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Body Slam

Introduction

There is nothing more conventional in an art gallery than the arrangement of paintings on the walls. They exist as precious, untouchable objects meant for our passive, admiring gaze only. I propose to work within this familiar context to challenge notions of entertainment, which has become even more complicated in our increasingly virtual world. Our entertainment can quickly turn into complacency. I will create a performance and installation that challenges this complacency and questions the ethics of entertainment on an utterly physical level.

Performance and Installation

The performance will result in the creation of approximately 12 individual wall pieces. For each piece, liberal amounts of house paint and acrylic color will be pressed against the wall with a glass sheet. Suited in protective gear, I will build up sprinting speed and hurl myself against the glass and pressed paint, cracking the glass and splattering the paint. Some of the broken glass will fall, but most of it will stick to the wall, held in place by acrylic gel-thickened paint. This process will be repeated as quickly as possible until all the wall pieces are complete.

The performance and its resulting wall pieces are the central focus of this project and will occupy roughly half the wall space in the gallery. The inclusion of concept sketches, studies, related art objects, and visual documentation of previous performances will fill the remainder, providing greater insight into my process.

Purpose and Impact

This performance problematizes the passive act of looking, dissolving the comfortable remove between art and audience. The longer the audience watches my repeated thrashings, the longer they remain complicit in my potential self-injury. Through the thick smell of paint, the violent splattering of color, and the sounds of my crashing body breaking glass, I will create a palpable tension between the audience’s desire for spectacle and their fears for my well-being. In this way, I intend to create a work, both in the performance and resulting installation, that connects with the audience on a gut level.

The Heights

connectivity

you have to tell people things about yourself, otherwise they won't know. there is value in this. it's not self-promoting. it is connecting. actions do not always speak louder. actions don't exist if they aren't witnessed, and sometimes the only way to share them with people -- and share yourself -- is to talk about these actions. direct experience is extremely rare and limited.

NM

talking through

2 views outside the bedroom window

i still struggle to cope with doing anything. 6 billion people is far too many. and i am one of them. that sounds morbid. i don't mean to suggest that i shouldn't be here, but rather, what can i contribute? ughh.

creating STUFF is a problem, and i am a stuff maker. a very poor one since i don't have any space to store the stuff i would make. so i have all these theoretical projects. they need funding, space and an audience. most importantly they need the commitment to bring them into being. i feel like if i had a stronger commitment, i would have done some of these projects by now. but i can't deny that the thought of adding more stuff to a world of stuff is discouraging.

new painting in progress

this is a current painting in progress. the jury's still out as to whether or not the project as a whole is worth pursuing, but it's essentially about documenting my performances through the painted image. these were quick snapshots with minimal editing. it's a 2-panel painting arranged the way you see here, but with greater continuity between panels (here it looks too broken as the image moves between panels. this is because of my cropping of the digital image). the panels are arranged in this way to emphasize instability of block structures created in the original performance. the scale is 1 to 1.