a.pass PORTFOLIO
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DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA
ARTISTIC RESEARCH Sven G
Jan 2010 - Jan 2011 a.pt
a description of the research goals – as evidenced by this portfolio – at least containing the research questions and strategy or research method, as well as the initially projected outcome ______________________________________________________ p. 3 - 17
the selected material: written documents, audiovisual materials, online projects on the a.pass site, etc. – this material has been collected on different points in time from various sources; own work, comments by fellow participants, feedback from supervisors, etc. _____________________________________________________ p. 18 - 73
reflections on own strengths and weaknesses, discoveries about learning experiences and strategies developed ____________________________________________________
p. 74 - 88
a summarizing self-evaluation and reflection, drawing conclusions from the entire portfolio, the learning trajectory and any remaining shortcomings _____________________________________________________ p. 89 - 98
a description of the research goals – as evidenced by this portfolio – at least containing the research questions and strategy or research method, as well as the initially projected outcome _____________________________________________________________ On June 16 2009 I had embarked on a yearlong documentary performance: ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0. Inspired by the works of performance artists such as Tehching Hsieh and NG, I submitted myself to a strict weekly planning for 1 year and documented my everyday life as SVEN G, a fictional persona alternating between 12 sub-characters, all revolving around my default, perhaps even non-existent, ‘self’ by the name of Sven Goyvaerts.
The 12 SVEN G sub-characters complement each other, but they clash also. It’s not customary to EAT while PLAYING MUSIC, for instance, or to go to the TOILET while WALKING. SUPERMAN always needs to choose between saving the world or his one true LOVE. RESEARCH STUDIES get in the way of my WORK and most of the time you cannot really JOKE when doing BUSINESS. Finally, my emotions and desires, in the form of the G-CHARACTER, are opposed to the I-CHARACTER, which is the one character questioning the fact whether I am an individual at all.
As I appended this ‘2.0’ suffix to the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE project, I attempted to link all of these personalities to social media. The ‘eating’ self was represented by a constantly updated FLICKR FEED, the ‘musical’ self was hosted on MYSPACE MUSIC, the ‘imaginative’ G-character tweeted all of his thought and feelings on TWITTER. The distance traveled by the ‘walking’ self was being GPS-tracked and posted on EVERYTRAIL. The ‘Superman’ self posted his good deeds on RAKAWA.net, as the ‘loving’ self got to know his girlfriend better over SKYPE. ‘Research’ self made updates on BLOGGER and a show-reel of assignments done as a cameraman under other people’s command was going to be put online on VIMEO. The ‘humorous’ self communicated through AUDIOBOO, while money was to be made and spent by the ‘business’ self on SECOND LIFE. The ‘cleaning’ self kept record of hygiene and basic vital functions using EVERNOTE, while the I-character questioned his very own personal existence by performing eye contact exercises which were uploaded to YOUTUBE. My ‘default’ self, Sven Goyvaerts, is still known to his friends via FACEBOOK.
Some of these applications I had already experimented with, before coming to a.pass. This was during my other studies at the Transmedia Postgraduate Program in Arts + Media + Design, a course which lasted until June 2010.
Gradually more social networking apps were being put into effect, as one can tell from this recent model:
Aside from my presence on online social networks, other media being explored were: lectures, installations with continuous projection, printouts of email correspondence & documentation and public interventions & live performances. While this yearlong performance was already underway at the time when I applied to a.pass, my main intention was to take a moment to critically evaluate this artistic process I had been going through, but now inside the collaborative and altogether less tech-savvy a.pass research environment. After the yearlong performance was over on June 16 2010 I did not radically stop making live documentary performances, and it became a challenge to introduce this more critical or self-reflective mode into my artistic practice. Looking back, I may have succeeded in doing so, up to a certain extent. For this portfolio I will be repeatedly referencing my original application to a.pass, in order to find out whether I stayed true to the goals I had set for myself. And so, to quote the application, these were the questions I had formulated before the start of my a.pass year:
- Can I become a fictional character, in what is commonly perceived as the real world, and create a space to release my desires on the one hand and be concerned with my duties towards the rest of humanity on the other? - Will I (still) be able to function in society? - How will all this affect me and the people around me? - Will people be inspired by this? - Will they be offended? - More importantly: who am I? - Is there anything that I can or would like to consider my work and my work alone? All of these questions are examined and answered under the third chapter of this portfolio, in which I reflect on the entire process. These questions above were posed before my departure on the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0. But along the way, the research questions got fine-tuned and split up into what became the three main questions of the research DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA:
1) What are the limits to consistently documenting one’s life and sharing it over the web? 2) Can durational live performance art of old be preserved through the use of new social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.? 3) How can we begin to think of making an inventory of contemporary durational live performance artworks that take place on these social media?
The addition of questions 2) and 3) – in themselves much more practical than the first one – can be attributed to a reflex of mine of wanting to legitimize my research and to make it useful to other artists as well. My ambition to take up a position in the Marina Abramovi! Institute for Preservation of Performance Art, set to open in 2012, also influenced this turn of events. Before we continue onto the selected material compiled over the course of the a.pass year, there are 2 things that still need to be properly introduced. One is the theoretical background which lies at the basis of the research subject DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA, the other is the form of the final a.pass presentation I had originally envisioned as opposed to what it ended up becoming. First: theory.
Ever since my final year in film school as a documentary filmmaker I had been asking myself: can a live performance be documented in a truthful way? Shouldn’t this document have a ‘performative’ quality – keeping the ephemeral, bodily and interactive element intact? By overcoming the conflicts between live performance and the documentary I came to realize that they are much alike and also largely dependent on each other. Live performance achieves recognition through its documentation, while reenactments are being performed on the basis of the record that has been kept. The documentary material in turn of course cannot exist without the performance taking place, which raises some fundamental questions about its authorship. During capture, the documentary filmmaker can also decide to behave in a performative way; by actively participating in the performance or by reperforming the piece himself in front of the camera. So once we stop to think about the differences between documentary and live performance, but rather about a combination – DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE – it shows that they can exist in harmony. But then, what is there left to find out? One issue remaining is: where does live performance art end and life begin? Why are such distinctions made, between live art and life itself? What if one tries to overcome these formal differences? Is it possible for me to approach my everyday life as a documentary performance? I feel that this question may lead me into uncharted territory. The end of art as we know it perhaps? Or the beginning of a more conscious way of living? In a way though I am merely putting the age-old ART/LIFE conflict back on the agenda, which has been the main subject of the work of several artists from the 70s, with key figures such as Allan Kaprow, Linda Montano and Sam Hsieh. So I would say that this is just one aspect of the project. A concept which has on the other hand completely changed from the 70s onward is our notion of presence. Presence in the here and now means something entirely different today, given the rise of SOCIAL MEDIA. These media can cause us to rethink where a work of art begins and where it ends, as we immediately share our creative processes with people and extend our work over the web around the world (afterwards or in the present moment of performance). The ubiquitous SURVEILLANCE and dataveillance technologies in the hands of global corporations form the shadow side of this evolution. These digital tools have become a source of inspiration to me and I am eager to learn more about how these are being employed in live performances. The ways in which I now discover and record my research information (on the practice of living life as art, while documenting it) obviously encompass all possibilities available to myself as a person: becoming conscious of and using mind and body, traveling space, recalling memories, communicating through language in order to comprehend accounts from other people, reading books, browsing the internet, doing interviews, etc. TIME however is to be considered the most important tool at my disposal, because I feel that time passing – and I hope I am not going too far-out here – in fact does not
provide me with more information, but instead reveals my exceedingly limited knowledge and understanding of things. It causes me to question the notion of me being a self-sufficient artist, or SELF at all. This undermining of private intellectual (and subsequent material) ownership ties into five big theories, which support my ‘timekeeping’ practice. These are: Lacanian psychoanalysis, Buddhism, P2Pphilosophy (peer to peer) and live performance art’s main dadas: participation and anti-commodification. I will run through these theories as quickly as possible. Made popular by contemporary thinker Slavoj "i#ek, Lacans theory of the human subject as being a void has made a profound effect on me. In his book ‘Tarrying with the Negative’, "i#ek writes: “… everything that I positively am, every enunciated content I can point at and say “that’s me” is not ‘I’; I am only the void that remains, the empty distance towards every content.” To talk about void is to talk about Buddhism. According to the Madhyamikas there are no such things as ‘inherently existing things’, but only ‘interdependent related events’. This interdependency is threefold: (1) appearances manifest themselves depending on causal influences, (2) they are dependent on their own parts or attributes and (3) appearances that are formed in our world of experience are dependent on the way we verbally or conceptually name them. On the basis of this illusory make-believe it is very tempting to consider these appearances, or to qualify them as, self-sufficient things. One calls this temptation ‘reification’ and to the Madhyamikas this is a basic hereditary misconception that opens the door to all sorts of psychological ailments. Reification takes away the context. Peer-to-peer (P2P) philosophy, masterminded by Belgian Michel Bauwens, proposes a redistribution of property, “made possible by internet technologies and a critical look at current authoritarian and centralized social structures”. And then finally, fundamental components of live performance art such as audience participation and its resistance to commodification may facilitate an art world in which anyone could potentially be an artist. By choosing to pass time and not to produce any priced art objects I hope to raise awareness on these themes of collectivity and, above all, threatening illusions that pervade life. Threats to society, created on the base of misconceptions, that need to be addressed are, for instance: individualism, systemic violence (the violence that is not directly inflicted by us, but the kind that is enforced by the capitalist system which provides for us), dangers to ecology, poverty, etc. But the key reason why I hold to the abovementioned theories is for my own sanity. I don’t think there is anything more important for me than to be okay with not knowing who I am, which is, if you think about it, probably the most defining of all human characteristics. To ignore or repress self-doubt can only bring harm. In his book Als een gebroken spiegel, Marc Verminck writes: “… in a certain sense we are all, if we are not insane, neurotic, if only because there simply are no really good or fitting solutions. But art (or good art) is not neurosis. (…) Neurosis stages phantasy on a private level, the art stages phantasy on a public level.”
To proclaim my life as a live performance, to document it and to present it in front of an audience allows me to elevate my existential undecidedness from the private to the public sphere. In the end, I believe it is important to stress that this project still is part of my investigation into the relation between live performance art and its documentation, which has now grown to include the world of social media … as well as my own personal everyday life. Wrapping up this chapter and leading into the next: some words on the final – or at least provisional – outcome of my research. In the a.pass application form we were not expected to draft a proposal for how the final presentation was going to look like. Back at Transmedia we were asked for it, and what I had proposed then was a lecture presentation, broadcast live on the internet. Instead I turned in a recorded desktop presentation, which would become my presentation medium of choice at a.pass. My resulting final presentation at a.pass included a classroom installation showing desktop presentations I had recorded over the year, but these played only one part in a much larger concept that can be traced back to the very beginning of this portfolio. In the opening paragraph I mentioned that, for the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 project, I imposed a strict weekly planning upon myself. My a.pass application contained a day-by-day run-through of tasks for a week which would constantly repeat itself. The week was made up of a Performance Day, Working Days, a Research Day, a Free Day and a Resting Day. This weekly planning, somewhat like a blueprint or discipline for the art projects I realized on top of its structure, was brought to the fore in MY WEEK 2.0, the weeklong presentation that took place from January 31 to February 6 2011. The weekly planning I originally mapped out for the SVEN G characters can be found on the next pages. The idea of keeping a calendar was not just that I would slavishly follow it, although that was my initial starting point. Equally important was to see how my lived life would actually differ from this strict schedule I set out. More than anything, the calendar was going to provide me with a reference to which I could compare my timed performances, to find out whether I was failing to reach my preset goals or if sudden interventions forced me to let go and reconfigure some of my plans. As one famous man once said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
On Monday – the first working day of the week for most people – I planned to do a live performance each time, in the morning, to put a smile on people’s faces or to draw attention to the banality of what they were doing. I was to get up early and record the dream I had into a diary. I was not to eat and to make preparations for the live performance, which could be anything really. Under normal circumstances I would perform for 5 hours. By the end of the piece I would gather documentation at the scene and have a talk with the witnesses that were present. In the afternoon I would cook dinner at my girlfriend’s place and in the evening I would arrange my stuff for the next day’s work. Before going to sleep I would review the documentary material of the morning performance and post it on the internet.
Tuesday meant I started working, either by going to school or by doing work for my company. After taking a shower I was to prepare a lunch box. When I got back home after a day’s work, or school, I would have dinner and finish any homework left. Sometimes we would rehearse in the evening. If not, I would have time to spare and I would go out or go to bed early.
Wednesday was pretty much the same as Tuesday. In the evening we would rehearse and after we were done I would upload the raw recordings we made and send them to the other members of the band. As soon as that was over with, I went to sleep.
The final working day of the week for me was Thursday. Same as the previous two days, except in the evening I would either practice drumming or stay at my girlfriend’s place, in which case I would permit myself some leasure time.
Friday was entirely dedicated to making music; practice in the morning, record demo material in the afternoon and rehearse after dinner. After sending the recordings to the rest of the band I would go out or move to bed.
The weekend I kept more open. Saturday meant basically I was free to do what I liked or to do what I hated: catching up with work, spending time with my girlfriend, shopping, studying for my driver’s license, and so on.
On the seventh day, I would rest and make sure I recovered some sleep. I would restrict myself by not eating for a day as I took time to re-evaluate the past week. I did not fast because of any religious convictions, but because I would perform for 5 hours straight the next day, requiring concentration and an assurance that I would not need to pay visit to the restroom during that period of time.
Aside from offering people a look at the daily planning that goes into my ongoing LIFE PERFORMANCE, other layers of meaning were added to the final presentation MY WEEK 2.0 by blatantly citing the creation week described in the Book of Genesis. On one level, a thorough overview of the individual art projects I realized was presented in accordance with the days of the creation week; the first day showcased works involving the WORD, LIGHT and DARK, works on the second day had to reference THE FIRMAMENT, the sixth day revealed other works around MAN, etc. On one final meta-level, the creation week was turned into the symbol of my research as such, which meant that I had to find out what the creation of EARTH and WATERS represented in my research, or the SUN, the MOON and the STARS. In the next chapter, these concepts will make up the same structure they provided for MY WEEK 2.0. The back of the flyer for the presentation is pictured below:
the selected material: written documents, audiovisual materials, online projects on the a.pass site, etc. – this material has been collected on different points in time from various sources; own work, comments by fellow participants, feedback from supervisors, etc. __________________________________________________________
The final communication MY WEEK 2.0 was made up out of three large parts: (1) an INSTALLATION on the a.pass floor of deSingel, (2) a series of online desktop videos recorded over the week, entitled MY WEEK 2.0, and (3) an EXPO at my house presenting new works and documentation of older works. As I mentioned at the end of the previous chapter, I will use the dramaturgy of this final presentation – the creation week written about in the Bible – to guide us through the selected material I have compiled over the a.pass year. The creation week consists of eight divine commands executed over six days, followed by a seventh day of rest. On the first day, the WORD of God creates LIGHT (“Let there be light!”). Light is divided from darkness, and “DAY” and “NIGHT” are named. These first concepts each relate to part (1) of my final presentation: the INSTALLATION set up on the a.pass floor inside deSingel.
The installation consisted of: -
4 1 6 1 1
tables with wooden tops student desk red chairs black sofa empty bookshelf
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2 black filing cabinets 1 flip chart black and red markers flyers advertising MY WEEK 2.0 paper nametags taped to the wall
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1 2 1 1 1
small DVD-player/-monitor + headphone medium sized iMac computers + headphones larger sized iMac computer + headphone large TV-screen + DVD-player + headphone video projector + DVD-player + headphone
To begin with the WORD represented in this installation:
FLIP CHART (2011) was a readymade conceived for the purpose of this installation. None of the visitors felt obliged to leave a message behind.
On the student desk I put two assignments I wrote for Anette Baldauf, one of my dedicated mentors. For these papers Anette had asked me to summarize two texts included in a book on THE ARCHIVE; one by Michel Foucault and another by Giorgio Agamben. Next to that, I was expected to write on how these texts related to my own practice and research. These two assignments are included as attachments to this portfolio.
The black filing cabinets each contained dossiers, written notes, magazines and printed documents only circumstantially related to my a.pass research. The open filing cabinet (on the right) held information about the previous studies I had enrolled in; TRANSMEDIA Postgraduate Program in Arts + Media + Design. The locked cabinet (on the left) stored confidential information on the period when I was working at ARGOS vzw.
The bookshelf started out empty and got filled up as the week went on. Each shelf corresponded to the day of the week. There wasn’t any shelf for DAY 1, since the installation itself served to introduce the first day, but the shelves marked ‘2’ to ‘6’ were meant to display resources relevant to the themes of each day. DAY 7 wasn’t featured either, due to it being a day of rest.
Moving on then to the creation of LIGHT, as opposed to DARKNESS, symbolized by the videos that were presented inside the installation.
INDIVIDUAL PRESENTATION on November 4 2009 for Transmedia about ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 (23min39sec – in loop) Watch video at: http://www.vimeo.com/7461196
INTERVIEW by GUNTHER TRUIJEN on February 24 2010 for Transmedia about ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 (20min39sec – in loop) Watch video at: http://www.vimeo.com/10674912
INTERVIEW by CARA DAVIES on March 19 2010 at Transmedia about ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 (73min01sec – in loop) Watch video at: http://www.vimeo.com/10882595
DESKTOP PRESENTATION on November 24 2010 for a.pass about Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media projection (40min30sec – in loop) Watch desktop video at: http://www.vimeo.com/17340638
DESKTOP PRESENTATION on May 5 2010 for a.pass about Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media (16min01sec – in loop) Watch desktop video at: http://www.vimeo.com/12898322
DESKTOP PRESENTATION on June 29 2010 for ARGOS about Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media (36min15sec – in loop) Watch desktop video at: http://www.vimeo.com/13090877
This concludes the overview of the installation inside deSingel that was inaugurated on DAY 1 of MY WEEK 2.0. Before heading over to DAY 2, there were still a couple of things that were communicated on this first day. One was the first upload of what would become 6 desktop videos recorded over the course of the week, representing part (2) of my final communication. Watch the desktop video for DAY 1 at: http://www.vimeo.com/19415739
SUMMARY: Why a weeklong presentation? The creation week in the Bible. The WORD of God. HOTMAIL. EVERNOTES. Nicolas y Galeazzi. The creation week as metaphor for the research. The first documentary performances in June 2009. Typing whatever I did. TRANSMEDIA Postgraduate Program in Arts + Media + Design. Mikes Poppe. Documenting live performance art. Making the documenting process into a performance itself. DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE. When does a performance stop? Why does it stop and turn into daily life again? Allan Kaprow. Marina Abramovi!. Blurring of art and life. LIFE PERFORMANCE. Daily calendar. iCal. STARTEL. Weekly planning. The installation in deSingel. FLIP CHART. The flyers. LIGHT and DARKNESS. The videos. Interviews and presentations. Assignments from Anette Baldauf. The ARCHIVE. Michel Foucault. Giorgio Agamben. DAY 2. The FIRMAMENT. Skies. TWITTER.
The final contributions to DAY 1 were a few posts I made on the a.pass website, showing teasers for the exhibition at my house – part (3) of my final presentation – which was to open on the seventh day, February 6 2011.
HOTMAIL (2009) is the action with which I began the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 project. HOTMAIL is part of the exhibition at my house, which will still be open to outside public for some time to come. More info on HOTMAIL at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=705
The other work that is included in the expo that deals with the WORD, and little more than the WORD, is EVERNOTES (2009). A post was put up on DAY 1, referencing this work in particular.
More info on EVERNOTES at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=706
On the second day, God creates a FIRMAMENT (“Let a firmament be …!”). The FIRMAMENT is named SKIES. Already hinted at in the desktop video on DAY 1, the SKY is represented in the house expo by a new work based on the micro-blogging service TWITTER: TWITTER SCREEN (2011). A glimpse of this new work was revealed in a post made to the a.pass website on DAY 2:
In light of this second day, two desktop videos were produced; one video summarizing DAY 2 and another evaluating nearly all of the TWITTER actions I had performed over the course of the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0.
Watch the desktop video of DAY 2 at: http://www.vimeo.com/19435571
SUMMARY: The FIRMAMENT is the INTERNET. Division between LIVE and ONLINE. Steven Devleminck. TWITTER. From Transmedia to a.pass. BLOGGER. http://svengblog.blogspot.com. The artist statement on June 17 2009. ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0. HOTMAIL. Account blocked. iPhone 3G as paintbrush. From Notes to EVERNOTE. Real-time. Problematics surrounding the difference between live and online performance. The bookshelf. LIVENESS by Philip Auslander. UNDERSTANDING MEDIA THEORY by Arjen Mulder. MEDIATED by Thomas De Zengotita. The first workshop of the a.pass year. THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW. Symposium organized by the MARINA ABRAMOVI$ INSTITUTE and PLYMOUTH ARTS CENTRE. The future of performance art. NEGOTIATED MAP. Filip Daniels. Voting poll. PERFORMANCE PORTAL. Paula Orrell. Social networking archive. USTREAM. VIMEO. Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media. The first video in the installation inside deSingel.
Watch the desktop video on TWITTER at: http://www.vimeo.com/19458321
SUMMARY: TWITTER keeping the entire record. Starting from around September 2009. TWITTER 24/7 projection. As detailed as possible. More general as I was getting tired or when it got too intense. Train delays. TWITTER SCREEN. Spam. Rarely or ever getting responses. 24 hour performance marathon. NG. Tweeting the thought I had on each hour over 24 hours. FOLLOWING PIECE 2.0. Sitting across Marina Abramovi!. TWEETMIC. Letting the actions be accompanied by the sound of the action. Trip coming back from Plymouth. London St. Pancras. Pictures of everything I ate and drank. Plymouth Arts Centre’s account. Getting tired of the thing. Taking some time off during the holiday season. Katrin Lohmann. IDENTITY study group. TWITTERING KATRIN. Me twittering her actions for an entire day. To find out who I was. Research proposal. Filing cabinets.
Also worth noting in regards to DAY 2 – this ‘internet day’ – is my a.pass participant page on the a.pass website, which I had been feverishly updating ever since the start of the year. Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserhome&cwUser=89
Throughout the rest of the portfolio there will be made reference to the page.
There is another blog I had been maintaining over the course of my a.pass and Transmedia studies till June 2010. Blogging proved significant in helping me structure my thoughts.
Visit the blog at: http://svengblog.blogspot.com
On DAY 3, God commands the waters below to be gathered together in one place, and dry land to appear. ‘EARTH’ and ‘SEA’ are named. God commands the earth to bring forth grass, plants, and FRUIT-bearing trees. In reference to this notion of FRUIT being produced, a post was made on DAY 3, revealing one photo from the FLICKR FEED (2009):
More info on FLICKR FEED at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=707
In line of the previous desktop recordings, a video for DAY 3 was put online. EARTH and WATERS (or SEA) had come to mean two things in my research: both the theories AND persons that have been important in my development process, but in the OFFLINE sphere. Together with the video of DAY 4, these are the moments where I take time to credit the people that have helped my research get firmly rooted (EARTH) or that have endangered it and pushed me into making a better foundation for my theory and practice (WATERS). Watch the desktop video of DAY 3 at: http://www.vimeo.com/19503764
SUMMARY: Defining the key concepts and persons that I could build my practice on. WATERS are unknown, ever-shifting, chaotic. EARTH is the fixed position where I can depart from. Mentoring. Group discussions with other students. OFFLINE people. THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW. Live Laboratory Symposium. PERFORMANCE PORTAL. USTREAM. Tehching Hsieh. Adrian Heathfield. André Stitt. Marina Abramovi!. Final documentary project at film school. DOCUMENTARY / PERFORMANCE. DESKTOP PRESENTATION November 24th 2010. The bookshelf. Catherine Oldenhove. Maud Lefever. TIME & MEMORY. Clock. Sven G characters. Thinking model. Characters corresponding with social networks. Dedicated mentors. Elke Van Campenhout. Bart Van den Eynde. Nicolas y Galeazzi. Anette Baldauf. Notes. Audio recordings. Stephen Bain. CREDITS. PRICKLES & GOO by Alan Watts.
Two menu items on my participant page deal explicitly with this third day, centered around people that inspired me. These are notes from DEDICATED MENTORING and the GROUP DISCUSSIONS with other a.pass participants.
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=681
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=667
THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW was the second project I created on the a.pass site, after the one for ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0. The page for THE PIGS OF TODAY holds a lot of information about this symposium that was central to the first a.pass workshop I helped initiate, on REENACTMENT/RECONSTRUCTION. Filip Daniels (a former Transmedia classmate) and myself contributed in setting up this symposium.
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojecthome&cwProject=93
The both of us created the mapping table NEGOTIATED MAP (2010) for the purpose of the event:
More info about the NEGOTIATED MAP at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojectpage&cwProject=93&cwContent=461
My fascination for Marina Abramovi!’s work dates back to my final graduation project at film school in 2008, called DOCUMENTARY/PERFORMANCE.
More info about DOCUMENTARY/PERFORMANCE at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=457
Leading into the subject of DAY 4, my contribution to the symposium also involved an ONLINE component. The PERFORMANCE PORTAL is a digital archive of THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW, intended to provide a virtual archive and forum to discuss topics that have been raised during the symposium. It is overseen by none other than myself as part of my research project DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA. These are both the old and new designs of the site:
Visit the site at: http://www.plymouthartscentre.org/art/2010/performance-portal.html
If the EARTH and the WATERS were the people and concepts that informed me in the OFFLINE world, then the SUN, the MOON and the STARS are those same sorts of men and women, and theories, but now in the ONLINE sphere. Halfway through MY WEEK 2.0, there was a crisis moment where I realized there was still a lot to be done. I called in ex-a.pass-participant Ana Casimiro to come and help me out, before recording my daily video in the nick of time. Watch the desktop video of DAY 4 at: http://www.vimeo.com/19546755
SUMMARY: Research Day. Ana Casimiro. Saying ‘euh’ a lot. The marking of time. HOUR. DAY. WEEK. YEAR. SUN, MOON & STARS. Recognizing ONLINE people. SUN are the bright inspirations that are also untouchable. MOON being the more achievable goals and approachable persons. STARS are the guides along the way. All placed in this FIRMAMENT, representing the ONLINE sphere. TRANSMEDIA. PROSPECTIVES.09 in Reno, Nevada. Joseph DeLappe. THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW. Geoff Cox from ARNOLFINI. CONFERENCES. Panel REALLY EXISTING SOCIAL MEDIA at ISEA2010 RUHR. Eva & Franco Mattes. Reenactments on SECOND LIFE. Q&A with artists. INTERVIEWS in New York City. LECTURES. Learning experience. Anne Helmond. IDENTITY 2.0. Archipel – MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger. Remembering and forgetting. Working for ARGOS centre for art and media. Media and communication department. Captured events on photo and video. TWITTER how-to. iMAL in Brussels. FACEBOOK group. Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media. Hasan Elahi. DELICIOUS. PhD in the arts. CREDITS.
And so God creates lights in the firmament on DAY 4, to separate light from darkness and to mark DAYS, SEASONS and YEARS. This marking of time is symbolized by a couple of new works added to the exhibition at my house, again reported on in the form of small posts made to the a.pass website:
SVEN G CLOCK (2011)
and MY WEEK (2011).
Menu folders on my a.pass participant page that are worthy of note in regards to DAY 4, with its ONLINE theme, are: LECTURES, INTERVIEWS, CONFERENCES and ARGOS research:
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=649
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=639
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=880
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=785
In order to share an inventory of art projects I deem relevant within the frame of my research subject DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA, I keep a FACEBOOK group.
On FACEBOOK, search under the title: Documenting Durational Live Performance Art Using Social Media.
Same goes for my DELICIOUS account where I store links for future memory.
Visit the site at: http://www.delicious.com/svengoyvaerts
By the fifth day serious fatigue started to kick in, probably due to the fact that I had been working all through the night. I mention this at the start of the video for DAY 5, on the subject of BIRDS and SEA CREATURES. Further on these concepts are explained in the context of my artistic research. Watch the desktop video for DAY 5: http://www.vimeo.com/19564643
SUMMARY: Didn’t sleep. Working Day. PhD application. SEA CREATURES as the projects that overwhelm you with information, swimming in the SEA in which you drown. Shared projects in a.pass. Study groups. Workshops. Collaborative project with Katrin Lohmann, NO ID. The IDENTITY study group. THE GAZE. Workshop around the 5 senses – SIGHT. REENACTMENT workshop. THE PIGS OF TODAY ARE THE HAMS OF TOMORROW. Reading session on AFFECT and EMOTION. Brian Massumi. REVOLUTION noworkshop. SOCIAL MEDIA & the AVATAR. Film analysis workshop on TERROR in film. JANEZ JANSA. The Document As Performance and The Performance As A Document. Documentary performance artist. Lilia Mestre. Repeating one day throughout the week. BIRDS. FOLLOWING PIECE 2.0. Reenactment after an original by Vito Acconci. TRANSMEDIA. The Academy Strikes Back. CTRLSPACE exhibition in ZKM. EYE CONTACT experiments. Alternative to conventional communication. YOUTUBE. Marina Abramovic. THE ARTIST IS PRESENT. Ulay. NIGHTSEA CROSSING. SELF-PORTRAIT. Jan Colle. PROSPECTIVES.09. UNR.
The a.pass WORKSHOPS, SHARED PROJECTS and STUDY GROUPS represent SEA CREATURES in my research; “the projects that overwhelm you with information, swimming in the SEA in which you drown”.
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=678
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=682
Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=683
As for the BIRDS, these are some remaining projects of mine, primarily taking place ONLINE: FOLLOWING PIECE 2.0 (2010), EYE CONTACT exercises and SELF-PORTRAIT (2009).
More info about FOLLOWING PIECE 2.0 at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojecthome&cwProject=121
More info about EYE CONTACT exercises at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojecthome&cwProject=122
More info about SELF-PORTRAIT at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=708
The sixth day I was backed up by former Transmedia classmate Maud Lefever as we put everything in its final place for the opening of the house expo on the Sunday. DAY 6 implied the creation of LAND CREATURES as well as MAN. Due to a technical malfunction I was not able to record and upload a video communication that day. It had to wait for the next day, DAY 7, when I released a combined video for DAY 6 & 7: http://www.vimeo.com/19633349
SUMMARY: Technical malfunction. Combined video for DAY 6 & 7. Free Day. LAND CREATURES symbolize collaborations with other artists in the performance field, whose work I had documented using social media. ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0. VRIJSTAAT by Thomas Verstraeten. YOUTUBE. Closer to real-time than a documentary would usually be. SUM QUOD ERIS by Mikes Poppe. BOZAR Brussels. Canvascollectie. Action on each day of the exhibition. VIMEO. Maud Lefever. Marina Abramovi! exhibition in MoMA New York. 100 Years expo at P.S.1. THE ARTIST IS PRESENT. Notes. External hard drive. Documentation of participation. Desktop stills. SMS. Creation of MAN. FACE-TO-FACEBOOK. Started around October 2009 – officially at May 21st 2010. Exhibition installation. Estimating about 2700 pictures. SELF-SURVEILLANCE. PAF in Reims. Retreat for artists. Rearranged my bedroom to turn it into a surveillance room. Had been filming myself working behind the computer. People were being filmed themselves. Iris Bouche. Marie Caeyers. Philip Janssens. Surveillance system. Warning sign. Jo-Anne Green from Networked Performance at turbulence.org. Josh Harris’ WE LIVE IN PUBLIC. Digital ethnographer MICHAEL WESCH.
As described in the summary, LAND CREATURES “symbolize collaborations with other artists in the performance field, whose (durational) work I had documented using social media”. These projects I contributed to were VRIJSTAAT by Thomas Verstraeten, SUM QUOD ERIS by Mikes Poppe and THE ARTIST IS PRESENT by Marina Abramovi!.
More info about VRIJSTAAT at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojectpage&cwProject=74&cwContent=440
More info about SUM QUOD ERIS at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojectpage&cwProject=74&cwContent=613
More info about THE ARTIST IS PRESENT at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=945
The trip to New York in general was a very inspiring one, as I got to visit the 100 Years exhibition at P.S.1 about performance art’s history, attended a lecture by Joseph DeLappe at MoMA, passed by LocationOne gallery, etc. Moving on to the creation of MAN: photos picturing the works related to it that are part of the expo were uploaded onto the a.pass website, in accordance with the previous posts.
FACE-TO-FACEBOOK is a project I began experimenting with in October 2009 and which started officially on May 21 2010. For FACE-TO-FACEBOOK I take pictures of every person I talk with face-to-face during the day and share them over Facebook. A selection made by Philip Janssens from these thousands of pictures are hung up inside old frames and displayed in my house. (Note: The pictures from the FLICKR FEED series – the project where I took photos of everything I ate and drank for over a month – were given the same treatment by Philip.) More info about FACE-TO-FACEBOOK at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=709
CCTVs is an installation of two analog surveillance systems – acquired thanks to the generous help of Philip Janssens – which are set up inside my house. The monitors are displayed in plain sight, producing an uncanny awareness of yourself inside the house. Earlier in the year I had experimented with surveillance for a project realized during our stay at PAF in St. Erme. It was entitled SELF-SURVEILLANCE.
More info about SELF-SURVEILLANCE at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojecthome&cwProject=142
On Sunday February 6, the week drew to a close. A few people showed up at the exhibition’s opening (perhaps poorly advertised as finissage on the flyer) and we chatted over snacks and refreshments. I enjoyed a moment of rest. Shortly after, I conceived of an EPILOGUE for MY WEEK 2.0. First of all, an email was sent to fellow a.pass members in which I summed up the entire list of videos I had presented them with over the week, arriving at a sum total of 9 hours of viewing time. According to WIRED magazine’s balanced media diet, this amounts to your day’s worth of media consumption:
Two other works were added to the house expo by way of this EPILOGUE:
A behind-the-scenes picture was also posted onto the site, uncovering the setup I had used to record the desktop presentations during MY WEEK 2.0:
The desktop video for the EPILOGUE is a 5-minute walkthrough of the MY WEEK 2.0 project page. Watch it at: http://www.vimeo.com/19875366 Visit the MY WEEK 2.0 page at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fprojecthome&cwProject=149
The project page for MY WEEK 2.0 features a few additions which have not been covered yet. There are the photos giving a more general overview of parts of the house exhibition, courtesy of Maud Lefever. The entrance:
And the living room (other parts of the house are not displayed online):
Aside from the ending credits and a link to this portfolio, there is a video interview recorded by fellow a.pass participant Manne Granqvist on his visit to the house exhibition: http://www.vimeo.com/20158394
SUMMARY: SVEN G characters. Role-playing. Fictional identities. Sven Goyvaerts. The model. Social media. Self-representation. TRANSMEDIA. Uncomfortable about acting. Gadgets. What is left out or missing. The VOID. FACE-TO-FACEBOOK. Twittering of conscious actions. The work as the whole, including the failure. OUTSIDERS and MENTORS. Presenting in a character that is convinced about what he is doing. The aggressive response instead of being on the same level. ART and LIFE. A.pass PORTFOLIO. Documenting everything. Not even selecting on the basis of what I am doing and what I am not doing. A bigger you that is creating yourself. MY WEEK 2.0. Playfully identifying with GOD. RELIGION. Icons. Wim Delvoye. IRONY. Failure. COMEDY. CHANGING TENTS by Heike Langsdorf. WORLD OF WARCRAFT. New forms of community. DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE. ART/LIFE 2.0. Inventing words. The IMPOSSIBILITY of the research. Margareth Kaserer. The UNCONSCIOUS. Freudian versus Lacanian. Not knowing who you are. Slavoj "i#ek. Brain science. Gödel theorem. Taking on a perspective that is larger than yourself. Defining yourself in TIME or through MEDIA. Recording voice as a child. DVDs of entire childhood on video. Digital consciousness. Gödel, Escher, Bach. Assignments for Anette Baldauf. Memory & documentation. Michel Foucault. THE ARCHIVE. The context which creates the condition why you should keep a thing. Changing over time. Memory objects produced in the Middle Ages. Medallions. The value for the community and in making it. The historical a priori and THE ARCHEOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE. Language being an overappreciated medium of communication. The future.
reflections on own strengths and weaknesses, discoveries about learning experiences and strategies developed ____________________________________________________
As mentioned in the opening chapter of this portfolio, I will make an effort to answer some of the research questions I had departed from in this research, or rather try to further specify the problem areas I intended to address. Let us look at these questions I asked:
- Can I become a fictional character, in what is commonly perceived as the real world, and create a space to release my desires on the one hand and be concerned with my duties towards the rest of humanity on the other?
Not so much a question as it was a mission statement, this sentence proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my imagination I can become whoever I want to be. However, this first question, referring explicitly to the SVEN G characters I created for myself, may still be a valid one. If I would try to analyze which of my characters have been neglected over this year’s period, then I wouldn’t be hard pressed to come up with some unsettling facts.
Certainly, in one respect, this thinking model has helped me to structure my everyday life in a very positive way, reminding me of the things I wasn’t spending enough time on or helping me to focus on the subject at hand. As a mnemonic, I even installed the SVEN G clock image as a background on my iPhone’s startup screen:
But in many ways, my life hasn’t been perfected substantially. This is the moment where I swallow my pride and turn this portfolio into a confessional, for the sake of the experiment. We will go around the clock for this. With the aid of the social media, tied to each of the characters, I will make out which of the icons have been neglected and which of the others found their place.
Starting from the top: the G-CHARACTER, representing my emotions and desires, channeled through TWITTER. Originally this character was to tweet each of his thoughts and feelings. But in reality, I got stuck on tweeting my actions for long periods of time, of which TWITTER 24/7 is a fine example. Aside from an occasional tweet on what I was thinking or what I had been dreaming, I seemed to steer away from my original intention. At one event, which is mention in my TWITTER desktop presentation, I did manage to tweet my thoughts and feelings on 24 consecutive hours. Sadly, my memory of this experiment is a very lonely and miserable one. It had to wait until Valentine’s Day 2011 before I succeeded again in tweeting my thoughts and feelings, albeit in a hybrid form. For I’ VE BEEN TWEETING ABOUT YOU (2011) I tweeted the situation I found myself in each time I thought of my special someone on February 14. This documentary performance I did was not included in the selected material in the previous chapter, for it took place after the end of my presentation, but I figure it is worth mentioning in this analysis. Watch the desktop video for I’ VE BEEN TWEETING ABOUT YOU at: http://www.vimeo.com/20036771. In any case, there is still a lot left to explore on this level of emotions and desires in the realm of social media. The second character is the EATING self, linked to FLICKR. A match made in heaven, if there ever was one. The FLICKR FEED, which I kept around September-October 2009, did in fact change my eating habits. Documenting everything I ate and drank helped me to fight a quite harmless but unhealthy addiction to chocolate bars I bought from automatic dispensers at the railway station. Over the course of the project, I noticed myself becoming more and more aware of the food that was being served on my plate. Now with the project more than a year behind me, I feel I need to start eating consciously again, especially now with my brother starting to fight the vegetarian cause. With a selection from the FLICKR FEED project decorating part of the interior of my house – depicting sometimes gruesome fast-food still lifes – I hope to be positively inspired as to change my diet for the better once and for all.
The RESEARCH self (character number 3) found a home on both BLOGGER and on the a.pass website. These webpages have proven to be invaluable tools in helping my research get structured and communicated to other people (although comments on posts I have made are an extreme rarity, not counting the spam messages thanking me for unknown reasons).
What became known as the ORGANIC self (referred to as the ‘cleaning’ or ‘hygienic’ self in the beginning) turned out to be a blind spot in the social media spectrum, as I was not able to track down an application yet which I could use to record my basic vital functions in an intuitive way.
The HUMOROUS self did have fun for a short while on AUDIOBOO, but that did not last long. Instead of just tweeting each of my conscious actions – the TWITTER 24/7 documentary performance – I posted short audio bits of these same actions on AUDIOBOO at one time. This later became the TWEETMIC action which is also refer to in the TWITTER desktop presentation. Later on, the HUMOROUS self developed into the GAMING self and eventually partnered up with the game WORLD OF WARCRAFT. Within the frame of CHANGING TENTS, a recent project by former fellow a.pass participant Heike Langsdorf, my brother and I gave a presentation about the online game’s fictional universe, its community and inherent economics. The LOVING self has always been quite central to my artistic endeavors. Last year’s projects were no exception, as they took on the form of several SKYPE performances. Some were realized, some were not. For one version of my SELF-PORTRAIT piece I had asked fellow a.pt participant Katrin Lohmann to sit in for me, in the context of our final exhibition at Transmedia in June. This experiment played part in the IDENTITY study group she and I had set up in the a.pass research environment. Another SKYPE performance, which would have been a contemporary rendition of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s BED-IN, together with Transmedia student Maud Lefever, was shelved.
The I-CHARACTER – the one character questioning whether he is in fact an individual at all – was to perform EYE CONTACT exercises on a regular basis and upload them to YOUTUBE. Admittedly, this project has been overlooked for too long and finds itself in an underdeveloped state. The EYE CONTACT project takes more effort too maintain, since it needs to actively involve other people in the process. My participation in Marina Abramovic’s THE ARTIST IS PRESENT reminded me of the potential of this most minimal but powerful setup of two persons looking each other straight in the eyes.
MYSPACE MUSIC was supposed to host the MUSICAL self; an idea which was only partially realized. On http://www.myspace.com/musicsveng I uploaded recordings I made on my own, but I quickly gave up on this, since most of my time was spent rehearsing with my other bands: Sombra De Bestia (http://www.myspace.com/sombradebestia), Swimmers In Loch Ness (http://www.myspace.com/swimmersinlochness) and Daus Loewe (http://www.myspace.com/dausloewe). Due to artistic differences, all of these bands are currently on indefinite hiatus.
The WORKING self was to maintain his steadily growing VIMEO account. With 71 videos available to watch, and another 22 which I contributed to (recorded presentations from the OPEN ARCHIVE #2 event at ARGOS vzw), I can safely say that this character is one of most looked after in the SVEN G clock model. Visit the VIMEO account at: http://www.vimeo.com/sveng With FOLLOWING PIECE 2.0 / EVERYTRAIL, the WALKING self was awarded its own documentary performance. This project was first experimented with during a workshop at Transmedia and was also featured at an exhibition there, before being reworked over the course of Lilia Mestre’s INTERFACE FICTIONS workshop, organized by a.pass at ArtLab Zsenne. Documentation of this piece has been included in the house expo for my final presentation. Undernourished would be the BUSINESS character, paired up with SECOND LIFE. Initially I had thought of experimenting with spending and making money on this online virtual world, but I never got around to actually doing it. I did however watch several documentaries on the subject, including Another Perfect World and My Second Life, both produced by Netherlands based production company SUBMARINE. What is clearly still lacking in my most up-to-date social media model is the addition of LINKEDIN, the networking tool popular among business folk. The SUPERMAN character has not been taken care of what so ever, aside from one single post on the micro-blogging site RAKAWA.NET, a blog “devoted to honor On Kawara’s pioneering work”. Instead of asking “What’s on your mind?” (FACEBOOK) or “What’s happening?” (TWITTER) RAKAWA.NET asks: “What have you accomplished today?”. My New Year’s resolution to perform a good deed every so often did not catch on, as I became more and more very self-involved in my artistic practice. Somewhat countering this narcissistic turn, the ‘default’ me takes a picture of everyone he talks to face-to-face during the day and shares these photos on FACEBOOK for what has become known as the FACE-TO-FACEBOOK project. Without a doubt the project that has come to mean the most to me, this durational documentary performance shows so much of the person I am, although I am never pictured inside the photographs. This project convinces me that the people I encounter on a daily basis are as much a part of me as I myself am a part of me. This, I think, is a very humbling realization.
- Will I (still) be able to function in society? - How will all this affect me and the people around me? - Will people be inspired by this? - Will they be offended?
Answering these questions above would likely border on the anecdotic, but some issues implied here should be dealt with at this point. First of all, as to my functioning in society: society is big word to use. What I mean by the word is, on a concrete level, the capitalist system that ensures my quality of life, at the expense of others. The time has come to move out from under my parents’ wings and to carve out a place for myself in this hostile environment. My frowned-upon BUSINESS self or MONEY MAKING character is preparing to retaliate, with a vengeance, while the other ones are resisting with all their might. In all seriousness, the implementation of this MONEY MAKING persona is the greatest challenge I am facing right now. The research subject I have defined for myself does allow for possible functions I could take on in a number of institutions or organizations (something I will come back to later when I am assessing my three main research questions), but during my most recent period of employment, for example, a conflict had started to arise. When thinking about the people I offended, my superior at my previous job would have to be one of them, among many. A very concrete reason for that is this FACE-TO-FACEBOOK project I have been keeping up for over a year now. Think about a project that never stops, going on for every minute of the day, and which includes people without them even knowing it. A project which does however bear a huge significance to myself and to my research subject that is set to investigate whether I can make my own personal life into a documented live performance art piece. When people notice what it is that I am doing, they feel as if I am violating their privacy. If I keep it up inside the walls of the place I am paid to work at, I am accused of divulging private company information to outsiders. Should I foreclose this research now, although I am sure there is still much more to find out, just because my research methods do not fit established modes of conduct or the standards of the institutions I am employed at?
The privacy issue leads us to the other question: have I managed to inspire people along the way? The most recent exhibition I was asked to take part in was organized in conjunction with the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference held from January 25 until 27 2011 in Brussels. A range of artists had been selected with works dealing explicitly with the notion of privacy today. The decision makers believed my projects HOTMAIL and EVERNOTES were worthy of inclusion. Over the course of the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 project – and in the period afterwards – I have been lucky enough to take part in a number of exhibitions, upon request. These include the FRIS VII exhibition in Ghent, the PROSPECTIVES.09 festival in Reno, Nevada, and the ERROR #16 MONUMENT expo at the Middelheimmuseum in Antwerp. The BUZZ section on my a.pass participant page can testify for the modest amount of attention that cumulated around my research. This BUZZ menu item contains mentions of my projects on a couple of blogs and some other texts that have been written on what I have been doing. Visit the site at: http://www.apass.be/apt.php?cwPage=browse%2Fuserpage&cwUser=89&cwContent=730
Over email I got support from various peers and people I admire, but one quote I felt deserved a special mention. The only person that has made a well-versed comment about my online MY WEEK 2.0 presentation so far is Jeroen Sebrechts, a former classmate of mine back in film school. On Skype he said: “I think it is actually wonderful how you just turn authorship into something unimportant, while making it the only thing that matters at the same time. If you weren’t your sober self, then your exhibitionism would be tremendously pretentious, but now it becomes vulnerable at the same time: anyone can destroy you like that with comments on your personal life. That split between exhibitionism and the banal is what makes it interesting.” Praise notwithstanding, how has this entire process affected me and the people around me? Well, my family and (ex-)girlfriend have fallen victim to this incessant documentation I submitted them to. My girlfriend and I have broken up (as we have many times before), while my parents are becoming increasingly worried. As a result of my attempt at multitasking between various media and different occupations, I was not able to focus enough of my attention on the bands I play in either, which has caused them to be on standby for the current moment. An article in WIRED magazine from August 2009 headlined: “Multitasking Muddles Brains, Even When The Computer Is Off”. In less than 7 months I have managed to break two joints in my body; my ankle and my thumb. I would go so far as to attribute these inflictions to my social media project, which came close to virtually detaching me from the physical world.
- More importantly: who am I?
Has this project taught me anything about the person I am? I claim it has. My findings are troubling on the one hand and comforting on the other. One thing that clearly comes out in my art projects is that the unspoken that which is not said – contains infinitely more information about myself than what is being communicated. I, myself, remain mostly absent. I am part of the FACE-TO-FACEBOOK and FLICKR FEED projects as a person that is never pictured. Yes, my conscious actions documented in the EVERNOTES project reveal intimate information about myself, but it is what is left unsaid that usually makes people imagine who I am. This conclusion can be seen as a reaffirmation of Lacan’s theories on the unconscious which helped frame my research; I cannot be fully conscious of myself in the present moment, but only in fragmented parts, having passed through a structuring language, such as these social networking sites. On a more positive side, these projects have made me acutely aware that I take part in a larger whole, encompassing the people and objects I interact with, the food I eat and the roads that I travel. These social media actions have created a new perspective on, or, dare I say, a new purpose and meaning in my life, by consciously connecting my personal existence to the world at large. I have begun to feel as though I am merely an instance in an ongoing exchange, happening inside me and all around me. More reflections on the person I am are voiced in the interview by Manne. Watch the video of the interview at: http://www.vimeo.com/20158394
- Is there anything that I can or would like to consider my work and my work alone?
How important is it that the documentation of my work is shared across these online platforms, rather than sold at a price? It matters a great deal. This question however has not been properly addressed up until this point and it opens up a whole new avenue that I do intend to start investigating in the nearby future, under the title of the follow-up research THE ART OF SHARING, THE SHARING OF ART. But let us not get ahead of ourselves.
Because what if we inspect the terms of use these social media impose upon their users? Don’t these providers restrict sharing as much as they allow for it to take place? Here we arrive back at the three main questions constituting the research project DOCUMENTING DURATIONAL LIVE PERFORMANCE ART USING SOCIAL MEDIA:
1) What are the limits to consistently documenting one’s life and sharing it over the web?
True, this question has already been examined at great length in this reflective chapter, but here I will pinpoint the circumstances in which the networking services and providers intervened in some of my projects or when I was rendered incapable by an outside force to further carry out the goal I had set myself.
- HOTMAIL : At the start of the ONE YEAR LIFE PERFORMANCE 2.0 I repeatedly sent out a emails, containing a log of my daily activities, until I was blocked by HOTMAIL, suspected of spamming. I continued posting my daily documentation through my blog immediately after that. - EVERNOTES : When the Notes app on my iPhone 3G (which I used to keep a log of my everyday actions) kept crashing, I was forced to turn to another application, which ended up being Evernote. After a month I gave up on my documentary project, as I was being convinced to take my mind off of it by my girlfriend back at the time. - FLICKR FEED : The FLICKR performance was finished the moment my free account was used up and reached its maximum upload limit. - SELF-PORTRAIT : This networked durational performance once took place for over a month in Reno, Nevada, which made it necessary for me to perform the piece from 8pm until 2am at night on each weekday over a Skype connection. In the second half of the exhibition period, I had started falling asleep behind my laptop. This did not prevent the performance from continuing however. - FACE-TO-FACEBOOK : On May 21nd 2010 I officially started this lifelong performance, sharing pictures of everyone I talk to face to face during the day. On June 5th I received an sms from my network provider, notifying me that I was exceeding my upload limit. The project was temporarily put on hold. On September 1st I took up the project once again.
2) Can durational live performance art of old be preserved through the use of new social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.? 3) How can we begin to think of making an inventory of contemporary durational live performance artworks that take place on these social media?
As for these other two questions, I still have my work cut out for me. In a simple sense, there’s really no problem at all. Over the years I have gone ahead and documented durational performances of colleague-artists using these social media. On FACEBOOK I started keeping a humble database of artworks that I include in my field of investigation. But if I want to move beyond that – into the professional sphere – then I am about to face some serious challenges. On the broadest conceptual level, the manner of documenting needs to be thought through. What does it mean to document? Who is to gain from it? How are social media integrated in this bigger picture? The two assignments I wrote (attached to this portfolio) belong to this domain of investigation. The copyright issue is something that keeps rearing its ugly head at every conference held on this subject of digital preservation. Luckily, in the field of performance art, the negotiation of rights still happens in a conversation with the artist. In other cases, a deal is struck with the heirs. The ongoing debate is a fierce and intricate one and I feel I need to smarten up on this matter. The technicalities of institutional database structuring are also downright intimidating, but I am eager to delve deeper into models for metadata annotation and agreed-upon standards in the cultural heritage sector. Now at the end of a.pass, with schooling behind me, my research starts revolving around this new question: how can I be applied in an institution for the archiving of live performance art? Do my very personal methods of documentation have a place and value within the structure of this kind of organization? What if I were to present myself as a tool to document also the workings of/in this very organization – its performance as an institute? As I envisioned in my Transmedia paper DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE: “... the documentary filmmaker mutating into a mobile, readily available, hitech, semi-virtual lecture performer or interactive interface, who remains humbled by the incompleteness of his attempts to properly document performances …”
bibliography ___________ For this bibliography I will sum up resources that have been indispensable to me throughout the year, and also provide a brief explanation on them. - Verminck, M., (2007) Als een gebroken spiegel – Psychoanalytische beschouwingen over het kunstenaarsoeuvre, Gent, A & S / books -> This small book by Marc Verminck, psychoanalyst and former philosophy teacher of mine, profoundly changed my outlook on art and artistry in its relation to our everyday life experience. Verminck elaborates on the way we fictionalize ourselves during life, and writes a passage which I have included in my theoretical introduction at the start of this portfolio. One more segment: “Fiction is the original substitute of life. And what is commonly known as ‘fiction’ (film, theatre, novels, etc.) is not just something else than reality, but a substitute of a substitute, and thus another fictional possibility for our own inadequate fantasized existence.” (translated from Dutch to English, p 17) - Meyer-Hermann, E. & Perchuk, A. & Rosenthal, S., (2008) Allan Kaprow – Art as Life, London, Thames & Hudson Ltd. -> Gained a lot of insights on Allan Kaprow’s Happenings thanks to this book, especially in the chapter Writing the Happening: the Aesthetics of Nonart. In one of my assignments on THE ARCHIVE I reference this chapter too. On page 21, Alex Potts writes one particularly brilliant segment describing Kaprow’s practice: “The point was to devise works that escaped the selfreferentiality within which modern art was trapped, and this could not be done merely by creating works that either alluded to or directly incorporated realities lying outside the sphere of art. What was needed was a procedure for effecting a compelling transition from materials and situations that were genuinely nonartistic – that were, as he put it, ‘lifelike’ – to an art that momentarily existed outside the context of the art world.” - Kaprow, A. (2003) Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, second edition, Berkeley, University of California Press - Dewey, J., (1934) Art as Experience, New York, Pedigree Trade -> Both of these books tie into Kaprow’s practice, with John Dewey having been one of the most influential thinkers inspiring Kaprow’s vision. Dewey: “If artistic and esthetic quality is implicit in every normal experience, how shall we explain how and why it so generally fails to become explicit? Why is it that to multitudes art seems to be an importation into experience from a foreign country and the esthetic to be a synonym for something artificial?” (p 12)
- Johnstone, S., (2008) The Everyday, London, Whitechapel Gallery - Merewether, C., (2006) The Archive, London, Whitechapel Gallery -> The series Documents of Contemporary Art consists of numerous publications, each devoted to a specific theme. Aside from The Everyday and The Archive, which I will go into, some other publications include Participation, The Cinematic and The Artist’s Joke. The introductory text to the series explains: “In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. Teaching, curating and understanding of art and visual culture are likewise no longer grounded in traditional aesthetics but centered on significant ideas, topics and themes ranging from the everyday to the uncanny, the psychoanalytical to the political.” -> The Everyday pushed my inquiry into artistic practices that attempt to blur or shake up the differences between art and life. Editor Stephen Johnstone writes: “… in the reconciliation of art and life lies perhaps the potential to undermine what has appeared to many as a misconceived view of art’s destiny: to be no more than an autonomous and rarefied sphere of production and consumption.” (p 13) One of the included artists, Hans-Peter Feldmann, is quoted saying: “Only 5 minutes of every day are interesting. I want to show the rest.” (p 6) Also the inclusion of excerpts from Henri Lefebre’s 1961 text Clearing The Ground had an impact on me: “In one sense there is nothing more simple and more obvious than everyday life. How do people live? (…) In another sense nothing could be more superficial: it is banality, triviality, repetitiveness. And in yet another sense nothing could be more profound. It is existence and the ‘lived’, revealed as they are before speculative thought has transcribed them: what must be changed and what is the hardest of all to change.” (p 33) -> Charles Merewether, who compiled the publication on The Archive, gave a lecture at ARGOS centre for art and media at the end of 2010. As was mentioned before in this portfolio, dedicated mentor Anette Baldauf had instructed me to write summaries of some of the texts by other authors included in his book and to find a way to relate them to my own practice and research. These assignments I wrote are attached to this portfolio.
- Debuysere, S. & Moreels, D. & Van de Walle, R. & Van Nieuwerburgh, I. & Walterus, J., (2010) BOM – Bewaring en Ontsluiting van Multimediale Data in Vlaanderen, Leuven, Lannoo - Dekker, A., (2010) Sustainable Archiving of Born-Digital Cultural Content, Virtueel Platform -> These two publications deal specifically with the challenges for institutions in archiving and disclosing digital data – a subject which I have only just started to get informed about. Social networks are addressed too: “In the public eye, YouTube has become the media archive par excellence and, for better or worse, an important reference for all existing and future initiatives aimed at archiving and disclosing audiovisual content.” (BOM, p 11)
- Orrell, P., (2010) Marina Abramovi! + The Future of Performance Art, London, Prestel - Westcott, J., (2010) When Marina Abramovi! Dies, Cambridge, MIT Press - Abramovi!, M., (2010) The Artist Is Present, New York, The Museum of Modern Art -> Abramovi!’s expanding oeuvre of durational live performance artworks has been central to my research for many years now, starting from my final documentary project in film school about her work. Three books released in 2010 caught my eye. The Future of Performance and When Marina Abramovi! Dies were published in the beginning of the year, around the time of the symposium in Plymouth. The catalogue The Artist Is Present came out in concurrence with her MoMA exhibition, which I attended. This catalogue also took a prominent place in a reenactment of one of her works I would perform in March 2011 (see final summary). Each of the books exemplify Abramovi!’s growing care and concern for ways of leaving her legacy behind, be it in the form of the Marina Abramovi! Institute for Preservation of Performance Art, or by having younger artists reenacting her work.
- Auslander, P., (1999) Liveness – Performance In A Mediatized Culture, London, Routledge - Kac, E., (2005) Telepresence & Bio Art, University of Michigan Press - Dixon, S., (2007) Digital Performance, Cambridge, MIT Press - Tribe, M. & Jana, R., (2009) New Media Art, Taschen American Llc. - Saavedra-Lara, F., (2010) E-Culture Fair 2010 – Connecting Creativity, Art & Research From The Netherlands, Flanders And North-Rhine Westphalia, Bönen-Westfalen, Druckverlag Kettler - Funke, J. & Riekeles, S. & Broeckmann, A., (2010) Proceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art ISEA2010 RUHR, Berlin, Revolver Publishing -> These are books that have helped me to begin to establish a lineage starting from earlier live performances involving digital media up until projects that have been presented in the year 2010. Philip Auslander’s Liveness provided a context for my specific research questions, asking: “What is the status of live performance in a culture dominated by mass media?” Eduardo Kac’s 1992 text Aspects of the Aesthetics of Telecommunications, included in Telepresence & Bio Art, reinforced my conviction in putting the emphasis on the performative element in media art, rather than over-appreciating the resulting artifacts: “Since the beginning of the twentieth century, but particularly since the early 1980s, increasing numbers of artists around the world have worked in collaborative models with telecommunications. In their ‘works’, which we shall refer to as ‘events’, images and graphics are not created as the ultimate goal or the final product, as is common in the fine arts. (…) Once an event is over, images and graphics stand not as the ‘result’ but as documentation of the process of visual dialogue promoted by the participants.” Both Digital Performance and New Media Art I have merely dipped into, but some references mentioned in those books still resonate strongly within me. The conference publications of the E-CULTURE ART FAIR 2010 and ISEA2010 RUHR also still deserve more of my attention, as they contain a sheer wealth of references as well.
- Levin, T. & Frohne, U. & Weibel, P., (2002) CTRL-SPACE – Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother, Karlsruhe, ZKM -> Somewhat of a sidetrack, this weighty exhibition catalogue, containing texts by some well-known philosophers, led me into the sphere of artistic practices that appropriate methods of surveillance and dataveillance. This book in turn formed an element in the installation I had set up in PAF, in light of the SELF-SURVEILLANCE project I had experimented with then. There are way more inspiring quotes than I would dare to mention here, so I will pick out just one by "i#ek: “What if Big Brother was already here, as the (imagined) Gaze for whom I was doing things, whom I tried to impress, to seduce, even when I was alone? What if the Big Brother show only renders palpable this universal structure? In other words, what if, in our ‘real lives’, we already play a certain role – we are not what we are, we play ourselves?”
- Mulder, A., (2004) Understanding Media Theory, Rotterdam, V2_Publishing / Nai Publishers - De Zengotita, T., (2005) Mediated, New York, Bloomsbury Publishing - Helmond, A., (2010) Identity 2.0 – Constructing identity with cultural software, University of Amsterdam - Lovink, G., (2010) MyBrain.net – The colonization of real-time and other trends in Web 2.0, www.eurozine.com
-> Finishing off with some texts concerned with “how the media shape your world and the way you live it”, as the subtitle of Mediated proclaims. In his chapter Analog Bodies, Digital Consciousness, Arjen Mulder states: “The self is the core of analog consciousness, while digital consciousness experiences itself as a distributed cognitive network.” (p 169) Anne Helmond’s paper Identity 2.0 convinced me to invite her to come give a presentation at a.pass, while Geert Lovink’s article MyBrain.net provoked again more questions in my mind: “There is no evidence that the world is becoming more virtual. The cyber-prophets were wrong here. The virtual is becoming more real. It wants to penetrate and map out our real lives and social relationships. We are no longer encouraged to act out some role, but forced to be ‘ourselves’ (which is no less theatrical or artificial).”
a summarizing self-evaluation and reflection, drawing conclusions from the entire portfolio, the learning trajectory and any remaining shortcomings __________________________________________________________ The moment I joined a.pass I knew I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I can even recall saying this to one of my mentors at Transmedia, the other post-graduate program I was still enrolled in back then. I had good reason to believe that underlying all artistic disciplines I had uncovered a common truth – a tradition even – of art/life practice, which had the potential of shifting our perspectives on what we had been making and performing. This common notion implied that our life could already be seen as a live performance piece. This did not mean the end of all artistic practices, but yet a uniting principle, which would reinstate that context for the creation of works or performances that seemed to have been downplayed, namely the context of the everyday life of the artist. I felt backed by Henri Lefebre when I read he wrote: “It is in everyday life and starting from everyday life that genuine creations are achieved, those creations which produce the human and which men produce as part of the process of becoming human: works of creativity.” Still it was important to claim this life performance piece to be art, for only by doing so would it be able to counter the unrelenting force of commodification and disproportionate mystification infecting art circles and carry on a tradition of public participation and near-therapeutic exploration of the self, as proposed (but sometimes dormant) within the genre of live performance art. Because I was so keen on putting this principle to the test – of making my life into a documented live performance art piece – I had grown impatient with more traditional ways of conceiving of art or performance. At the close of the a.pass year, I do feel I have become more understanding of other disciplines than my own, as I noticed the passion with which some people went about their favorite practice, be it dance, theatre, music or a more conventional form of visual art. Nevertheless, my belief remained as firm as ever: performance is not so much about playing a role as it is about realizing that your everyday self already is a role in itself.
It wasn’t until my final evaluation on February 25 2011, with coordinators Elke Van Campenhout and Bart Van den Eynde and mentor Pierre Rubio, that a big shift happened in my perception of the artistic research project I had undertaken. When I presented my findings, based on my practice, that I appeared mostly absent throughout the work and that this void in fact drove people to imagine more about me than what was actually being said or shown, this conclusion was termed insufficient by the coordinators. For what I had been avoiding, resisting, and fighting even, up until that very evaluation were the ideas of EDITING and AESTHETICS. Yes, I was sure that a set DURATION, a SCORE or CONCEPT and the chosen MEDIUM were the only elements I was willing to claim to be my artistic choices. AESTHETICS would be the ones inherent to the MEDIUM itself, and EDITING would mean a failure on my part – proof that I was stretching or not living up to the severe SCORE I had set out for myself over a certain DURATION of time. I insisted, but Bart could not take it anymore and he told me that the work was to be located somewhere in between VOID, EDITING and AESTHETICS. And at that point it hit me. As much as I would try to oppose this idea, or distance myself from claiming any artistic intention in either the (sometimes unintentional) EDITING process or the AESTHETICS that manifest themselves, this would still be what is there. Even though, as Tehching Hsieh argues in Out of Now, “instead of approaching art through the document, we need to go back to art itself,” this document is what we are left with.
In the end, it may have been the structure of the TRIANGLE that won me over. It wouldn’t be the first time that an overview of my research could be presented in threes. Think of preserving / inventorying / limits. Then I noticed 3 other notes I made, next to the triangle, during the evaluation:
The drive for my practice is generated by, again, 3 forces: it is addressed to someone I LOVE, it means to exorcise the guilt I feel in the way I live my LIFE and it is a deliberate statement of irony towards the ART world. This is not to say that this is what I would like to communicate through the work, but that these are 3 forces that keep me going, which are personal to me. This leaves us with 3 triangles now: One on the level of the research: Preserving Inventorying Limits One on the level of representation: Void Editing Aesthetics And one on the level of inspiration: Love (Guilt about) Life (Irony towards) Art
There are 3 projects I started with after finishing the a.pass course. These are: I’VE BEEN TWEETING ABOUT YOU (mentioned earlier in the chapter in this portfolio where I reflect on my practice), iGotUp and THE KITCHEN. iGotUp is a reenactment (or remediation) of On Kawara’s classis I GOT UP, a continuous piece produced by him between 1968 and 1979 in which each day the artist sent two different friends or colleagues a picture postcard, each stamped with the exact time he arose that day and the addresses of both sender and recipient. When I wake up in the morning I snap a picture of my face using my iPhone, then snap a picture of the time when I get out of bed and later on I email the composed picture to two people in my mailing list.
THE KITCHEN is a reenactment after an original by Marina Abramovi! that I performed on our most recent visit to PAF together with the a.pass group. I reported on this performance in an email I have sent to the artist:
4 pictures were attached to this email:
From top to bottom: a photo of the performance (courtesy of David Bergé), a still of the video documentation, a view on the research table and feedback from the audience.
The second mail I sent to Marina Abramovi! referred to my PhD proposal:
Closing off with some final notes on a.pass: before finishing the year, I had convinced myself that I wanted to make a more substantial contribution to a.pass than I had done during the year. I drafted a job proposal in December 2010 and discussed the contents of it in a meeting together with the general coordinator at that time. Unfortunately, my offer was turned down and I felt disappointed. Stubbornly however I performed the task that I wanted to take up anyway, namely documenting the workshop activities and archiving them through the a.pass website, even after I was done with my participation in a.pass. These particular workshops I helped record were: the SETTLEMENT (led by Vladimir Miller), LOCATION (led by Leo de Nijs) and THE ARCHIVE AS GENERATOR (initiated by Adva Zakai).
In the beginning of May 2011 a new pack of a.pass’ies will be introduced to the program. I have proposed a frame for this opening week, based on my own final research communication. And, miraculously, this links back to the beginning of this portfolio again and to its actual title. On Sunday May 1st all a.passies will receive an email invitation to access my personal Google Calendar. My week will be elaborately mapped out; when I will get up, leave for a.pass, have lunch, etc. It is an experiment of mine in sharing a schedule of my daily activities, projected into the future. Shifting my focus to a more shared perspective on the work I have been doing, a.pass participants will each receive a postcard-sized calendar of the week, onto which they will be asked to mark the time periods in which they performed artistic research throughout the week. I realize, after the end of this year at a.pass, how I may be able to extend my research question to other people and learn from their contributions. Better late than never.
date : April 24 2011
Sven Goyvaerts aka Sven G De Leescorfstraat 54 2140 Borgerhout
[email protected] www.vimeo.com/sveng
