#tracey warr

[k00288674]

Marina abramovic

(artist research)

I found the work of marina abramovic quite interesting to view and to experience.

Her work " The artist is present", is a spectacular performance piece where she sits and stares at whoever is willing to sit and stare at her.

I love the idea of art being able to stare back at us, making us feel a mixture of emotions.

Eye contact, can be so hard to maintain as well while interacting with people, even though it sounds so simple to do. So I love this element of her holding her gaze determinedly, provoke different reactions from the person opposite her.

Her work, "Rhythm 0" is also a disturbingly spectacular piece too.

She let people do whatever they wanted to her body, for many hours, with acts becoming more violent as the hours went by.

She put herself as an object (like how women can feel) and represented, I feel, toxic masculinity and how power and lack of boundaries can become very dangerous.

Overall, in my opinion, she is excellent at creating an uncomfortable feeling within people, something of which I feel resonates with my own project work.

(Some work found in book, "The artist body" by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones.)

EDIT

My use of the word uncomfortable was not intended to be negative. I was conveying how I feel her work is very deep and is heavily thought provoking.

[philomaela]

I recently read “The Viking Hostage” by Tracey Warr and it proved to be a breath of fresh air in my adventures of Viking Age historical fiction... mainly because this book was set in France and Wales rather than the usual stomping grounds of England or Iceland.

The story mainly concerns 3 women, Adalmode (daughter of the viscount of Limoges), Aina (heiress of Segur) and Sigrid (a pagan slave who serves Aina’s family). The story tracks their intertwined adventures, as they navigate the political struggles and harsh norms of the society they live in.

I’m not entirely sure whether to recommend this novel or not. I would say that I liked most of it, some of it I definitely found refreshing and unique compared to the other books I’ve read in this list so far. However I’m not sure if that means that everyone will enjoy it... perhaps I should say that it’s worth checking out?

Okay, onto the review which I will try to keep spoiler free:

So, I really enjoyed getting a historical fiction novel that explored medieval France, it was interesting reading about the power struggles of Aquitaine and Wales to a lesser extent and I actually enjoyed how much exposition there was about who was gaining power in what region, even when it sometimes felt somewhat unneeded for the plot at hand. It was just refreshing to hear about a bunch of dudes named Guillaume and Louis rather than a bunch of Athelstans lol. I also liked how the Welsh characters were humanized and given personalities, because I feel like in my reading... whenever I read stories that take place in England, the Welsh and the Scottish people... they’re almost treated like stock vikings are in other media? Like, these books are working so hard to make sure people know that these Vikings are well-rounded characters who don’t conform to the “stereotypical viking” and then they go and decide to be like... well here are these stock Welsh and Scottish villains (not even really villains since the focus is on them as a group rather than any individual) who have no personality and no voice in a lot of cases. So to have a book discuss Welsh politics and have our characters interact with Welsh characters in a relatively meaningful way was nice imo.

As far as the characters go, I really enjoyed Sigrid and Aina and their relationship. Sigrid is a completely original character so the author uses her to explore some really interesting details. Sigrid was made a slave at a point in time when Christians were discouraged from buying other Christians as slaves, so when she bought by Aina’s family, the family initially thinks that they can just convert her and free her that way, but Sigrid doesn’t want to give up her faith.

I also really liked the interplay of Sigrid and Aina’s personalities because Aina is portrayed as... I don’t want to say a selfish character, because I don’t think her desires are necessarily selfish, but she never thinks about the potential ramifications of her actions. This extends to actions that have negative ramifications for the people she loves and I think what’s interesting about it is that the story allows her to be uncompromising, but you never doubt how much she and Sigrid love each other and always want to be together and take care of each other.

Guy, Adalmode’s brother and Aina’s betrothed, is also an interesting character. He’s portrayed as very politically competent and intelligent, but he’s very nearsighted to the point where he struggles with every day tasks and especially things like swordfighting, which is expected of him as a future viscount. He goes through a lot of effort to try and hide his nearsightedness and compensate for it and prove that he’s  “worthy” in other ways.

Now, about the stuff that I didn’t like as much... notice how I haven’t talked about Adalmode yet? Yeah, I didn’t find her part of the story to be particularly satisfying. Her story is primarily about her romance with Audebert, the son of the count of La Marche, who she meets when he is first taken prisoner by her father. I was a little put off by the fact that they meet when Adalmode is twelve and Audebert is seventeen, and that it’s meant to spark this decade long love affair, but that didn’t even end up being my main issue with it. Like, I’ve read plenty of books where I’ve found the romance off-putting but I was still invested in the characters themselves, the problem was that the book didn’t seem entirely invested in Adalmode’s journey? I understand that she has a very internal journey, compared to Sigrid and Aina, but I think you still could have done more with her? As the story went on, she kind if disappears from the narrative, her chapters get smaller and it feels like we’re just watching her repeat over and over her how she feels about Audebert. It’s compounded by the fact that, we get a ton of PoV from Audebert and Guillaume, the future duke of Aquitaine, who takes up this sort of villainous rival role in the story, as a rival suitor for Adalmode’s hand. Guillaume and his mother, Emma of Blois, are portrayed as like so villainous and such caricatures that I was really tired of it because well... why are we hearing so much from them when we get so little from Adalmode? It felt very unbalanced and that threw me off a lot.

Also, just as a general critique, the story covers a lot of time and sometimes things get a bit blurry when we see whole years jump in the course of a single paragraph. 

I.... said I was hesitant to recommend this book and the funny thing is, my hesitation doesn’t actually come from the parts I disliked but from the parts I liked! I kept using the adjective “refreshing” when describing the parts I liked about this book and I think that kind of reveals a core issue, it’s refreshing because of all the books I’ve read previously, and I’m not entirely sure how it stands on its own? Thinking it over, I believe it’s a solid read, and you should check it out if you’re interested, it’s just... well keep in mind, you may not find it quite as exciting and enjoyable as I did lol.

[coloursofunison]

Welcome to today's stop on the blog tour for The Anarchy by Tracey Warr

Welcome to today's stop on the blog tour for The Anarchy by Tracey Warr @TraceyWarr1 @maryanneyarde @tracey.warr.9 @coffepotbookclub #HistoricalFiction #Medieval #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub

Welcome to the blog. Your book, The Anarchy, is set in a time period that I thoroughly enjoy and sounds absolutely fascinating. As a historian first and foremost, and then a writer, I’m always interested in how people research their historical stories. Can you explain your research process to me, and give an idea of the resources that you rely on the most (other than your imagination, of course)…

[festalfavours]

FESTAL FAVOURS is a programme of performance art, sound installation, experimental printmaking and new writing curated by CLARE CARSWELL for the new CHARLBURY FESTIVAL.  

SATURDAY 10th - SUNDAY18th JUNE 2017.

Presenting two week-ends of residencies, installation and performance art by thirteen artists, it will introduce performance art to the local audience and will showcase new works made especially for Charlbury by major names as well as by younger artists. 

Writer and academic TRACEY WARR will write the introduction to our catalogue and leads a team of guest writers and artists who will make written responses to the performance works of all types, from review to poetry and fiction. www.traceywarrwriting.com

Artist ISABEL WILKINSON is artist-in-residence at Southill Solar Farm Charlbury and will run a cyanotype making workshop on Sunday 11th June. www.isabelwilkinson.net

Artist technologist NEIL C SMITH is collaborating with young artist WILL H HARVEY to make a site specific sound installation for the Larcum Kendal Room in The Corner House. www.neilcsmith.net  cargocollective.com/Will_Harvey

CLARE CARSWELL MA(RCA), is an artist and Director of COU COU Curation (formerly AYYO Contemporary Art) www.cou-cou.org  www.clarecarswellperformance.com

[msudenverperformanceart]

By Amelia Jones and Tracey Warr. One of the best books ever.

[aliciafrankovich]

Alicia Frankovich, The Work, Performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, September 14 & 28, 2019, 1 pm

60 min

With: John Bayley, Keith Bell, Brendan Buckley, John Corbishley, Michael Dagostino, Sophie Day, Xueer Du, Lauren Eiko, Neil Evans, Ryuichi Fujimara, Qingqing Guo, Alison Guthrie, David Huggins, Chrissie Ianssen, Stephen Jones, Brian Mahoney, Karen Libbury, Richard Maude, Nataasha Menon, Ian Milliss, Gill Minervini, April Murdoch, Glenn O’Reilly, Jessica Pedemont, Travis Rice, Michael Rolfe, Leigh Russell, Marian Simpson, Lleah Smith, Cassandra Starr, Christelle Tuyau, Margot Warre, Ivey Wawn, Tracey West, Serena Weatherall, Beiyuan (Hugo) Zhang, John Zhao und anderen / and others

Assistant choreographer: Brooke Stamp

Produktionsassistenz / Production assistant: Michael Waite

Production: Emily Sullivan Commissioned by: Kaldor Public Art Projects

Photos: Hamish Tame

[baileymitc-hell]

Additional Texts

healing experience; it makes one part of rhe eternal cycle of nature. One senses the slow breathing of the earrh. A lot of theory discusses 'the body' as if it could be considered in isolation - but the artist's body is self-evidently self-reflexive. notes/important excerpts/my understandings/points of interest Design with the senses and for the senses:an alternative teaching model for design studio - May Al-lbrashy &Tammy Gaber ‘The hands want to see, the eyes want to caress’ (Goethe qtd. In Pallasmaa, 2005, p. 14) installation-  they were used to expressing buildings through drawings, photos and words. This is how they had been taught  to analyse and design. asked  to translate the ideas and understanding of one of their case study buildings into a bodily experience and to refer to conceptual and installation art as a genre. address the sense of touch but evoked a mix of all of the senses. We were asked to enter the room in line with our eyes closed, with each person’s hand on the previous person’s shoulder . installation making involved bringing the student back to primal actions of making with their hands.The ‘real’ properties of materials, their textures, ability to stretch, stand, support, transmit light and so forth became part of the design process for the students. While each student had a preliminary idea of what they wanted in their installation, modifications were made while making, often with improvisations and unexpected solutions 

“The skin reads the texture, weight, density and temperature of matter… The tactile sense connects us with time and tradition: through impressions of touch we shake the hands of countless generations…” (Pallassmaa, 2005, p.56). The Informe Body  Tracey Warr This article discusses this oscillating flux in relation to a range of visual artists using their own bodies in their artworks - in performance, painting, sculpture, photography, film and video. Vagina Painting heavy aspects of performativity The artist's body is an art object that will not stay put and fixed in its role, it is contingent and gets up and walks back into the artist's life. As art object the artist's body is always ephemeral. leaving only its imprint or trace in gelatin, paint, microchips or its relic in cast objects, its indexical mark or stain, or simply its memory burnt on the retina and the cortex.

Examples of work:1 Artists leave their trace behind - in the body prints that Yves Klein made in Anthropometries 2, in Francesca Woodman's enigmatic photographs of herself as an almost insubstantial body in flight through a world of materiality, or in Ana Mendieta's imprints of her silhouette in mud, grass and ash.2 it commands a bodily as well as an imaginative empathy from its viewers. how the body is at once subjective and an interface with the objective world, A lot of theory discusses 'the body' as if it could be considered in isolation - but the artist's body is self-evidently self-reflexive. An Archtiecture of the Seven Senses_Holl, In Questions of Perception 2006  The shape of touch example:It is pleasurable to press a door handle shining from the thousand hands that have entered the door before us; the clean shimmer of ageless wear has turned intro an image of welcome and hospitality. The door handle is the handshake of the building. The tactile sense connects us with time and tradition; through marks of touch we shake the hands of countless generations. feet on ground feeling through our soles: healing experience; it makes one part of the eternal cycle of nature. One senses the slow breathing of the earth. skin-sensation of home -warmth-fireplace-intimacy-comfort The eye of the skin architecture & the senses Juhani Dallasmma dominance of the visual realm in today's technological and consumer culture.sight-hierarchy-causing suppression of the other sensory realms- impoverishment of our environment-feeling if detachment/alienation. “the dancer has his ear in his toes”

[mollyskinnerresearchblog]

PERFORMING IDENTITY- Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones

“During the 1970′s there was an increasing awareness of identity which continues today. The body is a primary communicator of gender, race and class, and body art reflects the ‘role crisis’ within contemporary society. Artists use their bodies to blur and cross boundaries of identity and to explore the implications of identity. 

Critic Lucy R. Lippard explores the different ways in which men and women use their bodies and how this work is received by both audience and critics. Women are often labelled narcissistic while men are not.”

“Men can use beautiful, sexy woman as neutral objects or surfaces but when woman use their own faces and bodies they are accused of narcissism”

“Because woman are considered sex objects, it is taken for granted that any woman who presents her naked body in public is so because she thinks she is beautiful“

Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones. The Artists Body. 2000

Something I would like to look into further- the differentiation between the association between a man and his mirror, and the female and her mirror. I have found in my research that female artists using mirrors like Yayoi Kusama and Helen Chadwick are likened to narcissists and the mirror use of the mirror is associated directly with them  , whilst for male artists, like Dan Graham, the use of the mirror is associated with the viewer. 

[patriciaksalamone-blog]

My Series of Author & Poet Interviews #author #poet Narberth Book Fair#BookFair. Today with Tracey Warr

My Series of Author & Poet Interviews #author #poet Narberth Book Fair#BookFair. Today with Tracey Warr

A great line up from Judith. Don’t pass it up. ☺☺

[sallygcronin]

My Series of Author & Poet Interviews #author #poet Narberth Book Fair#BookFair. Today with Tracey Warr

My Series of Author & Poet Interviews #author #poet Narberth Book Fair#BookFair. Today with Tracey Warr

Judith Barrow meets another of the Narbeth Book Fair authors.. Tracey Warr is the historical novelist. #recommended

[michaelsavageep]

Tutorial - 06/02/2017

Issues Discussed - Progress on project - recent shooting? (No, but shoots scheduled); - Relevant practitioners, essays, books to research; - Project development - outcomes the same as the beginning; - Possibility of performance art as a means of expression.

Student Action - Read and consider application of Doulas Edlund’s essay; - Study Keith Arnatt, Carey Young, Dennis Oppenheim; - Order / hire The Artist’s Body by Tracey Warr, read Survey by Jones, A; - Revisit notes from The Body in Contemporary Art (read from CoP 3).

[coloursofunison]

Stop by the blog to check out today's fascinating post from Tracey Warr about her latest book #TheAnarchy http://mjporterauthor.blog/?p=2953 @TraceyWarr1 @maryanneyarde @tracey.warr.9 @coffepotbookclub #HistoricalFiction #Medieval #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub

[frontiersinretreat]

FiR Artist Interviews: Tracey Warr

Interview by Tessa Aarniosuo

I met with Tracey Warr during her autumn 2016 residency at HIAP, to discuss her projects relating to Frontiers in Retreat, her relationship with Fine Art, water, and the world’s end. 

TA: What does it feel like, being a writer working with artists in a contemporary art project?

TW: I’ve been doing what I refer to as ‘writing in the vicinity of art’ for a long time. I started out as a curator and art writer, taught art history and theory writing in Fine Art departments, and collaborate with visual artists. I write with artists rather than about them, embedded in the process, collaborating and contributing, rather than simply looking at end results as an art critic does. Sometimes the writing I do relates directly to other artists’ work – an essay on their artworks, for instance, and sometimes I write my own fiction within contemporary art projects. 

In Frontiers in Retreat I’ve been working with Jutempus on the Zooetics project. We recently held a think-tank on a former US military base in Iceland. I did some fiction writing that Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas incorporated into an installation/performance at Reykjavik Art Museum. Earlier this year I wrote a future fiction novella called Meanda set on a watery exoplanet for the exhibition Exoplanet Lot organised by Maison des Arts Georges Pompidou, Cajarc in France. I published the novella in French and English as an ebook and as Twitter Fiction. I’m developing that story now and will publish an expanded version, along with other future fiction stories, next year, as part of my work for Frontiers in Retreat. 

Generally, working as a writer alongside contemporary visual artists provides lots of stimulating ideas. I use visual, material, spatial, sensory inspirations in my writing. Contemporary art projects often have quick turnaround times and require a physical or performative outcome which can be a challenge for a writer. Writing a book often takes a long time – a few years rather than a few months. I’ve solved the outcome challenge in exhibitions so far by producing books and sited text installations and by running workshops and seminars.

TA: Tell us a bit about your work in Frontiers in Retreat, especially the Zooetics series of seminars.

TW: Zooetics is a word made up by the Jutempus team (Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Viktorija Siaulyte and myself) to gesture poetically, playfully, artfully, at radical ideas around extended notions of life from mammals to molluscs to mycelium, and to explore the possibilities of weaving together human epistemology with the knowledge of other lifeforms. We began with a series of lectures and seminars at Kaunas University, Lithuania in 2014-5 on anthropocene, nature and interspecies. The lecturers included Natalie Jeremijenko, Timothy Morton and Keller Easterling. You can find the lectures on Youtube and more information on the Zooetics website. We were working with the idea that fiction can help us get past an impasse in ecological thinking and action. We looked at J.G. Ballard’s fictional technologies in Vermilion Sands. Working with mycelium, Nomeda & Gediminas created the Psychotropic House, Zooetic Pavilion of Ballardian Technologies, which was shown in the Baltic Triennale at CAC in Vilnius, in Gallery Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow and in the Sao Paulo Biennale. I recently led a seminar on ‘Nonhuman, Nonanimal’ which included presentations on Zooetics at the Museum of Nonhumanity in Helsinki in September 2016. 

TA: The Zooetics series is meant to cover the entire alphabet eventually. Does language help define the ideas or the other way around? What came first, language or definitions?

TW: I think it’s a fluid, dynamic interchange going in both directions. I like to see language as having a kind of life of its own. Etymology is interesting. I’m always thinking about Georges Bataille’s non-dictionary, The Critical Dictionary, and his complaint about definitions as straight-jackets. But he was a writer. He wasn’t attacking language, just the way some people use it. Language can be used divisively, hierarchically, to repress and control – but language is also expansive, poetic, evocative, blooming and conjuring. Text is a material – like wood, paint or stone – that can be worked and honed.

TA: You have written extensively on rivers and water. How has your time in Helsinki, and Suomenlinna specifically, helped develop your ideas? Helsinki is, after all, a coastal city.

TW: Being on Suomenlinna island, travelling to and fro on the ferry, and also travelling in the Turku archipelago, in both winter and summer, have been enormously influential. I integrated experiences of watching water here in Finland into my fiction. I ran a water workshop with children at Annantalo Art School in Helsinki and then recently with postgraduate students from the Helsinki University of the Arts MA Contemporary Performance and Ecology. It was very interesting for me to engage with other people’s different cultural experiences and knowledges of water. I know more about rivers but the Finnish children for instance, were more interested in the sea and in islands. On the Turku Archipelago ferry I ran a workshop on Viking readings of the marine environment. Two of the participants had grown up in the archipelago with an embodied knowledge of navigating and their kayaks were prostheses. Another artist used her hair as a navigation aid: its responses to wind and humidity. I was struck by the idea that the islands in the archipelago are joined by the water rather than separated by it.

TA: How do you go about giving a voice to the other, or in your case, water? It must be difficult to think of water as the protagonist, without giving it human attributes.

TW: Yes, we can’t ever really get away from refracting everything through human knowledge, sensory capacities, language, but I find out as much as I can about water behaviour and characteristics and try to write from an imagined perspective inside water. Books such as Tristan Gooley’s How to Read Water, Felix Franks’ Water, Charles Fishman’s The Big Thirst, Roger Deakin’s Waterlog (an amazing account of feral swimming), Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World are all big influences on me. And I spend a lot of time swimming and looking at water. I live right next to a river.

TA: The Frontiers in Retreat project focuses on matters of ecology. Do you believe the world needs saving?

TW: The world doesn’t, if you mean the planet by that, but the world with humans and many other lifeforms threatened with extinction does. My interest in ecology doesn’t stem from a desire to save the world but rather from a desire to see a different way of human life – that doesn’t regard everything around it recklessly and selfishly as resources to exploit until they run out. I don’t believe that a dog eat dog attitude is fundamental to human nature. Capitalism and consumerism are ideologies. They are not biological imperatives.

TA: ”If the world would end, it wouldn’t be ’sad,’ because sadness is a human concept.” Discuss.

TW: Of course it would be sad although I’m not sure that little word fully empasses that potential tragedy. I don’t have anything against human concepts! The world is amazing and so are we, and our co-lifeforms living on it. Everything passes, and even Earth will end as a consequence of the heating up of the Sun – but it does have about 1 billion to 7.5 billion years to go yet. We could still be here for some of that if we make a bit of an effort to live differently.

Read more: traceywarrwriting.com meanda.net twitter.com/Meanda facebook.com/exoplanetlot zooetics.net facebook.com/zooetics

[aliciafrankovich]

Alicia Frankovich, The Work, Performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, September 14 & 28, 2019, 1 pm

60 min

With: John Bayley, Keith Bell, Brendan Buckley, John Corbishley, Michael Dagostino, Sophie Day, Xueer Du, Lauren Eiko, Neil Evans, Ryuichi Fujimara, Qingqing Guo, Alison Guthrie, David Huggins, Chrissie Ianssen, Stephen Jones, Brian Mahoney, Karen Libbury, Richard Maude, Nataasha Menon, Ian Milliss, Gill Minervini, April Murdoch, Glenn O’Reilly, Jessica Pedemont, Travis Rice, Michael Rolfe, Leigh Russell, Marian Simpson, Lleah Smith, Cassandra Starr, Christelle Tuyau, Margot Warre, Ivey Wawn, Tracey West, Serena Weatherall, Beiyuan (Hugo) Zhang, John Zhao und anderen / and others

Assistant choreographer: Brooke Stamp

Produktionsassistenz / Production assistant: Michael Waite

Production: Emily Sullivan Commissioned by: Kaldor Public Art Projects

Photos: Xueer Du

[remoteperformances]

Tracey Warr's Outlandia writer's workshop. Photography by Alison Lloyd.

[aliciafrankovich]

Alicia Frankovich, The Work, Performance, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2019

60 min

With: John Bayley, Keith Bell, Brendan Buckley, John Corbishley, Michael Dagostino, Sophie Day, Xueer Du, Lauren Eiko, Neil Evans, Ryuichi Fujimara, Qingqing Guo, Alison Guthrie, David Huggins, Chrissie Ianssen, Stephen Jones, Brian Mahoney, Karen Libbury, Richard Maude, Nataasha Menon, Ian Milliss, Gill Minervini, April Murdoch, Glenn O’Reilly, Jessica Pedemont, Travis Rice, Michael Rolfe, Leigh Russell, Marian Simpson, Lleah Smith, Cassandra Starr, Christelle Tuyau, Margot Warre, Ivey Wawn, Tracey West, Serena Weatherall, Beiyuan (Hugo) Zhang, John Zhao und anderen / and others

Assistant choreographer: Brooke Stamp

Produktionsassistenz / Production assistant: Michael Waite

Production: Emily Sullivan Commissioned by: Kaldor Public Art Projects

Photos: Hellene Algie