Performance Art. Leap into the void – Yves Klein 1960

It’s been quite a week – Donald Trump president elect of the USA – this has hit closer to home because we have Americans in the family – Democrats thankfully. But I was surprised how the news on Wednesday 9th November 2016 knocked me sideways and I spent quite some time in the new Starbucks at Wolverhampton University just staring into space. I know American tax avoiding Starbucks might not have been the best haven given the blow the USA had just inflicted on the rest of the world but I needed something sweet and Starbucks fitted the bill nicely.

Say hello to the Rocky Road to ruin.

So for anyone just catching up with my journey – and by the way thank you for your interest, my blog Reverent Art, is my record of life studying for a BA in Fine Art at Wolverhampton University, I know, an undergraduate at my age what am I thinking!

Today it was Performance Art. Yes as life settles down again following the US elections I have been learning about Performance Art and one of the best examples of the genre is Leap into the Void by Yves Klein. It is entirely coincidental that this subject falls in the week of the US presidential elections but the image of someone throwing themselves from a building feels a bit like Life imitating Art.

But back to today and Performance Art.

The idea is that art is so much more than many of us might think – I think pictures in a gallery – but we art students are encouraged to see ourselves as communicators, conveyors of imagination, creators of visual ideas. Art is supposed to evoke a response a reaction.

So one writer Paul Schimmel described Klein’s leap like this:

“Klein’s leap served as a powerful metaphor for the creative act, both in its uncontrolled, visceral manifestation and in the highly contrived conceptual theory that created it.”

I think he meant – it is a performance piece of what the artist faces when confronted with a blank piece of paper.

So this is a long lead up to what I did today as a performance piece.

Joined by three others, considerably younger than I, (so more flexible, which matters when you are crawling around on the floor!) we devised a performance involving paper and charcoal called:

‘Conversation Peace’.

What would a conversation look like without words?

Because we all know that there is always more than words going on in the human interaction called conversation. Unspoken thoughts like:

‘What is she thinking?’ ‘Does he like me?’ ‘I wonder if they voted for Trump?’ or even ‘I’m bored’!

So allowing our bare hands to move the charcoal around the paper the four of us performed a conversation without words and our performance left these traces.

It felt good and strangely soothing communicating with three others without speaking. The only sounds heard were the breaking of charcoal and the swishing sound of the movements.

Connection without words, conversation by design.

I’m wondering, what traces our conversations leave in the world? Yours and mine?

Do our words bless and build up or bludgeon and tear down?

Next? Stretching a canvass.