AN OBJECT
OF STUDY
Performance
by Ivan Lupi
Presented
in LiVEART.US for the program 'Transformations' hosted at the Queens Museum,
New York City, USA.
AN OBJECT
OF STUDY is performed in collaboration with Prof. Ryan Ashley Caldwell from
Soka University of America.
LiVEART.US
is curated and organized by Hector Canonge.
Saturday 17th of
September 2016 at 2.00 p.m.
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| Freehand tattoo designs by Mishka Stein. Ph Martina O'Shea, 2016. |
I trust
the audience. I don't just consider it merely to be an audience. Once we are in
the same room at the same time and we are all focusing on each other, the
audience is performing as much as I am. As things correctly stand, most of the
time the public enters the room and sits waiting for the performer to create
something that hopefully fulfills or perhaps disappoints their expectations.
Only a few performers have escaped this format successfully. I believe that a
more critical approach from the audience is needed at the moment of the action.
Not before. Not after. (Ivan Lupi)
In times of
radical political changes it becomes difficult to keep the focus on the
importance of what 'sharing' means. How can we come together if we feel
separated? How is it possible to exist together when we don’t know how to
understand the other(ed)? Performance art, social movements and protests
clearly blur into each other more and more in their attempt to raise awareness
on the topic of ‘sharing’ thereby creating confusion, noise and sometimes the erasure
of important embodied self-narratives. What we see happening on the street, in
galleries or underground scenes is only the surface of a hidden landscape that
unravels itself between the walls of our actual homes. They are interestingly
connected —the individual, the group, and larger culture. Dialogues,
interpretations, and meanings unfold about these spaces, “homes”, and stories
of identity manifest. Inspired by the private battles for our identities that
we “do” within our closer circles of family, these clashes are what the sort of
“domestic activism” challenges that are the point of departure for
understanding this performance piece. If the family is the initial place for
socialization about culture, it is certainly influential in determining not only
how we come to see and engage with the world, but also in how we see and engage
(and accept) ourselves. This approach is a secluded movement that sees
ourselves involved on a daily basis where our body and embodiment plays a very
important role in identity, activism, social relations (families, cultures,
etc.), and beyond.
In the new
work presented by the program LiVEART.US, curated by Hector Canonge and hosted
at the Queens Museum in New York City, Ivan Lupi offers his body as a
performance tool for those present to “come together" and "experience
together” an open and informal, theoretical and practical conversation on the
themes triggered by Professor Ryan Ashley Caldwell from Soka University of
America. Ivan Lupi is this month's CONVIVIR artist in residence at MODULO 715,
a live-in-create program initiated by Hector Canonge in 2015.
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| Freehand tattoo designs by Mishka Stein. Ph Martina O'Shea, 2016. |
