On performance art and such matters from my point of view

published in booklet «11th – 25th November Live Art 2011 Bangalore», editor Bengaluru Artist Residency BAR1, Smitha Cariappa Bangalore, 2012, pages 12–13

abouth the booklet

«Why a Internationa Performance art event in Bangalore?»

Bengaluru Artist Residency One (BAR1) is a non-profit exchange programme by artists for artists to foster the local, Indian and international mutual exchange of ideas and experiences through guest residencies in Bangalore. Bengaluru Artist Residency One is registered as a Public Charitable Trust. Currently, Bar1 is engaged in project based works.

Live Art 2011 is a performance art project by Bar1, organized by Smitha Cariappa, in Bangalore between 11- 25 November 2011. An event of this scale, with 26 Indian and international participants, is the first of its kind to take place in Bangalore and will become a gathering of artists, who use performance as a medium of expression. ...

booklet

text contribution by Dorothea Rust

«On performance art and such matters from my point of view»

«When we talk about «Performance Art» we talk about a definition, but foremost it's a practice with human beings at the source and behind it. It’s most important that we witness, experience and do perceive ‹performance› as a singular and yet very diverse cultural and transdisciplinary practice. As such it can merge, cross and dissolve categories like dance, music, visual arts, theatre, literature to non-arts practices like social-, political-, community-work and much more –it's a way of thinking, an attitude towards life. The word ‹art› creates/frames it as a specific space of reflection.

There are no limits and codes to the use of time, space and material: so to speak performance can happen at any place (theatres, galleries, off-spaces, work-sites, public and private spaces etc.), at any time, in any durational length from a short moment to a year or more. And last but not least it has so much potential for surprises. Human bodies/beings in relation to society are vulnerable and unpredictable in their behaviour and (therefore) controlled by social rules and codes - the single human being/body is at the base a (very) political issue. As a performance artist I want to move into those gaps of rules and codes with the notion that human beings are as well capable for consensus, common understanding and empathy.

Through performance I like to create a space, where people feel physically present, very alive and experience a real immediate situation - where we enter somehow into communication with one another - sometimes this situation can become very precarious, sometimes very poetic, sometimes it’s common.»

Zurich, 15th January 2012