Performance

...As the Moth is lured to the candle's flame, so it is that a group of misfits enter a dark house to converse with shadows amid the dust of Time.

—Mike Kuchar

This video was produced as a part of Eiko & Koma's exhibition Time is not Even, Space is not Empty which opened at the Zilkha Gallery in Wesleyan University in the fall of 2009. Edited by Eiko with assistance of Tara Kelton and Shoko Letton, 38 Works shows the trajectory of Eiko & Koma's career through short excerpts of most of their works created between 1976 (the year they arrived in the US) and 2009 (the year they started the Retrospective Project).

"Pointing at my own image on the video monitor: my attempt is to keep my finger constantly in the center of the screen — I keep narrowing my focus into my finger. The result [the TV image] turns the activity around: a pointing away from myself, at an outside viewer."

— Vito Acconci, "Body as Place-Moving in on Myself, Performing Myself," Avalanche 6 (Fall 1972)

5% is a ten-minute work that questions the cult of pop stardom, deconstructs music industry practices, considers the problematics of live performance, and suggests other, more anonymous working strategies.

"Emptiness: I just watched your latest video, Colchones Individuales (Single Beds), Volume 1: Desolacion, and I wanted to write you about it. Oddly, Single Beds sums up much of what I have been thinking lately. In these times of speed, where everything is propelled forward at an incredibly spiraling rate, it is only in moments of pause, of inertia, that we examine what is occurring to us. Your piece, Single Beds, performs an arrested time, a succinct suspension of time. (It is in many ways a companion piece to an earlier video of yours Staying Alive).

Acconci's open mouth is framed by the camera in an extreme close-up, bringing the viewer uncomfortably close. A desperate sense of strained urgency comes across as Acconci gasps, "I'll accept you, I won't shut down, I won't shut you out.... Im open to you, I'm open to everything.... This is not a trap, we can go inside, yes, come inside...." Acconci continues to plead in this way for the length of the tape, his mouth held unnaturally wide open. The pathological psychology of such enforced openness betrays a desperate struggle to accept and be accepted by others.

This tape examines the meaning, impact, and future of the early-1980s avant-garde through interviews with artists (Scott B., Robert Longo, Walter Robinson, Michael Smith), an art dealer (Helene Winer, Metro Pictures), a museum director (Marcia Tucker, The New Museum of Contemporary Art), and an art historian (Roselee Goldberg). “Whenever you feel confident that you know what’s happening at the outside edge, something’s always happening that you don’t know about. The avant-garde, if it exists at all... is determined by the artist, not the peripheral people like myself,” Tucker says.

Thinking of herself as a spy assigned by the female sex, Green reinterprets baseball’s symbolism—its womblike landscape, its cycles and rituals—and constructs an iconography that pays homage to the female. In one magnificent montage, numerous phallic symbols pass by as Green sees the real purpose of the game: baseball is the only sport about returning home—and where is home...? In a mother’s belly. With humor and irony, Green creates a tape that is both a personal revelation and a heretical portrait. 

Featuring Vito Acconci, Richard Serra, Willoughby Sharp, Keith Sonnier, and William Wegman

This black and white drama of romance, adventure and outer space intervention was mounted at the San Francisco Art Institute. The plot concerns two groups of missionaries who depart for a tropical island inhabited by a population of attractive denizens who are ruled by a libido-fueled queen. She in turn is guided by the Star People who have their own carnal urges and the result is volcanic. The $400 budget guarantees cheap thrills and makes an explosive vehicle for the queen of these dime store dynamos: Linda Martinez (our Sharon Stone).

Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing aftermath destroyed Noel's community and home. He is rebuilding, and as he rebuilds, he evokes the past through the enlistment of his personal archives. His memories are complicated by the tragic events that occurred on the Danziger Bridge on September 4th 2005. As Noel reflects back on what has been lost, the story that he tells about his neighborhood is affected by the story of innocent people gunned down while attempting to cross a bridge in search of safety, and for Noel their plight clarify many things.

A woman is standing barefoot on a tile floor.  In slow motion, the investigative camera circles around her.  Her breasts are bared and liquid runs down her legs.  Bit by bit, every part of her body is shown, except her face, which remains hidden behind her hair.  The camera besets the woman, who remains silent.

This title is also available on Hester Scheurwater Videoworks: Volume 1.

In The Body Parlor, both man and sheep as combined sacrificial bodies become subjects of biological investigation. As symbols of ritual sacrifice, they are bodies that give of themselves. In discovering new forms of health-care (regenerative medicine) and tissue engineering (such as stem cell research), the body becomes sacrificial material for the greater purpose of a social good. The performers employ the material objects, either as products of or as extensions of the body as a way of exploring giving from one's self in sacrifice.

Performers throw themselves into an underground passageway. They exit through the mirror, a symmetrical mirror world which exists because of the placement and angle of the mirror as an upside-down place.

Performers: Ellen Krueger and Monica Wilson

See a boy turn into a tiger. See the lad vomit colors of the rainbow. Watch him toss marbles onto wet bathroom tiles while holding up a green skull. See him squirm on warm bedsheets, wearing only soiled socks on his feet…… This kid has a mouthful of flowery words to spit out to you !

This title comprises Witchery (2008), The Tiger (2009), Swan Song (2009), Medusa's Gaze (2010) and Opal Essence (2010) which were compiled into this form by Mike Kuchar in 2022.

Offering was co-commissioned by Dancing in the Streets (New York), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, where the proscenium version premiered January 9, 2003) and the University of Arizona (Tucson).

Offering is a ritual of regeneration after loss. People everywhere have lost ideals and landscapes that were dear to them. Offering was originally developed as a mobile outdoor work. This transportable dance or living site "installation" can be brought into communities to serve a communal need for a ritual of mourning.

Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Eiko Otake is a movement-based, interdisciplinary artist. She worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma, but since 2014 has been working on her own projects. Her works often investigate themes of death and dying, history, and the persistence of collective memory. Eiko has also broadened her collaborative practice to create interdisciplinary work with artists from different backgrounds and disciplines, both alive and deceased.

As a document of an early performance, this video details the process of orientating the body and self in space, providing a physical metaphor for the process of adjusting oneself in society.

"Blindfolded, ears plugged: our goal is to sense each other’s movement and bearing, to attempt to assume the same movement and bearing. An off-screen voice, heard only by the audience, gives directions that would help us attain our goal."

—Vito Acconci, "Concentration-Container-Assimilation," Avalanche 6 (Fall 1972)

Live in San Diego is my first live performance. David Antin, my mentor when I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego, encouraged me to perform in front of an audience. Why? Since my videos directly addressed the camera- why not take the next step and address a live audience?

A newly re-mastered collection of 22 comedic performances to camera, produced during 1973-74. Absurd stories mix with word play; product demonstrations extol the virtues of a specially modified cocktail tray or canine selling aid; and throughout it all, Man Ray. May Ray woken by an alarm clock, tormented by paper-throwing and map-reading, and ever attempting to understand his master.

Contents:

Wake Up, 1:33

Trip Across Country, 0:50

Down Time, 0:36

Laundromat, 0:43

Cherokee-American artist Jimmie Durham has worked in performance since the mid-’60s. In the ‘70s, he immersed himself in activism, working for Native American rights as part of the American Indian Movement. In the ‘80s, his focus returned to producing art in multiple forms—performance, poetry, and mixed-media visual works—that consider Native American identity and critique American domestic colonialism. He has also published numerous critical essays.

Interrupting the nightly news in an act of guerrilla television, Gómez-Peña returns to the persona of a Chicano-Aztec veejay—"The Mexican who talks back, the illegal Mexican performance artist with state of the art technology"—to elaborate the complications of American identity. This post-NAFTA Cyber Aztec pirate commandeers the television signal from his underground "Vato bunker", where virtual reality meets Aztec ritual. Gómez-Peña embodies the doubly radical Chicano performance artist, delivering radical ideas through a radical form of entertainment.

Shot with my students at the San Francisco Art Institute, this colorful drama with song and dance numbers (plus burlesque acts) follows the libidinous poisoning of Vatican personnel by an otherworldly intruder. The cast is mostly young and vibrant and the songs staged as opulently as possible on a $400 budget. Anyone interested in these collaborative productions will find a lot to gawk at in this backstage romance with pagan overtures galore.

This horror picture is a sequel to THE KISS OF FRANKENSTEIN (a one act play I wrote a few years ago which was performed by my graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute). This one was made on the main campus and features Linda Martinez reprising the role of Sherri Frankenstein who is MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE! The budget given us was $400 but the picture looks big and robust, thanks to the attractive and healthy looking cast of students and guest performers who bring this tale of family vengeance to a rousing and tuneful finale.

Taste the delicious colors of "SWEET NOTHINGS" and observe the dice of desire being tossed on a gambler’s bed like yesterday’s candy. See tomorrow’s chocolate bunny melt into a brown puddle and feel a sticky, rainbow colored lolly-pop thats stuck to six feet of skin that secrets pent up passions... It’s all here for you to eat and is guaranteed to fatten your eyes!!