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dcperformanceart:

Eleanor Barba: A Brief Reminder of Our Even Briefer Encounter

Performance, Watercolor, Watercolor Paper, Pulleys, Rope, Acrylic Paint

Part of the NEXT show at the Corcoran.  Video documentation of performance, along with installation produced through the performance.  Usually, I find it a little redundant to have the video of the performance alongside the installation, but this work made me pause and really consider the relationship of these two documentations of the same performance.  What the video did was force me to spend some more time in front of the work, between the two pieces.  In incorporating video, which is inherently time-based, the trace of the duration of the performance is emphasized.  The installation is imposing, dominating the whole room, and a quickly read text.  In front of the wall hanging are chairs and the paint materials used in the performance.  I noticed that Eleanor lists “Performance” as one of the mediums alongside the materials that physically constitute the piece, but leaves out the chairs, bucket, and brushes.  It is as if she is locating that part of the installation within “performance,” where the installation is disparate.  It made me think of Joseph Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, an early conceptual work that consists of an actual physical chair, a photo of a chair, and a printed definition of “chair.”  A Brief Reminder of Our Even Briefer Encounter is installation, video, museum wall text, with performance situated somewhere in the forefront but absent in my encounter with it.  It may be that I sometimes deify performance, and I had to consider what the implications are of listing performance right there with the physical materials.  What does it do to reiterate the installation in a much smaller video, documenting it’s production as an integral part of looking at the finished piece?  There’s a layered significance in the title, “reminder” and the persistance of the performance in the installation and video, “encounter” and the actual physical presence of the body of the artists making the text with her body.  

Eleanor is performing this Thursday at Soapbox, a piece called Letter to Margie; She Will Never See This.  Soapbox is at Hillyer Art Space, 9 Hillyer Ct NW DC, 7-9pm

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