Category: Reality Art

Reactor

(Via RH‘s PhD thesis.)

From website:

Based in the UK, Reactor is a group of contemporary artists whose collective practice is focused on creating projects in which audiences become active participants. By developing situations that leave no room for the passive observer Reactor create work in which, rather than being forced, active engagement becomes the norm. Group dynamics and social interaction come to the fore, as participants immerse themselves in an unknown that invites risk-taking and a heightened sense of reality. The multilayered and social nature of the experience encourages diverse interpretations of the meaning of the work and emphasises the responsibility individuals have in forming collective perceptions of reality.

As described by former member Dave Bond:

Reactor began life as an exhibition of the same name, staged in September of 2002, in which all the artworks focused around the active participation of the audience. The exhibition took place in the same warehouse building that also housed our two separate studio groups of Graze and Aldaran, and when we found out the building was doomed to be demolished to make way for student flats the core members of both groups banded together and formed something new: Reactor.

Reactor was both a collection of artists who worked individually but also an organisation that worked collaboratively to stage events and exhibitions, continuing the original ethos of interaction and involvement with the audience.

This collaboration reached another level with the development of GHAOS: where previously we had generally worked individually on our own elements of Reactor projects, GHAOS projects were created entirely as a group under the sole authorship of Reactor. GHAOS methodology evolved an exuberant and darkly comic attitude, entwining complex systems with elaborate wordplay, often confusing and manipulating the audience but simultaneously encouraging them to involve themselves in the bizarre fantasies presented to them to make the leap from being passive spectators to ‘GHAOS Actors’. In October 2005 this cumulated in the event Total GHAOS: a totalitarian utopia ruled by the Reactor Party under the principles of GHAOS.

Post-GHAOS and following a period of assessment, Reactor decided to maintain the group practice and develop less frequent but more complex, large-scale events. Continuing to misdirect and confuse audience perceptions, initially under the secret identity of Ivan’s Dogs, a fake artists group from Northern Ireland, and then going on to develop events exploring social and group dynamics and psychological experimentation in The Geodecity Project and The Tetra Phase.

Robin Hely

Whatever his shortcomings as a human being, he’s undeniably an amazing artist. And his sociopathy and his genius kind of go hand in hand.

“As an artist, I have a big problem,” he said to me once. “I don’t really like art. I just love fucking with peoples’ heads.”

Yeah.

“Interventionist performance art”, he’s calling it now. Previously known as “interactive public theatre”. I still like “reality art”. Whatever it is, it’s something else.

Interesting review of “Sherrie“. Origin of the spycam. Missing Person –> Who Is Robert Henley?. Oh, and then there’s this. Changed my life, y’know.

I miss the evil bastard. He’s never dull.

(Previously.)

Harry Goldgar, Telepath

Googling on the phrase “telepathy project”, I found this. See also.

I think most people would call this psychosis, not art. But like many manifestations of delusional paranoia, it’s also recognisable as beautiful art, even if it wasn’t created with that intent.

We all live in our own dreamworld(s) – some people’s are just more divergent from the norm (and, for better or worse, a lot more interesting) than others’.

Live Art

From the UK’s Live Art Development Agency:

Disrupting borders, breaking rules, defying traditions, resisting definitions, asking awkward questions and activating audiences, Live Art breaks the rules about who is making art, how they are making it and who they are making it for.

Live Art practices have proved to be especially equipped to meet the complexity and sophistication of contemporary audiences’ values, identities and expectations. Live Art questions assumptions and defies expectations about who an audience can be, what they might be interested in, and the means by which they can be addressed.

Live Art occupies a huge range of sites and circumstances, from the institutional to artist led interventions; from actions in galleries and performances in theatres, to artists working outside of the constraints of official culture, within civic or social spheres, in challenging and unexpected sites, or at the points where live and mediated cultures converge. Some may experience Live Art in a gallery, others in a theatre, and others still as an occurrence in some unusual location or a process in which they are involved.

Live Art can also span extremities of scales – from intimate one on one encounters, to civic spectacles, to the mass participation of virtual events. Wherever they may take place or whatever shape they may be, Live Art practices are concerned with all kinds of interventions in the public sphere and all kinds of encounters with an audience.

Live Art offers immersive experiences, often disrupting distinctions between spectator and participant. Live Art asks us what it means to be here, now. In the simultaneity and interactivity of a media saturated society, Live Art is about immediacy and reality: creating spaces to explore the experience of things, the ambiguities of meaning and the responsibilities of our individual agency.

Live Art is on the frontline of enquiries into what our culture is and where it is located, who our artists are and where they come from, what an audience can be and how they can be addressed.

Strangers & Intimacy

(Via Rob Hely.)

Strangers & Intimacy was an interactive performance work staged at West Space in Melbourne in early 2005.

The project began in September 2004 when eight artists were assigned a pen pal living in a city on the other side of the world. On the first day of September they all wrote a four line letter of introduction to their foreign pen friend. Over the four months, between September and December they continued writing letters to each other each week.

The development process was interesting enough all by itself..

Part One = Letters – The strangers meet via hand written letters, they reveal themselves, become intimate, share pasts, stories, memories and daily life.

Part Two = Melbourne – They establish a working relationship upon meeting at West Space in Melbourne, they stand face to face, sort through all the material, share ideas and create performances.

Part Three = Glasgow – The artists then travel together to Glasgow, the temperature drops, the poles shift and new intimacies form.

.. but what sounds really interesting (from the account related to me yesterday) is the actual performance, which – probably appropriately – isn’t described at all on the page linked above.

Cults As Art

The previous two posts inevitably bring to mind of a certain other individual whose work I’ve admired. But can he be legitimately classified as an Artist?

In my terms, absolutely. But then I think everything people do is recognisable as art. (And that all institutions are recognisable as cults..)

What about this guy?

The Church of Scientology was not intended to be art in any conventional sense. Its purpose was to make money and slaves for Mr Hubbard, shoring up his rampant god complex.

“Writing stories for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a creative man wants to make a million dollars, the way to do it is to start your own religion.” Etc.

But however venal its objectives, it’s also a bizarre, byzantine and beautiful creative accomplishment – and LRH is recognisable as a Reality Artist of jawdropping genius. (A greedy, sadistic, megalomaniacal cunt, sure – but that’s neither here nor there. He got his. And genius in ugly forms is still genius.)

These speculations stem largely from my experiences with this singular beastie – the most extreme example I know of a mind control cult which was, covertly but very explicitly, created and maintained as a legitimate Art Project.

Distinctions, eh.

Lynn Hershman

(Via J.)

Specifically: Roberta Breitmore.

ROBERTA BREITMORE was, for 9 years, a private performance of a simulated person. In an era of alternatives, she became an objectified alternative personality. Roberta’s first live action was to place an ad in a local newspaper advertising for a roommate. People who answered the ad became participants in her adventure. As she became part of their reality, they became part of her fiction.

Yes.

(More links.)