Category Archives: Power Dynamics

Melanie Manchot, “Walk (Square)” (2011)

photos of children marching

Walk (Square), 2011, Single Screen, HD, 20′40″

Walk (Square) forms part of an ongoing series of projects investigating collective gestures or situations enacted in public such as walking, dancing or celebrating. The work extends a practice based on an analysis of the construction of individual and collective identities and their performative representation through photography and moving image. Walking en masse—whether it be in processions, pilgrimages, in carnival or protest marches—forms the starting point for this video work made with 1000 Hamburg kids. Drawn into the centre of the city from all directions, with art as the ‘Pied Piper’, the work refers to current socio-political situations of protest as well as to recent research across different disciplines into the meanings of groups and crowds. The piece questions whether the act of walking may constitute a ‘form of speech’. On the square in front of Hamburg’s contemporary art museum a crowd of kids performs a simple walking choreography, based on Bruce Nauman’s video Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967– 1968, creating a shimmering form of movement that brieﬂy produces a moment of collectivity and visual coherence before breaking apart.

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“At first glance, Melanie Manchot’s work shows us what might be a demonstration, a procession or a parade in the centre of Hamburg. The differences between the three, though seldom observed, are crucial. T h e historian David Cannadine has observed that when the French “put their social structures on public display they have parades (which are intrinsically egalitarian), whereas the British have processions (which are innately hierarchical)”. Demonstrations can be either hierarchical or not but, unlike the other two categories, are impossible to fully impose order on.

In ‘Walk (Square)’, a thousand children flock into Hamburg’s central square – with “art as the ‘pied piper”‘, as she puts it. Once inside the square, the children undertake what Manchot calls a “simple walking choreography” based on the Bruce Nauman work ‘Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square’, seen elsewhere in this show. Manchot’s recreation of the earlier work in new form asks us to imagine how occupying public space has changed its meaning between ‘then’ and ‘now’. At the time of Nauman’s work, the purpose of protest was not in doubt, even if its efficacy was not universally accepted. Walking is, here, the means of occupying public space by traversing it. As Manchot puts it, “the act of walking constitutes a ‘form of speech'”. To walk – together – is in certain contexts a political act in the purest sense of the term. It is to ensure that one cannot be simply ‘walked over’ by those in positions of authority. To walk is to create “a moment of collectivity”, in the artist’s words.”

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, “Marches” (2005-09)

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Marches, is a project that started in 2005, the work been performed and exhibited for multiple organizations including Transmission Gallery Glasgow, C-E-M Lisbon, Artangel London 2008 and in Italy with Festival di Santarcangelo 2009. The chief concern of this project is to explore the auditory perception of our built environment.

At the centre of the Marches project is a series of performances that take place on the streets of towns and cities. These performances are choreographed marches in which a small group of 10 performers march planned routes through urban districts. These routes are primarily designed to include the most interesting acoustic/architectural dimensions of the town, connecting large halls, domed ceilings, glass walls, narrow corridors, piazzas, crowded spaces etc. The only costume the performers of Marches wear are specific shoes adapted for greater sonic effect, using combinations of hollow stiletto heels, thick wooden heels, tap plates and hobnails to create strange shoes that when stamped emit a sound that works to acoustically define the architectural space through which the wearer travels. The footwear is designed and adapted in collaboration with cobblers and shoe makers, during the Artangel project, the artist undertook a mini residency at Anthony Andrews Special Footwear and Orthotics.

Participants of the performances are choreographed to join and disperse at points of distinctive acoustic interest. Pathways are planned according to the most acoustically exciting way of navigating all the domed roofs, narrow corridors and reflective glass walls offered by the surrounding urban territory. Planning also involves sociological research and historiography; digging into the city’s history to find stories and accounts of parades, processions, marches, trudges and demonstrations. The resulting routes, illustrated in the maps/scores made, were harvested and mapped onto the current city form, intersecting new buildings and extinct pathways to create new navigations of the city.

Marches performances can be heard online here

Photographs here document recent exhibitions of Marches at AUB Art Gallery Beirut 2013 and Caja Madrid Barcelona 2012.

Pope.L , The Great White Way: 22 miles, 9 years, 1 street, Broadway, New York (2001-09)

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man crawling and rolling in a superman costume

William Pope L., “Training Crawl”, (for The Great White Way: 22 miles, 5 years, 1 street), 2001. Lewiston, Maine. Performance photographs. © William Pope L. Courtesy of the artist.

Check out this descriptive article from 2003, from the work in-progress:

“The socio-economic implications of Broadway are enormous, and examining what Broadway “represents” is the first key to making some sense of William Pope.L’s complex, ongoing street performance The Great White Way.”

“Since the late 1970s, Pope.L has been infecting the streets of New York with periodic street performances, reminders that the country, city, and culture he lives in have a long way to go before the discomforts of race and stereotyping have safely receded.”

In this work, Pope.L crawled the full length of Broadway.

The entire crawl was recorded on video and later edited.

Ingrid Pollard “Wordsworth Heritage” (1992)

photographs of Black people in the landscape

Ingrid Pollard [credit]

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This photographic work was originally presented as a billboard image on 25 urban sites around the UK. The image takes the form of a mass produced tourist postcard. It shows the profile of William Wordsworth, 19th century English Poet Laureate. Wordsworth and his poetry are icons closely linked with the ‘Lake District’. A group of contemporary Black walkers transform the ‘Romantic’ landscape and ideas of History and Heritage.

From Ingrid Pollard (2004) in The Art of Walking: A Field Guide:

“Going to the Lake District over the years, collecting postcards, deliberately searching out England’s timeworn countryside ‘the way it’s always been,’ searching the postcard-stand for the card that shows a sunny upland scene with a black person standing, looking over the hills. Never finding it. I fantisise about encountering that image amongst the England of craggy rocks, rushing streams and lowly sheep. Simple stories, simple connections.”

Billboard, Kings Cross London. Dr Julian Agyeman & Ingrid Pollard

Bruce Nauman “Live-Taped Video Corridor” (1970)

two monitors at the end of a narrow hall

Credit: Guggenheim

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Related to part of a multi-corridor installation that Nauman constructed earlier in 1970 at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles, Live-Taped Video Corridor features two stacked television monitors at its far end, both linked to a camera mounted at the corridor’s entrance: the top monitor plays live feed from the camera, while the bottom monitor plays pretaped footage of the empty passageway from the identical angle. Walking down the corridor, one views oneself from behind in the top monitor, diminishing in size as one gets closer to it. The camera’s wide-angle lens heightens one’s disorientation by making the rate of one’s movement appear somewhat sped up. Meanwhile, the participant is entirely, and uncannily, absent from the lower monitor. The overall result is an unsettling self-conscious experience of doubling and displacement.

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992)

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992)

100 pairs of army boots, mono-filament, metal grid, 700 x 700 cm

In the installation Missa, a hundred pairs of army boots suspended on nylon strings are arranged in a square grid. Raised slightly off the floor, the right-foot boots suggest the synchronised movement of military marching. The overall effect conjures up the destructive violence of political regimes that manipulate dehumanized troops like puppets. Although it was conceived in 1992, Missa continues to resonate wherever it is exhibited. This sensitive exploration of a military accessory, linked to individual soldiers but expressing a collective action, spans the history of wars and the atrocities they breed.

In her multidisciplinary practice, the Montréal artist Dominique Blain denounces the oppression that stems from relationships of power. She approaches historical references with restraint, using a few carefully chosen images and objects to arouse individual and collective memories. Leaving room for imagination, her socially engaged art gives viewers the leeway needed to reflect on the subject of war and totalitarianism. Blain’s work has been widely shown in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, notably at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and in the 1992 Sydney Biennale. [credit]

A nearly deafening silence immediately strikes the viewer of Blain’s remarkably spartan installation. This soundlessness continues to resonate – and change – as one walks around her three-dimensional grid of strings and shoes, filling in its absences with haunting narratives and dark associations. Ominous connections between facelessness and force, blind obedience and inhuman strength, a sense of belonging and one of being utterly lost gain clarity as one contemplates her austere memorial to war and its – often abstract – if all-too-real consequences.

– David Pagel, Dominique Blain, Art Forum, 1993

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992-2012)

Regina José Galindo “Who Can Erase The Traces?” (2003)

Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio

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In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.

Francis Alÿs “The Green Line” (2004)

video stills of a man dripping paint as he walks

The Green Line, Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min
In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux.

Alÿs performed this walk by carrying a can of paint with a hole in it as he traced a portion of the “Green Line” that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. There is a filmed documentary of the walk.

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“In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the ‘Green Line’ that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. 58 liters of green paint were used to trace 24 km. Shortly after, a filmed documentation of the walk was presented to a number of people whom I invited to react spontaneously to the action and the circumstances within which it was performed.” (credit)

Gail Burton “Crawl” (2010)

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Crawl

On Saturday 29th May 2010 I performed ‘Crawl’ as part of ‘Look Harder,’ an exhibition of site specific and performance art at Alexandra Palace Park. ‘Look Harder’ was organised and curated by Tony Peakall and Judith Brocklehurst of Rekindle Arts, and included art work by Judith Brocklehurst, Tim Flitcroft, Calum F. Kerr, Miyuki Kasahara, Marco, Tony Peakall and Sarah Sparkes, amongst others. Art works and performance were situated in the vicinity of the lake in Alexandra Palace Park. (Click on Look Harder exhibition for more details of the exhibition). This was the second year that the exhibition had taken place; I also participated in the first exhibition, when I created a banner and performed three solo marches carrying it. (Click on over, banner, march, Alexandra Palace, protestation or tags in the sidebar for posts about the banner march and the first exhibition.)

Crawl was proposed as a counterpoint to a march; its antithesis. It was intended to embody a private world of defeat. I envisaged a temporary escape to a different world; different to our usual sensory experiences, to our ordinary measures of temporality, to notions of patience and endurance:

‘I will crawl on my hands and knees, my face and fingers in the dust and dirt. Crawling, I will exit the biped world, relinquishing verticality and the customary plane of society. I will move slowly, perhaps painfully, aware of my body’s awkwardness. Conscious of the detail, detritus and texture of my passage, the aromas and acoustics of movement close to the ground, I will crawl a complete circuit of the lake of Alexandra Palace Park. The antithesis of a march, the crawl will embody the private, the broken, the beaten, the small and the slow.’

The invitation to watch my crawl was also extended to visitors to the park who might wish to perform their own crawl; letters suggesting and inviting a crawl, addressed to ‘Dear Visitor,’ were left in the Lakeside Café. (View or download a Crawl letter here).

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Nancy Spero “Vietnamese Women” (1985)

Nancy Spero

This is a large hand-printed and painted work that is so long it cannot be taken in without walking along it.

The subject matter is an image of a Vietnamese woman fleeing the massacre of civilians in 1968, taken from the news. Spero states the cigarette in the woman’s mouth is a symbol of survival.

(credit: Walk Ways catalog)