I was inspired primarily by Mierle Laderman Ukeles and her performances surrounding themes of labor, service, and primarily motherhood. Within my own series, I choose to focus on the performance that many can relate to on the daily, the process of studying and/or getting work done from home. I think it brings to mind many of the ideas that Ukeles focused on, but can offer a past perspective to her future of motherhood. Essentially, even if one is working just for themselves to survive, and is not even at the point of being ready to care for others or in a family, one still isn't truly working for themselves or their own survival but that of the greater systems we find ourselves in, and for this machine to survive instead in essence.
Widewalls Yoko Ono - A Groundbreaking Artist, Activist and Fighter
1. “She became the first woman to study philosophy at Japan’s Gakushuin University. In the following year, young Ono moved to the U.S. to study at Sarah Lawrence College, but that educational pursue did not last long either. After dropping out, she became involved in the Fluxus movement which was led by conceptual artists from New York, like George Maciunas, Diane Wakoski, Walter De Maria and La Monte Young. Once Ono was settled in her new surroundings, she began writing poetry. Even at her early age, her work was considered as too radical by many, so it did not receive much recognition and acceptance.”
-I just found this part of her backstory interesting, especially her background in philosophy as I had also pursued it for some time in community college as a major. I can also see her being drawn to it and likely the things that she learned from the practice so have gone to radicalize her in some senses, and definitely drive many of the meanings behind the work that she has always created.
2. “Her wide-ranging artistic expression encompasses film, sculpture, text, performance, music and artwork. Although eclectic in nature, her work has been often greeted with incomprehension, mockery and even rage. Her work has always been an indivisible element of her activism and life-long mission of communicating with the world at large. Despite the often hostile response, Ono has won the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Observer Ethical Awards for her activism lasting over half a century. Her combined work has been exhibited in a unique show at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, entitled Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960-1970, the exhibition featured Ono’s artistic practices and her involvement in the Feminist movement. As she explained, art represents a way of showing people how you can think, and even though some people think of it as a beautiful wallpaper that you can sell, Yoko Ono rather perceives it as a direct connection with activism.”
- Ono is the definition of “if you have haters, you’re doing something right”, but many women have been placed in this position across history. Especially where much of her credits are given to her husband, John Lennon, but even other men she is associated with at even the beginning of her career. If anything, she is the driving force behind much of the activism they go on to include their own art.
Hispanic Executive | Interview with Shaun Leonardo - Performance, Pedagogy, and Philosophy
1. “I attribute my work ethic to them. However, it was in the mentality of striving for the best that I was also taught that success meant economic stability and mobility. And so art wasn’t really within my vision as a child: I never quite know what inspired me, other than the moments where I did see and take in art. I don’t know what drove me to identify as an artist because it wasn’t within my familial background—not that I know of anyway—and my only exposure to art, growing up in Queens, were the moments here and there where we visited the Queens Museum and the Metropolitan Museum.”
- I actually wish that we had read this article on Leonardo last semester because I feel like I was just able to relate to him so much more. He reflects on being raised Dominican and Guatemalan, his parents work ethic and his confusion in the start of his attraction to the arts. I had a similar experience within my family too as I have mentioned before, and in large part culturally because of religion on my mothers end and the same work ethic and mindset that he describes from my father. Traditionally you have to follow a sense of normalcy within your families, that something people can experience in all cultures I believe, and in ours, art is adornment usually for something tangible. It’s almost like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and sometimes your family can’t accept that you need more in life that is abstract than solely tangible.
2. “…I don’t, and I haven’t for a long while, created a distinction between the two. I am now the codirector of Recess, a nonprofit art organization that is centered on socially engaged practice and even more centered on practices that engage topics of social justice. This is the same organization within which I cofounded the Assembly Diversion Program, which works in conjunction with the criminal court here in Brooklyn.”
-I personally am curious to as to how he feels there is no distinction between the two, and what caused him to step out of education and focus in more on his nonprofit instead.
Khan Academy Performance Art An Introduction webpages
1. Marina Abramović, The Artist is Present
- This performance always makes me a little emotional. I think the entire concept itself of an artist starting at a viewer and the viewer being able to have a moment to state back at the artist and participate in an opportunity of being apart of their project in such a way in beautiful. I also think it’s powerful that she is only able to shed tears when her former partner not only romantically but within art and business whom she hadn’t seen since their final performance together which was their breakup. It creates this bittersweet feeling that perhaps even sums up the piece in general.
2. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Cleaning the museum—maintenance
- She turned what is a part of her daily reality into her art. She took scenes from her own life of motherhood and service into a display of artistry. One of her quotes from when she first started was “I can do art or I can be a mother”, and its through her work this feeling is preserved, where women have to choose one or the other. But, she finds ways to fuse the two to have both.
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