Body Art/Work/Action #temptingfailure

When I was six, I was taken to the opening of an art exhibit at a gallery. This is how I was taught how to experience art: you walk into the space, grab a glass of wine, stand in front of pictures, nod, leave. Very often, the work hanging on the wall has no intrinsic meaning for you. Here you are confronted with a canvas awash in several colours you don’t like. Or perhaps it is a vaguely figurative work, and you silently guess what it might be. (After all, you don’t want to be wrong). Perhaps you tilt your head. For the longest time, you think that art is a guessing game, a sort of high-brow ‘Where’s Wally?’. Just as you think you’ve spotted a brown dog in the corner of the canvas, someone ruins your day by telling you that this work can only be appreciated ‘in the context of the canon of all the Western Art that’s come before it and the history of the artist’s own previous works’. At that point, most people either give up going to art galleries, or just go for the bad wine.

My first encounter with performance art – specifically body art – was in the late 80’s. Encounter is really the wrong word. It was more of an intrusion. Lacking money, I was living in a cockroach infested room off the mezzanine floor of an artist-run gallery. I woke up, after a drug-addled evening, to find a woman slapping on strips of cheap flank steak onto her naked body in front of an audience. Then she sewed herself into it with a large needle and thread. And I noticed, that she wasn’t too careful about whether she was just joining the pieces of meat, or her own skin. She hadn’t just made herself a meat suit – she’d attached it to herself in paces with sutures.

The first thing I noticed was the scent of the bloody meat, which was strong, in that sweet, nausea-inducing way meat sometimes smells. Then there was the fact that it was winter and I wondered what all that cold, wet meat must feel like on her body. Of course, the meat got warm in contact with her skin and that made the smell worse. As I stood there, looking over the mezzanine banister, I realized – oh, my god, she’s meat. She’s all meat. She’s nothing but meat.

Body Art is a type of performance art where the artist uses their own body as the canvas. It’s always live, never exactly the same twice, and always meant to confront you, not only on an intellectual level but a visceral one as well. Because how you experience it as an audience member is part of the art, as is the space it happens in. You don’t need to come with a thorough knowledge of the canon of Western art, or even know what the artist might have done before. All you need to do is be willing to come and be the essential empathic body-wearing human you are.

Truly, if you can’t get past the ‘ick’ factor, then you’re missing a lot. For me, being an audience member at a Body Art action (they often call them ‘actions’ as opposed to ‘performances’ to make the point that this isn’t theatre), the important thing is to be able to do what comes very naturally and imagine being in the body of the artist. There is a strong element of ‘spectacle’ to this type of art. And I notice I always have a tendency to try and distance myself at first by intellectualizing it. My best experiences have been when I’ve managed to persuade myself not to do that, because it dulls the intensity of the experience. I have to remember to stop trying to protect my sensibilities, and just let what I’m seeing, hearing, feeling in with as few filters as possible.

Body Art often asks you to reconsider how you see the body – theirs, yours, ours. Skin, muscle, bone, blood, bruising… We live in our bodies, wear them, use them, experience the world through them. They are the visual and visceral proof of our existence. And yet they are so much more. Symbols of so many, many things. Our culture tells us how to treat our bodies. How to see it, how to depreciate it or venerate it. How to be in it. When to share it and when to keep it separate.

Most Body Art interrogates and confronts one or more of those aspects of our relationship with our bodies.

Tempting Failure, a series of actions curated by Thomas John Bacon, at the ]performance s p a c e [  on March 4, 2012.  Please consider coming. If you’ve never seen Body Art/ Live Art before, you really are in for an incredible experience. I’ll update you closer to the time as to logistics and how to get tickets. Meanwhile, you can follow on twitter, via the hashtag #temptingfailure  and the Facebook page.

Thomas John Bacon is a live artist whose work focuses upon the conception of the body, Being and a multiplicit Self. In the build up to the forthcoming premiere of his Triptych, he has curated an evening which seeks to engage with the role that sacrifice may play for the artist who challenges their practice or Being in the production of the living artifact: Be it via physical means or through a sense of exposure. Be it metaphorical or actual. And most importantly, be it through the risk of failure. Tonight’s series of live art & transgressive performance from professional artists based across the UK has been selected by Thomas John Bacon to each uniquely engage with a shared ethos; to tempt failure. www.thomasjohnbacon.com @thomasjohnbacon
	Version 2 In a continued [s]exploration into dissent, cause & effect, Version 2 moves into a controlled demolition of two connected bodies through an abstracted veil of Minimal Drag/Gender blurring and blunt force movement.”You are young and beautiful darling and you deserve the best things in life…but you weren’t young and beautiful tonight” – Crystal LabeijaKris Canavan & Nick Kilby notesoncruelty.blogspot.com @nkilby9932 www.kriscanavan.com @kriscanavan
	the space between you and me Exploring intimacy, survival and reparation the performance is a process of revelation; peeling away the layers, searching for ‘bare life’, the air pocket between the wall and the wallpaper… the space between you and me.Helena Sands www.sandsh78.blogspot.com @hsands

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	The King of Beauty While life thrives, beauty seems to fade – a fact that the King of Beauty can’t come to terms with. In a bid to preserve his appearance, he eats lipstick to fill the emptiness inside. As time goes by, he realises quests born of vanity are unfulfilling, empty and solitary.Allan Taylor www.allanstanleytaylor.com @Allan_Taylor
	Hand In Glove Intercutting male bodybuilding poses with the charges of heraldry. An exploration of looking and being seen, the performance references Lacanian theory, and ideas around disgust and display.Mark Leahy www.markleahy.net @gmarkleahy
	[deletia] a romantic ritual exploring the aftermath of failed romance, using the body as the canvas in acts of memory, pain and tenderness.Hellen (aka Traumata) www.traumata.org @Traumata
	Tracing the Pathway Glancing Back is a series of participatory interventions engaging audience members in a documentary mapping of bodies in space. Concretising what is missing by focusing on what is first present, we seek a collaborative and embodied approach to archival lacunae.Cara Davies, Joseph Dunne, Mads Floor Andersen & Rosanna Traina tracingthepathway.wordpress.com @TracingPathways
	Laced Lace, thread, slide, feed them close together, in and through the other. Lace. Pull, bring white to the finger tips, stretch and strain the spine. Lace. Complete, repeat and return.Holly Johnson @johnson_holly1
	baby wears a balaclava Written on the piece of paper is a request, an instruction, a desire, a revealing anecdote, a possibility, a fragment, a frustration, an encounter, a beginning and an end…Tim Bishop @timmybishop
	Spitting Distance I am broken, and just like my Dad did, I want you to make me better again through the polysemous act of spitting.Mark Flisher www.markflisher.co.uk @MarkFlisher

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	Failure to COMMUNICATE Madness – Somewhere within it lies sancitity, reasoning and sound thought {Sound} Thoughts without names from past masters.Taylor Le Fin idlevault.blogspot.com @TLeFin
	True Love Waits A durational participatory project engaging with cycles of boredom, play, improvisation and space making. with no intention towards or expectation of an outcome; a non-verbal something out of nothing.daniabulhawa.wordpress.com @skeeterdani
	Sardonik Grin Sardonik Grin is the live sound scuplture project of Llewyn Máire (kabbage23, Try My Cabbage, gyrl grip).A previous sound collaborator on the Traces of Being project with Thomas John Bacon, Llewyn Máire brings a wonderful live sound to the evening. Thriving in the liminal spaces of gender, culture, life and death, Máire’s work seeks to expose, challenge and explore the constructs of identity, the mediation of socio-cultural experiences, and the influence of power.kabbage.panzen.net @kabbage23