Still haven't really done much worth talking about, but I want to sometimes do posts about other people's work instead of just mine. I think this is the first one.
This weekend I was lucky enough to go to In Between Time in Bristol, a city I had only briefly visited before. It's a live art/performance festival with participatory stuff thrown in. I have a very limited experience of live art and didn't really think I liked it. How my eyes and mind were blown wide open!
highlights:
1. The String Section performed by Reckless Sleepers: four ladies in black dresses and heels performing a symphony for wood and metal: basically, sawing the legs off chairs bit by bit whilst they were sitting on them. I liked this piece very much, it was quite uncomfortable but funny to watch them frantically destroying the structures that they needed to support them.
2. The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein - How to Become a Cupcake
Okay this one was a bit nuts and not at all what I was expecting: women in bras and tutus smearing food all over everywhere, yeah yeah I thought. I ended up really enjoying it though, just because of its apparently disorganised structure and the bit where the Famous becomes a real boy, and the bit where she dances to the Backstreet Boys over and over again while the other women squirt cream at her for about ten minutes. Thought this one was kind of aggressive, although I liked it. I didn't take any pictures because I was mesmerised by the sight of a naked woman on crutches weeing on a pile of popping candy. I am sure you can find pictures on the internet of that sort of thing if you like.
3. Holzinger and Riebeek - Kein Applaus fur Schiesse
ohhhh... this was the same day as the Famous, and I had seen so much human flesh and fluids by this point that when the whole pulling string out of a fandango/throwing up/weeing stuff happened (within 5 minutes) I was like, oh hooray. But this was THE BEST thing I saw all weekend! It was so sweet and warm and funny, such a delight. I have developed massive crushes on both of them and rekindled my love for Devendra Banhart. I came out feeling like I'd taken some giant drugs. I still have no idea why I liked it so much.
4. Silvia Rimat - If You Decide to Stay
No nudism in this one, just a nice lady dressed as a bunny, pondering on probability and chance, and celebrating the fact that we all went to see her show at that precise time with rum and nibbles. I did cry though, when she asked who would put sleeping pills in their children's lemonade at the end of the world, and no one said yes except me :(
Me and Oly took part in Kate McIntosh's Worktable in which I deconstructed a chamber pot with a crowbar.
Live art makes no sense to me, I can more or less grasp meaning from it, I enjoy it, I feel moved by it. Is that enough? I don't understand how it's constructed. I watched loads of hour-long shows that felt, to my uninitiated mind, like unconnected series of things indiscriminately wedged together in a sequence. Maybe it's just because I'm used to static images or something. If someone would like to talk to me about this I would be grateful.
Also while we were recovering from performance-fatigue, we wandered round beautiful Bristol and had a look at the graffiti on Nelson Street
this looks like a John Campbell?
Plus other things which I've forgotten. It was a great time and I feel like I'm changed forever. Until probably next week. Anyway I will try and write more soon, i will make something, I promise. don't leave me
xx
