RDEČE NITI #1: WHERE IS THE LINE?

Rdeče niti #Where is the line? Galerija Kapelica, Rampa/Lab, Ljubljana, 31.5-8.6.2018. Photos: Tomaž Šantl

Rdeče niti #Where is the line? Galerija Kapelica, Rampa/Lab, Ljubljana, 31.5-8.6.2018. Photos: Henrike von Dewitz

RDEČE NITI | RED THREADS

Translacija | Traslación is a platform for production, exhibition and research on performance art created by artists Tatiana Kocmur and Francisco Tomsich in 2017¹. Its first edition was produced in Ljubljana, Slovenia, between March and June 2018, and included a series of public activities (performance art events, publications, exhibitions), as well as the first application of a model of artistic research focused on narratives and memories around historical performances, entitled Rdeče niti (Red thread). The title of this research model refers to methodological aspects and displaying devices, as seen in the exhibition Rdeče Niti: Where is the line? (Rampa/Lab (Kapelica Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia, May-June 2018)².

Performance art happens in a specific time, in a concrete space, and no documentation or registry substitutes the uniqueness of the experience of having been there. Each performance creates a number of non-fixed images, stories, rumors, memories and narratives, sometimes contradictory, obfuscated, fragmentary. In Rdeče niti, we want to approach this phenomena by choosing one significant performance art piece from the past and therefore generating an exploration of its persistence on the bodies of the persons³ who were there or heard something about what happened there. Memories and remembrances from witnesses are able of being articulated as stories, discourses and images, and they can be represented in different ways. We are interested in how individuals and groups remember, articulate and tell stories about what happened in one performance art event from the past.

These approach to historical research on performance art tries to operate afar from three common current trends: re-enactment as re-construction, “the shift to the objects remains of performance”⁴ and the fetishism of documentation. It tries to avoid the “presence of the original” instead, it eludes relics, and refrains from interpretation. All these aspects can be illustrated by the way we applied our research model to the study of memories and narratives around the performance Where is the line? (ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, December of 1998), from the Slovenian artist Franc Purg.

We decided to produce this first research project about Where is the line? because this piece provides many interesting aspects in the framework of our study. It was a complex work which followed a very simple idea. It was developed dramatically in different rooms of the gallery and even incorporated the public space into its scope. It is easily understood in universal terms (i.e. it was not exotic), but it deals at the same time with very local issues. It included the participation of the public, and also the essential assistance of a non-artist professional in order to carry out one part of the action. It was attended by a considerable number of persons, and it was documented through photos and videos. It is reviewed in books and articles. In addition, it was shocking and very controversial, and probably it would be even more difficult to make it nowadays than back then. This latter point is remarkable, since revisiting Franc Purg’s work in current times poses many questions about politics, ethics and even morals of art practices, and about the contingency of the ideas articulating the discourses about them. Each one of these interesting aspects proved to be extremely rich in reverberations and secondary red threads.

The practice and analysis of our research model, even if still fully undeveloped, produced another kind of very interesting and specific consequences on the theoretical level, aiming us to start sketching a typology of performance art in relation with the strategies, methods and potentials of the research itself, thus proving it to be what a scientific approach to art history demands. It means that each application of our research model produces a set of specific questions and issues in relation with the kind and type of the studied performance in the framework of our methodology. Franc Purg’s Where is the line?, for example, represents a type of performance artwork extremely dependent on action itself, on dramatized (or scored) action. There were neither discourses to remember nor music or sound, there were not even words in the performance’s script and formalization. In the context of our research, that means that we must look for a specific type of memories and remembrances. This is why the space of the gallery where the work was done acquired such an importance, this is why stories focused so much on the order of events, in actions’ dramaturgy. Being the work very simple from the point of view of its articulation in space, but complex in meaning and emotional responses from the part of the public (and the artist himself), it allows us to delve into the very difficult task of remember even the less puzzling events and the devices and objects involved on them while producing at the same time recreations of emotions and feelings which superimpose with ideological discourses. Telling what happened there that day (or night, in this case) is not our task: we are absolutely devoted to let the witnesses talk (and only them, and the author, if there, appears at the same level). This is why we should never forget, as editors of the source material of the exhibition or publication, that we are showing (among other things) a function of the performance for the bodily configuration of its public. “What happened there that day” (in this case: “What happened that night of december, 1998, when Franc Purg made his performance Where is the line? in ŠKUC Gallery?”) is the only question we have to launch the interviews with the assistants.

Due to the distinct character of performance artworks, our research included conventional methodologies (organizing interviews, visiting archives, deciphering photos and texts) as well as some not-so-common operations, like the one in which we got to know at least the name of the butcher who assisted Franc Purg in his action, completely erased from the memory of all participants, organizers and the artist himself.

Tatiana Kocmur & Francisco Tomsich

1 The name refers to the artists’ main interests, as stated in the general presentation of the overall project: “We are interested in works in which the body takes the quality of an artistic object: a presence in a space with aesthetic values producing potentially infinite images and interpretations. The characteristics of the place where each work is produced and introduced to the public also offers the opportunity to deconstruct, fragment and re-combine former artistic processes in order to be shown as performative events in a different context and in a specific space. We are aiming to create an international platform for collaborations and exchanges with artists and institutions from Slovenia and abroad. The intention is to emphasize processes and models of translating and exhibiting performance events happening in another location and in a parallel space.” The use of Slovenian and Spanish version of the association’s name also alludes to the specificities of the word in that languages which can not be translated into English as “translation”, as well as to the bilingualism or biculturalism of T|T’s founding artists. See: https://translacija.wordpress.com

2 The exhibition displayed a series of artworks and documents summoned as preliminary results of the research model’s operation on the performance Where is the line? (Franc Purg, ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana, 1998). This specific investigation is not concluded yet. See: https://translacija.wordpress.com/documentation/

3 See: Belting, Hans, Bild-Anthopologie: Fink Wilhelm GmbH + Co.KG, 2011.

4 See: Jones, Amelia, “The shift to the objects remains of performance. Material traces: time and gesture in contemporary art” in: Dertnig, Carola and Thun-Hohenstein, Felicitas (eds.), Performing the Sentence. Research and Teaching in Performative, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien. Sternberg Press, 2014.