Class Performance Art Activity

The performance art activity was fun and, overall, I got more out of these performances than out of Kaprow's mirror activity that we did last week. The one I performed, Casey's "Star of David" activity, was interesting and thought-provoking. We were to spend a few minutes drawing the Star of David on a piece of paper in all different iterations. At the end, Casey asked us what we were thinking about while drawing. I found the activity interesting on a number of levels. As I was drawing, I began to think about the power of symbols and how historically they have been used both by and against certain groups of people. As I continued to draw, I noticed that the symbol began to lose visual meaning for me, much the way a word said over and over and over begins to sound nonsensical. That got me thinking about the power of art to effect the cultural significance of particular symbols, etc etc. I also thought it was interesting, and effective, that Casey did not tell us ahead of time to be conscious of what we were thinking or alert us that she was going to ask us about it. This made the activity much more authentic. It was interesting to hear how different the thoughts were between the two people who were drawing and to see how those different thoughts influenced the way the drawings evolved on the paper. It was a striking reminder of how every stroke and line drawn or painted by an artist is a reflection of that person's individual consciousness.

My activity had two people taking turns "destroying" and "creating" art. It was intended as a metaphor for the evolution of art, the interconnectedness of artists and how all art is a reaction to what has come before. As I was writing the activity, I was reflecting upon how artists have needed to destroy on break down previous paradigms in order to create something new. Viewing the performance, I think it would have been more effective to have 4 or 6 different people engage in the activity, each one picking up where the other left off.
To have the same two people doing the destroying and creating gave the impression of a cycle rather than a forward progression, which was not as effective.