Performance Art – SYLVIA SCHWENK

Library of emoji art

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:28:36 +0000

The “library of emoji art” is a large-scale community-based public art project that showcases “emoji art” created by communities around the world, at different times and in response to different topics.

Every work of “emoji art” is a site-specific work of socially engaged performance art, that reflects the identity of the participating city and community. For every performance, Schwenk brings hundreds of people from the community together to connect, and communicate with each other in the physical world as they create large-scale emojis using their bodies. The emoji is designed by the community in a workshop(s) and is then presented as a work of performance art with the bodies of the participants who come from all areas of life such as aged care homes, schools, fire brigades, police, church groups, businesses, music groups and sports groups. To connect individual projects across the world, Schwenk pairs every performance of “emoji-art” with the performance of one of the most popular emojis of the year.

“emoji-art” performances are fun, eye-catching and full of movement. The participants bring emojis to life with their bodies as they stand, sit, kneel, walk, march their arms, laugh and/or lay on the ground. Emojis are now an essential part of communication in our media driven age. Creating analogue versions of these digital icons helps counter isolation and makes it easier to connect with one another in the physical world

“emoji art” lives on after the performance for the performers and others to enjoy. GIFs and photographs of the “emoji art” performances, together with drawings from the workshops, and archive material such as radio programs, social media posts, are deposited into the “library of emoji art”.

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Connect

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:24:31 +0000

“connect” reminds us of our own humanity by allowing us to see ourselves in others. Six films show a social and visual portrait of over 160 people of different ages, gender, socio-economic backgrounds, cultures and religion from local communities in the USA (New York City), Germany (Schöppingen, Berlin), and Spain (Blanca).

The project presents stories and interactions that build intrigue about who we are and how we relate to one another. The protagonists share their private stories and thoughts in an honestly refreshing way, as they answer 5 universal questions that we all ask ourselves at one time or another. Each of these questions is the subject of its own film, with similar answers and counterpoints sewn together to build a narrative on humanity. These films are compelling and they draw us into the protagonists’ lives. Humans are curious by nature, so of course we’re interested in who these people are and what they do. The participants’ answers are so relatable or so unrelatable that we can’t tear ourselves away. Watching and listening to other people allows us to see ourselves in others and by doing so offers us a way to start connecting.

The feelings driving the project are true connection and a universal love for others that is simply based upon our shared humanity. These feelings are present in all of the works by virtue of the protagonists’ generosity and honesty, and they are especially present in the film ‘gestures’, where each of us is unconditionally offered feelings of genuine warmth and love by over 160 people we don’t know.

We may all be different but we all have the same core desires of love, peace, security and hope. We have much more in common than our differences suggest.

The questions are:

1. What makes you happy?
2. What are you scared of?
3. What do you love the most?
4. What advice would you give your younger self?
5. What are your hopes for the future?

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Connect: kaleidoscope

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:22:15 +0000

There is a sense of timelessness and harmony, as you watch over 30 people unite in movements to create a large human kaleidoscope. “connect: kaleidoscope” is a meditative work with an almost spiritual feel, that was performed under a huge copper beech tree on a meadow of grass and flowers on the grounds of a water castle. As raindrops fell on the faces of the performers, they shared in the unique experience of connecting with each other and the natural environment.

The sentiment driving the work is connection. Connection between people and connection with the world we live in. Schwenk has created a body of work that re-presents these feelings for us to experience. Her 2-channel film successfully creates a dreamy experience that transports us back into this performance and into a space of feeling calm and connected.

An interactive installation expands the experience, allowing viewers to re-perform aspects of the performance while watching “Drawings for the performance”. The installation is made up of 3 viewing points that show 5 hand-drawn short films (2 to 6 minutes each) on small screens/ ipads with headphones. The viewing points are set up in ways to encourage people to lie down; kneel and stand, referencing the movements of the human kaleidoscope. The music and animation are hypnotic and mesmerising.

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Dada—when up is down

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:15:52 +0000

On a Saturday afternoon in Sydney a group of healthy people, including 2 children fell. They collapsed to the floor. Simultaneously. The fall happened during the opening of an art exhibition in Sydney Australia.

The cause?

A dada inspired work of socially engaged performance art directed by Sylvia Schwenk, performed by everyday people at Brenda May Gallery.

This short film tells the story of this group of people who only met 30 minutes before the exhibition.

What happened?

“dada – when up is down” is made up of the performance, a short film that re-presents the performance and a series of photographs.

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World Domination

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:13:06 +0000

Research tells us that we laugh for less than 6 minutes a day. This is surprisingly only a third of the time people laughed in the 1950s, and we are correspondingly almost 20% less happy today than people were then.

“World Domination” is a fun and playful work of art that encourages laughter, whilst parodying evil, greed and the desire to control the world. It is a nonsense. It is a silly and carefree project that is happy and evil, playful and scary all at the same time. “World Domination” aims to inspire happiness and laughter. It shows everyday people in ordinary spaces acting with playfulness, silliness and spontaneity, while the darker side to the work—the connotations of evil, greed, violence and dominance— act as a counterpoint. Perhaps it is the co-existence of these incongruous attributes that make the work so engaging.

In the pilot of “World Domination”performed during peak-hour on a tram in Melbourne, Schwenk directed “Movements of Laughter” that saw a carriage full of passengers joining in with the silliness of the laughter. Laughter is contagious, once one person starts laughing, others quickly follow.

This Pilot will be refined and further “World Domination” works will be performed and created.

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Study for Dazzle

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:11:07 +0000

The practice of painting naval ships with disruptive pattern camouflage known as “Dazzle”,was initially used 100 years ago in the First World War. Ships were painted in bold coloured abstract shapes and patterns, with areas of dark and light tones placed next to each other to break up the outline and shape of the ship when viewed from a distance.

During an artist residency at the Naval base, HMAS Penguin in Sydney, Schwenk and Zahalka proposed to contemporise this naval history of camouflaging by creating a work of art made from human bodies. A study was done to present a side view of a naval ship covered in “Dazzle” camouflage on Middle Head Oval with military personnel and civilians lying down side by side.

This socially engaged work of performance art was to have been filmed and photographed from a Navy helicopter Unfortunately the Australian Defence Forces did not have the resources to commit to the project.

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Along white lines

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:08:21 +0000

In Launceston in late 2011 the public was allowed on to the field at half time during the regional Aussie Rules grand final. Kids kicked balls, little children and parents wandered around taking in the scene. Then something odd happened. Men, women and children dressed head-to-toe in white overalls jogged single file on to the grass. There was something disconcerting about their appearance, as though their costume was related to an emergency—a toxic spill, bomb threat or radiation leak—but their behavior was reassuringly playful. The white suited figures broke into groups and occupied different parts of the field, using their prone bodies to outline the markings for the goal square and goal posts. Beguiled by the performance kids and adults joined in. Eventually the white-suited performers occupied the centre square and, with the help of hundreds of football fans, completely covered the white lines marking its boundary.

“Along White Lines” was a performance staged by Sylvia Schwenk at Aurora Stadium during half time at the Northern Tasmanian Football Association Grand Final. Watching the video of the event one is struck by the good will of the crowd – as these odd, white-suited figures take their places and begin to form lines, bemusement turns to fascination – and then to participation. The low-key nature of the work seems to attract this good will and there is a festive air to proceedings. The relationship between the artist’s crew of 30 volunteer performers and the public becomes collaborative, the innocent action of lying on the ground one of definition. The football field is a codified space described by lines, distances and boundaries that, without the football teams, becomes a delimited space of possibility. “Along White Lines” subtly reminds us of the structure of social relationships between artist, audience and setting but, more importantly, the work underscores the consensual nature of those relationships.

Schwenk’s work is a democratic experience where every step of her process is open to the audience to engage, interact and direct the outcome.

— Extract from “Engage, explore and evolve” by Andrew Frost

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Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:05:34 +0000

“Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty”is a project that tells stories about prisoners and people who were committed in mental asylums, in a beautifully simple, yet powerful way. These works consider spaces, lives and environments that are off limits to most of society. The artworks also reflect on the notion of what performance in the everyday means for those who live in a space where private and public co-exist, sometimes simultaneously.

The first workof this projectcalled, “Sometimes awful things have their own kind of beauty”,is a mesmerising film of a man Schwenk invited to perform in a maximum-security prison. The man dances with a lawnmower to the music of a harrowingly beautiful waltz, as he mows the lawn in an area surrounded by alarmed perimeter fencing and razor wire.

The lawn is surrounded by 20 magnificent towering palm trees. It is an oasis in the maximum-security area of the prison, that offers a respite from the confinement of the prison cells and the cold metal surfaces and concrete of the prison. It almost seems surreal. The air seems sweeter and fresher here. The waltz is filled with hope but is underwritten with a score of despair.

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Birds and clouds from one life to another

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:04:30 +0000

“birds and clouds from one life to another” by Sylvia Schwenk and Nikola Dicke references Bertolt Brecht’s poem “The Lovers”, that centres on the lives of a flock of cranes. In this art event, which took place in the German/Dutch border town of Bad Bentheim, German and Dutch model-plane pilots flew their planes as a group in a choreographed performance suggestive of the flight movements of a flock of birds set to music written for this performance. After the model plane performance the audience and pilots were invited to fold small origami cranes and build large origami crane sculptures, which were later carried over the airfield in a performance, also set to music. The event ended with a barbeque.

Schwenk and Dicke’s approach to this project reflects social and political action, which uses an art framework that draws attention to and generates discourse on areas that create opportunities for inter-human relational practices. This form of artistic practice typically creates a social and spatial dynamic that rises to a climax during the art event and carries on beyond the public presentation of the project. Over 25 years ago¹ the art historian Hal Foster describes such an approach as “a new critical strategy of resistance from the inside”. Schwenk and Dicke do not try to relocate artistic strategies in the real world, as Kontext Kunst did in the late 1980s and 1990s. Conversely they try to integrate reality into a themed art project in a way that decontextualises and recontextualises art, which is then later re-presented in the artworld. Schwenk and Dicke not only describe cultural, social and political practices, but focus–coherently and playfully at the same time–on reality, without submitting themselves to a stylistic realism.

The nature of “birds and clouds from one life to another” is based on everyday routines that in a collective, mostly playful practice is given a new aesthetic quality. The final meaning of the work happens when the newly created actions are integrated into everyday life.

“birds and clouds from one life to another” adopts a socio-political approach that simultaneously activates spatial and social processes and negotiates the political and aesthetic field. In this art project Schwenk and Dicke offer communication and interaction. It is about appreciating the whole project as an event. Art as a moment of revelation, not creating life through imitation or reflecting life’s context to represent content, but to be aware of the reality of life. Art not as a tangible physical representation, but as a way of thinking.²

1 Hal Foster, ‘Subversive signs’, in: Charles Harrison & Paul Wood (ed.), Art in Theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2003)

2 Also refer to Alan Kaprow: ‘The Happenings are dead – Long live the Happenings’, Artforum 4/7, New York, 1966

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In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people

admin — Sun, 07 Nov 2021 13:03:25 +0000

“In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people”, which takes its name from a quote by famed mime artist Marcel Marceau, Schwenk re-stages one of the most famous of all visual gags. Wearing bright yellow overalls with hardhats and suction pads, performers move large panes of non-existent glass back and forth among the milling crowds outside Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Like “walking against the wind” or “trapped in an invisible box” this mime is so well known that it’s almost negated by its clichéd nature. Schwenk engages more than the recognition of a public audience of the conceit of the illusion, one that can only succeed through the assent of the audience, who became part of the performance. The audience started polishing the “glass”, some ran through sheets of “glass” smashing them into “shards”, while others simply joined in, and carried their own “glass”.

This work was performed as part of Art Month Sydney [2010], and adapted for a performance at Brenda May Gallery, Sydney [2011].

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