LIFE AS PERFORMANCE
I finished the book. I have been practicing binding it. Production will fully occur after my exhibition, because it takes a lot of time to make the books, and I do no want to be rushing.
Sayward was incredible as always this semester. While we did not meet many times, each time we did she had very helpful things to say, and offered great feedback. The best of this was, upon seeing my first mock up of the manual, suggesting that I alter the size of the paper. In response I made the paper slightly smaller, using the guillotine cutter in the copy room. The book looked much better.
It has been very interesting to see the shift in this project from conceptual writing to materiel practice. It has drawn on my math and geometry skills, as well as my string work.
Immediately following my exhibition I am premiering LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective, which I have been working on since I performed it at the Personalized Learning Summit, it has gone through a bunch of forms, from being very scattered long to being fairly short and simple. It has turned into a piece that I am using to help close my time here in Vermont, which is very important to me.
Part of LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is just presenting things as they are - without editing, or if there are edits, revealing the process. This is very interesting to me in a conventional performance setting, like a “show”, because if something is rehearsed it does not have the rawness that real life has, so I feel the need to open it up to chance and improvisation. This is also why I have been so intrigued by the idea of ‘scores’ in dance, because they can be rehearsed but never the movement is never is never the exact same, and because they are identified and learned before you execute them.
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is an unending thing. I am wrapping up this book that I made as part of it, and beginning to develop retrospective, but I will take this process and this way of thinking with me a I go forward into the world.
because i have been changed by it
irrevocably
Sayward was incredible as always this semester. While we did not meet many times, each time we did she had very helpful things to say, and offered great feedback. The best of this was, upon seeing my first mock up of the manual, suggesting that I alter the size of the paper. In response I made the paper slightly smaller, using the guillotine cutter in the copy room. The book looked much better.
It has been very interesting to see the shift in this project from conceptual writing to materiel practice. It has drawn on my math and geometry skills, as well as my string work.
Immediately following my exhibition I am premiering LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective, which I have been working on since I performed it at the Personalized Learning Summit, it has gone through a bunch of forms, from being very scattered long to being fairly short and simple. It has turned into a piece that I am using to help close my time here in Vermont, which is very important to me.
Part of LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is just presenting things as they are - without editing, or if there are edits, revealing the process. This is very interesting to me in a conventional performance setting, like a “show”, because if something is rehearsed it does not have the rawness that real life has, so I feel the need to open it up to chance and improvisation. This is also why I have been so intrigued by the idea of ‘scores’ in dance, because they can be rehearsed but never the movement is never is never the exact same, and because they are identified and learned before you execute them.
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is an unending thing. I am wrapping up this book that I made as part of it, and beginning to develop retrospective, but I will take this process and this way of thinking with me a I go forward into the world.
because i have been changed by it
irrevocably
Semester 1
I made a book. It is almost ready to mass produce.
While I was making LEAR I took a hiatus from LIFE AS PERFORMANCE, but as soon as LEAR was over I needed to distract myself with it.
This quarter I made 4 new drafts of Manual. Each taking major strides to finality. I believe that the 6th draft, which will be completed early in quarter 4 will be the final one.
The editing process has been wonderful as always. In this project the most interesting part has been taking things away from the book to make it more complete. It is about 760 words long, the early drafts where about 2000.
Early in the quarter, at the Personalized Learning Summit, I performed LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective. It solidified the thought that I can perform LIFE AS PERFORMANCE. I have continued to think about how I will do this and have book a two day run for the show in early august at Phantom Theater. I will also reach out to GIA to see if they would be interested in me coming to perform there. In addition I applied to Burlington’s Off Center for the Performing Arts, but was drawn in the lottery as on the waitlist.
This project is nowhere near over. In the coming quarter I have decided to hand bind all the copies of the book, then I will fill a handful of them in with the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE writings that I have been making all year.
While I was making LEAR I took a hiatus from LIFE AS PERFORMANCE, but as soon as LEAR was over I needed to distract myself with it.
This quarter I made 4 new drafts of Manual. Each taking major strides to finality. I believe that the 6th draft, which will be completed early in quarter 4 will be the final one.
The editing process has been wonderful as always. In this project the most interesting part has been taking things away from the book to make it more complete. It is about 760 words long, the early drafts where about 2000.
Early in the quarter, at the Personalized Learning Summit, I performed LIFE AS PERFORMANCE retrospective. It solidified the thought that I can perform LIFE AS PERFORMANCE. I have continued to think about how I will do this and have book a two day run for the show in early august at Phantom Theater. I will also reach out to GIA to see if they would be interested in me coming to perform there. In addition I applied to Burlington’s Off Center for the Performing Arts, but was drawn in the lottery as on the waitlist.
This project is nowhere near over. In the coming quarter I have decided to hand bind all the copies of the book, then I will fill a handful of them in with the LIFE AS PERFORMANCE writings that I have been making all year.
Quarter 1
“We’re all born naked and the rest is drag”
-RuPaul
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is my big [solo] project for the year, comparable to what Zero Hour was last year. So far it has taken shape mostly in the form of written word, and is on trajectory to, by the end of the year, become an art book.
It is very much in the mindset of happening organically, and so far I have put no restrictions on what is can or can’t be, this being said the title has lead me in a few directions. I have been exploring the notion that this project will self-document, in the sense that creating the work of art is the art, and all the raw material involved is perfect.
I have been working with Sayward to have a bank of resources of work that is aesthetically and ideologically similar to mine to draw from for inspiration and to gain a better understanding of the structure that LIFE AS PERFORMANCE may take.
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is a long form art project, and as such I do not have any finished work to show, I have 30 some pages of raw material, and have engaged in much thought and conversation on the topic. But it will not be till much later in the year that I produce any form of polished work.
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE is probably, in a certain way, what suffered most due to my illness. This is because it is a very independent project, I am not deeply accountable to anyone but myself in it. The deadlines that I set for myself at the end of this semester are unmet, but I’m not particularly upset about it.
Many times this semester I got overwhelmed by the ideas that this study deals with, the boundlessness of art, and how much there is to explore beyond this. At its base this is a project about documenting my life, and, in truth, I document very little of mine for this project at the moment. I can imagine in the future, living somewhere less busy and spending months doing nothing but working on this project, refining my ability to capture and record each moment the passses, and each thought that goes through my mind. And yet this same intention destroys itself in some way: if you take a moment to record a moment, and then try to record that moment you quickly end up in a world of the same moment over and over, always recording, never experiencing.
That is my fear about this project in some way: that I will miss things while I am reflecting upon others. I don’t think this is a reasonable fear, but this is not a project that can ever be fully done. It is too much for its own good.
This, however is not just a project of ideas, it is also my primary materiel practice at the moment. I type all LIFE AS PERFORMANCE materials on a typewriter (the act of creating is a performance of its own) and the produced papers an entirely different way to experience the project.
Right now it is manifesting as a manual, a series of exercises and instructional pieces that lead the viewer to developing an understanding on the idea that life is inherently performative. In the coming quarter I will be revising and finalizing these excercises into a volume which I will then begin to record my own responses to, creating a second layer of work. I plan to add a third layer even, a sort of after the fact reflection on my responses and the instructional pieces - annotations to the work, if you will - that solidify it as an artwork that document myself in some way, more than just that of the art I create, or my personal self, but also of my intellectual self, demonstrating the function of work to it’s viewer.