Artist statement:

Practicing Frank in aphorisms:

·         Practicing Frank is a squirmy, smiley, adventurous artist

·         They practice work that celebrates that they made it, it's soft, it's ugly and pretty at the same time, sometimes they can treat it bad or forget about it and then it's ok to love it again later

·         Practicing Frank stands against desire and craving. They make her really cross, they create the condition for continued suffering and are unsatisfactory.

·         The work looks like dirt and vaginal secretions and unshaven bottom of ankles and unresponded to emails

An artist statement for this project:

This body, my body, it’s all flesh all the time. And the way of the flesh is decomposition. Standing, walking, sitting or laying down; it’s one thing for a while, an ecosystem within the earth’s, and it’s that same thing as it pours out of itself, returning to it.

I feel far away from my mother. I wanted to be inside the earth again, pour this flesh into it, and play in the puddle. I wanted to smell the heat and share it with people walking by. So, I woke up and practiced.

In my practice, reflecting on corporal reality is key. In any action, dance or stillness I take; I’m researching the impermanent, suffering and non-self. Letting go again and again, and not picking up that which is seeming. Composite form is a bubble in loam.

Time to give my materials back over to the Earth. Give up my will and allow impulses of the body, of the elements, of bacteria undress this flesh. This practice takes place in the moss-covered now, gnarled roots surround and the smells are sweet and fresh. In here I make my stead. In the here, now, love radiates out. Thank fuck for that.

Research Project description:

The audience will enter into an outdoor performance installation, seeing strange objects thrown aside, bubbles to play with, fabric veils to wrap themselves when cold, earth under their feet, whimsy through their teeth and homecooked food in the tradition of Death Cafés. I will be in the space for 7.5 hours, having made a firm determination to explore the nine stages of decomposition as set out in the Cemetery Reflections within this time.[1] Explore with all the means available to me including interacting with the audience. My research has been into decomposition, outside interpretation is not mine, is welcome and will be facilitated.   

Research questions:

·         When does decomposition start?

·         How can I embody the qualities of each stage of decomposition?

·         How can I crawl back inside the earth? What is there to learn from this?

·         What is the relational aesthetic between my research interests, facilitating participants on their own journeys and miscellaneous audience interactions?

Research aims:

·         To find the connection between practicing decomposition with fostering love of the earth

·         To facilitate loving kindness in the shared space with the participants.

·         To build a realm of infinite resource

·         To announce decomposition as a corporal reality in the audience/participants

·         To make Chats Palace’s disused back garden my stead; a realm of whimsy

Case Studies:

Tehching Hseih’s work/practice/life/concepts have been a beautiful influence on my practice.

Hseih, born in Taiwan as one of 15 children, served 3 years mandatory army service. At this time he trained in art and painted. He created stark and conceptually rich works which he stated range between Abstract Expressionism and Post-Impressionism.[2]

When I look at Paint – Red Repetitions (1973), it has an aesthetic between stark and full. White paper slightly discoloured yellow now, puckered subtly around red circles, imperfect in shape, bright in colour and yet almost flat in tone. Hseih, in an exchange with Adrian Heathfield which illuminated so much his concepts, rules, life-views, art-views and survival strategies, detailed ‘I dipped the brush into the paint, swirled a circle, flipped this sheet over, and then repeated the same set of actions on the next pages, until the last sheet. It took me about four minutes to finish this piece.’[3] They seem to radiate space, refute virtuosity and suggest time. However, perhaps my reflection here is coloured by the work the made after, which I saw first. Time collapsing on itself.

For my practice it became clear that having a stark aesthetic allows the interior richness of the concept and whatever is happening as time is passing to shine through. I determined to do one thing at a time and allow the time to affect that thing, which meant my performance needed to go on durationally. Whatever my research practices, I have stayed committed to one form/action/frame at a time and explored how time has affected these research explorations and will continue this for the performance.[4]

On the content of his work, Hseih stated: ‘I am inclined to observe the universal circumstances of human beings instead of pointing to issues’ [as in politics, current events, cultures etc.][5] I was glad of the permission this granted me to make work that spoke to the nature of things. My concept is decomposition, a universal circumstance of the corpus, transcending frivolousness.

Another key aspect of Hseih’s work that influenced me is his exploration of freedom. He devised his performance pieces within a parameter of rules, describing ‘what matters is that you stay within the rules, it doesn’t matter how good or how terrible it gets.’[6] On his One Year Cage Piece he ‘treated the corner of my bed as “home” and the other three corners were “outside.” I would take a walk “outside” and then come “home.”’[7] 

For his One Year Piece which was outside he ‘expanded my activity to treat the whole city as home. For instance, Chinatown was my kitchen; the Hudson River was my bathroom…I was very close to this city, but at the same time, very alienated from society.’ This was instructive to me: build a world, survive in it no matter its harshness, define clear divisions in/uses for space and use them at different times when needing different things and allow things to come up as time is unfolding.

I devised rules such as my ten firm determinations (see Methodologies), spaces demarcated for eating, for being buried alive in, for walking meditation and for bubble blowing and cultivated a feeling of surrender to these rules.

One of the contributions to decomposition is death. Death Cafés are a tradition started in Switzerland by sociologist, anthropologist Bernard Crettaz. ‘The only rule was that there was to be no prescription: no topic, no religion, no judgement. He wanted people to talk as openly on the subject as they could.’[8] By creating this space, they create a platform for community. It is a model which recreates spaces which exist in families and cultures the world over. Food is one of the markers that define the space.

I am interested in how the practice of food-sharing defines temporary spaces.  ‘Tea and cake are one of the most important features to the event [as] they assist with creating a nurturing and supportive environment.’[9] This practice suggests that as I am framing my space with death, in order to fulfil my research aim of love I would need to serve food at my performance. This would even potentially have the effect on the audience/participants that they are a community, not abject from each other or me. Crettaz stated: ‘nothing marks the community of the living like sharing food and drink.’[10]

Death Cafe has a mission: “to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.”[11] Knowing that this kind of loaded situation occurs gave me confidence that my research can take place as a community practice as well as aesthetic exploration. In Death Café’s there are no pre-planned structures and the facilitator uses a laid back approach. It is a sharing of information and experience without hierarchy, religion or politics. I will adopt these styles of facilitation when the audience participates with my work.



Research contexts:

The work of the Death Café is interpersonal. It takes place between people, it is in a contrived situation and has many of the characteristic conventions of performance art contexts, however people would not usually associate this kind of work with performance. To understand how to translate this situation into the more aestheticized environment I have been exploring in this project, my research took me into performance art contexts.

In 1970, when performance art exploded with experimentation in form, content and breadth, influential performance/video/installation/sculpture artist and architect/landscape designer, Vito Acconci offered up a definition of the performance art situation; ‘the information he [sic] provides necessarily concerns the source of information, himself [sic], and cannot be solely about some absent object; the transformation pertains to the general relationship of the individual to what is transpiring’.[12] In this he states that performance art necessitates a performer/performer’s body, an audience of some kind, and a relationship between these two groups in which takes place some kind of transmission.

In his seminal work The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art, Dominic Johnson halos performance artists, their practices and relationships to themes surrounding their work including its reception; he observes that with performance art there is a prioritisation of ‘signification, [which] accommodate[s] directly the materials (bodies, objects, language, technology and space) that are visible or sensible in the performance.’[13] I drew upon this to place emphasis in my work on the role of my body in the space and the objects I surround myself in. To explore more of the social quality I am seeking to create in my performance installation, I researched relational aesthetics.[14] 

In Relational Aesthetics, published in 1998, Nicolas Bourriaud argues that critical discourse on 1990s performance fell short on new matters being raised in works which blended the boundary between art and social situations. He cites works such as by Rirkrit Tiravanija, who organised dinner in a collector’s home, leaving him the ingredients for him to make a Thai soup. 

Bourriaud wrote ‘Artistic activity [now]….open[s] up obstructed passages and connect[s] levels of reality kept apart from one another,’[15] and with the term “relational aesthetics” created the conditions for critical engagement for this. The Death Café and Hseih’s practices emphasize the nature of things, which is not framed within a consumeristic dialectic, and seeks to connect the audience with their bodies and their natural fate, ‘a level[] of reality’16 usually avoided.

To explore decomposition, although exploring the simple nature of flesh, is to explore the abject. Julia Kristerva incepted this term as it is understood in art contexts in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, published in French in 1980 and into English in 1982. I read the text itself as performative. She defines the abject as an immediate threat to one’s sense of life. One, through the process of abjection, then others this confronting phenom so separating one’s sense of self from it in order to survive, she describes ‘the corpse…it is death infecting life.[16]  She pronounces 

‘a wound with blood and pus, or the sickly acrid smell of sweat, of decay, does not signify death. In the presence of signified death – a flat encephalograph, for instance – I would understand, react or accept. No, as in true theatre, without makeup or masks, refuse and corpses show me what I permanently thrust aside in order to live’[17]

Kristeva makes a case for the power of accepting the horrible abject, which she defines as merging with corporal reality, which she explores through the character of the deject:

‘the deject never stops demarcating his universe whose fluid confines….constantly question his solidarity and impel him to start afresh. A tireless builder, the deject is in short a stray. He is on a journey, during the night, the end of which keeps receding…’ [18]

The journey of the deject is towards ego death, which occurs to the constant practice of moving away from “self” in all it’s forms and fetters, ‘…and the more he strays, the more he is saved’. The critical work of the deject is the work of my research into decomposition. My aim of announcing this corporal reality in the bodies of the audience adds a relational aesthetic to Kristeva’s solitary deject.   

Research Methodologies:

To explore my research questions I determined ten firm determinations to surrender to for the duration of the project. In this surrender I have found freedom. The determinations were developed through the practice of group spectrum-ing, where you position yourself in a defined polarised space representing how much you agree/disagree with a statement. My determinations have been as follows:

1. Create/foster an intimacy with the audience

2. Be open to pursue failure

3. Blur the boundaries between art and life

4. Use/develop skill/craft in performance

5. Engage with the breath

6. Break moments of comedy and tension

7. Ensure the performance is completely accessible

8. Learn from the performance itself

9. Do not fulfil the full potential of a performance; leave some unsaid and undone

10. Be kind to oneself and others in the process of making a performance/performing

Applying these determinations throughout my use of other methodologies has created a disciplined process and have been useful as practices in and of themselves. 

Methodologies such as task-based performance, methods looking at materials, Actionism, Butoh, meditation, documentation practices and world-building were used to explore the research questions, there are too many to discuss here. I shall detail some with their research question below:

When does decomposition start?

To explore this, I looked at the task of bubble blowing and the material life of bubbles in different materials. I blew soap bubbles, plastic bubbles, gel bubbles, large bubbles a few meters long which you create through long sticks and strings and saliva bubbles.

I discovered that to research the start of decomposition is in the act of blowing the bubble. Through adding breath into this material, you create its composite form. An aggregate within this form is the potential for its popping. The beginning conditions the end, and in that way is the end. This is a circular logic, or even spherical, one may even say bubble shaped.

I observed that when a bubble pops it unfurls and shatters, with a majority of the bubble zipping back into the place exactly opposite from the weak point that opened it up and caused the popping. Observing this decomposition many hundreds of times allowed me to see this occur, and reflect that decomposition also starts from a point where the whole is betrayed.

Bubbles made out of plastic blown, similarly to glass, through a tube do not pop with immediacy. They dry out until they are very thin, similar to the skin of an elderly person, and deflate slowly. I noticed that my impulse is to maim them, twisting them into new shapes or to stomp on them. From this I learned that decomposition can also start through outside forces, as it takes place in the second of the nine stages of decomposition listed in the cemetery reflections: ‘Again, as though one were to see a corpse thrown aside in a charnel ground  being devoured (eaten) by crows, hawks, vultures, dogs, jackals, or various kinds of worms…’1

The practice also engaged with my 5th determination to engage with the breath, as well as the 3rd owing to the fact that I am a recreation bubble-blower. 

How can I embody the qualities of each stage of decomposition?

Another method took the form of free-form Butoh improvisation. With or without music accompanying me I would set a period of time, usually 30-60 minutes, in which to move and play with specific forms of Butoh, such as spine variations and various Butoh Fu.[19]

Butoh is a form founded in 1950s Japan coming out of the Hiroshima bomb, Surrealism, German Expressionism, mime and flamenco among other sources. It explores “moving passively,” the phrase means to move with no effort whatsoever and no conscious intention, and played through my head throughout my improvisations as an impossible action, similar to the practices of Actionism.

Founder Tatsumi Hijikata stated ‘Even your own arms, deep inside your body feel foreign to you, feel that they do not belong to you. Here lies an important secret.’[20] I attempted to let the foreignness move me, as this is the foundation of all Butoh practice. This practice is a Zen style Koan, designed to break the brain, to kill you and then let the corpse dance. Reflecting and moving with this quality was key to my exploration of this research question.

Sometimes in my practical research I would begin by reading what occurs in a specific stage of decomposition, list two or three Butoh forms or thought experiments, create a strong image of a corpse in that stage in my cleared mind and let my body be still. Looking within deeper and deeper and falling into the void, the image would grow and my body would move itself.

Evaluation:

I wished to fulfil my research question regarding crawling back inside the earth by opening my performance having already been buried alive and then slowly digging my way out to begin the first stage of decomposition. After a work sharing, I received feedback that this opening created a discord between this research question and my research aim of facilitating loving kindness; the image was too abject.

Looking back to my other practices I saw that I used bubble blowing to frame my practical research sessions. I reflected on the aesthetic similarity between a bloated corpse and a bubble; and how this will create some creative distance between the audience and the content. This distance is vital in fulfilling my aim. Furthermore, the more I involved others in bubble blowing, the more it became clear that it is a very fun activity of creation, performed together and an ice-breaker to relate/socialise with me and between audience members, even more so fulfilling my aim.[21]

I included the listing of Butoh forms before improvisations as without this the work created in jams would be too similar stage to stage. The form listing allowed more mental and physical variation in responses, allowing me to come out of my preferences and “move passively.” This also allowed me to explore my ninth determination of not fulfilling the full potential of a performance. Without set forms I would expand my movements to all of my current Butoh repertoire, almost performing myself in pastiche. I had to be more creative in using fewer set forms over an extended period of time.

The more time I would improvise over the more it felt useful in exploring the embodiment of those stages of decomposition, this signed to me that duration and improvisation would be a key element to explore in the final performance, which was something unexpected from the process. Butoh is not typically performed durationally, and so performing with it in a performance installation is an exciting new direction for the field and I would hope it can be developed over much longer durations than I am able to pursue in this project.  

Evaluating the relational aesthetic in the work cannot take place yet, it will come when I have an audience. I look forward to the extra dimensions that this will add to my research questions and aims.

I also look forward to decomposing. To keep asking what I am learning about decomposition throughout the performance, the relational elements and performing itself will be tiring. As with durational meditation practices, failures, emotions and apathy will arise decomposing my plans. I look forward to this immensely.   

References:

[1] A list containing these reflections will be on a handout on the performance day, one is available here on my website for reference www.practicingfrank.com/cemetery-reflections-detail

[2] Adrian Heathfield, Tehching Hseih, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hseih, (London: The MIT Press, 2009) p319

[3] Out of Now, p319

[4] See www.practicingfrank.com/lead-up for week on week material

[5] Out of Now, p330

[6] Out of Now, p336

[7] Out of Now, p327

[8] From <https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/take-me-to-the-death-cafe>

[9] From https://bogatiurns.com/the-birth-and-life-of-death-cafe/

[10] From Holding your own Death Café, accessed at <https://deathcafe.com/how/>

[11] From <https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147444221730203X>

[12] Vito Acconci, ‘Some Notes and Activity in Performance’ (1970, in Jennifer Bloome, Mark C. Taylor and Frazer Ward, Vita Acconci, (London: Phaidon, 2002), pp88-92 (p88)

[13] Dominic Johnson, The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) p6

[14] In Relational aesthetics, Bourriaud defines the terms as: ‘Aesthetic theory consists of judging artworks on the base of the interhuman relations they represent, reproduce or prompt.’ (p112)

[15] Relational Aesthetics, p8

[16] Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982) p4

[17] Powers of horror, p3

[18] Powers of horror, p8

[19] Please see the videos on my website which captured a period of time from these jams, www.practicingfrank.com/lead-up  

[20] Listed on the official Facebook page set up students of his lineage, accessed at < https://www.facebook.com/HijikataTatsumi/>

[21] In 52 Ways to Show I Love You: Having Fun Together, Roni Beth Tower Ph.D., ABPP, a clinical, research and academic psychologist details fun in the form of creation, performing together and create and maintain love. 

Bibliography:

Vito Acconci, ‘Some Notes and Activity in Performance’ (1970, in Jennifer Bloome, Mark C. Taylor and Frazer Ward, Vita Acconci, (London: Phaidon, 2002), pp88-92 (p88)

Nicolas Bourriaud, english translation, Relational Aesthetics, (Dijon: Les Presses du reel, 2002)

Adrian Heathfield, Tehching Hseih, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hseih, (London: The MIT Press, 2009)

Dominic Johnson, The Art of Living: An Oral History of Performance Art, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015)

Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982)

Webliography:

<https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/take-me-to-the-death-cafe>

<https://bogatiurns.com/the-birth-and-life-of-death-cafe/>

<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147444221730203X>

Gotama the Buddha, The Nine Cemetery Contemplations or Stages of Decomposition, as detailed in Therevada Buddhism, translation taken from  <http://bozemaninsightcommunity.com/27-death-meditation-and-stages-of-decay/>

Roni Beth Tower Ph.D., ABPP, 52 Ways to Show I Love You: Having Fun Together, Accessed on Psychology Today on 10th May 2019 at <https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/life-refracted/201707/52-ways-show-i-love-you-having-fun-together>

www.practicingfrank.com/cemetery-reflections-detail

From Holding your own Death Café, accessed at <https://deathcafe.com/how/>

https://www.facebook.com/HijikataTatsumi/