08.14.08 kulturnatib

Art does best

In no other art form is weather a decisive factor than in performance art. This, among other things, is what sets apart performance art from the performing arts.

While the performing arts is generally sheltered from the vagaries of weather, often in climate-controlled environments of theaters, concert halls or some indoor venue, performance art -- because often it is site specific and just as often the site is outdoors -- has to work around those same vagaries especially when the performance art event is billed as “rain or shine.”

Exactly how the performance event Saturday, last weekend, was billed as.

The event was Time Squared or Time to the second power. This was the second annual summer art festival of Gallery 101 in Ottawa. It featured video screenings from the Available Light Screening Collective, performance art from Fait Maison (HomeMade) and a musical duo (electric guitar and drums) whose name escapes me now.

Rain and shine, indeed, it was that Saturday. Thus a tent was on standby for that eventuality. It became the refuge for the musical duo and performance pieces that could not weather the rain. Such as mine and another one whose karaoke setting, as happened, best fitted under the tent.

The four other performances were done in the rain while one was done when the sun made a brief appearance. The artists had anticipated and prepared for this.

I had done the same. I had anticipated rain and was prepared for the fact that it would be impossible if not foolhardy to invite a dozen possible strangers to the table for a soup meal while being drizzled on.

But, that was as far as that went. Which is what happens in performance art; What is possible is inevitable.

As mentioned in my immediately previous column, my piece involved inviting a dozen people to eat with me some alphabet noodle soup. The noodles spelled out certain phrases or sentences, the eating of which, while not necessarily acknowledging a mistake as implied by the saying, 'eating one's own words,' could lead to a healthy skepticism about such words.

I had provided chopsticks instead of spoons not only as a reference to my being Asian, but also mostly to force a more careful appreciation of the fact of the alphabet noodles and the corresponding phrases they formed.

For most, this was immediately apparent. For some it was an invitation to extend the performance, to add their own layer, their own skin as it were to the total onion of meaning to the piece.

Stefan is a performance artist himself and he was among those who received an invitation to the table. As soon as he sat down, he set about with his own performance, which others followed but not with the same thoroughness and doggedness.

He picked each letter carefully and properly with the chopsticks and reconstructed them on his place mat. This grabbed the attention of some others and encouraged their emulation for which he got a much deserved applause when the entire phrase, that turned out to be with the most number of letters, was completely reconstructed.

Then, to end it with a flourish, he proceeded to eat them by licking them off the place mat.

While that ending I found to be simply in keeping with his rather flamboyant personality, it was the careful reconstruction of the phrase that I realized was where he accepted the challenge of the piece and truly ate the words that not only led to skepticism but was from the beginning led by skepticism.

He was immediately skeptical of my claim in the exhibit statement found in the place mat that the phrase in his bowl was complete and he seriously took the invitation, also found in the place mat, to 'feel free to ascertain that no letters are missing.'

While I took pains to make sure that the phrases were complete -- in fact, there were some missing letters reported, but not in Stefan's bowl -- I simply did not expect that anyone would actually try to find out. Certainly not with the same elan and flourish as Stefan.

In some way Stefan did me better. Yet, at the end of that rainy day, it was the art that did best.