Annotated Bibliography | sheilaiveyfineart

Artshock (2006) Red Back production for Ch4.

I was researched a DVD called Artshock 2006 Human Canvas it drew my attention, as the title is so similar to the work I have produced. The artists push physical boundaries and aspects of control as do I. The visual impact I found gut wrenching and disturbing however I felt emotionally charged. The artists designed the performance and took different narratives for example a tea party and changed it. They added a shock factor through the use of metal hooks embedded in the body. The overall effect was shocking but memorable for me. There was also the use of blood something that I have done in the performance Dark Rooms. It made me reflect on how art can ask questions in particular what we find to be acceptable and challenging and what is considered unacceptable in society. Issues such as fetish and self-harm were considered.
This helped me to think about how I execute my performances and it gave me an insight into how we can question whether something is art or just voyeurism.

Ayers, R. & Butler, D. (1991) Live art, AN Publications, Sunderland.

This book gave me an insight into what live art is and the pitfalls of performance. It provided me with a better understanding of how to prepare oneself for working with an audience. The considerations to be taken into account are things like context, content, audience, timing, venue, budget, publicity, funding and documentation. This book is for anyone who is thinking about performance and wants to develop and incorporate live art into his or her practice.

Brett,G. (1997) Mona Hatoum, Phaidon, London.

This book is a collection of Mona Hatoum work and her interview with Micheal Archer, Hatoum talks about her performances, videos and installation work, in one of her pieces of work titled “The Light At The End” (1989)” s

Annotated Bibliography

This is a list of resources in chronological order that have been very informative and useful to me throughout my practice.

Ayers, R. & Butler, D.1991. Live art. Sunderland: AN Publications.

Brett,G. 1997 Mona Hatoum. London: Phaidon.

This book is a collection of Mona Hatoum's work and her interview with Micheal Archer, Hatoum talks about her performances, videos and installation work, in one of her pieces of work titled “The Light At The End” (1989)” she constructed piece of work with six heating elements fitted vertically into a frame, these gave off a menacing heat.
I can relate this to my series of video performances entitled “Entangled” where during one of the performances I also constructed a “cell” with the bars made from vertical strips of double sided sticky tape which were suspended from a grid made from crisscross string I became trapped in the tape when I tried to escape. Hatoum’s work was based on her struggle through life, and most of my work is based upon my past experience where my own life was a struggle.
Hatoum likes to involve the audience, as she likes them to be part of the experience.

In my piece of work entitled “ The Living Canvas” I invited the audience to paint and draw on me so likewise I too enjoy the audience participating in my work.

Goldsberg, R. 1979. Performance Art: From Futurism To The Present.
London:Thames and Hudson.

This book looks at the history of performance and how artists decided to use it as a way of bringing their work to life and to bring it to the public.
Performance became popular in the art world in the 1970s. The book is also a record of that artist who uses performance to express their own thoughts and emotions and push boundaries by combining several genres. I can relate a lot of what is in this book to my own performance pieces where the audience can become interactive with the artist.

Kuppers, P. 2007 The scar of visibility: medical performances and contemporary art, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.

This book looks at artwork and the medical systems and bodies. She looks at productive practice meaning an engagement with social and personal realties that explore moments of difference individuality, power. Kuppur is a feminist theorist trained in cultural and performance studies areas of exclusion and openings guide her analysis.
I was attracted to her focus on the idea of the scar being a meeting place between inside and outside. I reflected on the type of scars you cannot see, perhaps emotional or psychological ones. She talks about the fragmented body and how it appears in dreams. Often dismembered, she talks about bodily fantasies and the work of Lacan the psychologist. Lacan sees the imaginary anatomy as under threat and that this can lead to psychosis. She states we live in a triad reality the body, external space and bodily space which co exist in mobility.
She refers to Rebecca Schneider a performance theorist who identifies that there is within performance there is always an audience/performer or ritual participant relationship.
“The study of performance has become integral to the space between self and other, subject and object, master and slave and other systems of social signification” page 22 paragraph 3. In relation to Mona Hatoum's work she cites Edward Said who recognizes that within the Corps Étranger there is a dispossession of the body. This for me represents one aspect that relates to my own feelings of this piece around alienation, possession and invasion. In terms of my own performance work I can reflect that my work in The Living Canvas there was elements of dispossession. The Living Canvas and more recently Entangled that were focused on aspects of fragmentation, alienation and embodiment.

LEE, Andy. 2006. Artshock. Part II. The Human Canvas. [Tv broadcast ] Ch4, 14 March 2006.

I researched a DVD called Artshock 2006 Human Canvas it drew my attention, as the title is so similar to the work I have produced. The artists push physical boundaries and aspects of control as do I. The visual impact I found gut wrenching and disturbing however I felt emotionally charged. The artists designed the performance and took different narratives for example a tea party and changed it. They added a shock factor through the use of metal hooks embedded in the body. The overall effect was shocking but memorable for me. There was also the use of blood, something that I have done in the performance Dark Rooms. It made me reflect on how art can ask questions in particular what we find to be acceptable and challenging and what is considered unacceptable in society. Issues such as fetish and self-harm were considered.
This helped me to think about how I execute my performances and it gave me an insight into how we can question whether something is art or just voyeurism.

McAdams, D. A. 1996. Caught In The Act. New York: Aperture Foundation.

I found that this book contained well-documented and photographed evidence of performance art. I found that the photographs answer why the performers choose this genre for their work I have also learned that how you photograph and present your work can relay what a performance was and can even capture the very essence of it.

Mona Hatoum, The Eye. 2001. Illuminations (video)

This video is about Mona Hatoum being interviewed about her work, She started off by explaining about her background mainly her childhood and how she was exiled, and this led her to feel like a foreigner in a foreign land.
Her work is about displacement and her emotions and feelings such as restlessness. Originally her work was performance and video but now she incorporates sculpture and installation. In her piece of work entitled Corps Étranger she explains that is about being penetrated, the invasion of privacy or even the eye of big brother. In her piece entitled Light Sentence she created moving shadows, so as to make the viewer feel unstable and displaced even giving them a feeling of restlessness. The thread that links her work is that it is about barriers, restraint and oppression. What I got from this video is that the thread that runs through her work is very similar to my own work and that the materials she works with help to convey both physical and psychological disturbance that has previously taken place in her life enabling the viewer to become implicated in her work or even imagine themselves in that environment.

Nollert, A. 2003. Performative Installation. Cologne: Snoeck.

This book covers the various subjects that are required to set up a performance installation, such as how this evolved and that performance is a continuation of an installation with an audience and really involves them emotionally and physically. This also covered the following subjects, construction and situation, narration, communication, architecture, performative art and body display.

Reckitt, H. & Phelan, P. 2001. Art and feminism, New York: Phaidon.

This book shows aesthetic responses to feminism within the art world. The collection of works identifies the struggles of female artists and their diversity towards art and life experiences from the 1960s to the present day. Women’s new found liberation as new forms of exploration of political and personal responses to life.

Sherman, C., Metro Pictures, N.Y. & Spruth Magers, C. 2007. A play of selves. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.

I work with the theme of identity and I was interested in this book because Sherman claims is her first consciously autobiographical book. It made me question the autobiographical aspect of my work. I examined the way in which she documents her work and the use of script notes. I noted that she lists what the characters are in her performances; she describes them and their lives. In the future I realize that I could do this.

Starr, Georgina. 2011. Voices of Georgina Starr [online interview]. Available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trtzsb1NkG0 [Accessed on the April 2013].

This clip gave me an insight to the artists Georgina Starr in which she discusses how she started off with sound performances and then moving images to which she combined film, sound and objects, incorporating these mediums together making them part of an installation.

Viso, O.M. 2004. Ana Mendieta: earth body; sculpture and performance, 1972-1985. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution.

The author of this book researched the work Ana Mendieta, born in Cuba, exiled and became a refugee. As a result her work expresses cultural differences, the voice for female authority, loss, absence and displacement. Her work crosses many genres such as film, video, sculpture and performance that is mainly body centred, she often appears naked as a silhouette and likes to include her body contours and shape in her pieces of work. She creates silhouettes and I do in my work as well. I was really surprised by the fact that Mendieta Body Tracks (1974) drew similarities of my work for instance mark making with blood scratched on walls which is what I did in my performance piece Scratching In The Dark where traces are left behind after the performance is finished.

Wearing, G. 2012. Gillian Wearing, London: Whitechapel Gallery.

Gillian works with identity and this book enabled me understand her work. She works with masks and identity, which is central to her work. She is not described as a performance artist rather performative and she documents her work with photographs and video work. I make installations and perform within them and I feel this could be described as performative as I go onto document my work with photographs and video.
Aspects of ambiguity and trauma in her work are another area where I can make connection with my work.
In researching Gillian Wearing I feel that the way she participates in the environment and engages with the public and her documentation is of great interest.