CIBELLE!!!! This Brazilian goddess is so yummy! I feel spiritually connected to her. She has such life and vibrancy. I first saw here here with Devendra:

then I got to looking… and saw this beautiful performance. I have no idea what she is saying, but it’s just glorious -

Then I found this interview in English and it just sort of sealed the deal for me

want more? (of course you do) go here: http://www.myspace.com/cibelleblackbird

What do you think??? Share the love and comment. <3

So much has happened so far this year. There’s been no space for deep contemplation, which is probably a good thing as I would tend to lay around thinking about things rather than actually doing them. So what should I do when turned out so quickly into a schedule where I have SO much more time than I previously did? Well, that’s precisely what I’m thinking about.

What to do? What to do?

‘DO is exactly the key,’ is what I’ve come to. Let me explain.

During the turn of the year (December-February) when I was still freshly in University and before the Grève (trans: strike) I had decided that I was ready to rise to a certain level of life. The Professional is what I considered it. I decided that I would be an Art Professor. The limitations of the decision were that I live in Paris and in order to teach Art History or a studio class, I’d have to know WAY more French than I do. Knowing that this was a goal for the distant future, I asked myself what steps I could take to put myself in that direction. Of course the dreaded answer arrived – teach English.

Now for anyone not living in a foreign country this must sound amazing. Although I’ve yet to try it in a formal way myself, I DO have friends who have taught English or still do. The moral is that while there can be amazing situations, it’s mostly underpaid shitty work if you don’t know any better. I know better. Having taken the examples that my friends have had to sweat for, I decided that teaching English could be good if I apply to jobs within a certain sector. I was set. I could begin my career as a professional. I felt great. Now I needed a vacation, but first….

The second semester was turning out to be a massive socialist orgy with the strikes at all Universities and the hatred toward the reforms of the French Government spear-headed by Sarkozy. The personal battles I had faced and moved through in the first semester left me with enthusiasm for the second semester. I was ready to be a professional and DO THIS! Yet I had little opportunity to put those lessons into practice. Or rather, I did put those lessons into practice only to be stunted again. Blocked, declined, and abandoned. Literally. My Uni looked like a war zone. Chairs and tables blocking doors, corridors, stairs, and just general space. Pro-socialist graffiti marked the walls and banners and there were constant demonstrations, protests, gatherings, shouting, and leaflets – Jesus the leaflets.

If I spoke more French and felt more settled in Paris, I think I would have joined in. However I’m a woman on a mission and this grève stopped me right in my tracks. Each teacher responded differently within the department. Communication was blurry and vague. I never knew if class was coming or going. Still I tried my best. I worked on proposals and presentations for my memoir for the Masters 1 program. I began talking more and gaining my confidence back that even if I did not speak perfect French I needed to at least be myself. Which means SPEAK!!!!

All of the frustrations of this semester burst open the week before my scheduled 10 day vacation to Beirut, Lebanon. All the due dates were lined up and one by one, upon accomplishing them the responses were confused, absent, and diluted. The professors in question did very little to keep up the moral and I felt all my efforts just crashed and lay there like dead men. Then I got to Beirut.

My experience to Beirut was so many things, SO MANY THINGS. I’ll have to add another post to explain them. What I will say is that the response to my arrival in this country was a stark contrast to the response I get in Paris. I was staying with a close friend who had fought the first year here with me in Paris and decided to return to Beirut. Now I know why. The people, the weather, and the city is so warm. Relaxed and energetic. It was a hard clash to experience all at one time. Coming from cold (in all senses of the word) Paris – at least from my experience so far – to warm Beirut. All of the friends of my friend embraced me and I felt something that I had not felt for the year and a half that I had been in Paris. I felt inspired. All I wanted to do was get a tiny flat in the mountain and paint, draw, and do that thing. sigh.

You can imagine my feelings coming back to Paris after all that majic. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to stay here. I was sick of the grève. Sick of my job. Sick of the rain, cold, and clouds. I wanted sunshine, smiles, and a studio. I wanted to focus on the drawing that I had started doing. So I did. I have started drawing often - with intention and with what I had learned from the Joseph Beuys course. Just playing around with materials and symbols. I wrote down all the ideas for works that the trip had inspired and I let go of school and the idea of being a professional.

Until now. Now the academic year is over. I’ve had a blissful long weekend of drawing and research and playing around. Now is the time to plan the rest of the year and the job change and flat change. It’s time to decide how to do all of this. What professional job do I need to look for that will ensure my stability and travel desires? I’ve decided to go back to Beirut as much as possible and set up half of my life there. What about school next year? What about continuing to learn French? What about this precious gift that’s been returned to me? Well, I’ll just have to speak to the Goddess about all this and keep you posted.

This is the end-of-the-year document I wrote to wrap up the art history course Joseph Beuys and the art of the 20th Century.

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Life is a series of experiences and with each experience we receive a bag of valuables. As we have more experiences we begin to see patterns and make connections. Some patterns are dead-ends and some patterns create energy that encourages us to keep going. These experiences teach us about ourselves, our neighbor, our country, our god, and we begin to place ourselves in a cosmic map. It’s human nature.

Some of us are conscious of this chain of events. We have the ability to manipulate aspects of life so that we can enhance our experiences, define them, or evoke them. We ask ourselves very difficult questions about our character and our history. Finally we ask ourselves, “What can we do with all of this information?”

In these instances, these people have the potential to impact a larger mass of people. Their bag of valuables becomes a fountain of enlightenment, a source of change, and a mark historical. Joseph Beuys is one of these characters. Because I considering myself a student of his, what follows is a report and comparison of important events in his life and my own.

« people can express themselves only through imprint forms using certain materials. This is, of course, also the case for language. But if this model – it need not be large; today everything is much to large – if the imprint character is there, it is easier to see where it came from and whether the constellation is already, shall we say, optimal, and this can be discussed unendingly. » 1

The impressions of War can still be seen in Beirut. War is a form of experience that impacts us enormously. The range of these wars can be personal (as within a family) as well as public. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the psychological results of war, can be a method used to identify materials and symbols.

For Joseph Beuys, the experience of war revealed to him his two most significant materials: fat and felt. These two materials were used to save his life during World War two. Although he uses many other symbols and materials they all carry the symbol of healing.

The material of Honey has had a very important place in my personal collection of materials. In Beirut I saw the importance of working again with this material as well as what amalgamations I could make. For this series of sculptures honey will transform certain icons of the Mediterranean and Middle East. The focus is to talk about not just the conflict of this region, but its healing.

Honey has a hygroscopic nature, which means when exposed to air, it naturally absorbs moisture in from the air. In treating open wounds, honey is useful as it could help prevent scarring by keeping the skin moist, encourage the growth of new tissues, and allow easy removal of any dressing by preventing dressing from becoming stuck to the skin.

Recently the development of resistance to antibiotics has led to a resurgence of interest into the healing properties of honey (as an antibiotic). The effective antimicrobial agent in honey prohibits the growth of certain bacteria. It contains an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide which is believed to be the main reason for the antimicrobial activity of honey. 

Honey contains natural antioxidant properties that can destroy biologically destructive chemical agents which have been linked to many diseases such as cancer. Not only could honey’s antioxidants help to eliminate free radicals in the body, they are also part of the nutrient supply for growth of new tissue. These precious honey properties help protect the skin under the sun and help the skin to rejuvenate. 2

Conflict, in its many forms, is the cause of many great things. The experience of war is an experience that changes the moral fibers of not only one person, but an entire people and their relationship with other groups of people. The effects of this are called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and certain transformations occur for a person who is diagnosed with this. Yet it is the process of freeing oneself from this Disorder where something unique happens.

PTSD is an anxiety disorder that some people get after seeing or living through a dangerous event. When in danger, it’s natural to feel afraid. This fear triggers many split-second changes in the body to prepare to defend against the danger or to avoid it. This ‘fight-or-flight’ response is a healthy reaction meant to protect a person from harm. But in PTSD, this reaction is changed or damaged. People who have PTSD may feel stressed or frightened even when they’re no longer in danger. 3

Re-experiencing symptoms may cause problems in a person’s everyday routine. They can start from the person’s own thoughts and feelings. Words, objects, or situations that are reminders of the event can also trigger re-experiencing. 3

Examining the symptom of Triggers of this disorder can give us an insight to Beuys and other artists like him and their choices of materials. As talked about previously, triggers can be objects, situations, smells, or any other sensory experience that bring us back in time to relive a horror.

Because of the traumatic event the understanding of how the world works, something that most of us take for granted, has been shattered. As a part of the process of recovery one recreates their own sense of stability and understanding of how things function. The works of Beuys exemplifies this characteristic. Not only do we find materials that have a symbolic power, but we also find that Beuys has created systems of understanding for himself and applied them to the art world.

They are also charged with the responsibility of seeing themselves – having been changed through this experience – and how their understanding of the world is not longer the common logic. In this situation one can accept this difference and move on or they can do something different. They can challenge these systems and ask others to listen to understand this new point of view.

Beuys often said that his fascination with fat and felt dated back to the Second World War, when he worked as a radio operator in Stuka bombers. Shot down over the Crimea, so the story went, his life had been saved by nomadic Tartars who’d rubbed his burned and frozen body with fat and wrapped it in felt.

Fat and felt came to symbolize nurture in Beuys’s personal mythology as he revealed in an interview included in a BBC film:

“I didn’t take these stuffs only as a kind of immediately dramatic stuff because I was in a dramatic situation in the war, no, not at all. I wasn’t interested to take such things. But later on, when I built up a kind of theory and a system of sculpture and art and also a system of wider understanding – anthropological understanding of sculpture being related to the social body and to everybody’s life and ability – then such materials seemed to be right and effective tools to overcome, one could say, the wound of us.” 4

“Had it not been for the Tartars I would not be alive today. They were the nomads of the Crimea, in what was then no man’s land between the Russian and German fronts, and favoured neither side. I had already struck up a good relationship with them, and often wandered off to sit with them. ‘Du nix njemcky’ they would say, ‘du Tartar,’ and try to persuade me to join their clan. Their nomadic ways attracted me of course, although by that time their movements had been restricted. Yet it was they who discovered me in the snow after the crash, when the German search parties had given up. I was still unconscious then and only came round completely after twelve days or so, and by then I was back in a German field hospital. So the memories I have of that time are images that penetrated my consciousness. The last thing I remember was that it was too late to jump, too late for the parachutes to open. That must have been a couple of seconds before hitting the ground. Luckily I was not strapped in – I always preferred free movement to safety belts… My friend was strapped in and he was atomized on impact – there was almost nothing to be found of him afterwards. But I must have shot through the windscreen as it flew back at the same speed as the plane hit the ground and that saved me, though I had bad skull and jaw injuries. Then the tail flipped over and I was completely buried in the snow. That’s how the Tartars found me days later. I remember voices saying ‘Voda’ (Water), then the felt of their tents, and the dense pungent smell of cheese, fat and milk. They covered my body in fat to help it regenerate warmth, and wrapped it in felt as an insulator to keep warmth in.” 5

Originally named Bêrūt, “The Wells” by the Phoenicians, Beirut’s history goes back more than 5000 years. Excavations in the downtown area have unearthed layers of Phoenician, Hellenistic, Roman, Arab and Ottoman remains. The first historical reference to Beirut dates from the 14th century BC, when it is mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of the “Amarna letters.” Ammunira of Biruta sent 3 letters to the pharaoh of Egypt. Biruta is also referenced in the letters from Rib-Hadda of Byblos. The most ancient settlement was on an island in the river that progressively silted up. The city was known in antiquity as Berytus; this name was taken in 1934 for the archaeological journal published by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut.

Beirut is home to (an ancient) and one of the largest seaports of the eastern Mediterranean Sea (dating back to the Phoenicians) (with) a thriving new infrastructure which continues to rise. The culture of Beirut has evolved under the influence of contact with many civilizations and peoples, including Greeks, Romans and Arab. 

There are wide-ranging estimates of Beirut’s population, from 938,940 people to 2,012,000. The lack of an exact figure is due to the fact that no population census has been taken in Lebanon since 1932. 6

Beirut is one of the most religiously diverse cities of the Middle East, with Christians, and Muslims both having a significant presence. There are nine major religious communities in Beirut (Sunni Muslim, Shiite Muslim, Druze, Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, and Protestant). 6

One can not drive anywhere without seeing numerous amounts of all types of religious sculptures. These sculptures pepper the landscape and there are vendors selling sculptures for all purposes – small enough to fit on your keychain and large enough to placed in the mountain and seen from the valley.

It suffered greatly over the past few decades but is experiencing an architectural and cultural resurgence due to massive reconstruction and restoration programs. A cosmopolitan and intellectual city, you are likely to hear as much French and English as Arabic here, especially around the best bars, clubs and restaurants. It is here that Beirut’s reputation as the Paris of the Middle East is exemplified. 7

Art gallery-owner, painter and photographer, Richard Demarco: “And so it was that I found myself saying, ‘well when will we meet?’ and he said in his reply, ‘when shall we two meet again in thunder, lightning or in rain…?’ ‘God Almighty’, I thought, ‘ he does know his Shakespeare!’ But he also said, ‘I see the land of Macbeth’. So that was enough. I knew he was coming. I brought him to Scotland for a simple reason and that is that Scotland is the land beyond the north wind where Apollo goes I think every year for a little holiday when he gets fed up with the Arcadian world of Greece to the edge of the world to a space where the idea of Europe being all about Mediterranean has to be rethought. When he first came he explored the one thing I needed to show him which was the experience of Scotland and its wilderness. I took him to the Moor of Ranouch. You have to go through the pass at Glencoe and through, if you’re lucky, storm thunder and lightning until you might find at the other side sunlight and a perfect sunset. And we did in fact find that at Oban with a view of Mull, the mountains of Mull and the idea that just beyond these mountains and the setting sun as you stood beside the fishing fleet at Oban you knew you were in the waters of Fengal. It’s the space where the Celtic imagination has, for millennia, taken flight.” 8

The stag was a particularly powerful symbol for Beuys. He wrote that it appeared “in times of distress and danger” bringing “the warm positive element of life.” He concurred with earlier Christian myths that it was “endowed with spiritual powers and insight.” One of the hallmarks of Beuys’ work is its reliance on his distinctive set of symbols and the different elements used in his work relate to his major themes and narratives – the natural world, sources of energy, human and animal life, and spirituality. His work was also driven by the interest he’d had since childhood in northern European mythology, and the animal characters in these stories. The stag, the hare, the elk and the swan all appear in many of his works.

In post-war Germany such myths had become taboo as the Nazis had used some of these traditional stories and images to bolster their political philosophy. Beuys refused to ignore these associations and instead sought to rehabilitate and reclaim the art of storytelling using emblematic characters. Because of this, Beuys has been credited with having given Germany back its imagination as well as forcing his peers to confront the horrors committed by their generation. 9

Sculptor Antony Gormley, on a Beuys exhibition in London, in 1982: “As a man he was just naturally engaging and generous. He gave you his entire attention. There was no sense of having to rush even though the room was full of people. I don’t remember at all exactly what he said, I just got a sense of encouragement. And I think unlike most artists where I think there’s always a sense of territory, a sense of rivalry, distrust, suspicion, none of were present. He had extraordinary eyes. He pierced you with his eyes but it wasn’t quite like that because they were very liquid at the same time so you got lost in them as much as being witnessed by them. And there was this sense of someone that had suffered a lot but had somehow gained through that suffering. I think he realized that art was about in a way understanding who we are, by understanding our roots. And he saw that he had huge therefore responsibility to in some way understand his own past and understand the past of his culture. The other aspect of his work is its call for the spiritual…that in some way we only understand who we are through the making of these otherwise useless objects that in someone chart our passage through time.” 10

This is a series of drawings and wet drawings that I’ve begun. The references are mostly architectural or abstract. I’m investigating medium and the process of abstraction.

from The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

From the dining-room window where she stood, with the wind in her hair, Rahel could see the rain drum down on the rusted tin roof of what used to be their grandmother’s pickle factory.
Paradise Pickles & Preserves.
It lay between the house and the river.
They used to make pickles, squashes, jams, curry powders and canned pineapples. And banana jam (illegally) after the FPO (Food Products Organisation) banned it because according to their specifications it was neither jam nor jelly. Too thin for jelly and too thick for jam. An ambiguous, unclassifiable consistency, they said.
As per their books.
Looking back now, to Rahel it seemed as though this difficulty that their family has with classification ran much deeper than the jam-jelly question.
Perhaps, Ammu, Estha and she were the worst transgressors. But it wasn’t just them. It was the others too. They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly.
It was a time when uncles became fathers, mothers lovers, and couisns died and had funerals.
It was a time when the unthinkable became thinkable and the impossible really happened.

During 6 hours of french lecture yesterday I found myself narrowing down my topic inch my bloody inch. I have to give up some ideas that really excite me, but this insures a clearer and more focused outline (due in 2 months). It also helps me in terms of research to narrow things down to just performance artists and cut out the Rock Gods and Spanish parts.

Instead I’m focusing on my curiosity in the research on the things that make the greatest contributions to my own plastic (as in plastician) works:

What compels an artist to use their body as a medium? What is that transition? Art Plasticians (as they are referred to here, in France) are not classically trained to use their bodies. There for the traditional response to a work where one views another doing something with their bodies is different. More on that later. For now the research has been narrowed down to 

Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney, Oleg Kulik, I’ve added Sophie Calle (my french professeurs are going to kiss me for that one!) and I’m searching for others. I have specific yet general criteria, which is actually the beginnings of the outline:

The Personal Aesthetic Vernacular

Each artist mentioned has created a universe of personal symbols/actions most of which come from personal historical references. A sort of Contemporary Surrealism. There is a great sense of repitition and personal branding that comes in their work. It is not work that is easily personal in subject, but is extremely personal in symbol.

The Cultural Signifiers

These symbols and actions which come from personal historical references are (in these cases) linked to the culture of which the artist inhabits. The personal historical relationship allows the artist to both defend, honour, and reminisce the identity of the culture as well as criticise it and bring confrontation, questioning, or observations which trigger the deep values of said culture.

The Medium Relationships

No art plastician who uses their body, does not also use other mediums. This is one large signifier of how the Performance artist is not an actor, and what keeps them tied to their own plastician roots. Often times the actions of making works such as drawings, sculpture, and installation take on such large uses of action that they then become art in themselves. In the case of Joseph Beuys, his constant explanation of his works and conversations with others lead to the actions of lectures and teachings which in return were catalogued through photography, and installation of the remnants of his performances (his famous chalk boards), and very rarely video. However, the work of Matthew Barney uses the sculptures, drawings, and action to make in the end a video product.

Les Methods des artistes de performance cru – The Method of Crude Performance Artists

Below is a small snapshot of the direction of my thesis. It’s nothing cohesive yet, it’s just sort of a ball of raw data that intends to meld into something soon. If you have any thoughts – leave a comment.

Les Questions

what are the motivations of an artist to intigrate the use of their body in their work when they have no training to do so?

Les Dieux de Rock – The Rock Gods

David Bowie revolutionized the expectations of performance in rock music with the creation of character themed albums which allowed him to explore different “voices” at once, giving him the courage to perform and maintain simultaneous isolation, and challenge his creative process.

His method changed the possibilities of how pop music could be delivered on the stage and opened the door for many others.

At the same time, Iggy Pop (embued with the title Grandfather of Punk) began to challenge the audience and relationship to the performer by expressing the most raw of emotional responses to his music. His performance methods are not accidental, although that ascpect is an important part of his work.

He is very much an american artist responding to, and challenging  the cultural definitions of lifestyle of his youth. 

The work of Iggy Pop, and his prediscesors, not only gave new options to stage, but to lifestyle as well.  

Les artists de performance – The Performance Artists

The Grandfather of Performance art who redefined concepts of WHO an artist can be, WHAT an artist does, what art can BE, and what PURPOSE art can serve. 

 

Consistant in his identity as JOSEPH BEUYS he was able to redefine CULTURE to include the personal experience.

One of the most contriversial of performance artists is Russian artist Oleg Kulik. Although his work is varied in method and subject, he remains an icon for his performance art which challenges the understanding of humans as animals and systems of government.

One of the most well-known artist of this generation, Matthew Barney explores potential of the body in his work as well as cultural and personal references. His work uses the mixture of modern technologies such as film, while still continuing traditional art methods such as sculpture, drawing, and performance.

There is another American in my department, as promised by a french girl in one of my classes.

By ‘department’ I mean the Théorie et pratique de l’art contemporain et des nouveaux médias [Theories and practice of contemporary art and new medias] at the Universitie of Paris VIII [8] here in, well, Paris France [not to be confused with the every infamous Paris, Texas]. 

Once a month, at 9:00 on a saturday mourning, the nouveux médias sub-department of the general department has a séance. Do not fear, there are is no table levitation or spirits involved. Séance in french is Seminar in English. English. Ah, how I once belittled you for being the only language I spoke. How I spat in your face. And now, beg your forgiveness and plead for you to take me back like the rejected lover you became. Oh English, how I love the…

Back to the majic that is 10:00 on a Saturday in Paris in a room full of semi-strangers speaking a semi-foreign language about very non-foreign project ideas and theories. Enter one said American – Tall, Flannel shirt, Professional cyclist cap, and that unshaven mechanically unkempt feel of most of the fellow Americans that I have come to befriend and love and whom burn the candle for me back in the City of Brotherly Love.

Captivation does not describe my interest. I am transfixed. Damn near obsessed. There he is – another American in the same program with the same interests. It’s as if I am seeing the real Pietà. Then he speaks. French. Willingly. Well enough to be understood. My brain pings with the possibilities, the ease at which the words come out, and how well they are understood. And is he laughing? Has he shared a joke and joviality with a french speaking room? He is AT ONCE my hero.

His presentation? Veganism. The Vegan. Did I mention that this happened in France? Veganism and Vegetarianism is one of the things that The French have no opinion, not because they look down on it, but because the concept is so absurd to them that it MUST be a hoax. I watched as my fellow peer explained in great detail the differences, political implications, subculutralism, anarchy, and general lifestyle of The Vegan.

It was this moment that something almost indescribable happened to me. I had a deep acceptance, sense of identification, and hatred of two different cultures at one time. 

Although the Identifications that Americans give themselves ‘Gay’ ‘Vegan’ ‘Christian’ ‘Liberal’ etc… make me feel uncomfortable, there is a sense of rebellion and revolutionary spirit that I connect with and lament. It makes me angry that an American who does not agree with the general description and behavior of what it is to be American feels the need to become or join a whole group of people with an ANTI message, amongst whom they can feel comfortable. The downside is that this is ALL that they become. They become archetypes. The Vegan. Period. Perhaps they are other things, which happens. The Gay Vegitarian. etc. He is no longer Steve a multifaceted man. He becomes a list of ‘identities’. With those identities he looses his very own uniqueness. His time, his choices, his clothing, his friends, his job, location of home, what he eats ALL become  choices he makes to support that identity so that he can feel a part of something that does not exclude him.

Of course I’m speaking in general terms. I’m not assuming this is the case for all, but this is a extremely American epidemic and response to the American Machine. As much as I find it limiting to the actualization of the person, I also admire its renegade spirit. The collectiveness fighting against the larger system that imposes its rituals and demands on a VERY large and varied group of people. OF and ENTIRE country. The American spirit to protest, which also occurs here, but in a different way, is something that I very much identify with. To create something comfortable and unique because it does not already exist. Adversity to change, to enlighten, and to gather with like-minded others is something that I miss in a city where indifference is the very definition of the population. 

Even the protests are organised and supported. Like the grève currently happening. The french REALLY inconvience others to get their point across. They demand the change occur not in themselves, but in the institution. They don’t feel the need to use their clothes, food choices, or friends as tools of protest or definition. That is not the set of of their culture. 

In the end I’ll do what I have always done, continue to explore what makes me who I am – culture be damned.