DIRECTIONS

^ Melody Woodnutt, 2010, "4 Titles."


Questions of pivots and paths.
My own musings are below after reading an interview with Marina Abramovic by Robert Ayers.


You believe that there’s a clear distinction between performance art and theatre?

"This is what I think: to be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake: there is a black box, you pay for a ticket, and you sit in the dark and see somebody playing somebody else’s life. The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real. It’s a very different concept. It’s about true reality." - Marina Abramovic

Sometimes I find live art and performance art to be interchangeable words, however one rings more relevant to each individual performer/artist I guess. For performance art I find it more indicative of a "performance" with a "performer" and a "stage" and an "audience". For live art (wherein lies moreso an interest to myself) seems to transcend these boundaries of "performance" and bring into focus acts of art that may not need a stage, nor a "performer", despite the body's cooperation at times. Though, even recognising these differences, I still find it difficult to explain the difference to friends or other artists. But I am convinced that once you see them in front of you, you can tell the difference. Perhaps I am biased to a humility I find in works of live art, as opposed to a (possibly my mis-)conception that performance is louder, more egotistically based or "performed" in a more traditional sense than it's quieter younger brother. -Melody Woodnutt



"Now I’m 63 now, and I’m struck by the awareness that we can’t take anything with us. When we die the only thing we can leave is a good idea. Material goods are such an obsession of American culture especially. But it’s just illusion." - Marina Abramovic on her current show in NYC.

This is something I can highly relate to, the struggle within myself and the production of something for consumption. I work in hybrid arts. I am passionate about installation and experience. I construct ideas into physical things. In creating artworks or paintings or drawings or things...do we really need more stuff? Or do we in fact just need more ideas? I believe this is the pivotal notion that shifts me from producing paintings or drawings into creating non-material works, and moving further from the visual and more to the live realm. Someone once asked me "Mel if you burn all your art, who will be able to collect it?" I honestly don't think this should be a problem, so long as they have experienced something through it. ( I also would like to avoid burning art in the future, I'd like to go green....) Experiential work seems to me to be the only way forward. For us to experience art in our lives, in our venues, in our studios. Because ultimately, when we die, we have nothing but our memory, or less. - Melody Woodnutt





http://www.askyfilledwithshootingstars.com/wordpress/?p=1197
It is her 600-hour performance The Artist is Present, which will be a constant component of her MoMA retrospective of the same name, and which has been organized and curated by Klaus Biesenbach, It sees Ms Abramović cease all social interaction with the outside world, and all verbal contact, and dedicate herself instead – as she explains in this conversation – to an unbroken performing presence in the MoMA atrium.