PERFORMANCY FORUM XXI: ARS ONOMATOPOETICA
Saturday, March 17th, 2012 at Vaudeville Park (26 Bushwick Ave)
8pm-12am
PERFORMANCY FORUM is a selection of serial sociological faux pas. It is shouting HEY! in public, it refers only to itself, it is working class, it is ROAR, QUACK, ZIP, it is phenomimes and psychomimes, it is phonosemantic (words, notes), and ideophonetic (sounds, actions, movements), and now its racket resounds: CLUNK, CLICK, BOING, SLURP, MEOW.
Lorene Bouboushian
Laylage Courie
Lindsey Drury
Tess Dworman
Kyli Kleven
Caitlin Marz
Brian McCorkle
Jordan Morley
Michael Newton
In March, PF will feature dance artists, composers, poets, and performance artists whose work deals with being itself, constructing reality instead of being constructed by reality, not mirroring it, representing it, nor otherwise being anything other than what is Is, in and of itself. Onomatopoeia, that term for words that are both an utterance themselves and the word for the utterance, becomes a poetics of self-made feedback loops, of cyclical material, gestural and often violent (WHACK!) as it meets Ars, slang for “tough guy/working class/bully/redneck/thug,” becoming work that asserts itself, theorizes itself, pushing other images out of the way, strange and too big for constraint. This work grew up being bullied, now it is a mean machine, scarred and bitter, or maybe it is just plain self-assertive, in a world where art is supposed to lay down meekly and take it.
We ask, does a mode of self-reflexivity make for work that is autonomous in its performance, i.e. non-reactive to its audience or does it make the work more reactive in its concrete insistence on existence? How do artists perceive their work as “pieces,” “material” or otherwise objectify process into product?
******************************about*****************************************
PERFORMANCY FORUM is a clustering, condensing, and critical effort comprising interdisciplinary exhibitions (emphasis on performance art, social practices, and participatory/publicly engaged work), workshops, conferences, actions, events, and more.
PERFORMANCY FORUM began in 2009 as a project of the Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL) while the collective was in residence at Surreal Estate. It has since become an open project, collaborating with spaces, sites, curatorial collectives, and many others to:
1.) Forge IN-PERSON relationships (including collaborations) between artists from different artistic mediums and micro-communities.
2.) Perform collective research, including drawing of parallels between current performance and social practices and attempts to locate them within historic, economic, socio-political, and aesthetic contexts.
3.) Provide a site (physical or cognitive) for complex and critical thought beyond academic and other institutional parameters, for political and cultural organization amongst artists, and for experimentation with modes, methods, and mediums in conjunction with concrete practice.
4.) Involve publics of ‘artists’ and ‘non-artists’ alike in constructive, collective, and critical analysis and debate of artistic operation.
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PF is curated by Esther Neff, co-director of the Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL). I am currently accepting proposals for future PFs. More info and proposal guidelines at www.panoplylab.org/
performancy.html or e-mail Esther directly at panoplylab@gmail.com.
