OPEN: The Tanks 18/08/12-28/1-/12 Tate Modern: Barry Sykes

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. 

John Cage, Water Walk on I've Got A Secret, 1960

 
It’s a shame we miss the discussion period the presenter wanted to make time for. It reminds me I’ve also seen Harry Hill do a very considered recreation of this in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London but I can’t track down any video of it. 

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.

Steven Paige, Lecture, 2007

WATCH – Nathaniel Pitt, OK, 2011

All of these clips deal with the point where the artist’s talk blurs into performance, where talking about something else becomes the content itself. This is something I’m currently preoccupied with whilst developing The Apocralypse, even the anticipation can be where the work is. This Daniel Eatock talk employs a number of strategies to upset the formality and certainty artist talks normally rely on (the two introducers being a classic example).

Watch out for The chair trick; the camera game; the breadth; the q&a.

Daniel Eatock, A Performance, 2007

 
It seems more and more artists of all disciplines are making performances these days. Not so long ago it you’d have to be a committed ‘Live Artist’ to dare risk doing one. But demand has increased and so has the supply. Let me be honest with you: I know in the recent years I’ve felt able to come up with performative work it has given me access to galleries and museums I’ve never been asked to show more static work in. These days even the most conservative galleries will have an evening of events where someone might be reading off a sheat of printed A4 for ten minutes, improvising some electronic music, re-enacting someone else’s performance or wearing a mask (I’ve done at least two of these). It’s an odd gig, you get to try something new, in a new space, they get to promote their venue and bring in a new audience. Chances are you won’t be paid, or if so only for delivering the work, not developing it. 

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

Postscript: I wouldn’t blame you for skipping through sections of any of these, I confess I have, I think this is also part of the mechanics of watching them online. However I’d also urge you to watch them twice, anticipating each tick, recognising each gesture, another freedom this medium gives you.
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