With the Tanks opening on Tuesday 18th July, a space dedicated to live art, performance, installation and film, I thought I'd invite two of my favourite performance artists, Oriana Fox and Barry Sykes, to make a selection of video pieces for me to post and share to celebrate this new space. I asked them to choose both recordings of live performances and discussions on performance art. Below Sykes offers up a selection of video and naviagtes us through them in his own words. You can view a heavily pregnant Oriana Fox's selection here.
@BARRY_SYKES EDIT
Videos of performance art make me think about forgetting – in that they’re often made as an aid to remembering, for the performer and audience; and of all the performances I’ve seen that I can only vaguely remember: the good and the bad, the great and the terrible. Even now, when the internet is full of thousands of these videos (some are the work, some documentation) it’s hard to recall the ones that mean most to me when asked for a top five, a double forgetting.
The first that came to me was this clip of a young John Cage on national television. How great to give the burden of documentation to a TV Channel, and interesting that far more people saw the footage than were in the room at the time.Watch out for The appreciative host; the way they adapt the show for him, and he adapts back.
Next up are two video from peers of mine. Both pieces have stayed with me since I first watched them. Although made separately – I don’t even think they know each other – the works act as kind of pair of empirical excercises.
Watch out for The attention to detail, habit as choreography; the audience.
Many have linked the development of Tate Modern’s new Tank spaces to this newly increased appetite to deliver the live and the immediate. In fact Tate have been tapping into this output for many years now, from ad hoc events in the galleries throughout its history and the heavily programmed monthly Late at Tate’s to the recent BMW sponsored ‘Tate Live’ webcasts. The below video is the only one I’ve watched of these and I didn’t see it live. I’ll also admit to being ambivalent about Bronstein’s work up until now but the self-reflexivity, economy, invention and faltering elegance of this piece was won me over. I've only just realised how much it has in common with the John Cage clip above.
Watch out for The entertaining institutional brutality of making him do a live Q&A straight afterwards.
Pablo Bronstein’s Constantinople Kaleidoscope, 2012
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