NET-PERFORMANCE: PROCESSES AND
VISIBLE FORMS
Recent experiences and a
statement by Caterina Davinio
(English editing Thomas Bell)
Images
- Related links - DOWNLOAD VIDEO - General
statement
In the net projects Global
Poetry, Paint from Nature, Parallel Action - Bunker (for the
49th Venice Biennial), and in other works, as in the videos cycle Fluxus
Trilogy (text by Charles Dreyfus), and in the contribution to Alan Bowman's
"Fried/Frozen Events 2003", I tried to develop a new language of
performance, in which new media and gesture are not superimposed, but deeply
immersed in a new structure.
Performance is now a
traditional genre, and it has been often recorded on analog or digital
supports, like videocassettes, or, recently, CD ROM and DVD. It frequently
appears in web sites in the form of Internet videos. The concept which I start
from is that this all is defined erroneously video-art or video-performance, CD
ROM-art, or, if it appears in the Net, net-art. I think that it is no longer
possible to declare a total deterministic rapport between new media and their
contents and forms, to maintain that a performance recorded in video is not a
performance, but video-art. I believe that to accept literally the maxim: "the
medium is the message" is bringing toward a conservative art, which
declares to be new because it uses new technologies as support, by focusing
only on digital images and products.
This not to deny that a total
new media would not be capable to bring a revolution in visual forms of art and
in the way to create them, this is already happening, but I think it is
simplistic to consider this all as an automatism, and, for instance, I would
like to examine the medium Internet, which I use since 1998 to create performances,
to explain how the process of the performance in net connection can be
articulated. By operating as a net-artist on the Internet I tried to define a
new language of performance utilizing specific features of the net:
On the other hand I am
fascinated by the idea of remote action, of dislocation of the body/presence in
the net, and by the absence of the performer as seductive presence.
It appears clear that this
discourse has nothing in common with a recorded performance, even though the
entire process can produce visible forms, such as photos, videos, or web sites.
In my performances the
communic-action flux is assumed as act/sign, introducing the necessity of a new
semiotic to describe the process. I worked in the direction that brings all the
technologic and telematic aspects intrinsic to the performance, and not only a
way to promote the real event or to communicate that the performance happened.
I use electronic mail as art
material (in the way could be used marble or bronze to realize a sculpture), to
connect places and situations to act the performance as decentralized remote
action, in collaboration with other artists.
Emblematic of this
experimentation between word, e-mail, net, is Global Poetry Project,
realized on line/off line in March 2002. The net-performance was developed
during the month of March 2002, and articulated in more phases: the first was
an e-mail interchange, which collected a great number of experimental images,
visual poetry, and texts; in the second phase, on March 21st, hundred of these
pieces were simultaneously sent through e-mail to some collaborators in several
cities and countries of the world; these artists, in real time, or with a delay
of few days, realized, with the received e-mails, a series of actions:
readings, performances, installations, diffusion in open spaces, etc., and, in
real time, they documented with photos and videos what they did, and, by
electronic mail, sent it to Karenina.it Office. All the materials were finally
put on line in a web site of the global action. The second phase was developed
between March 21 and March 27th 2002.
The entire process is based on
various steps, only one of which was the creation of texts and images; the
central fact is the communic-action interchange, and fundamental was the real
action/performance contemporaneously dislocated in numerous places in the
world; another step was to film the dislocated events or to take photos,
another was to re-virtualize the process by re-inserting it in cyberspace, by
transforming it in video, digital products, etc.
The semiotic limit between
real and virtual became a sensible interface crossed by signs of several
nature, constantly "translated" in files, a continuous
"translation" of the object from real to virtual and vice versa. The
reflection starts from some historical experiences which introduced real
objects in art, like in Marcel Duchamp, and in Rauschenberg. What happens when
a real object is translated in machine language and becomes a file? A file can
be considered as well an object, or, at least, we can say it contains the
genetic (linguistic) code of an object that, when the file is opened appears on
our monitors.
The file object is introduced
in the cyber work without discrepancies, steps on the surface of the work same,
differently from what we see, for example, in Rauschenberg.
Around this concept I worked
also in a visual poems series which is part of the hand made book "Serial
Phenomenologies". In this contest is presented the sequence: real
object-printing of the digital photo-printing of the characters that appear if
we open the digital image with a text editor. Starting from the real, we pull
the image toward written language, in a process of "translation"
which uses the machine as medium.
Another net-event of this kind
was organized for the 49th Venice Biennial during the opening of the Poetry
Bunker (project by Marco Nereo Rotelli); during the "real" opening
were programmed readings and performances, but I preferred to take part in the
event by organizing a parallel virtual meeting, in which sixty poets and
artists met together on line, in times established in advance, they sent by
e-mail their creative contributions on the topic "poetry against power,
instrument of mankind", writing in the subject "Parallel Action -
Bunker" (a semi-clandestine net-poetry event, which fell in a contest of
almost traditional poems and readings); all was put on line with my notebook,
in a long web page, in the same hours, just while I was in Venice.
Something similar happened in
the performance "Prisoner of Reality", realized at the Art
Rock Cafè in Padova: in this case, all the e-mail which crossed Karenina.it
account on the performance day was directly forwarded to the café (which was in
another city), and diffused among the public.
Around the theme art-reality
is another web project realized in 2002: Paint from Nature, in two
versions, in Florence (at the Giubbe Rosse), and in Ajaccio (Eglise Anglicaine,
F). As it appears clear in the title, the topic is the fundamental one of art:
connection art-life, art-reality, in the way these terms have changed in the
new media scenario. Pop Art and the historical Visual Poetry had already put
art in front of the mass media scene; the real, filterer through these media,
was photographed, interpreted, copied by the artist, who already was more and
more in contact just with a mediated reality.
In Paint from Nature
performance the real appeared filtered through the telematic flux of
information.
As curator and creator of the
web site Karenina.it, I received daily a great amount of e-mail messages, which
mainly were press-releases, notes by artists and writers who submitted
interventions or links for the site. But something unusual happened on
September 12th 2001, after the attack: the account was submersed by messages
arriving from all the world, but for the most part from New York. I collected
them, and with seventy of them I tried to construct a telematic "copy"
of the fact, just as it appeared to me in the telematic communication flux.
What had to be copied was not only the written text in the monitor, but was the
specific of the entire process, the e-mail communication flux.
Following this intuition, the
"copy" was realized as event, in which all the received e-mail was
forwarded to the places where the performance would happen.
So the event had a dislocation
in time and in space, and played on the identity of the author, which was a
collective identity (the voices of the net were systematically registered), and
I was absent, as performer, in the place where the real action should be
happening; in this case I preferred to remain hidden behind a double: some
collaborators received the e-mails, printed them, and, during the opening of
the exhibition, a young woman installed them on two panels, one white, one
black: the event happened physically contemporaneously in two spaces: in
Florence, at the Giubbe Rosse, and in my studio, and, the second time, in
Ajaccio, at the Eglise Anglicaine, and in my Studio, which is in a city near
Como Lake, in the North of Italy, very far from Florence and from Corsica.
The public could not
immediately realize that something was happening: they believed something
visual or theatrical would be happening where a "performance" was
expected, but gradually only a great amount of leafs of paper arrived, in which
anonymous voices from the rhizome were speaking. So the event grew gradually,
great like the surprise generated in the viewer.
In my more recent works I am
developing the concepts of remote action and presence, of telematic action, by
experimenting a new kind of net-performance in which materials arrived through
e-mail are re-elaborated in real performances using video.
Fluxus Trilogy was made in 2002 for a project by Charles Dreyfus, to
commemorate 40 years of Fluxus. I received with e-mail, as attached, the
invitation to remember Fluxus by doing something at a precise time on a precise
date (November 16th, 3:00 PM), and many key words related to the semantic field
of the movement, such as: virée, dérive, transhumance, cheminement, etc.
The Movember 16th Fluxus
walk was virtual, crossed various international mailing lists, to which
Dreyfus' project was forwarded, and also a real one, with my video camera,
precisely on November 16th, exactly starting at 3:00 PM, as asked; printed
materials were diffused and filmed in the city of Lecco. But I liked the idea
to utilize the topic of wandering and related words, that I realized two other
videos on the theme of travel, drift, nomadism. One of them was shot on
November 20th in Rome, title: Movember 20, a surreal conversation among
a taxi driver of Rome, the Satellite Navigator, and I, crossing the city at
night; the other realized video is Other Fluxes and Small Decadence, in
which I utilized Charles Dreyfus' text in superimposition, in French and
translated in English, driving and filming streets around Milan. The term
"decadent" is used because the video alludes to some decadent common
places, in historical sense, like Wagner music, or the background of a burger
house with a silent, solipsistic character; but these elements are treated with
irony in a minor tone: the Wagner orchestra becomes a midi file, the thoughtful
character is collocated in a small burger home, but with real sense of the end.
Also the invitation to
participate in Alan Bowman's Fried/Frozen events, previewed at the 50th Venice
Biennial and at the Reg Vardy Gallery, arrived by e-mail as attached file, a
page with Alan Bowman's Organization logo and the invitation to do
"something" with the page same; possibilities listed on the leaf:
fried, boiled, baked, roasted, refrigerated, frozen... After the elaboration
the pages have been sent to the curators of the events in Venice and at the Reg
Vardy Gallery. The aim of the art/movement was to surprise them, more than to
exhibit something. So I worked in this spirit, on the sequence:
"cooking", "creating an object with the cooked material",
"sending", "surprising". The performance was articulated in
the phases of cooking and filming (contemporaneously), creating the
presentation of the page same (i. e.
the page sent to Reg Vardy was
stuck in a round metal vessel and this was decorated with photos and prints of
the preparation process, the one sent in Venice had a plastic knife and fork
stuck on it together with small photos of the cooking/refrigerating actions),
and, finally: sending/surprising. I think the curators have been surprised
anyway. I was surprised too, by discovering that a piece of paper could survive
all the performance phases!
Caterina Davinio 2003
1. GLOBAL POETRY NET-ACTION
(virtual&real) Texts & Pictures (various languages)
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/kareninazoom/kareninarivista.html
2. PARALLEL ACTION - BUNKER
(49th Venice Biennial, general director Harald Szeemann; virtual happening for
the Bunker Poetico). June 7th, 2001
http://www.geocities.com/biennale2001/
3. PAINT FROM NATURE / COPIA
DAL VERO ("Nature" as media landscape and telemathic passage)
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/7323/paintfromnature.htm
Year: February 4th 2002
(Florence) and June 8th 2002 (Eglise Anglicane, Cours General Leclerc, Ajaccio,
F);
4. KARENINA.IT (Poetry in
Phatic Function)
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/7323/kareninarivista.html
Year: the web project began in
1998, is still active; technology: web site, html, gif, jpg, e-mail and web
communication; international meeting point for debate around new media poetry
and avant-garde, concrete, video, visual, sonore poetry and experimental arts.
By Jakobson, phatic is the use of the language which has the finality to
maintain open and operative the communication channel among the interlocutors.
On the limit between art and critic, happening and net performance, Karenina.it
is a virtual meeting place around the theme of writing and the new
technologies, in which experiences of international artists, curators,
theoreticians converge, in a net that counts thousands of contacts in
the world.
5. CATERINA DAVINIO FOR ALAN
BOWMAN'S FRIED/FROZEN EVENTS 2003
(video-performance) http://xoomer.virgilio.it/kareninazoom/fried.htm;
Download low definition Real
Player video 3.44 MB:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/davinio/Fried-Frozen.rm
6. CATERINA DAVINIO FOR
CHARLES DREYFUS' PROJECT - FLUXUS 1962-2002
(video-performance )
From Fluxus Trilogy: Movember
16th - Fluxus Walk, 2002, 3.29MB
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/davinio/Movember
16web.rm
7. TECHNOPOETRY FOR PEACE,
open call for web materials, edited in video by Davinio, 2003,
presented at the Mudima
Foundation on March 31 2003.
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/davinio/TechnoPoetry
for Peace.rm
8. A STORY, 3:00, 2003,
Video: Caterina Davinio
Sound poem, voice,
performance: Julien Blaine,
Music: Etienne Brunet.
http://space.tin.it/arte/cprezi/AStory.rm
The book as object, the book as writing, the book as story. The writing as
visual and sound. With a sound poem written and performed by Julien Blaine,
dedicated to the female sex, and music by Etienne Brunet. This video was
created for the Wandering Library Project in Venice, curator Doron Polak.
UNESCO - National Italian Commission - World Book Day.
9. SERIAL
PHENOMENOLOGIES, with- TRANSLATIONS, TRIBUTE TO JOSEPH KOSUTH.
Artist's book, unique
piece, 16 pages; exhibited in The Wandering Library Project, Venice June
15-August 26.
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/kareninazoom/wanderingdavinio.htm
10. INTERVIEW WITH CATERINA
DAVINIO (Carol Sill, DIGITALIS II, Canada BC)
http://meta.insinc.com/citysoup/digitalis/CATERINA_DAVINIO_interview.ram
Aerocarte, performance and photo by Caterina Davinio
and Claudio Preziosi,
Milan, March 21 2002, Duomo
and Metro. In the contest of Global Poetry, March
2002.
Fried/Refrigerated Events,
digital photo, March 19th 2003. Reg_Vardy, object
sent to Judith Winter, curator
at Reg Vardy Gallery (UK) for Alan Bowman
Fried/Frozen Events 2003.
Otherfluxes, frame from the
video "Other Fluxes and Small Decadence", video:
Caterina Davinio, text:
Charles Dreyfus, November 2002
Translations. Tribute
to Joseph Kosuth, from "Serial
Phenomenologies", artist's book, 16 pages, unique piece