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Rest: “Lie of the land; line of vision”, Vito Acconci, 1969, MoMA: Drawings and Prints

Gift of the Gilbert B. and Lila Silverman Instruction Drawing Collection, Detroit Size: (.a): 11 × 8 ½" (27.9 × 21.6 cm); (.b): 8 ½ × 17 5/8" (21.6 × 44.8 cm) Medium: Typewriting on paper and five gelatin silve prints mounted on paper

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/288747

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Farewell and Thanks!

I wanted to say a quick thanks and happy summer to everyone! I loved this class so much, and I am definitely going to keep bringing more performance into my mediums moving forward. I'm going to continue my sound performances spontaneously on instagram if anyone wants to follow @ sheinafae!

I wanted to leave a quick note about why I didn't reblog this semester, and I hope no one was offended! While I did my absolute best to find and comment on everyone's pieces this semester, I was already familiar with reblogging on tumblr and had experienced what havok it can wreak on the home feed. Especially if everyone isn't reblogging everyone, posts could (and did) really get lost in the sea of repeated reblogs, and I just didn't want to contribute to the clutter. I wanted to say something early in the semester but time kept passing and I didn't, so I figured I'd say something at the end.

Oki, that's it! You are all so incredibly talented and I'm so grateful to have shared this virtual class with you all! Thank you all for your vulnerability and acceptance. <3

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I’m fine. I made the mistake of having the course end at 5am in Friday instead of 5pm, sorry! But thanks for thinking of me. It was a fun semester and everyone did some amazing performance art. Thanks to all of you for your work, support, and positive energy.

Has anyone heard from Matt? The performance art tab is deleted off of Canvas and I’m just curious if everything is okay

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Open Work: Simplicity of Meditation

For my final performance, I record myself meditating, a practice I’ve been doing regularly for a couple years now. one of the first performance I’ve recorded of myself a couple years ago in another class was me meditating as well so it feels like this has come full circle. I noticed a lot of misconceptions about meditating. I feel as if a lot of the western views of it are projections of our culture here causing misunderstanding, presumptions, and judgment. One thing I hear a lot is that people think they don’t like meditation because they don’t want to become a “zombie”, emotionless, and passive. On the contrary meditation isn’t doing any of those things. I feel like I can compare that kind of statement to someone who doesn’t want to workout because they don’t want to accidentally become too muscular. That just doesn’t happen by accident. Meditation isn’t about pushing out emotions, it’s not about doing anything. The practice in of itself is just witnessing the self, understanding the flow of thought and emotion, and when out in the world you can recognize your patterns and instead of reacting you can respond. This I believe is the opposite of passive, it’s actively training yourself to align with what you  want to do in the present moment.

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Final performance

Artist statement:

For this project I was inspired by both our site specific and our material agency project. I wanted to create a work in which the location and material were both integral. Like my site specific project, I wanted to give back to and honor a space that I take so much from. The space I chose for this project was my cabin. This cabin has been in my moms side of the family for 8 generations. We spend about a total of a month or two here over each year, however for me, this has always been more of a home than any permanent residence. This space has given me so much as I have grown—a space to play, to be safe, and to explore. It has allowed me to form a deep love for the natural world and a connection to my ancestry. As a family, we spend the month of may giving back to the space to prepare it for the summer. We do this by primarily repainting and cleaning but this year I wanted give more, to give a gift. With all of this in mind I decided to record and perform the act of planting lavender, the flower of devotion, as a gift to the space that has continuously given for almost 150 years. Through this act i interact with the materials, digging the hole, planting the lavender, scooping and shaping the dirt, and pouring the water from the river. This act is both a thank you and a reminder to keep fostering and nurturing this space. To continue to do what it has done for me and my family through out our lives.

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Performance artist of the week 14: Senga Nengudi

Senga Nengudi is Colorado based multi media artist working in both los angles and New York. She is best know for her sculptures that are abstract in nature that combine found objects and choreographed performance. She was one of the most influential artists working with in the black arts movement of the 1970s. Throughout her career her work as been focused on highlighting black experiences and womenhood through movement, space and the function of ritual.

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Final Project: Overflow

This year has been beyond emotionally and mentally overwhelming. I experienced some personal trauma and a great deal of loss resulting in a lot of major life changes. I felt like I had been continuously riding on the edge of a breaking point, where my pain and frustration had filled me completely to the brim and began to overflow into different areas of my life like a constant inescapable feedback.

This piece is an audio expression of these emotions that ran heavy for me over the past year. Using sound as my medium, I attempted to illustrate the build-up of frustration and pain that I experienced, and also the feeling of a slow recovery and return to a shaky normalcy that have followed. I also considered some visual elements in this performance. I did my hair and makeup but wore a bathrobe to represent how the pandemic forced us to be presentable for work/school while we were in our own homes. This is also why I used a ring light as my spotlight; to highlight the pressure to be camera-ready at all times. Changing the light source to a small jar lamp at the end symbolized me returning from the “stage” to myself into a place of comfort and safety.

The sounds sampled in the performance were recorded during the height of the pandemic. Most were taken at work, and were of things like plastic gloves crinkling, wiping counters, bleach bottles, etc. Other sounds were of my ex-partner and I. I created patches on my synthesizers that best represented to me the physical sensations of being emotionally overwhelmed. I ran my delay pedal on a longer time setting and allowed the feedback to play out as I channeled these feelings and improvised.

(I streamed this live on Instagram but didn’t leave the video up for too long because I honestly felt too vulnerable having this on my account. I uploaded it to youtube, but the sound is slightly out of sync with the video. For those that watch, thank you for seeing and hearing my vulnerability. I invite you to channel your own frustrations through the sounds and release with me. <3)

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Project 4 Service with a Smile artist statement

have worked in the service industry for 6 years. Every day, I wear a smile on my face that grows weaker. Although this industry has provided me with the opportunity to make a livable wage in a very expensive state, it tests me. We have all heard the motto “the customer is always right”. While this might be a great motto to keep customers coming back to your place of work, it perpetuates a very negative part of this service driven country. The customer is not always right, and in fact, the customer is very often incorrect. Businesses, and in particular-restaurants allow, and often-unintentionally-encourage, behavior that is abusive to its workers. To create an environment where the mindset is “the more unpleasant you are, the more you get special treatment”, is to tell your workers that they are not valuable. The mental health, and emotional well-being of restaurant staff is often the last of the priorities to corporate leaders. It is unethical to allow the staff that supports a business to become a punching bag for customers who have discovered a secret…that they can get what they want with the perfect combination of condescension, threats, and demands. It is time for businesses to put their employees first. Every day, employees can decide to show up and do their best, or they can choose to show up and give a small percentage of their efforts. They can choose to go the extra mile to help, or they can show up for you only when required. They can promote your company outside of the work place, or they can speak about the injustices they face every day. I believe that the business model for putting employees first; should be the standard as opposed to the exception.

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Service with a Smile

https://youtu.be/BE85GseZEfw

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Service with a Smile

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PAW 12

Ana Mendieta

Untitled (from the Silueta series), 1973-1977 MCA Chicago

I appreciate the work of Ana Mendieta because of how she uses the human body to imprint herself into the landscapes of her environment. It is interesting to learn about her history of displacement and to see how this influences her work.

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PAW 13

I found the work of Valie Export to be really interesting. In this image, she encourages individuals to reach behind the curtain to touch her breasts. This is to expose people to a real woman's body as opposed to the idealized version.

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PAW 14

Marc Arthur, Wandering in Ypsilanti (2020) Ypsilanti, Michigan

I thought that this work was interesting. It was creating during the covid isolation period in response to skeptics of science. It was based on a book about the doctor who cured tuberculosis, and the skeptics that confronted him.

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(Project 3: Site Specific) Walking the dog

In this performance I recorded myself bringing my dog outside of my apartment which is located in Cap Hill. Although this is relatively a small task, going outside at night in the city brings back a lot of difficult memories. Every time I hear people and cars come near I check over my shoulder and I feel my body anticipate defense. Before I transitioned, my appearance called for unwarranted harassments. When I was younger, older men would cat call me, yelling out from cars, and when I didn’t respond they would call me a bitch and follow me in their car or on foot. I never felt safe alone on the street, especially in the dark. Now that I pass as a guy, this threat never happens. When I would see a man I would expect what I was used to, comments on my body, them getting into my personal space, though it hasn’t happen again since starting testosterone. It may be obvious to some people men get treated differently in public spaces than women, but I hear too often men not realizing the constant survival mode people who present as femme in society experience. Living with years of experience treated one way, then now having all of this sense of freedom yet privilage to even just walk at night without fear makes me what to say something about it all. The intense harassments women and femmes in general experience is appalling and very real. We need to use our voices to teach other men to not attack and objectify women, and that to step and stop their “friends”.

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(Project 4: Participation) Chirping Frogs

For this performance my partner Park and I played these little wooden frogs that make a chirping sound. We’ve been having so much happening in our lives over the past year. Things felt slow during the pandemic then it felt like all at once everything we were needing to do happened all at once. With prepping my stuff to move soon to a new apartment, I’ve been going through the process of looking at what to donate, and what to keep. One object I came across were these frogs. They were originally a gift from Park’s Mom to us when we lived with her. As I held it in my hands I thought if I should keep it or not. I started to play with it and Park joined me. I thought I should document this moment. Watching it it makes me think this is rather common when people are going through there stuff when needing to move or get rid of clutter. We play and try on things we haven’t touched in probably years. Moments like this its nice to connect to the memories the objects have. And don’t worry we decided to keep them!

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Collapsing Wall- Project #2

Artist Statement

For this project I used the disposable coffee cups that many people use not for single cup coffee makers. It was a moment of reflection for sustainability. So much in this world is used once and just thrown away. When I started this idea was to show how this waste and plastic was piling up. It revealed a different meaning on-top of that to me. It was almost symbolic of how this with not sustain and everything will eventually start to collapse with out planet if we just keep piling up the trash. We need to build our world up with better materials or she may in-fact just knock us over. 

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Performance #4 Participation

5/10/21 10pm

For this performance, I used the participation of my partner and friend to help me collect materials for a collage. Those pieces created a 3’x4’ mixed media collage that was inspired by the artist, Hannah Hoch. I was having a hard time coming up with the participation aspect of my piece, but I felt as if it was a really strong symbolic piece, in the end. We all spent a few hours peeling through old magazines and cutting out whatever we wanted to contribute to the collage. This made for a really fun time hanging out, eating ice cream and being creative together. With all the isolation from covid-19 it really was such an affecting event to spend time with friends and have a piece of work to go with it. After we all cut out a good pile of materials, I arranged them on a prepared canvas with modge-podge. That part was harder than I expected so I stayed up for a while trying to incorporate all the pieces. It definitely was challenging to harmonize all of our pieces because all three of us had our own idea of what we were picking, but I thought that definitely added to the performance focusing on how our individual choices could be put together in a coherent beautiful piece of art. This piece is an existing tangible memory for this event although a small memory, really means a lot when I look at it.