Although I am primarily a maker of objects and images I often am involved in performance, timebased, and interactive works or "actions" below is some info and links to related projects.
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| The Wheel 7/20/2000 Photos by Gaby Brainard | ||
| Albert Camus once stated that you should only do that which you can do. So one of the things I can do is walk atop giant wooden construction spools. I would not call it performance, more of an"action": The Wheel Action. | ||
First Wheel Action- Yale School of Art May 2000 phots by Susie Reiss
Another thing I can do is balance giant objects on my chin.
12 ft. ladder on chin - Dec 7th, 1999 Photo by Zak Smith
I consider these actions to have something to do with The Bertolt Brecht idea about Epic Theater, If I can do this, then you could do it, or you should start to think of what it is that you can do.
The Bertholt Brecht idea of "Epic theatre", not epic in the sense of Beowulf, but in the critical attitude of the narrator to the fiction they create. The artist tells the story and comments on plot but does not identify with it. In this way, the reader or spectator is allowed to observe and to form an opinion while maintaining a critical distance. Contrasted mainly with naturalist and romantic tendencies, transmitting practical knowledge and teaching materialist thought capable of exercising some influence over reality. Distancing is the essential element, preventing the viewer from any instinctive identification and from confusing the art with reality. To the extent that he then recognizes a situation as historic, the world will appear to the viewer as capable of transformation. An art that presents a world that the viewer can take possession of and begin to alter themselves. The viewer can become the subject of their own epic.
cosomlogical balance prop footage shot by Joe Infurnari 2001
cosomlogical balance prop by JRB- 2000
