Welcome to issue 10 of liveartwork DVD, a unique publication showcasing contemporary live art.

This is something of a bumper issue with a total of 9 videos from separate artists. First is Roi Vaara, one of Finland’s leading contemporary artists performing his work Sprial at the Momentum festival in 2009. Andrés Galeano is a young Berlin based artist who presents Birdmen, a performance installation based on his research into birds and flight. Melati Suryodarmo presents one of her classic performances - Exergie - butter dance, also filmed at the Momentum festival in 2009. Robin Deacon returns to liveartwork DVD with his recreations performances by Stuart Sherman (the original versions of Sherman's performances are featured on liveartwork DVD issue 5). Also returning are Finnish performance theatre group Oblivia with their latest production Entertainment Island 2. Finally there is a special compilation presenting four emerging artists who developed work as part of the Young Artists Space at the 2009 Accion!MAD festival in Madrid. The featured artists are Eva Pérez, Isabel León, Maria Marticorena & Ángela García.

With special thanks to the Momentum festival in Brussels, the Performance Saga festival series in Switzerland and the Accion!MAD festival in Madrid.

Total running time approximately 98 minutes.

Scroll down to see more detaills about the featured artists.

To get a copy of liveartwork DVD issue 10 click on the 'order' link above.

My name is Roi Vaara. Roi means king in French and vaara in Finnish is a type of mountain typical in northern Finland but it also means danger. What I mean is not fixed but true. I went to see Fuji mountain as a blind man and passed by The White House as the White Man. I've seen Hell's Angels on Wall Street and abandoned bicycles by the Dead Sea. I've bricked up department store's show windows and I've swum across the volcano lake with burning bowler hats. There is only one Roi Vaara in the world.

I write a list of words on the uneven floor. It takes longer than I thought. The words form a spiral. Inside the spiral I walk around and around faster and faster, until I finally fall. I am exhausted, but soon I substitute all the words with a related word.

Video duration: 16'00"
No spoken text

Credits
Camera: Christopher Hewitt and Sven G

Contact:
Roi Vaara
roivaara 'at' hotmail.com

Galeano was born in Mataró, Spain and studied Philosophy at the University of Barcelona and Photography at the Freie Fotoschule of Stuttgart as well as Fine Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna and the Kunsthochschule Weissensee in Berlin. He works with photography, video and performance and currently curates the Extension performance art programme at the Grimmuseum in Berlin.

Andrés Galeano’s main artistic research focuses on performance art. In his pieces, space, audience, objects, actions, time and his body are the elements that compose consciously the work. He plays with the performance as a social moment and subverts its conventional structures and rules by directly provoking the audience. He uses the power of the instant to create actions and situations, that open philosophical questions and poetical experiences that can be extended into daily life. His work is usually site-specific and ephemeral. Its documentation is part of the concept as well as a search for new ways and methods to document performances. For the artist, performance means interdisciplinarity, that is, the possibility to freely mix different art languages within a performance, continuously trying to extend its boundaries and definitions.

Birdmen is a multimedia installation which explores the semantic field surrounding birds and flying. It is a performance-essay about the myth of flying, combining written words and actions. The performance analyzes poetically how and where birds are represented and what kind of symbols and associations are related to them and with flying. Birdmen combines written words and actions, showing the collective idea of flying and the ancient human desire to be what we are not able to.

Video duration: 15'28"
No spoken text

Credits
Camera: Christopher Hewitt & Enrico Centonze

Contact
www.andresgaleano.eu

Born in Surakarta Indonesia, Suryodarmo lives and works in Gross Gleidingen, Germany and Solo, Indonesia. She graduated from the postgraduate program under Prof. Marina Abramovic at the Hochschule fuer Bildende Kuenste, Braunschweig, Germany.

“I try to understand the language that are not spoken, and opens the door of perceptions. I respect the freedom in our minds to perceive things coming through our individual sensory register system. Crossing the boundaries of cultural and political encounters has been a challenge that stimulates me discovering new identification. An effort to find identity is yet a dangerous act of losing the ground of origin. For me, the process of making artwork is a life long research that never stops me to put myself inside the metamorphic constellation. I intend to touch the fluid border between the body and its environment through my art works. I aim to create a concentrated level of intensity without the use of narrative structures. Talking about politics, society or psychology makes no sense to me if the nerves are not able to digest the information. I love it when a performance reaches a level of factual absurdity.”

Wearing a tight black dress and red shoes, Suryodarmo walks into the space, and steps on the pieces of butter. She starts dancing. Melati Suryodarmo is flailing, crashing heavily downwards, and continuously being on the verge of standing, slipping and falling on the butter- greasy dance floor.

Video duration: 9'22"
No spoken text

Credits
Camera: Christopher Hewitt

Contact
www.melatisuryodarmo.com

Robin Deacon (born 1973 Eastbourne, England) is an artist, writer and filmmaker based in the UK. Working since the early 1990’s, much of his work encompasses live performance with a series of performed lectures that have explored journalistic and documentary approaches to arts practice.

Approximating the Art of Stuart Sherman is part of a long term project in which Deacon explores the art of the late American performance artist Stuart Sherman through documentary film, interviews and performance re-enactments. Since 2006, he has gathered video footage, testimonials and written descriptions of Sherman's solo performance works, exploring Sherman's creative methodologies through transcription and physical re-enactment of the artist's performances. Deacon is interested in how the work and legacy of an artist like Sherman may live on not just in the work itself, but also in the work of artists who have been influenced by him. So, in this spirit, the performances featured in this video are direct recreations of a selection of performances that were originally part of The Eleventh Spectacle: The Erotic, which was originally developed by Sherman in 1978. Video of Sherman performing the original Spectacle can be seen in liveartwork DVD issue 5.

Video duration: 13'58"
No spoken text

Credits
Camera: Christopher Hewitt

Contact
www.robindeacon.com

Founded in 2000 in Helsinki, the international performance company Oblivia is a unique force on the Finnish performance scene. Oblivia's collectively devised, interdisciplinary and minimalist performances merge the boundaries of art forms and nationalities. The background of Oblivia's members from Finland, Iceland and UK are in performance art, music, dance and theory. This mixture of backgrounds and nationalities creates a vibrant tension and humour in the work. From the beginning the core members have been working together creating a common performance language. Guest collaborators are invited to partake in individual projects. Oblivia is the house artist at Kiasma Theatre and part of the Produforum network.

Entertainment Island 2 is a humorous take on lifestyle where local culture meets global. The storytelling invites the audience to create the performance in their heads. The performance is the second part of the trilogy that forms Oblivia's three year project Entertainment Island on popular culture and entertainment.

Reviews of Entertainment Island 2:
"Oblivia performs a wonderful and unpretentious performance where consumer hysterics are scrutinised” - Isabella Rothberg, HBL
"By introducing the concept of papier maché Oblivia creates a most accurate metaphor for our times, where everything is papier maché today! ” - Johanna Enckell, dramaturg
"Being swept into the world of absurd storytelling is thrilling and oddly relaxing” - Anna Dönsberg, YLE

Video duration: 21'44"
Spoken text in English


Credits
Camera & Editing: Christopher Hewitt
Producer: Marina Andersson-Rahikka
Funders: Svenska kulturfonden, Arts Council Helsinki, Arts Council Finland
Performed and Devised by: Timo Fredriksson, Anna Krzystek, Annika Tudeer
Lights: Meri Ekola Sound: Juuso Voltti
Produced by Kiasma Theatre & Oblivia
Supported by: CCA- Glasgow (UK), PACT-Zollverein (D)

Contact
Oblivia
info "at" oblivia.fi
www.oblivia.fi

Born in Valencia, Pérez originally studied Fine Arts. In 2000 she studied performance under Bartolomé Ferrando which led her to develop her artistic work as a performer. She is currently working on a Masters in Artistic Production at the Polytechnic University of Valencia based on an investigation into Erotics and Awkwardness in relation to action art. She has participated in meetings and collective actions at the festivals Nits d'Aielo i art in 2003 and Influxus in 2007. Most recently she has participated in Fem09 in Girona, PPP09 in Bern (Switzerland) and AcciónMAD09. She has also been involved in the coordination of the Arrt d'Accció performance programme at the Sinberifora Cultural Association over the last three years.

Her performance is an investigation into how clumsiness acts as an engine of social change. The action is part of a series on the topic of stupidity and ridicule associated with the erotic that has been traditionally been linked to the female. The weakness, delicacy, suffering and pain of the female is equated with pleasure. My intention is to strip these myths of their unquestioned existence in order to make them visible.

Credits
Camera: Fernando Baena

Video duration: 5'00"
No spoken text

Contact
Eva Pérez
evitagobiarte "at" gmail.com

García studied Fine Arts in Valencia and works primarily with action and performance art, although she also works with dance and theatre. She has participated in several performance art conferences, including CENDEAC (Murcia, 2007), the 5th International Meeting of Performance (Valencia, 2007) and has worked as coordinator on the festival El Arte es Acción (Madrid, 2008), Alter Arte Festival (Murcia 2008) and the International Young Festival of Performance (Murcia 2008).

She is an active and founding member of Sinberifora Cultural Association where she practices collective management of cultural and performative interventions in arts programs such as FAP (Festival d'Art d'Públic Ciutat Algemesí), Festival d ‘Art Public EFIMER d'Alginet, Nits d’Aielo i Art en l’exili, Sinerifora at the French Institute of Valencia ... She is currently involved in organising the performance programme Arrt d'Accció at the October Contemporary Culture Center of Valencia.

The performance is a reflective consideration of the complexity of human beings and their state of dispersion. Humans are so self-absorbed sometimes we do not realize where we are, how we are, what we do and how we are. We have reached a point where there isn't reflection, where development of thought is below the material acquisition, where reality is fiction, and where fiction is reality. People become breeding machines for behaviours related to spaces that are increasingly flawed, the common experience is gone. We no longer know. Not what you expect to happen, but probably will not happen... think about where is your limit.

Video Duration: 5'00"

Credits
Camera: Fernando Baena

Contact
Ángela García
www.sinberifora.com
www.youtube.com/user/sinberifora

Isabel León, from Cáceres, Spain, started working with photography and video, then progressed into performance art, which is nowadays forms the centre of her activity. Recently, she has taken part in numerous festivals and performance meetings in Spain, such as NauEstruch (Sabadell-Barcelona, 2010), Arrt d´acció (Valencia, 2010), Acción!MAD09 (Madrid, 2009), Influxus I y II (Museo Vostell Malpartida, Cáceres, 2007 and 2009), La Muga Caula 4 and 5 (Girona, 2008 and 2009), Sinergia (Girona, 2008) and Radio de Acción (Huelva, 2008).
She sees artistic creation as an act closely related to life; so, her works need to be sincere and connected with her feelings, thoughts and intimate emotions. Inside of the performance, she is interested in the interaction between her and the audience, and how the public turns into the protagonist and contributes to the existence of the works, which otherwise are technically and materially minimal.

"In this performance I share secrets with the audience. On my mp3 player I have recorded eight series of twenty questions about personal information. Some of them are very superficial and other questions are very intimate or deep. Some examples are: Are you in love at the moment?, What is your favourite colour?, What are you afraid of?, Are you happy?, Do you believe in life after death? etc.
There are two little armchairs and I am seated in one of them. I invite members of the audience to come and share secrets with me. Somebody comes and I start playing one of the series of questions. I hold his or her hands in mine and look into their eyes while we both are listening to and answering the questions at the same time and out loud. The rest of the audience can only hear our answers, not the questions."

Video Duration: 5'00"

Credits
Camera: Fernando Baena

Contact Details.
Isabel León www.isabelleon.eu

Marticorena is a performance artist from La Coruña-Galician, Spain. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Vigo. She participated in the scholarship Ruta Quetzal, of universal interest by UNESCO and also undertook the Harlech International Artists Residence, ICAW 05. She was the winner of the1st prize of sculpture “Novos Valores 04”. As well the 1st prize of Visual Arts "Gzcrea 06" from the Council of Galician. Although she presents her work in sculpture, intervention and drawing in both solo and group exhibitions in, she considers performance art as her artistic career. She approaches performance art from the visual arts, being a blend between sculpture, the body and conceptual art.

The inspiration for this performance comes from a small town called Fort Worth located a few miles from Dallas. While living there for two years, I had the opportunity to assimilate the cowboy culture and the spirit of the Texans. There are certain aspects of the West that interest me on a performative level. The West was constructed by violent, uncomplicated men. I want my performance to reflect the force and simplicity of their life. I used twelve black hats and one white hat, each with phrases written on the inside of the hats - for example: “Malignant Benevolence”, “Shameful Acts” or “Apocalyptic Pleasure” that I throw to the audience with a leave blower between my legs. Also two songs are used during the performance: “Riders in the Sky” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” mix.

Video Duration: 5'00"

Credits
Camera: Fernando Baena

Contact
María Marticorena
www.mariamarticorena.multiply.com