Catherine Ugwu, 'Live Art'
In: Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire. Edited by Ragnar Farr. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts in association with the Institute of International Visual Arts, 1995, pp. 83-96
I have only one solution: to rise above this absurd drama that others have staged around me, to reject the two terms that are equally unacceptable, and through one human being, to reach out... [1]
Frantz Fanon
Reading Fanon today we are struck by the focus, at key moments in his writing, on the drama of conflicting cultural signs and their decipherment, as they are mapped out across the body as a site of individual identity. Here, the notion of outer skin as mirror of a fantasised soul which is not allowed to speak but only to be described, an imagined essence of seemingly inescapable delimiting negativity, is cast aside, in a gesture of cultural defiance against the mythologising of black identity through the uncomprehending gaze of colonial voyeurism. Anticipating contemporary concerns, in Fanon's text the body becomes both site and symbol of cultural resistance.
Notions of the body have been and continue to be a primary source of material for contemporary performance practitioners. When the body becomes a metaphor for struggle, its power in addressing our own demons or those imposed on us is immense. Clothed and unclothed, performers have focused on the body and its social codification to explore how meaning is generated. By examining the representations of the black body by mainstream society and the dynamics of objectification and exoticisation which affect it, performance artists highlight the complexity and fluidity of identity formation and confront the impact of social perceptions and self perceptions in its construction. Whether by reworking and subverting stereotypes, testing artform boundaries or challenging social and sexual taboos, performers continue to use their body as a site and symbol of cultural resistance. The live art work in the Mirage season focuses particularly on clothing and costume as a mediator of different identities.
[...]
Conceptual in nature, live art which is time-based, centred on notions of identity and using visual signifiers rooted in human physical presence, is invariably driven more by the expression of ideas than the aesthetics of surface, framing and display. Deployment of a diversity of media, often simultaneously, along with a bombardment of disconnected and reconnected symbols, actions and images, is part of the lexicon of much contemporary live art practice. This method assaults the senses with loaded imagery, forcing the view to translate received images, actions and words and construct meaning.
[...]
Ronald Fraser-Munro's provocative use of stereotypes, humour and his abrasive diatribes against social, cultural and artistic rules continues to elicit both adulation and disgust amongst audiences. His interventions in Mirage perform a twisted homage to the 'multi-accentual' voice of Fanon by presenting a roll-call of peculiar and often dodgy characters, cropping up at odd times and places and performing somewhat incongruously in the institute's designated spaces for viewing art or socialising.
[...]
Mario Gardner and Marcus Kuiland-Nazario each investigate a narrow boundary between lived and performed experience, confuting stereotypical notions of the individual persona and engaging their audience in politically educative roles. Mario Gardner describes himself 'as a veteran thespian, fag, African-American, political activist and AIDS educator. A coloured queen, a negro griot, the penultimate fierce, vicious HIV infected drag diva in the universe...' Marcus Kuiland-Nazario is a Puerto Rican American, Los Angeles based artist infected with the spirit of an Afro-Caribbean priestess named Carmen. There is for Marcus/Carmen no distinction between community activism and stage performance - the world is a stage, the stage is politics, and politics is class, race, and sex and gender.
[...]
Sarbjut Samra's work focuses on an exploration of performance languages to challenge the meaning and authenticity of cultural identity. He applies postcolonial debates on essentialism, deconstruction and popular iconography to explore how cultural identities become psychically naturalised as 'real' through compulsive repetition.
[...]
Carmelita Tropicana is a New York based Cuban American writer and performance artist.
[...]
In her work as a 'queer' female artist she goes beyond challenging stereotypes to explore the possibilities for individual identity in an envisioned space where assumptions about race and sexuality, physical taboo and psychological homophobia, can be challenged and transcende.
[...]
Susan Lewis also takes as the starting point for her work her identity as a black woman with a colonial line of descent. Both Walking Tall and Ladies Falling investigate the many facets of female suppression. Her work is personified by risk and expressive subjectivity. Both works embody the inner conflict of a woman confronting sexist and racist stereotypes in an effort to replenish her life and actualise her talents. Both solo pieces, the works embrace a combination of personal investigation and transformation.
[...]
Keith Khan's Wigs of Wonderment is a performance installation commissioned for Mirage, challenging western notions of beauty, objectification and the 'exotic'. The audience is invited on a sensory journey to explore its relationship to black style and fashion. Bombarded by an array of wigs, beauty products, costumes and objects, Khan confronts internalised racism and the commodification and appropriation of black popular culture.
[...]
Bonus Ball, an installation about existence, is a new work by Nina Edge commissioned for Mirage. In response to the new nationalisms in Europe the installation explores scientific developments in genetic engineering, and issues of ethnic cleansing, today's 'final solution' to eradicating difference. Plundering current issues from eugenics to the random selection inherent in lottery fever, the piece touches upon the politics of gender, genealogy, the formation of power bases and the reduction of culture to 'race'.
[...]
[1] Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Pluto Press, London, 1986.