09.14.06 kulturnatib

Birdsong

"Are you playing the guitar for your performance?", Loic asked. We were in his car returning home from a trip to Steve's Music Store. There he had a recently bought guitar repaired and his old guitar looked at.

Loic is a recent friend who plays the guitar, owned a jazz club in his native Benin, Africa, and works as a computer teacher, web and graphic designer by day.

He was simply putting two and two together. He knew my interest in guitars and I had just invited him to a performance piece I had been invited or, more accurately, given permission to perform in a weeks time after that trip.

As a musician he, more than most, would immediately think of a performance as something musical or theatrical.

But, like most, he probably hadn't been exposed enough to performance art which, more than other artistic styles or genres of the visual arts continues to expand in scope as much in its definitions as its practice.

I tried to explain as best I could what my performance was going to be. Before proceeding, however, I cautioned him that such explanation is at best provisional since one of the main elements of a performance is its site specificity.

The details of a performance is determined to a large extent by the specific conditions of the site where the performance happens, the most important among which would be the size of the audience (usually small), the size of the performance area and the extent or direction of the development of the artistic concept of the performance.

This differentiates performance art from all other visual arts genres or styles. The work is almost never developed in full until it begins and ends. And then, sometimes, not even. A similar performance can continue to develop depending on, again, the specifics of site, thematic or content currency or, simply, a different or the same artist developing further the artistic concept.

This puzzled him until I said that performance art was not unlike a musical jam where musicians improvise on a musical theme and constantly listens to the other musicians for cues on how the whole musical piece proceeds or otherwise ends.

Ah, he says, but to appreciate a good jam, its best for one to be present. I smiled. I couldn't have said it better. Just the same, I told him, music is an integral part of my performance.

Performance day rolls around and there he was with his partner, Amélie and another handful who comprised the audience. The event was a meeting of the Centre sur la diversité culturelle et les pratiques solidaires (CEDISOL), an immigrant integration and solidarity NGO based in Gatineau, Quebec.

The performance consisted of, first, the distribution of the artist statement titled, Bird In My Head, Song Of My Heart, which is also the title of the performance piece. Then I had eight people write their names on Philippine passport facsimiles which were arranged, as each were written with the names, in a circle approximating the eight compass points.

A chair was then brought in and placed in the middle of this circle. I then entered wearing a suit case head gear with the world map painted on it. After dancing around the passport circle a few times, I stepped in the circle and sat on the chair.

A minute later I took off the headgear, set it down and from a bag took out a home made megaphone. At the mouth end was a whistle attached to a paper strip that unrolled through the sound amplifying end when air was blown into it which also made the whistle sound.

One after the other I took the passports, climbed up the chair, stood, held the open passport in front of me and, facing the direction from where I took the passports, started blowing several times on the whistle as the paper bird proceeded to unravel and roll back.

After this I sat for another minute on the chair. Then, i got up, upended the chair and took off a plastic covering on the two rear legs of the chair to reveal a full bird on a board similar in design to the bird on the megaphone. Then I walked out with the suitcase.

Every traveller, whether they are immigrating or simply touring, always bring with them something of what they have left behind. This is the complex that is recognized as identity. Immediately, in the hands of a bureaucrat or an immigration official it is packaged into a document, a passport or a visa for exclusion or inclusion. For the wider community it is a set of prejudices or labels, dictating rejection or acceptance.

Every step across any border is an act of both acceptance and challenge. Acceptance that what one brings must be given voice. And the challenge that all voices must be sung, must be heard, despite or because of the difficulties.

That was the exhibit statement. That was what, I suppose, Loic was smiling at.