Fernando Aguiar

PERFORMANCE:

THE LIVE INTERVENTION

1.

The principal finality of art is to provoke in order to obtain a reaction. And it does so through a communicative process, of which, information is an essential part. Any object or artistic action only intervenes when it contains in itself something new. This aspect is precisely the informative component of the whole which communication represents.

Information, in art, can be given at various levels. On a technical and technological level, on  an aesthetically level, on a level of the different significant and their meanings, and, principally, on the level of the methods of expression. Containing but one informative load in one, or in all of these sectors,  an artistic object can intervene in a critical form and be creatively actuating.

Presently, and under the pressure of a series of conjectural factors and external experiences of life on the “producer of images” (as Nicos Hadjinicolaou would say), there exists a tendency in which the arts complement and interaction each other.

In the same form, and beyond the individual capabilities of each means of expression, the possibilities of exchange and of consequences see themselves infinitely extended, when of associated or integrated use of those means (painting, photography, slides, installation, performance, video, or even the computer, for example),  from which result works full of allusions and deductions.

In this perspective of complementarily and wholeness of perception, and seeing that each means “translates” a message according to its technical and technological characteristics (M. Mcluhan), a fixed artistic intention transmitted by a set of means, will  allow a more  differentiated and  diversified  vision of itself and may be more easily understood in its globalness.

2.        

In this way, the direct intervention of the artist, or the so-called performance, is probably the means that best adapts itself to this conjugation, because it can contain and easily relate itself with all of the other expressive means of transmission, and present itself with a maximum of elements for its comprehension.

The performance contains a series of components that may be explored aesthetically. Concepts such as time, space, movement/action, tri-dimensionality, colour, sound, smell, light and principally, the physical presence of the artist as the display and the factor of  attainment of the intervention, interwoven with a limitless quantity of objects, intention, techniques and technologies, completely revolutionise the notion of “plastic arts”, conferring them another dimension, and offering the public in its communicational and  informational fullness, that which could be  considered “live art”.Two basic concepts are commonly connect to all of these performances: the space where it happens, and the time in which it unfolds.

Time and space, here, are eliminated as separate concepts and make up the “screen” where  everything  can/will happen. These two concepts define the space-temporal limit in which the action will be summarised, and are important for a reading and a comprehension of the performance as an independent means of expression.

Taking up on Décio  Pignatari’s opinion about happenings, the performance can also be considered the “Art of action, versus the art of contemplation”. The physical presence of the aesthetically operator is one of the essential factors of “live art”. Live because it contains precisely the living form of its creator. Live because the (propulsion) pulsation / the movement / the breathing of the body makes up an integrand part of the artistic intervention as an instigator of the development and formulation of the same.

The performer is the transmitter of action, and all of his gestures, all of this mimic expressiveness sends forth information’s, paraphrasing a language rich in sings and meanings.

The performer’s circumstance, as an aesthetically agent, being in the center of the action, bestows this action a sensation of tangibility that represents, in a certain way, a liaison between him and the person who enjoys the performance. To this “tangible” facet of the performance, arises immediately the tri-dimensionality. The volume given by the multiplicity of objects and also by the presence, in motion, of the aesthetically operator.

Although movement is not always explicit in the different objects that integrate the action, it exists in the animation given to the manipulated objects, in the audible rhythm/balance, in the light/colour, or even through the particular movement of other simultaneous usage’s such as the projection of slides, video, etc., etc.

The slides exploitation of  colour is a direct  reference to the integration of painting in the performance, as well as tri-dimensionality is an inclusion in this concept of sculpture. The different types of art converge, in the performance, so that in a group they result in an expressive interaction, as well as on the technological level the different media that were conjugated originate an inter-expression of communication means. “…the resources, as extensions of our sense, establish new relational indices, not only between our individual feelings, but also between themselves, as they gradually inter-relate to one another.”, writes M. Mcluhan.

Sound, another element of reading of the performance, can present itself through various forms. The rhythm, the melody, or simply the noise represent sound structures that are not always but simple accessories, but could be a group of sings to be decoded. In this area are englobed, apart from the voice, sounds produced by proper instruments, and/or  those considered “improper”, such as environmental sounds or that resultant from industrial activities.

Natural or artificial, we also have light as a transmitter of reading. Artificial may be a source of effects, through the possibility of chromatic transformation and transmutation of the different elements.

3.       

The performance, as an intervention process should give, against the exploitation of the diverse communication fields, the perception of simultaneous, which, in a practical sense, we already live.

Edmund Carpenter and Marshall Mcluhan wrote in the introduction to their book entitled “Revolution in Communications”, that “The electronic communication resources of post-learned man contract the world, reducing it to the proportions of a village or a tribe where everything happens to everyone a the same time: everyone is aware of – and, therefore, participate in – everything that is happening, the minute it happens”.

The performance furnishes and also reclaims a simultaneous reading of all the aspects, which compose it, the moment it happens.

The person who enjoys representation should conduct an integral reading of the aesthetical intervention, as the whole which in reality he is, and should not be content just to simply catch the significance of that he sees, as this is but one of the components of the artistic act. For this there has to be a synchronism in the use of meanings, to result in a good deciphering and comprehension of the performance and, consequently, a critical participation.

The abridgement of a performance resides precisely in the binomial action/reaction. And here we apply the thinking of Marcel Duchamp when he affirmed that “The artist establishes alone the act of creation, since the spectator establishes the contact between the work and the outer world, deciphering and interpreting his profound qualifications, and, reacting in this way, adds his personal contribution to the creative process”. Between the aesthetically operator and the public there exists a direct empathic relation, due to the participation of one in the work of the other, where feed-back may, inclusively, modify the particular course of action, always altering its meaning. As the reading of the performance is done so simultaneously with its unfolding, and because the reaction is given in synchronously with the reading, the feedback is immediate, at times turning the consumer into producer and vice-versa.

The fact that the action in unfolded in front of the spectator, is directly relationed with the extraordinary development of the means of communication, that is, we have the possibility of gaining knowledge of the different occurrences in any part of the world as simultaneously as the happen.

The performance contains the aspect of the simultaneous of action/reaction, which brings art to life. The people take part in the birth and end of the action. They see who creates and how it is carried out (sometimes they help create it), reacting the moment in which it takes form. The  performance permits the creating and the being there to see it. It allows integrate and instantaneous  (in) formation. It implores for participation. This contains something umbilical. The circumstance of the aesthetically intervention being collectively used and enjoyed, represents an extraordinary advance in the social sense of art. In this mode, the transmission of the “message” results in a common experience. At a time when the communication methods suffered an astonishing evolution, but where, paradoxically, there does not exist communication between people, the direct contact between the audience and the work/artist gains another intensity, (re) establishing dialogue between beings themselves and between beings and artistic objects/acts.

The interaction in this type of art is done so not only between different materials and technologies, as between the creator/action, action/spectator and spectator/creator. It is precisely these relations that the performance comes to provoke: the artist/public dialogue, divided by the unfolding of the work.

And, if on one side there ceased to exist the individual possessor of a single work (painting/sculpture), of which he is the only user and person who takes enjoyment of this, to come into being an artistic creation that would benefit the collective, on the other hand the unique character is, still, maintained, because on a general basis these interventions are not repeated or at least they never are totally.

Regarding the aspect of the performance being, in a certain way, the “art of the ephemerous”, links itself to the fact of its rapid presentation and assimilation. Which in a consumer society seems to be in my opinion perfectly natural and integrate in the social context.