Ice Balls

View my new piece here

this is an absurdist performance piece.  I feel like it needs a statement, if only for myself to see what the hell I think I'm doing.  So here goes.

This piece references several artists/works indirectly.  I can cite Mathew Barney's Drawing Restraint videos, Andy Goldsworthy's landscape/performance art, Bruce Nauman's self referential piece "Walking in an Exaggerated Manner around the perimeter of a square", some of Vito Acconci's early video work, and Muybridge and Etienne's photo studies of human movement and animal locomotion.  Oh, especially Duane Michal's Still photo sequence "I Build a Pyramid" where he photographs himself building a small pyramid of stones in front of the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt.  There is probably more, but that's all I can think of right now.  

In the video, I see myself as "the artist alone in his studio" where my studio is outdoors.  I find the scenery especially scenic, if not remote.  It's shot near downtown Anchorage, and if I let the direct sounds in, you would hear trains, humming industry, cars and planes flying overhead.  I opted to make it sound remote by dubbing the arctic wind.  

In the action itself, I wanted to create a dichotomy of scene and action.  I find the act of playing baseball, football or soccer in a such a desolate landscape extremely funny.  I added an element of slapstick to the mix.  The physical comedy of the movements exaggerates the incongruity of context.  The use of different sized pieces of ice as the objects of sport pushes the piece further into the absurd.

While reviewing the footage after the shoot, I came to see the marks being made in the clean white snow as drawing.  I, dressed in black, became like a charcoal stick that made lines and shapes with my footprints.  This is where I really felt I was close to what Goldsworthy is doing with his use of sticks, leaves, rocks and ice to make natural drawings and sculptures.   This piece also draws from Hamish Fulton whose artwork begins with a walk from one place to another.  Incidentally, both Goldsworthy and Fulton have done work in Alaska in the last 10 years.

In this work I see myself as moving through space, moving through landscape, moving through environment.  I see myself struggling against myself and the environment.  The idea was born with the weigh lifting scene, the first shot in the video.  this one for me is representational of struggle, first to get the ice ball free of the ground, then to lift and carry it off camera.  The other parts continue with throwing an ice ball away, sliding into a 2nd base iceball, then stealing third, an iceball onside kick turned into a touchdown, and dribbling an ice soccerball.  In the last two pieces I reference running, swimming, gymnastics, swimming, boxing, bowling and the shot put.  I have since shot something with hockey and breakdancing.  I'm not sure where this will eventually lead me, but I plan to follow this train of thought throughout the course of this winter.