Mar. 1, 2010 at 10:43pm with 4 notes View comments
Contemporary ArtPerformanceBruce High Quality Foundation
I snapped this awful cell phone picture Saturday night at BRUCEFORMA, a performance event in conjunction with the BRUCENNIAL, in (informal) conjunction with the Whitney Biennial. This is not, in fact, an image of the performace, but rather the enthusiasm of two young men jumping up on the stage for an extended moment of art love afterwards. The event, presented by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, a Brooklyn based artist collective, consisted of a menagerie of hipsters in a SoHo room lit by neon lights and several garbage cans full of Natty Ice.  I couldn’t help but feel like I was back at school watching a bunch of stoned 19 year olds try to pass their gallivants off as art, but I think that unrefined, sophomoric style was all fully intended. I stayed for one performance, in which an eBay scam (presumably created by the Foundation) involving a witch advertising a spell to increase a person’s buttocks was presented in the form of a gaudy PowerPoint, music, and spoken word.  The group displayed a reply from one poor man desperate for a little more junk in the trunk, and willing to pay for it, immediately followed by the witch’s response that she and the coven had gotten right on it and guaranteed he would have a juicy behind in no time. The art of screwing people over is an interesting one (note Artur Zmijewski’s manipulative video pieces), and though the performance did not focus solely on this aspect, it’s what stood out for me.  When artists start to see “civilians” merely as potential marionettes in their schemes, they may create  interesting work, but in the end, only retreat further art’s ever more removed domain. In other words, rather than simply existing at a distance from the rest of society, they’re actively shoving it away. I think the intended message may have been something more along the lines of “see how easily people buy bullshit,” and yes, Bruce High Quality Foundation, I agree.  But maybe it wasn’t the poor flat-butted eBay user buying the bullshit, it was all of us in the audience and, by proxy, the adoring audiences at Performa (the seminal performance art review from which this event took tis name) and the Whitney Biennial. (more on the Biennial later.  Personally, I thought it was terrific).

I snapped this awful cell phone picture Saturday night at BRUCEFORMA, a performance event in conjunction with the BRUCENNIAL, in (informal) conjunction with the Whitney Biennial. This is not, in fact, an image of the performace, but rather the enthusiasm of two young men jumping up on the stage for an extended moment of art love afterwards.

The event, presented by the Bruce High Quality Foundation, a Brooklyn based artist collective, consisted of a menagerie of hipsters in a SoHo room lit by neon lights and several garbage cans full of Natty Ice.  I couldn’t help but feel like I was back at school watching a bunch of stoned 19 year olds try to pass their gallivants off as art, but I think that unrefined, sophomoric style was all fully intended.

I stayed for one performance, in which an eBay scam (presumably created by the Foundation) involving a witch advertising a spell to increase a person’s buttocks was presented in the form of a gaudy PowerPoint, music, and spoken word.  The group displayed a reply from one poor man desperate for a little more junk in the trunk, and willing to pay for it, immediately followed by the witch’s response that she and the coven had gotten right on it and guaranteed he would have a juicy behind in no time.

The art of screwing people over is an interesting one (note Artur Zmijewski’s manipulative video pieces), and though the performance did not focus solely on this aspect, it’s what stood out for me.  When artists start to see “civilians” merely as potential marionettes in their schemes, they may create  interesting work, but in the end, only retreat further art’s ever more removed domain. In other words, rather than simply existing at a distance from the rest of society, they’re actively shoving it away.

I think the intended message may have been something more along the lines of “see how easily people buy bullshit,” and yes, Bruce High Quality Foundation, I agree.  But maybe it wasn’t the poor flat-butted eBay user buying the bullshit, it was all of us in the audience and, by proxy, the adoring audiences at Performa (the seminal performance art review from which this event took tis name) and the Whitney Biennial.

(more on the Biennial later.  Personally, I thought it was terrific).

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