PROJECT No. 2 – SOCIAL TRANSPARENCY PERFORMANCE

Create a performance based on an ordinary task to be presented to our class in the Hurvis studio and documented. Use real materials and objects without pretending. You are not representing, not recounting, not-re-enacting, but simply doing. Ideally this activity will make sound and prompt viewer interaction. Use minimum language or none at all.  Contemplate Bourriaud’s statement that: “A work of art has a quality that sets it apart from other things produced by human activities. This quality is its (relative) social transparency… The “transparency” of the artwork comes about from the fact that the gestures forming and informing it are freely chosen or invented, and are part of its subject” (41-42).


It was really fun for me to be in on this one! Always think of my Christian background this time of year (Easter), and how that lore is all about aspects of performance in real life, pre-media. So i wanted to explore one that i always thought was pretty wacky, transubstantiation. In my improvised monologue i speculated that maybe 5 or 10% of the US population would regularly participate in the holy communion ritual, but with some flimsy research it seems to be much more. According to the Religion in United States wikipedia page 70.6% of our population considers themselves Christian, and 60% of those consider themselves devout. On a worldwide level we're 31.5% Christian, according to Major religious groups. What a bubble i live in!


This iphone documentation interests me in how ambiguous this all looks, and i really like to look at them as images without captions for that reason. The neutral black/gray environment of the studio adds to the level of displacement for me.