With love (project 5 reflection)

This is the project I will remember the most after this class.
To be clear, I have never been abused and do not think I will ever be because of my personality and my living environment. In fact, I have a really happy and easy life that I think sometimes it stops me from a being a great artist because all good art emphasizes personal struggles and pain. People don't remember art for being bright and happy. Is this true or is it just me?

Anyway, I made this video when I found out that April is Sexual Assault Awareness month and I would like to do something to support.

This project was hard since the beginning when I tried to find participants. You would find me constantly asking my friend the same question "Will you slap me? It's for my project?" and most said no. For the people that were in the video, they didn't really know what they signed up for until I made them say yes.

I was scared, honestly scared when making this video although I was surrounded by my friends and although I asked them to do all these to me. After the all the hands came inside the frame, I really felt trapped among these people and did everything I could with my head trying to get out but I couldn't. I hoped the audience could read it from my facial expression because it was a real experience.

About the sound. I put the raw video in silence at first. After that, I recorded myself tapping my finger on the computer while watching the video. Some said it's like a gradually rushing heartbeat and I thought nothing can describe it better than that.

Over-consumption (project 4 reflection)

For my ASB trip this year, I went to Colorado to volunteer after the flood last November. We did hard physical labor everyday but no matter what, a simple ham and cheese sandwich was always enough to last me through the day. It was the opposite to my usual self because at Cornell, I almost always stacked my food to top my plate. That was when I realized what over-consumption of food was.

My performance was inspired by that epiphany. When getting food to go from the dinning hall, I honestly feel very bad about what I was gonna do to it. I tried to get the most common things like cheese, hams, peanut butter, cereal, rice… The plan was to have Haley stand in the middle, acting happy when being thrown food. After that, I wrapped around her with the plastic wrap, make sure that she couldn't move her body anywhere before setting her down on the floor, grabbing onto her and roll around. Haley was on the passive role the whole time and she was happy about it, showing the ignorance of the consumers. Even when the food that she consumed or the condition that gave her all the food became her burden, she still not realized it.

My favorite part about the performance was the residue that was left on the white paper underneath Haley's feet after we rolled around. It reminded me a lot of Yves Klein's. However, I think the performance could have been more successful if it was simplified a little in term of the food and actions, more control over facial expression, maybe add some language when throwing food at her.

In the end, some audience felt the way they supposed to feel but not everybody. so overall, this performance has not reached its highest potential.

Laurie Anderson Show

I did not expect Laurie Anderson to be so casual and friendly like that at all.

In my opinion, great artists usually are eccentric and different from the crowd because they need to live in their own world to create their own visions like in their art. However, Laurie Anderson is like the connection between the art world and our real world. The only difference about her is her perspective and how she transfer that perspective that she has into something we call art.

Because I know her through Lucian's presentation, especially through the O Superman piece, I expected her new work to somewhat associate with new sound/music technologies. That's why I thought it was really interesting when she began to read to us some of her stories. They all started out with some humor and friendliness but ended up giving us a chill, like the story about her childhood when she had to stay at the hospital. That was when I found the serious Laurie Anderson that I observed from O Superman.

I also found it very interesting when Laurie told us stories about how came up with ideas for art. Her fantasy about the dog concert was HILARIOUS. I'm so glad we're using that name for our show.
She made me think about how simple art could be, how it can come from everywhere, even the weirdest things.

Thank you for letting us know about the show, Sandy.

Call it a chaos (project 3 in class)

Due to some technical difficulties, my camera only captured 3 seconds BEFORE my actual performance. But it's okay, I will explain my process.

My initial idea for this piece was actually an upgraded version of my first performance that would include my body as one of the items to pile/hang on each others. I also intended to include larger items like chairs, tables... However, figured that I wouldn't be able to prepare them in my "magic" bag myself, John Cage and Merce Cunningham's idea of indeterminacy came about. That's when I decided to set up 3 boxes where people can pick out random items that were placed in the first 2 boxes beforehand and the 3rd box gives them options to pick out larger items in the room. The plan was to have people from the audience come up one by one to put items on me. Another piece that I associated mine with was Yoko Ono's "Cut piece". She also had people come up and cut away a piece of her clothing.

However, the performance did not go as I planned due to my lack of instruction at the beginning. The audience rushed in all at once and pick out the items at the same time. The down side of this is
1. The audience cannot see the progress/the endurance building up.
2. It changed the odd of a number to be picked. For example, the 2nd person, instead of having 1/3 chance to pick a number of the box, she/he would have only 2 choices in the pool to pick out. It affects the process of CHANCE significantly.

Another factor of the performance that I got the most feedbacks about was the sound. The ideal sound I had in my mind was to have a speaker system that can cover the entire room with sound. Unfortunately, all I had was a little speaker chilling underneath my notebook so that wasn't the best. I really appreciate Sandy's comment about how I should make the sound a part of my piece instead of JUST being the background sound.

I like how people could interpret it as some reference to New York city base on the base on the chaotic city sound and my pose, although it was not my attention. I think that's also the purpose of chance, both the artist and the audience cannot predict the specific result of the piece.

Overall, I think this piece was not a success. There were too many elements to the piece and I think it created more room for mistakes than structure the performance itself.