New Work Jan 2010

A short performance inspired by the 1927 silent film Metropolis by Fritz Lang, in particular Maria's Robotic transformation scene.
A scissors is used to cut away the metal used to suture along each eye, enabling the person to see ..a representation of renewed awareness....

Image 1 : torn t-shirt as gag, marker, survival blanket, Image 2: chamber pot covered in gold leaf .

As a performance artist I reconceptualise notions of self through the objectification of my body in space or environments. In this work I plan to use the deconstructed body as a system of conversing with oneself, asking oneself questions in relation to the theme of change and realigning concepts of change of self in relation to gender and the body politic; the body in relation to culture and society.Although an image maker, the experience for me lies in the act of performing. The body becomes the shared event, a piece of art in perpetual flux.

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The Doll' (1934-5) , 'Machine Gun(eress) in a State of Grace' (1937): bellmer

Metropolis

Metropolis is a 1927 silent German expressionism science fiction film directed by Fritz Lang and written by Lang and Thea von Harbou. Lang and von Harbou, who were married, wrote the screenplay in 1924, and published a novelization in 1926, before the film was released. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film stars Alfred Abel as the leader of the city, Gustav Fröhlich as his son, who tries to mediate between the elite caste and the workers, Brigitte Helm as both the pure-at-heart worker Maria and the debased robot version of her, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge as the mad scientist who creates the robot.
Metropolis was produced in the Babelsberg Studios by Universum Film A.G. (UFA) and released in 1927. The most expensive film of its time, it cost approximately 7 million Reichsmark to make. The film was cut substantially after its German premiere, and there have been several efforts to restore it, as well as rediscoveries of previously lost footage. The American copyright lapsed in 1953, which eventually led to a proliferation of versions being released on video.
The reconstruction of Metropolis, completed in 2001 and shown at the Berlin Film Festival, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in that same year.[1]

Mina Loy

______________________________________

"Apology of Genius"
Mina Loy
published 1922 in The Dial

Ostracized as we are with God

The watchers of the civilized wastes
reverse their signals on our track

Lepers of the moon
all magically diseased
we come among you
innocent
of our luminous sores

unknowing
how perturbing lights
our spirit
on the passion of Man
until you turn on us your smooth fools' faces
like buttocks bared in aboriginal mockeries

We are the sacerdotal clowns
who feed upon the wind and stars
and pulverous pastures of poverty

Our wills are formed
by curious disciplines
beyond your laws

You may give birth to us
or marry us
the chances of your flesh
are not our destiny ---

The cuirass of the soul
still shines ---
And we are unaware
if you confuse
such brief
corrosion with possession

In the raw caverns of the Increate
we forge the dusk of Chaos
to that imperious jewellery of the Universe

--- the Beautiful ---


While to your eyes

A delicate crop

of criminal mystic immortelles
stands to the censor's scythe.


Mina Loy
1882 -1966)

Mina Loy
The Modernist Journals Project

Becoming Modern
The Life of Mina Loy
Carolyn Burke

Charles Bernstein on Mina Loy

English As A "Second" Language
Mina Loy's "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose"
Marjorie Perloff

... in what sense, if any, is the "elliptical style" of this "English Jewess," who spent so little time in America before her fifty-fourth year, identifiable as "American," especially since, overtly, it has little in common with the "American" styles (and settings) of such of her contemporaries as Stevens and Williams? To answer this question, I propose to examine Loy's remarkable long (and still almost unknown) poem "Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose" (1923-25). For here, in this allegorical, parodic, often disjointed pseudo-narrative of the poet's ancestry, birth, childhood, and coming of age, we have Loy's most compelling representation of her "mongrelization" -- the "crossbreeding" of the English and Hungarian-Jewish strains that produced, so the author herself seems to feel, a form of mental and emotional gridlock that could be overcome, in life as in art, only by large doses of the transnational avant-gardism of the interwar period.
Mina Loy feature at Jacket

Yoko Ono;s glass hammer

Sir Thomas Mores UTOPIA

Sound Workshops

http://vimeo.com/7263868



sound workshop in prague
October 29th, 2009
‘New Maps of Time’ was a sound workshop led by John Grzinich in October. The workshop used a number of ‘revenant’ techniques and ideas in addition to exercises in sound mapping and phonography.

Waste Not Want Not

Self Portrait

Hint Fashion Magazine -- Hint Blog

Hint Fashion Magazine -- Hint Blog

Artist Agnes Nedregard- highly interesting

Agnes Nedregard Lives and works in Bergen. In her work Agnes Nedregard explores how personal and cultural baggage informs our personal interpretations of situations, places and people. She places the experience of being a human body at the center of her research, charging her performances with physical energy, actions and symbols. The shared and unpredictable sensory and visual experience between artist, site and audience creates a platform for communication and this is where she will present herself, dressed in absurd costumes, sometimes bringing objects or including projected video footage, aiming for these elements to come together into an unpredictable but cohesive whole. Agnes Nedregard is a Norwegian visual performance artist based in Scotland and Norway. Her working practice is primarily based within live performance, while she expands her explorations of a corporeal language in other mediums like video and film, drawings and sculptural installations. She graduated from the Masters of Fine Art program at Glasgow School of Art in 2005, and has since showed her work in festivals, galleries and screenings in Europe, USA and Asia. Some recent projects include a solo exhibition/ performance at Stills, Edinburgh, and participation in Beijing Open, both in 2009. Frequently she enters collaborations with other artists, among others Brazilian aerial acrobat Raquel Nicoletti, Scottish painter Moray Hillary, and Scottish composer Harold Nono. She teaches performance art workshops for art, theatre, film and architecture students in Europe. Agnes is currently the editor of performancekunst.no, a web magazine for Nordic performance art. Please visit Agnes Nedregards website. Agnes Nedregard, Norway

The Nature of The Beast, The Joinery Gallery Dec 2009

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2009

Aoife Casey

Nature of The Beast, The Joinery, Stoney Batter, Dec 2009

Nature of The Beast, The Joinery, Stoney Batter, Dec 2009

I recently succesfully curated a group show @The Joinery Gallery and Studios Stoney Batter.(17th Dec to 21st 2009) 11 paintings from Wexford based painter Liam O'Rourke acted as a colourful entrance in the main gallery space. The back room housed my own sculpture /performance.A

durational 1 hour performance, a clip seen here was accompanied by another hour long performance by NCAD graduate Roisin Beirne (pictured top) in the back area. A small square table was set for tea leaf readings, a performance by Roisin which saw the audience being invited to participate in a conversational piece , the audience were

asked questions and the answers were written by Roisin on her upper body, these words were then reused by her to activate further conversations. The show was warmly recieved with people trying out the sculpture piece, pulling the ropes and letting them go with a huge crash to the floor which I was told felt liberating ; and conversing with Roisin in her performance.

The Nature of The Beast Aoife Casey

Artist Statement from Exhibit

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Aoife Casey’s main area of interest as an artist is the body in relation to gender and the body in relation to the spaces it inhabits, actively emboding gender, sexuality and the body politic through her performances, Aoife uses costumes which are functioning aparatus’ collaborating with the body to visually display notions of internal conflict and self realisation and perhaps self-acceptance.

In this exhibit, passages from the book, Sex and the Social Order (1964) by George H. Seward are investigated, social and biological behaviour are explored through mechanical and spatial representations of the body in durational performance.The book claims to be “ a psychologists assessment of modern knowledge about sex, with a view to reformulating sex roles in a way which will improve relations between men and women”.

Aoife reconceptualises notions of self through the objectification of her body in space or environments.This explorations are documented and presented in such a way the viewer can fully immerse themselves in a potential reavaluation of themselves. The work can also be seen as a visual conflict between notions of woman as female and woman as artist, between death and life, reality and fantasy, voyurism and exhibitionism.

The structure of the body sculpture worn during performance is derived from the back crests of mammals, the rising and dropping of the piece illustrates and challenges the relationship between dominance and receptivity, courtship and territorial behaviour.

The crest is slowly highered off the back at intervals by pulling down on 3 ropes, each representative of part of the female sex rhythm. (1. Physiological Process,2. Psychomotor Performance and 3. Emotional Reactivity).

Rope 1 represents Physiological Processes- a suggested 4 stage hormonal sequence in menstruation cycles of females and in particular a suggested rise in muscle strength (pre-menstrual) and peak in motor activity followed by a sharp fall (post menstrual).

Rope 2 represents Psychomotor Performance, the maintaining of motor skills irrelevant of menstrual cycle and a heightening of intellectual awareness ( pre-menstrual).

Rope 3 represents Emotional Reactivity, the reported studies stating the pre-menstrual phase being characterized by activity spurtscoupled with high tension , iritability followed by introversion tendencies.

All these elements are embodied by the strenuous lift and hold of the crest followed by a quick and violent collapse/letting go ( eliminative, destructive) of the crest to the floor.

The framed pieces displayed are to read as objects relating directly to piece performed, the book being the language or script acted in the piece and a boxed trio of objects. The sponge, hook and spring merely humble objects each representing the three stage of the repeated act, sponge(lift), hook(hold) and spring (letting go).

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Aoife Casey received a Diploma in Fine Art Painting from DLIADT in 2001, followed by qualifications in Sustainable Development and Fabric and Fibre Arts, followed by a degree in Fine Art Sculpture from NCAD in 2009. She uses her varied backgrounds to inform her practice. Aoife has exhibited in Tasmania as well as throughout Ireland including the Tig Fili in Cork, Kenny’s Gallery Galway, The Mantua Arts Centre Roscommon, The Dublin Art Mill, This is Not A Shop and The Joinery, Dublin.

Live Durational Performance , The Darklight Festival Oct 2009

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2009

Darklight , The Dublin Art Mill

STRAYLIGHT PERFORMANCE WEEKENDER 2009 UPDATED!

Straylight Performance Art Weekender
@ Darklight 2009
8th October – 11 October
Mill Street Studios

Straylight Performance Art Festival
8th October – 11 October
The Dublin Art Mill

The Straylight Performance Art Festival presents a weekend of live performance art. Bringing together the work of 25 different artists, from established and internationally recognised practicioners in the field of live performance work, to exciting new emerging artists.The festival will take place over 4 days at the Dublin Art Mill. Straylight is the Darklight Film Festival’s visual arts strand and is curated by Niamh Murphy.

On Darklight’s launch night – Thursday 8th October, at 8.30pm – Niamh Murphy and Meabh Redmond will be showing their group performance Something Specials on Smithfield Plaza. This performance event will see 20 women standing in formation voicing their frustration with attitude. This is a substantial new piece of work from emerging artists Murphy and Redmond. The piece has been developed in collaboration with the twenty performers, a mixture of actors and non actors and is the result of a unique process of call and return.

On Friday 9th October Straylight’s Performance Festival takes up residence in the Dublin Art Mill. Friday’s program will focus on emerging artists, culminating with a live performance open to the public from 6-8pm. The artists are Linda Conroy, Michelle O Shea, Sinead Corcaran, Aoife Casey, Mia Mularky, Ciara Mc Keon, Roisin Bierne, Mags Geaney, Pearl Henegan, Anna Maria Healy and Niamh Creely.

All of these performance events are free to the public. Contact us at straylightlive(at)gmail.com to book your audience tickets.

Places are limited so booking is strongly advised.

Performance is omnipresent in contemporary art practice, and internationally it is in the throes of its second wave. Straylight will bring attention to this explosion of the live in the visual arts, highlighting indigenous artists alongside international practicioners. Straylight will capitalise on this abundance of homegrown talent to produce the first Irish performance art festival.

Straylight’s performance art festival is co-curated by the artists Niamh Murphy and Amanda Coogan.

Contact: straylightlive(at)gmail.com

More on Mill Street Studio HERE.

SpARASI 2008

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2009

Collaboration Projects-Dublin: Karen O’Connor and Aoife Casey

Collaboration Projects-Dublin: Karen O’Connor and Aoife Casey

Graduation Show NCAD 2009

as an artist my work has graduated toward an increased interest in gender representation over the past two years. I am interested in the idea of ‘gender socialization’ – how our environment, culturally/socially influences our own sense of gender as historically for so long “everything other than conventional masculinity or femininity was rendered pathological”. I question whether this notion has resonance today in our relationships. How do we account for the “techniques of self” we use in everyday life. I am interested in notions of male suppressed emotional attachment and questioning this disconnectedness in relation to intimate family and social relationships. Men's emotional dependency is discussed under the concept of power and control in my work, in conversations and objects engaging a space. Viewers’ participation in the piece is central to the installation, I hope to engage the viewer in a questioning of their own gender identity and its relationship to others.

Many ideas have influenced my work including the writings and films of feminist writer Marguerite Duras in particular the film Le Camion which is used in the piece. It is the tone and tempo of the scripted conversation that plays out that is of interest to me rather than the actual words. After creating a scripted dialogue with my father I had this script read in a controled and intimate installation miimicking the lighting in Le Camion along with extended deliberate silences and a feeling of uncomfortableness, the aim being to reinact the strained tension of communication between the role of father and daughter. The psycological and physical aspects relating to the Roman Room Technique also interest me and this informed my decision to have two separate rooms with a view from one to the other with no access.

The viewer enters the first larger room representitive of the male role. Atop the steps a wardrobe stands, specifically made for housing a mans wardrobe. To the left of the steps is an enlarged photo of stacked old chairs behind thick obscured glass. The chairs in this photo mirror the one in the next room which is a life-size toy like rocking chair with screenprinted imagery. The smaller room is abstract, playfull with clashing colours