Amanda Coogan - Performance artist

Amanda Coogan

YELLOW

Tableau Vivant - Performer is present before audience enter space. Audience is free to come and go.

Performer sits on top of bucket, back straight. 

AUDIENCE ENTER

1. Performer submerges skirt inbetween legs into water. Pulls out material. Rubs material together in 8/8 time. Bubbles arbitrarily for

2. Performer holds scrubbed material out to audience. Looks audience in the eye. Resubmerges material into water. Continues scrubbing in 8/8 time.

3. Performer wrings material, from bottom to top forming a crown of bubbles at tip. Blow bubbles off tip. Take tip in mouth. Bite material. Stand up holding material in teeth. Bare teeth and shake head.

Repeat loop, sequence variable. Duration: 4 hours.

AUDIENCE LEAVE

 DRESS

Sunflower yellow dress, shirt collar, short sleeves,  4 gold buttons down the front, gold belt. Skirt of dress is volumous, stretching to 5 meters in lenght. 

BUCKET

White bucket, placed center, the seat and site of action.

Bucket filled to the top with water and bubble bath.

Bucket holds 80 litres of water.

BUBBLE BATH

Bubble bath for bucket = 1litre of Sailor Matey brand.

Bubble bath for skirt = 500ml of Mermaid Matey brand, poured into lap.

LIGHTING

Room dimly lit, bucket/performer area simply spotlit.

 Amanda Coogan, Dublin 2010

Yellow map drawing 1

medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Yellow map drawing 2
medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Yellow map drawing 3
medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Yellow map drawing 4
medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Yellow map drawing 5
medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Yellow map drawing 6
medium: black tea with scratches
2010

Music
Included three pieces of music for Yellow.
1.             Franz Schubert Impromptu in A flat, D 899 No. 4.
The Sofia Recital. Pianist: Svjatoslav Richter.
2.             George Frideric Handel; Messiah
Messiah: 6 Chorus: And He shall purify the sons of Levi.
Academy of St Martin and the Fields, & Sir Neville Marriner.
3.            George Frideric Handel;  Messiah
Messiah: 5 Air: But who may abid the day of his coming.
Academy of St Martin and the Fields, & Sir Neville Marriner.
2008 – Schubert’s Impromptu was used.

2009 – Handel’s Messiah: 6 was included.

2010 – Handel’s Messiah ; 5 will be added.

Yellow score 1

Yellow Score 2

Yellow Score 3

Yellow Score 4

Video
3 minutes, from a live performance, duration: 6 hours

at the Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin July 2008
Video shot during the final hour.

 

 

Proposal for a live durational performance exhibition.

Working title: Sheela-Ni-Gig

(above image; Tullaroan Sheela, Co. Kilkenny, found in 1992,

in the possession of Noel Coogan, the artist’s Uncle.

Dimesions: 75(h)X35(w)X25(B))

Description:

A longditudinal live performance in the sculpture hall in the Hugh Lane gallery, made in conjunction with the Sheela-na-Gig sculptures borrowed from the National Museum of Ireland. The sculptures will be placed on the floor, leaning against the walls of the hall. The Artist will perform amid and with the sculptures. The room should be dimly lit.

National Museum of Ireland

The Live Performance:

The artist will crawl or walk around the oval room carrying the Sheelas on her back. The process of development for this new piece of work is open and fluid at this stage. This will not be a sensationalised exploration of the Sheelas but an investigation of the heritage of the female image in Ireland.

The core of this exhibition is the longditudinal durational performance, 2 to 3 weeks in lenght. (this will be clarified closer to the date in conjunction with the Gallery).

The performance will be tableaux vivant with the artist following the opening hours of the gallery and performing for the full duration; 10am – 6pm/10am – 5pm/11am-5pm.

Documentation:

There will be no documentation of the performance on exhibition, allowing for a focus on the purity of the live moment. In the times when the artist is not present in live performance the piece will be relayed to the audience by the invigilators, the Sheelas will still be present. Each invigilator may choose their own way to 'document' the performance; by verbally retelling it, or showing video or photography of the performance captured on their mobile phone.

In the run up to the live performance I will be making a series of work around this investigation and will have a plethora of images that may be used for catalogue/press. I will document the performance outside of the public viewing times for archive and post-performance usage but want to keep the a clarity of what Peggy Phelan calls the ‘manically charged present’ for the exhibition.

The Sheela-na-Gigs:

‘Sheela-na-Gigs are figurative stone carvings of naked females, typically depicted as standing or squatting in a position generally described as an ‘act of display’. Sometimes they are shown with thighs widely splayed and often one or both hands are shown pointing to, or touching, the genitalia – deliberately accentuating the focus upon this part of the anatomy. To further emphasise this aspect of the carving, the vulva or genitals are often over-exagerated in startling detail. It is extraordinary that Sheela-na-Gigs are most commonly found as a form of church ornament. They are often built into the fabric of medieval churches, in some cases being placed over the doorway.’ Joanne McMahon & Jack Roberts, The Sheela-na-Gigs of Ireland and Britain, Mercer press, 2000.

Conceptual references:

As a female artist using my body as a primary tool, the presence of the Sheela is an uncontestable influence. With 18 months development for this piece still ahead the task is to get behind the mystery of the Sheelas. This live performance will not mimick them literally visually but look to their power. Confronting the representation of the female body I will be looking at the weight of their history in this context.

Their will be a layering of influences in the final piece.Some of the concerns , at this stage, are: The Sheela’s placement in religous settings is a curiosity and how that may sit in the light of what has been exposed by the Ryan and Murphy reports. And from contemporary practice key nodes of reference will be Abramovic’s Nude with Skeleton and Schneemann’s Interior scroll.

In 1992 my fathers Family found a Sheela amid rubble they had collected to build a wall on the farm. I was then a young art student and sat for days drawing and taking rubbings from this Tullaroan Sheela in my Uncle’s front room in Kilkenny. 

Borrowing the Sheelas from the National Museum:

I have visited the archive in the National Museum to view their Sheelas.

To borrow the Sheelas a letter must be sent from Director to Director, from Barbara to Pat Wallace, and c.c’ed to Ned Kelly, Keeper of Antiquities seeking the feasibility of borrowing the 9 sheelas in their collection, 7 in storage and 2 on permenant display. This process can take up to 18 months.

When the lending process has been formalised I can then request to make replicas of the stones, following their guidelines. This is a sensitive and delicate process and would have to be done following strict antiqity guidelines. The replicas can then be cast in a fibreglass/rubber mixture, coloured following the stone of the original but lighter in weight, allowign for performance handling.

The Tullaroan Sheela, pictured above, is in my familys possession and is, conceptually and emotionally,  a central piece for the exhibition.

Budget items:

• Borrowing and transportation of the Sheelas
• Craddling/support for the Sheelas in the sculpture hall
• Replication process for the Sheelas
• Invigilators/documentors
• Costume
• Live performance fee     

 

Performance Art Now ‘10

A festival of live performance in the Visual Arts @ Dublin Art Mill

The Performance Art Live Foundation (IRL)

Three days of live performance, with an emphasis on durational performances presented as living installation by the artist, followed by a day long symposium on live performance practice today.

Over the four days of the festival we intend to focus on the work of both renowned international performance artists, the exciting practice of Irish live artists, as well as providing a platform for emerging artists working with live performance. We are focusing on artists who have live performance as the central tenet of their practice and who work as artist-performers. This festival is distinctive providing an in-depth focus on Performance Art.

Performance art is a slippery, uncertain term and through this festival, via the work and critical discussion, we will investigate performance practice in this, it’s second wave. The festival will critically and viscerally engage with performance in the Visual arts today.

Each day 4 artists will perform simultaneously in living installation for a four-hour duration. The exhibition will be curated to include an international artist, established Irish artists, alongside new emerging artists.

List of Artist/Performers:

Day 1

Dominic Thorpe, Ireland

Brian Connolly, Northern Ireland

Victoria Mc Cormack, Ireland

Ann-Maire Healy, Ireland

Day 2

Francis Mezzetti, Ireland

Sandra Johnston, Northern Ireland

Pauline Cummins, Ireland

Alex Conway, Ireland

Day 3

Alastair Mac Lennan, Northern Ireland

Anna Bernston, Sweden

Mebh Redmond, Ireland

Niamh Murphy, Ireland

The International Context

Live performance in the Visual Arts is in the process of coming in from the periphery and into the canon of the contemporary gallery. In 2009 New York’s MOMA appointed Klaus Biesenbach as their first Curator in Chief for Performance Art. In July of the same year, for the exhibition Marina Abramovic presents... the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester cleared its permanent collection and installed 14 durational performances for three weeks. Our festival will explore the impact of these seminal developments within the infrastructure of the art world, the re-framing of performance art within it, and subsequently the effect this has on Irish live practice.

The Irish Context

Irish people have a special relationship and enthusiasm for all things live from sport to music, theatre to storytelling. Within this cultural context Ireland has developed a vibrant and outstanding practice in performance art making. Of the 14 international artists included in Marina Abramovic Presents... at the Whitworth Gallery, Alastair Mac Lennan, Kira O’Reilly and Amanda Coogan are Irish or live on the island.

The influence of Mac Lennan’s practice on both contemporary Irish Art and international live performance cannot be underestimated. Andre Stitt has suggested the richness of performance practice in the Irish Visual Arts is a by-product of the Troubles, that the conflict, placed on the artists body from the late 70’s, became key to the development of Irish performance practice. The late ‘loop’ plays of Samuel Beckett have been cited as an important legacy in the emergence of Irish live performance in the visual arts. The festival symposium will strive to explore these ideas and theories.

The Symposium

The festival will culminate with the symposium which will reflect on ideas based around the question of contemporary live performance in the visual arts. During this we will address the status of performance art both nationally and internationally with our exhibiting artists and academics in the field.  Potential topics may include;

• The Artists presence in live performance
• The impact of 70’s performance on contemporary practice
• Duration and it’s relationship to performance
• Performance Art- Coming in from the cold
• What is the legacy of Irish performance artBoard of Performance Art Live Foundation, Ireland
• Amanda Coogan, Curator.  A performance artist working primarily in live durational performance. Coogan is recognised internationally as being to the forefront of the current wave of performance art. She brings to P.A. Live her experience of participating in a number of international performance festivals and performing her work live in museums and galleries in Ireland, Europe and America.
• Niamh Murphy, Curator. A performance artist and recent graduate of  IADT, Murphy has an emerging and exciting practice. She brings to P.A. Live a dynamisim, enthusiasim and experience not only as an emerging artist but also as a live cabaret performer.
  
  Dominic Thorpe, Curator. A visual artist working primarily in live performance.  He works uses site specific and relational processes in developing and presenting work. He is invested in the development of Irish performance art and brings to P.A. Live particular experiences of working with various groups of people to develop and present work.
  
  Jimmy Fay, Non Executive. A theatre director with substantial experience  producing live performance in both avant-garde and traditional theatre. His experience of setting up and founding the Dublin Fringe festival may be particularly helpful to P.A. Live. Fay has also documented a number of live performances, most notably he filmed Coogan’s performance video Adoration currently on tour with the exhibition Noughties but Nice.
  
  John Kenny, Non Executive. A Visual Artist and curator and recent graduate of IADT. Kenny will bring his vibrant experience of exhibition management and artist collectives to P.A.Live.
  
  Helen Carey, Non Executive. A Visual Art Curator who has commisioned and produced many live performance in the Visual Arts most notably Coogan’s recent durational performance for Tulca; Yellow-expanded. She sits on the board with both curatorial and managerial skills to assist P.A. Live.
  
  

Robert Wilson

 15th March 2010

Audition for ‘The life and death of Marina Abramovic’ – produced by the Manchester Interatioal Festival.

Berliner ensemble 12 -3 pm

 We come in.

There is a long table at one end of the room where Bob, his associate director and the producer are seated. There are 7 audtionees, and 7 chairs laid in a line with their backs to this table. We are asked to sit on these chairs.

Bob comes around the front, into the middle of the rehearsal room. He stands in front of us and starts to tell us the story of his evolution as a practionner, from studying business, architecture and art and then moving into the New York scene of the 70’s where Raunscheberg painted a goat and called it art. The Whitney held a seminal exhibition (anti-illusion: porcedures/materials 1969) and from their he decided that he was interested in illusion and in the frame given by the procenium arch, unlike Merce Cunimgham’s use of the 360 degree presentation. He spoke very slowly, methodically and considered, and looked straight over our heads as he spoke. Occasionally but pointedly giving one of us eye contact – I felt I was being examined or considered throughout this whole process.

Then we were asked to stand at a white line up the other end of the rehersal room, in a line.

He asked us to look straight ahead and imagine there is a beam of light coming out from our body into infinity. And another beam of light coming out of our back and going into infinity. The light at your back was the most important. He told us Martha Graham used to tell her dancers they were on a railway track that streched out in front of them into infinity and behind them into infinity. I think he was looking at our presence or radiance.

Then he asked us to take 3 minutes to walk 1 meter. I asked to take off my shoes as I wasnt able to get a firm grip or plant for my body for the excercise. I was allowed and all of my fellow auditionees took theirs off too. He claped and we begin. I am in the slow motion walk mode, I havent done it in a while and my planted foot is woobling a bit, Im out of shape (!) but am right in the moment and concentrating, I love this feeling. He claps to finish. I think Ive taken three steps.

We are asked to sit down again, he comes around in front of us and tells more stories, slowly and again occassionally making eye contact with some of us. He tells us the hardest thing to do on stage is stand, second hardest is to walk. He tells us that Western Theatre is ‘bounded’ by the word and following a script will only lead to an illustration of it. He’s just back from Taipei where he has been working with a traditional chinese dancer who has been trained since the age of 2. He talks about giving a masterclass in Julliard and none of the kids could stand on stage. He talks about working with a Deaf kid who heard through his body, im very excited by the description, Ive never heard it told like that.

He walks to the back of the room, tells us he is going to make a movement, we’re to watch it and repeat it when he is done.

He stands his back to us arms folded, heal of the right foot slightly raised. He stays there for maybe ten beats. Swiftly raises his right hand up and over and his body follows. He is now turned around but with his head facing to the side. His right hand, palm outstreched faces down. Slowly, over about twenty beats, he raises his left hand from his side, and points the index finger, clenching the other fingers. Holds it. Then skakes the outstreched pointing fist, slowly, but with menace. In a fast motion he spreads all the fingers outstreched on the left hand, holds it, palm facing out front. He slowly brings the left hand down while rasing the right hand towards his face. The right hand, fingers outstreched, reaches the top of his chest. Three beats. He clenches this fist, in a sharp movement. (like the ISL(Irish Sign Language) sign for ‘bitch’) holds the fist for three beats. Then releases it, opening up the fingers. Moves both hands so as the palms are facing each other, right hand up at chest height and left hand near the hip. Swiftly he spins on his right foot and turns back around.

We get up and repeat. There is not enough room for all 7 of us to do this comfortably so 4 make it first,. I can sit and observe the first 4. Us 3 then make it in the second run. I totally love this excercise, the beautiful control of the body and the concentration.

He gets up again and makes another, less complicated action- he stand, arms by his side looking out, the face is neutral but concentrated, his heal of his left foot is slightly raised (simple) he flexes the right hand at the wrist so as the palm is facing the ground (the ISL sign for little boy) slowly. He flexes the left hand in the same way (ISL: two little boys) I can’t remember the rest but know that I flexed both my hands at the same time when I did it.

Were asked to sit down again and he comes around and tells us more stories. He was directing the opera singer Jesse Norman in a song cycle in Paris on 9/11. The next day Jesse called him to say she had been crying all night and couldnt go on that day. He said she must. She called him back about 4 that afternoon and said she would go on. In the middle of a song during the concert she broke down. The pianist stopped playing. Jesse stood crying for about ten minutes on stage, composed herself, tapped the piano and began again. He is telling us this very slowly and methodically and looks like he too could cry. He tells us about reading something Arthur Miller once wrote about theatre, the best thing he ever wrote, he tells us as an aside, about attending a play with Marlin Brando in it where at the opening of the play Brando simply walks down stage and stares out at the auditorium for about three minutes. The audience were electrified.

 

Standing on the line again we all had to simply say our names. In different orders and different speeds, it sounded very beautiful when we said it in a line and rythum. A simple excercise but potent one.

 

I told him about my parents being Deaf and that my first language is Sign Language. He gets up in front of us again and talks about the Deaf kid ‘hearing’ through his body.

The audtion ends and we all feel like we have attended a masterclass.

 

 

I am making a live performance in IMMA
18th June 2010
at the opening of their
Altered Images exhibition


note to self:
 to talk about case study potential
also re Bob Wilson
Also re St Paddys day live experience

Yellow - re performed 
This case study has expanded somewhat since January.


It will be held in Mary's Abbey in Dublin, a crypt and public venue (Alanna O'Kelly made her seminal Famine Performance there).

I have also expanded the artists to reperform it to include two actresses - Deirdre Roycroft and Olwen Fouere. (Olwen is still to confirm as she has been availability checked for a play to go on during the festival aswell).

Here is my proposal for the piece so far!

Mary's Abbey, Dublin run by the OPW.

Dear Supers,
I had a most amazing visit to the archive of the National Museum here in Dublin to see their reserve collection of Sheela Na Gigs, 
I am in negociations to have a durational performance at the Hugh Lane Gallery mid 2011, and possibly as part of Dublin Contemporary.

I have been considering a longditudinal durational performance, at this stage Im talk to them about 2 or 3 weeks but have to see how it might fit into Dublin Contemporary's schedule.

At this stage Im interested in confronting images of the female body as seen with the sheela na gig's alongside the female body, (I have also been developing a response  piece to Schneemann's interior scroll and both ideas are overlapping at the moment)


At this stage the proposal is for me to carry them on my back and walk/crawl around this oval shaped room in the Hugh Lane.. but Im putting provisos on this as i still have a lot of negociation to do and development time. 


Also Im considering having NO documentation for the piece in the exhibition space in the times when im not live. The piece would have to be relayed to the audience through the invigilators, and each invigilator may choose their own way to 'document' it; by verbally retelling it, or showing video or photography from their mobile phone. This I think could be a place to case study audience reaction to live performance -?


Im hoping to borrow the collection to show alongside my live performance and make casts of the antiquities and this is a delicate process, i will keep you updated as it develops, but I am super excited by it at this stage and hoovering up all thats been written about Sheela na Gigs...hmmm attempting to read Barthe too!

The following essay was published in VISUAL's catalogue, I havent recived a copy yet so havent got proper references for it to hand.

Accumulator, a live performance exhibition 
Curator: Amanda Coogan  Artists: Amanda Coogan Neva Elliott Declan Rooney Yingmei Duan Brian Connolly Alastair Mac LennanVideo and Editing: Paddy Cahill Photography: Colm Hogan and Mark Durcan Production Manager: Joe Cleere
Accumulator is a Performance Art exhibition, a conversation between six artists and their audience. The exhibition has at its core the live durational performance. Over the course of the first two months of the exhibition’s run it was in flux; shifting and changing as each artist created their performance. The exhibition was ‘finished’ when the last artists had performed and the footage of his performance was edited  and projected large scale onto the wall of Visual’s digital room. Performance Art is a slippery term. In contemporary art practice video work is sometimes referred to as performance, experimental theatre and dance also come under the umbrella of performance art. What kind of performance practice to choose was a pertinent question for me as the curator. Performance in the Visual Arts narrows the field of choice somewhat but within this remit there is also a plethora of practices.
The Performance Art that engages me is one where the artist is the performer and works durationally. This type of practice may be defined as one where the Artist is present in a certain place, for a certain amount of time, communicating with the audience and the lenght of time should be substantial.
The artist’s included in Accumulator range from the Father of Irish Performance Art; Alastair Mac Lennan to the younger generation of practioners such as Declan Rooney. The politically charged yet gentle practice of Brian Connolly intersected with Neva Elliott’s relational practice, engaging directly with the audience to make a participatory performance event. Declan Rooney, Yingmei Duan and myself have all made post graduate studies with Marina Abramovic and are in the vanguard of the second wave of Performance Art currently showing internationally. This exhibition appears at a time in the Art World where performance practice is coming from the edges into the gallery canon. New York’s MOMA this year appointed their first Curator in Chief for Performance Art[1] and the Whitworth Gallery in Manchester cleared out its collection and installed 14 durational performance for three weeks this July[2]. Live performance practice now has options beyond the event that enlivens an exhibition opening.
Durational performance is the dynamic element to this exhibition. All of the artists were asked to be present in the gallery for six hours. This time is substantial. It has transformative power over the work. The distinction made for live durational performances in the visual arts, living installations, is that they are un-rehearsable and un-repeatable. A practioner may try out, practice and reconfigure a new piece in their studio. It is not until the live event and the added elements of site and audience that the piece can be made in that unique configuration. The element of chance is the explosive constituent in duration and we Irish people love chance. We have a special relationship and enthusiasm for all things live, from sport, to music, to storytelling and it is in this cultural context that Ireland has developed a vibrant and outstanding practice in performance art making[3]. The choice of the six-hour duration gives room for the actions to develop autonomously outside of the artist’s dictate. The artist comes to a performance with a plan. But, it is with the length of time, attending, being in the here and now, that the artist’s ego is superceded by the work. A purity and clarity becomes apparent and the work sings. Live Performance in the Visual Arts is a unique and ephemeral medium and brings with it that excitement and freshness for the viewing public. This notion of the work taking over is not an indulgent artist-centric concern. As the clarity of the piece becomes more apparent over the duration, the intensity of communication with the audience heightens and the power of the work soars. This is a cyclical exchange between audience and performer. The artist offers a live image, the audience engages, the work becomes more powerful. The audience is the second performer. By their presence, their attention and their eye gaze they activate a loop of communication with the performer, assisting and allowing the performance to continue.

Accumulator is the first time such an exhibition was seen in Ireland, showing a substantial body of live work presented over the normal length of an exhibition in an innovative way. As such it was an ambitious one for a new centre of contemporary art to host. Because of the process basis of the exhibition it’s management and logistics were demanding. The exhibition was in flux for two months and its production was a truly collaborative one. The gallery doors are open, the audience is free to come and go as they please, each work is not constructed to been seen in full duration, though these performances were worth the evolutionary witness. For Accumulator I wanted to be very clear about the practionners I chose. All of their practices engage with site, duration and audience in fundamental ways. I asked all of the artists to agree to the following rules of engagement: 1. The duration of the performance will be 6 hours. The artist must be present in the space for the duration of that time. 2. The ‘trail’ of the performance activity will be left behind. 3. Each artist will perform amid the detritus of the previous performances. 4. Documentary footage of each performance will be taken and shown post performance. The exhibition space started empty with a simple long white table and six white chairs. Three projections played, showing previous performance work from each of the artists and the documentary footage of the live performances. These projectors were turned off during the live performances.
Thursday 24th September 2009•6pm – 9pm•Cut Piece, Amanda Coogan.   
I was the first performer. I covered the tables, chairs and half of the room with a yellow canvas. I wore the canvas as a skirt around my waist, cutting the body in half and planting the body into the installation. It was in part homage to Beckett’s Winnie from his play Happy days and a place of transformation of that image. The image is uprooted and during Cut Piece I liberated myself from its mountainous hold.   Pulling the fabric up I ripped it down the middle, turning the material and continuing to rip around it. As the ripping continued the diameter of the material crept closer to the body, slowly exposing the table and chairs. At each rip the fabric emitted a cloud of dust. During the piece a brilliant moment of the unexpected arrived. Simply put, I couldn’t rip the material by hand and so bit and tore at it with my teeth. As I bit the fabric I ate it, spat it out and dribbled with spit. With the material in my mouth I made direct eye contact with the audience, echoing a performance, The Fall, I made in two months earlier.   I left the space with strips of ripped fabric placed on the seat of one chair.  

Saturday 3rd October 2009•2pm – 8pm•Broken Hearts United, Neva Elliott   
Neva’s practice is collaborative and relational, depending on the participation of the audience and for this performance she advertised in the Nationalist newspaper for participants to join her in making a private process public and collective. She organised the timing of her actions precisely. 
2pm – 5.15pm •Film viewing and comfort eating. The table was laid with popcorn and heart shapes biscuits. A screen played two films about love lost and found and large cushions were strewn around the floor. As the audience came into the room they were invited to sit or lie on the cushions, eat popcorn and watch the movies. 5.15pm – 5.45pm•Wallowing in song A song was played on repeat while Neva and participants danced, swayed and lay around. 5.45pm – 6.15pm •Button badge making The action moved over to the long table where the badge making began. Badges emblazoned with ‘it’s not me it’s you’ and ‘I will survive’ were produced and worn by all. 
6.30pm – 7.30pm • Haircuts Neva had long red hair falling down to her shoulder blades as she began this performance. She sat on a chair in the middle of the room for Connie Byrne-Hyland, a professional hairdresser,  to cut her hair short and funky. Connie was armed with a cowboy belt full of hairdressing tools and seemed to dance and flutter around Neva as she transformed her. The crowd were both witnessing the event while queuing for their own turn. 
7.30pm – 8pm • Beer and getting over it Bottles of beer were opened and passed around by the newly shorn haired artist.   Neva left the tables strewn with empty green beer bottles, cut hair and badges.   

Saturday 17th October 2009•2pm – 8pm• Young and Innocent, Declan Rooney 
Declan completely changed the layout of the room, installing a full drum kit and an 8ft X 6 ft mirror on rollers. One table was piled with that weekend’s Nationalist newspaper and two other tables were doubled up and left with Neva’s beer bottles, hair and badges and my strips of yellow fabric. He invited Alex Pentek to collaborate with him playing the drums occasionally throughout the performance.   At intervals Declan rolled the mirror around the space, confronting the audience with their own image and fracturing our perspective of the room. The heavy and cumbersome mirror knocked into furniture and walls occasionally threatening to topple chairs and tables or knock into the feet of audience members. On placing the mirror at a certain point he then sat at the newspaper filled table black pen in each hand and X-ed the heads on photographs of people in the paper.   Approximately every hour Alex came into the room and started drumming, rhythmical, jazzy beats while Declan silently and intently moved the mirror around, showing us broken and backward images of the drummer. The room and the past performances detritus shifted and were half captured in the mirrors reflection. Playing with our perspective of what was in front of us, the moving mirror dynamically confronted us with a cubist like framing of the reality of the performance. The pace of the moving mirror changed throughout the performance, often slow and laboured but sometimes faster creating a cinematic spin as objects, audience and artists flew past themselves. Both performers had calm but intense presences.   Declan left the room with the full drum kit and large mirror installed.  
 
Saturday 7th November 2009•2pm – 5pm• Future Imagination, Yingmei Duan 
Yingmei gave us an oral guided tour around her imagined solo exhibition at VISUAL in 2013. As in a dream, Yingmei’s description did not match the physical reality of VISUAL’S spaces.  This was an audience dependant performance in more ways than one.  The audience did not simply look and listen, they were invited to imagine being in Yingmei’s dream, in it’s every detail. Through her heavily accented English she described several themed exhibition spaces. At one time walking us through a pastoral landscape installation she asked the audience to make the ‘voice of a cow belling’, the sound of a cowbell.   She also projected her performative presence by acting out a future performance piece. She then walked in front of us, crouched in typical Asian fashion, and began to sing a haunting Chinese lullaby.   The performance was engaged with directly by an audience seated on chairs set up in horseshoe fashion around the middle of the room and also by passive observers who watched the performance from the back of the gallery.   Yingmei left the room with the six chairs in horseshoe formation in the centre of the room with the detritus of the previous performances dotted around the periphery of the space.   

Saturday 21st November 2009•2pm – 8pm• History Lesson, Raising the table, Brian Connolly 
Brian radically changed the configuration of the room. The chairs were moved and placed at carefully selected intervals. The room was lit by desk lamps also selectively placed.  Timber lengths were piled in one corner while Declan’s mirror was moved to face into the space, providing a frame to Brian’s scene. Two tables were the main areas of action, the rising table and a second ‘workmans’ table. The audience were free to wander the room and consider the different objects and images.   The two tables demarcated two areas of action, the workman’s for intricate engagement with a scorched atlas, compass, knife, pages of text (the universal declaration of human rights). An intense and introsepctive ritual-like process resulted in the text being crumpled into balls and thrown around the gallery. Images of the war in Afganistan were transferred from the table to the timber lengths (like flags) which were then used in the second area of work, the rising table.   This rising table was installed in the middle of the room with a silver tray laid on top inside of which rolled a large silver ball. Here Brian slowly extended the legs of the table, drawing on his increasingly tall lengths of timber, making the process more difficult and unstable as he went along He methodically released one leg of the table, allowing it to hit the ground, and inserted the new longer plank of wood. Holding the table aloft with his head, like Atlas, while he raised the table. The silver ball and tray rattled with the instability of the rising table. All of these actions were made with a slow steady, concentrated energy. The table rose to beyond six foot, making the final adjustments only possible from the top of a ladder. The table swayed freely with the instability of its height. Throughout the day he shifted back and forth from these two acitivites.   Brian left the room with his precarious raised table supported by the wooden ladder. The back of each chair was slotted with the flag like planks of wood, the intermittant lenghts of the table legs.   

Saturday 28th November 2009•2pm – 8pm• Dust in Gust, Alastair Mac Lennan 
Alastair sprinkled the installation, as left by Brian, with shredded paper and littered the room with odd shoes. These shoes had been collected from the local community. The seat of each chair was piled high with shreaded paper and the video footage of all of the previous performances was left running. This simple intervention effectively transformed the space, encorporating and respecting the build up of live energy that had formed it. On Brian’s ‘workmans’ table Alastair placed a pigs head, pigs trotters and four whole fish. The audience were allowed to freely move around the installation and examine its constituent parts at close proximity.   Wearing the double vision of two pairs of glasses adorned with different lenghts of ribbon, Alastair moved slowly through the room or sat at the ‘workmans’ table. At times he wore one of the shoes on the top of his head, at other times balancing a six foot plank of wood with pigs ears nailed on each end on his head. As he moved gently the plank see-sawed across his head, the extended pigs ears straining to ‘hear’.   At one stage Alastair was seated at the workmans table, the plank with the extended ears swaying on his head. The length of the plank echoing the length of the table. Eyes closed, two long white ribbons tied to his glasses touched the table seeming to caress the splayed pigs head. Ears were listening and eyes were searching the evidence in the room.Performance practice by its nature demands assistance and collaboration from the most basic of documentation to logistical and event management needs. This exhibition would not have been possible without the commitment of Film-maker Paddy Cahill, Photographers Colm Hogan and Mark Durcan, Production Manager Joe Cleere and the ambition and risk taking of Visual’s Director Carrissa Farrell. 
Amanda Coogan December 2009
[1]Klaus Biesenbach is Chief Curator of MOMA’s Department of Media and Performance Art, this Department was broadened in 2009 to include Performance Art to as their press release states ‘reflect the Museum’s increased focus on collecting, preserving and exhibiting performance art’[2]This exhibition for the Manchester International Festival 2009 Marina Abramovic presents... curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Marina Abramovic and Maria Balshaw. Amanda Coogan, Yingmei Duan and Alastair Mac Lennan were exhibiting artists.[3]Interestingly, from the 14 international artists included in Marina Abramovic Presents... at the Whitworth Gallery three of them were Irish or live on the island; Alastair Mac Lennan, Kira O’Reilly and Amanda Coogan.