In this assignment we were asked to make a performance art piece. In class we learned that performance art is influenced by the work of sound artist John Cage, the anti-art movement Dadaism, and fluxus, and so it is not surprising that many performance art pieces are made to provoke thought and often involve socially unacceptable subject matter such as public nudity. Performance art "challenges and violates borders", and must be remembered through documentation of the performance because of its ephemeral nature.
My performance was much more tame than the work of artists such as Vito Acconci and Tehching Hsieh. Taking inspiration directly from the assignment handout, I "[took] the action of folding [my] laundry, and place[d] it on a public sidewalk." This piece moved a commonplace event into a different and unexpected context in order to assess how this might change the meaning of the act.
I brought an ironing board to help make the action of folding clothes more recognizable, and stood at the corner of an intersection on campus for fifteen minutes on a Monday morning while I folded as many garments as I had been able to fit into one laundry hamper. I did not know what to expect from the piece in advance. I had hoped that campus security might come to ask me to move along, in which case I would have requested a written warning, which would have made a great documentation of the performance. With the exception of a fellow student in this class who waved as she drove past, nobody acknowledged me, and I was alone with my thoughts on the sidewalk in the wind for the duration of the performance. One person walking down the sidewalk crossed the street so he wouldn't have to walk past me. At one point the wind blew the tripod over.
In making this piece I explored what makes art art. When I fold my clothes at home, it's a chore, not art. There's certainly no artistry in my folding technique, either. Moving the chore to an unusual place created a situation where its meaning became undefined and open to interpretation. If one of the tasks of art is to make people think, then perhaps this performance was art. If I had said that my performance was a piece about feminism, although it was not, then it would more clearly be art because it would be specifically critiquing a female role in domestic duties. I was not trying to make that statement, however. Conversely, if I had folded my laundry on the sidewalk out of necessity, the same act would become an everyday chore again, with its commonplace meaning. I think it is the context, rather than the action, that makes this piece art. It is art not only because I, the artist, would have described it as "performance art" had anyone asked me for an explanation, but far more importantly, because my university art professor provided the concept for this performance specifically in a list of acceptable ideas on the handout for an art assignment in an art class. Duchamp's Fountain, the "urinal on the wall", was art because he said it was, and this is art because my art professor said it is.
Crushed garbage from the nearby road and parking lot
This tennis ball was sitting by the curb on the other side of the street
Recently we have studied copyright
law and famous cases of copyright infringement, and have learned that a piece
of artwork which incorporates copyrighted material is more likely to be considered
fair use if it transforms the nature of its borrowed content. In this
assignment, we were asked to deliberately appropriate footage and manipulate it
in such a way as to change or add to its meaning.
My mother occasionally sings a ditty
that she remembers from the movie theater, which goes, “let’s all go to the
lobby and get ourselves a treat.” It has become a joke about commercialism and advertising
to her, but I had never seen it. I found this intermission advertisement on
YouTube, along with quite a few old candy and fast food commercials, and combined
them with a few scenes from two episodes of the television show How It’s Made, one about hotdogs and the
other about mayonnaise, to make this video.
I combined the most obviously
commercial parts of advertisements with the intent to make their motives became
a little too obvious. I did not alter any footage, but by putting specific
pieces together I hoped to change their meaning from advertisements into a critique
of food commercials and commercialism. Food advertisements are designed to do
just the right things to grab attention and sell their products, but I think
that they often become too blatant and become parodies of themselves. I really
enjoy that part of them, and wanted to highlight it in this video. They also
only show their audience the appetizing side of food, and often eschew a less appealing
side, like the manufacturing process. I used parts of the How It’s Made episodes to superimpose the manufacturing process
with the food. All of the pieces together make something that looks and sounds
a bit like a commercial of its own. We’re so accustomed to seeing food
commercials that we might not give them much thought, and my intention was to
make a commercial that instead invites critical thinking about the ways in
which they’re constructed.
In the introduction to his book Remix, Lawrence Lessig discusses the
repercussions that the “copyright wars” have had on creative work. Lessig
explains that artistic appropriation of copyrighted material does not cause
financial damage to copyright holders in the way that blatant sharing of the
original works can do, but lawyers police all infractions as a matter of
principle. Stephanie Lenz’s seemingly innocent home video of her dancing baby,
which has a copyrighted song playing on the radio in the background, was
targeted by lawyers, but even more derivative artistic work has been stifled by
copyright laws. Lessig shares examples of artistic work which has been challenged,
such as Candice Breitz’s exhibitions featuring videos of many music fans
singing songs from their favorite artists, or the illegally remixed music
produced by artist Gregg Gillis. They have all attempted to use and build upon copyrighted
music with varying degrees of impediment and legal repercussion.
Lessig
feels that appropriation of copyrighted music is beneficial. The resources copyright
holders and their lawyers spend in pursuit of making examples out of these
artistic works are grossly misused. Artists have found non-licensed
creative remixing to be somewhat revolutionary. Artist SilviaO found that the remixes of her
Creative Commons licensed a cappella tracks gave the sound “new meaning”, as
Lessig describes. Breitz explained that her work was “never thought of as. . .
stealing. . .[but] the natural way in which culture evolves and develops and moves
forward”, adding that it is a “new layer of interpretation”.
I am
inclined to agree with Lessig. Although it is important that copyright holders
are not deprived of income, artistic use is not likely to be a major source of
financial damage. The creativity and ingenuity of remixed works is valuable,
and provides a medium for cultural critique and exploration that should not be
stifled. Some very popular music and artistic work can become so well known
that it becomes part of our culture, like Any Warhol’s Campbell Soup cans, and inevitably
become subject to heavy interpretation in doing so.
This
article reminded me of some of the remixed songs I have seen on YouTube, and I
have two to share. One is a combination of popular country western songs which
pokes fun at a “winning formula” in country songs, filling one of art’s vital
roles as a medium for cultural critique. Another is a remix of Walt Disney
Studios’ Alice in Wonderland that I think is quite beautiful. I don’t know
the stories behind either of these videos, but I imagine that they were not
produced with legal permission.
