: Thought Beyond Representation (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 1.

[23] O’Sullivan, Art Encounters, 2.

[24] Love, “The Experience of Art,” 163. 

[25] Love, “The Experience of Art,” 173.