me having my hair cut

Haircuts by Children’ by Darren O’Donnell
03 November 11am– 4pm
2 in 1 Hair Salon
12 B Pell Street, Chinatown, New York

Produced with children studying at MS131, Dr. Sun Yat-sen Middle School in Chinatown by Art In General for PERFORMA07

Hair is not as external, shallow or simple as it may seem. Since before the dawn of Western civilisation hair and hair cuts have played a vital role in our cultural, social and religious beliefs and impacted upon our sense of our innermost selves: In the Bible Samson lost his strength when his hair was cut. For a Sikh long (uncut) and turbaned hair is a symbol of faith. In addition, Women’s hair has historically been covered up in the practise of Orthodox Judaism and Islam. Hair also plays a vital role in the identification of African tribal peoples. The long and short of it is, whether it’s shaving your head, having too much body hair, being concerned about going bald or getting a drastic new cut, hair is rooted to our contemporary psyche. All this makes having your hair cut, especially by non expert young children, extremely fitting material for a performance.

So the stakes are high in Haircuts by Children and the risks involved are many, for both performer and participant: the child ‘stylist’ or performer risks giving someone an unwanted or bad - in academy terms - haircut. The ‘customer’ or audience member has to make themselves and their hair open to a hair cut in the name of art and to potentially sporting a truly avant-garde style. The economic and cultural factors are equally tangible; whatever the result, the haircut is - literally - live art and it’s free, this means you can’t get a refund or complain. The politico-economic factors in the work are also clear; 2 in 1 is a hair salon in Chinatown, the kids are all of Chinese heritage mostly with English as a second language. The implications of being white, whilst being pampered by a group of clearly underage Chinese people in a run-down part of town, their home, perhaps doesn’t bear worth thinking about. But in this way, Haircuts By Children is yet another example of how live performance uncovers, and puts pressure on, important aspects of contemporary life that could so easily otherwise remain hidden beneath the surface; of the body, of the city of New York, and of the current (booming) Chinese / Anglo-American market economy.

Politics aside, my own hair cut was a personal disaster for me. To cut a long story short, I went from shoulder length curly hair to a severe, short, and very uneven bob in only 30 minutes. They were an extremely tense 30 minutes in which I saw larger and larger chunks of my hair falling past my shoulders while my hairdresser accidentally cut her finger, laughed a lot and waved her scissors dangerously near my eyes. Meanwhile, other 10 year olds stood by and stared, saying in hushed Chinese tones what I hoped - but doubted - were nice comments about my beautiful, stylish hair cut.

The focus of O’Donnell’s work isn’t to traumatise people or give bad hair cuts (the kids have all undergone basic training). His point is that children should be trusted with the important things in life and not sidelined. Moreover, a child’s opinion, their vision, should not be put down as simply childlike. Perhaps then, my hair came out bad not because of my child stylist’s inexperience or young age, but because I appeared nervous or was too demanding and therefore wasn’t trusting enough of her aesthetic vision for my hair. Whatever the result, she and I entered into Haircuts by Children as equals, both parties open and willing not only to acknowledge, but actively participate in, or risk, failure. This is a rare and difficult thing to undertake, however old you are, and it is testament to O’Donnell’s skill that both the participating children and adults took the transgression of these social and personal boundaries in the slightly manic, dangerous, yet underlying serious spirit of the work.

If you see me at any of the remaining Performa events come and say 'hello', I’ll be the one with a turban, hijab or large head-band on.

By Rachel Lois Clapham

A Hair Massacre

Darren O’Donnell and Art In General are offering the public free haircuts by children next Saturday November 10, 2007. (See Performa website for location details)

PS1‘Stapelung (Stack)’ 2007
A Five Channel Video Sculpture by John Bock
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Centre
28 October – 19 November 2007
Thursday thru Monday, 12 – 6pm
FREE with museum admission

Best known for his 1990’s spontaneous performance lectures, German born visual artist John Bock works with a wide range of different media, including sculpture, theatre, film and performance, and everything he touches takes on a dirty, low-fi, absurdly comedic feel that is distinctly Bockian.

For PERFORMA 07 Bock has installed a video sculpture, ‘Stapelung (Stack)’ 2007, at PS1 Contemporary Art Centre. ‘Stapelung (Stack)’ 2007 is a 5 channel video sculpture; a 5 screen video work that is also a 9 foot high steel rack supporting a messy combination of monitors, electrical wire, tape, plugs and 5 sets of audio headphones. Each monitor perched on the rack or ‘stack’ screens a different Bock film. On the top shelf is ‘Meechhouse’. Below that ‘Foetusgott in Memme’, then ‘NogoJones Dandy’ on top of ‘Wuhl um die Klumpen’ all 2002. On the bottom shelf is the 2004 ‘Sechser Tragerl Sushi Aschai Periskop Guatscht Schwanerl- Wie kann man das Gobu Ten Udong massig Bekleben.

Stapelung (Stack)’ 2007 is an important inclusion within the PERFORMA 07 biennial; it manifests Bock’s trademark combination of performance, sculptural construction and film whilst highlighting the artist’s concerns with narrative, staging and props. If the German titles don’t make sense to you don’t be alarmed, it’s all part of the absurdity. To view Stapelung (Stack) 2007 is to be touched by a distinctly European tradition of artistic madness that comes directly down from Surrealism, Dada, Chaplin, Boyce, Beckett and Brecht. If you get there before November 19th step inside PSI, into Bocks mind, and be immersed into his world.

written by Rachel Lois Clapham

‘Stapelung (Stack)’ 2007 is co-presented by PS1 Contemporary Art Centre (a Museum of Modern Art affiliate) and PERFORMA , with support from Anton Kern Gallery.

Me and DaveNovember 1st 3-6pm.
Artist Dave McKenzie
‘I’ll Be There (2007)’ at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza.

On Thursday 1st November from 3-6pm a black man in a leather jacket sits on a bench in Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, Harlem. It doesn’t sound like anything out of the ordinary. It’s not. And that’s the beauty of Dave McKenzie’s performance. Amid the other highly choreographed or larger staged events of Performa 07; with its celebrities, fashion designers, famous curators and artists- most of whom I don’t know- it is intriguing and radical to be invited to simply go and ‘find’ someone sitting on a bench at a certain time as a piece of art.

The works’ radicality comes in part from its unpredictability. ‘I’ll be there (2007)’ is Dave’s open invitation to be ‘found’, but it is not listed as happening anywhere but the Performa programme. This makes it a relatively secret rendezvous in which neither you nor the artist know who will turn up to Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building Plaza, or what will happen. It’s also a public, and hence relatively unsupervised, event. Such instability enacts one of the fundamental underpinnings of performance; that it has the ability to be un-tethered, and perhaps not to be trusted. ‘I’ll be there (2007)’ also returns at base to one of the paradoxes of live work; it is simultaneously structured and timetabled yet represents a wholly chance encounter in which neither you nor the artist have full control; you can choose not to go, Dave can choose not to be there. There is also the possibility that the normal nature and look of the piece may lead you to not find, not recognise, or worse still misrecognise, Dave. Either way, the performance of ‘I’ll be there (2007)’ still happens, the work is still completed.

‘I’ll Be There (2007)’ could be overtly and radically political; deliberately performing a black face (his own) in a historically predominant black part of New York (Harlem) in a plaza named after a black civil rights hero (Adam Clayton Powell Jr) that is now best known as a site for contemporary political protests and street-side vendors selling gospel psalms and black activist memorabilia. It could also be of fundamental importance to ‘I’ll Be There (2007)’ that nearly all the Performa visitors who actually do find Dave are white. These are undoubtedly important elements to the work but ‘I’ll Be There (2007)’ feels much less banal or soap-box than that. Instead the work operates on a more open-ended, fragile and quiet level that is clearly indebted to Allan Kaprow’s politics of the performance of the everyday and the subversive, quiet, often un-witnessed performances of Adrian Piper and does the vital job of refreshing these narratives for the 21st Century.

In the end I did find Dave. He was there, as he said he would be, sitting on a bench in the plaza. We had a pleasant chat together then went our separate ways. In our technologised, wireless everything, age ‘I’ll Be There (2007)’ indulges us in a desire for a bygone era when spontaneous, low-key yet intimate one to one social encounters were commonplace. It also allows for the fantasy of meeting a dark, handsome stranger at a pre-arranged time and place and so putting your trust, and fate, entirely in a printed paper advert.

Dave McKenzie’s ‘I’ll Be There (2007) is part of ‘All Together Now’, a series of four performances in PERFORMA 07 that look at the artist’s past and current performances and interventions. Curated by Romi Crawford. Presented by the Studio Museum in Harlem. Courtesy PERFORMA and Studio Museum.

Dave McKenzie will be performing ‘Babel’ (2000-2006) on the 14th November and Private Dancer (2007) on the 18th November as part of PERFORMA 07. See programme for more details.

Rachel Lois Clapham