Congrats to Ana Martinez for her new publication. She includes my work in Chapter 14 Relics, Artifacts, and Bones: Activating Migrancy's Traces Through Performance.
Link to the Book is here.
https://www.routledge.com/Puppet-and-Spirit-Ritual-Religion-and-Performing-Objects-Volume-II-Contemporary-Branchings-Secular-Benedictions-Activated-Energies-Uncanny-Faiths/Orenstein-Cusack/p/book/9780367713799?srsltid=AfmBOopkns5VJkGs_3s6pRYiU17jbVE2DrfDTwSIE60jfMR14Arcdx5L
https://cameronartmuseum.org/exhibition/close-to-home-exhibition/
Bridging Borders, July 17, 2023, Spello, Italy
We spoke on the phone and did some planning but Tamara Soldan and I had only one day in person before our performative collaboration to finalize what we were going to do. We gathered voices from friends and colleagues talking about borders in their lives prior to coming together.
I wanted to know what people thought about borders and what exactly the word border meant to them. Tamara and I we worked their voices into a sound piece which was the basis for my mapping performance. I had just returned from the Evros river border crossing between Turkey and Greece. I was thinking about the ribbon I had held up there and the way we inscribe territory and control of that territory through mapping. How is takes more than one actor to make a border and hold it in place, therefore the border is constantly in flux and never static. You can see a photo of the action I did with a ribbon in Turkey near Evros on the flyer which we made. The trip to that border was also a return to a place I had been at ten with my mother in 1969.
The key elements in the performance were 1) Emergency Blankets, 2) Large Map, 3) Ladders 4) Reading in two languages at once 5) Music
Laura Ritchie joined out team that day and passed out shimmering and noisy emergency blankets to everyone in the audience with no specific directions. We also staged some of them with fans blowing on them. These are the blankets that immigrants are given when they reach the U.S. border from Mexico and are held in makeshift chain-link fence cages. They are indeed efficient, but they make continuous noise. It was the hottest day of the year in Spello so the Centro Studi Europeo Di Musica Medievale Adolfo Broegg (Chiesa di Santa Maria della Consolazione di Prato - Spello, Italy) was extremely hot…some folks opened the blankets, and some folks carried them home for further contemplation.
I made a large scale map combining many different forms of mapping on paper, a 17th century map of some earthworks, old road maps, military maps from World War II, maps of the U.S.- Mexico border, Italia touring maps from the 50’s, maps of the moon, a map of Berlin which Tamara had carried with her from her home there, etc. This object became the crux of the work and my performance. I shared it with each member of the audience in silence as I entered the space and then slowly explored it's objectness....unfolding it, tearing it, wearing it, crawling under it, sewing a border into it and ultimately tearing out the threads I had swen into it..
Ladders have many meanings. I have a strong memory of my father in grey striped overalls flecked in Wedgewood blue as he painted our house, a ladder which represented care, work, and stability. In my many trips to the U.S.– Mexico border I was stunned to see wooden ladders piled up against the border wall. They were handmade. People floated them across the Rio Grande in parts and then walked the distance to the wall where they were assembled and used to cross into what they hoped to be a better life. In Spello, Italy wooden ladders are symbols of the olive harvest. The hallmark tool is a handmade wooden ladder that fits between the branches of the olive tree. The olive harvest is a yearly event which involves every member of the family and marks the passing of a year which is celebrated with meals, festivals, and olive tastings. I am fascinated by the beauty of these ladders and asked our local farm store Fastellini (Mangimi e Sementi) if they would lend me some for the installation and performance, which they generously did. During the performance I slowly raised and lowered a ladder in the middle of the church.
The fourth element of the work was a mash up of language and communication. Tamara and I read the same text in different languages at the same time. My language English and for Tamara Italian. They were the words we had gathered from people speaking about borders. Our words connected, disconnected, were out of sync but also vibrated as the words and emotional effects of bordering fell from our mouths. We stood on either side of the ladder as we performed.
Tamara also performed some of her sonorous work during the performance.
Posting photos to fill in the blanks below.
Here is the link to the full Artist Spotlight
https://mccollcenter.org/press-news/alumni-artist-spotlight-susan-harbage-page?fbclid=IwY2xjawGfV0xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRlxi8IcFS0akbH_uFPl2hQjO7glmJaFlyrPf0qMK7BKkInLbWehvjrclg_aem_fXp9jy9wP6jwRKzxklscGA
Standing on a very narrow history of patriarchal art that many of us grew up on.
This collection of H.W. Janson's "A History of Art" books is the last thing left in my office before I retire. Coincidentally, my office was previously a women’s dorm room at UNC. I used to use these books in a performance designed to deconstruct art history on the first day of my Women and Gender in Contemporary Art Course. Sometimes standing on them in silence till I became tired and lost my balance. Other times sitting in the corner or laying on a table reading all the white European male names of the included artists out loud, one after another ad nauseum. Dragging those books to class and plunking them down (sometimes in anger, sometimes as if to discard them) one at a time was all part of the performance. It symbolized the weight of the male artists who had been selected to be historicized and important by the white male art historians and the capitalist art world. The "Standing Performance" amplified the fact that I could not see the work of other women like me or a diverse set of women artists when I went to a museum or read about art as a kid and young adult. The performance changed from year to year, after that initial stage of the performance (me balancing on the books) we would start learning about women and gender in contemporary art and make new lists. Always important to understand who was left out before digging in.
