About Me!
I am a second year, Bachelors of Arts Honours student. In elementary and high school I had my entire future planned out surrounding dental schools and orthodontics specialties at schools out of province. Nearing the end of high school, barely passing my chemistry class, spending all of my time crying in an art room to my teachers, I finally realized reaching my goals PROBABLY shouldn’t make me so miserable. My art teachers told me I should seriously consider a pathway in art, telling me about their experriences in University (most of them went to Guelph!). I decided I’d consider it, but I hadn’t spent years planning to be an art teacher, so it seemed impossible. Two of my teachers gave me the opportunity to take student teacher positions in their grade.9 classrooms and I immedietly knew teaching was a much better fit than what I’d been working for. I am from Guelph(ish) and when it finally came down to choosing schools, I was in a place where I couldn’t imagine (or afford) leaving home, I am so lucky that the most convienient school for me is one of the greatest, both in regards to the art program aswell as the community.
Marina Abramovic
- My first impression of Marina is how incredibly strong and brave she is. She creates art that she knows will bother people. She knows many won’t understand her. She knows it takes a specific headspace to feel what she is portraying, but she continues to create. I think that this speaks to her passion to create for herself, and for a specific audience, rather than to “succeed” or receive recognition. Her undeniable endurance is incredible. Rhythm 5 (1975) was briefly mentioned in the documentary. This piece began with a large wooden pentagram being lit on fire and Marina tossing pieces of herself (hair, nails, etc..) into it, she then threw herself into the flames. This performance was incredibly dangerous, and Marina lost consciousness during it, but she continued to perform despite harming herself and receiving backlash. Despite controversies, she is a very admirable woman and artist. The pure emotion people feel simply by sitting across from her speaks to the impact she has.A quote that stuck out to me was “with Marina, she is never not performing”, I feel this is displayed fantastically with her endurance piece The Lovers (1988), where she and Ulay walked from opposite ends of the Great Wall of China, for 90 days, to symbolize the end of their relationship.
2. When discussing preformance art, state of mind was mentioned multiple times within the documentary.
“it doesn’t matter what kind of work you’re doing as an artist, the most important is from what state of mind. preformance is all state of mind.”
How an artist can take an audience, of any demographic, and move them to feel things, and enter a similar state of mind to which the artist is in is a beautiful and important ability.
“you have to create your own charismatic space” “for most pieces, people stop and look for 30 seconds. People stay here all day”.
Preformance art considers so much more than just how ‘cool’ something will look. It is about changing a space, and untimatly changing people. Creating something that doesn’t just change a headspace for a moment, but becomes something that people look back on and reflect on those feelings many times.
3. Preformance art is constantly resisting what is commercially considered art, even as art styles change. When preformance is how the art is being communicated, the medium is the body, this is directly challenging the viewer. The art we see most frequently is created to appease an audience, it’s familiar and safe, the mane goal is to look pleasent. With preformance, if you are not willing to feel the emotion, you won’t understand the art. That is incredibly challenging to market to an audience, as many people simply do not understand, or wont LET themselves understand. Just based off of what I saw in the documentary, I didn’t particularly notice Marina compromising to fit in to these social ideals, although I could be wrong, if I am not I consider that incredibly admirable.
1 Kilometer ; The Cost of Going Nowhere
A trend in my art style is creating based on what I’m currently passionate about.
To me, a kilometre has so many meanings, but in my current headspace, I knew I wanted to make this about travel by car. As a commuter student in a long-distance relationship, and someone whose car is my most prized possession, there were a lot of different ideas flooding through my brain. I reflected on what an overarching theme in all of these concepts was: I pollute our planet, A LOT!
To briefly summarize my ‘performance’, driving one kilometre is such a minuscule act in our minds; it’s a couple of seconds in the car. We all know cars are not good for our planet, but do we really know just how bad they are? Do we really recognize the magnitude of one kilometre?
Most of us are ‘environmentally conscious’, we don’t use plastic utensils, cups, straws, or bags.
My “muse” for the math in this project is my dad’s Dodge Ram.
This truck burns 0.2L (200mL) of gas per kilometre. If I gave you a jar with 200mL of water in it, that would not make an impact.
Burning 200mL of gas produces roughly 500g of CO2.
Producing 1kg of plastic emits roughly 2-6kg of CO2.
That means the emissions of 200mL of gas is equivalent to 0.5kg of plastic.
300 plastic straws
30 plastic lids
18 plastic forks
15 grocery bags
9 plastic cups
Using this amount of plastic would eat up our conscience; many of us would never use these things, it is incredibly immoral.
The production of each of these emits the same amount of CO2 as driving just one kilometre. Driving across campus is a task we view as insignificant, but that is equivalent to using nearly 100 plastic forks. Why are we so woke when it comes to using a straw but not driving down the street?
I wanted to make everyone as angry as I was. I want us all to reflect on whether driving one kilometre is worth avoiding that 15 minutes of exercise. If you wouldn’t use 300 plastic straws in one day, why will you drive that one kilometre?
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