March 11, 2010
NYC
Elevation 80 meters
A few days ago I made it over to the Guggenheim for the Tino Sehgal exhibit. Lets just state up front here that I have never been a really big fan of Performance Art in general. Perhaps it is because of my years in the theater, or perhaps I have just seen too many bad example of such that I tend to have very little faith in the genera. With that being said, I also make an attempt to make myself experience things that I perhaps would not like other wise, in theory, if for no other reason than to see if I still feel the same about my own current list of preference.
Tino Sehgal exhibit at the Guggenheim. WOW!
The entire Guggenheim rotunda is cleared of all art objects for Tino Sehgal. The effect of walking into a space that I know so well to be just white, free and clear was rather an amazing experience in itself. To behold Wright’s design without added objects was refreshing. I walked into the rotunda and I see a couple kissing in the middle of the floor. It is an intimate moment, it is happening in slow motion. The motions are choreographed but the choreography is not intrusive. You almost don’t realize it until you see the action loops around again from the starting point. The couple embrace, kiss, caress. They start on their knees and stand for part of the the sequence, work their way back down to the floor, spent some time entangled on the floor and then finally back on their knees again. The moment is real. The actors in the piece are expressing intimacy that feels genuine. It is the entanglement of their limbs that are really getting to me and catching me off guard. All a while I am sitting there watching the couple, I can’t help but take this all back to the SEX project that I have been thinking about and researching. A successful day already and I have only been here for 5 minutes. I sit and I watch. I am excited by the art that is happening in front of me. Is my excitement from the genius that present in Sehgal’s work or am I excited because I am watching a couple being intimate?
I move on and walk up the ramp. A kid approaches me and tells me that this is part of the exhibit and if I would please follow him. He wants to talk about “Progress” and ask me to give him an example of such. I had my Blackberry in my hand, so I naturally pointed to it and gave it as an example. We reach a predestinated point and a young girl takes over and she and I chat about progress as we walk up the ramp. About a third way through a woman name Anna, in her 30’s with a baby, Alexandra, strapped to her takes over and launches into a story about her family and family secrets.
We have a conversation about how secretes breed and takes on mass and density as it lives in darkness and silence. She disappears and an elder gentleman Jack shows up seamlessly and tells me a story about him and the telephone in 1948. We talk about phones and what I remember. There is a progression of age in the people that I interacted with. The conversation is natural and I am certain improvised to a certain extend as each visitors would take the conversation in different directions. I am curious as to Jack and his spiel of telephone in 1948 and if that was some what customized as I named my Blackberry as an example of progress.
To me the first and foremost objective of an artist is expression. However the ultimate objective of the art itself I believe is to provide / provoke / generate an experience / respond / thought. Nick Cave’s sculptures at The Armory Show made me laugh. He provoked a responds in me. The degree and magnitude of the responds varies and some time (often the most best and rarest of times) I cannot put words to the experience. The work beholds me and renders me speechless. Tino Sehgal was an incredible experience and to me a fantastic example of Performance Art.
I was part of the art. I was essential to the creation of that moment and of that experience. The experience is unique and it cannot really be duplicated again. I could meet the same set of actors and repeat the same conversation but the first time would not be the same as the 6th time around. What is even more interesting for me is that these easy conversations that I had with the actors are occasions that occur rather frequently when I am out on the road, traveling for “Wok the Dog.” Yet is Sahgal’s exhibit more ART than that conversations I have on a bus ride to some where? Or have we arrived back at the issue of context again and that it is ART because someone said it is and that it is ART because it is in the Guggenheim?
I don’t know. What I do know is that this exhibit will be remembered and go down in a short list of art that moved me.
Ah man, I saw Tino Sehgal's work in 2006 at the Berlin Biennial. Same deal—a couple making out in ultra slow motion in an abandoned cathedral. It was amaaaaazing. I was totally mesmerized.