Lyuda Didovets

Lyuda showed her own personal relaxation ritual with a combination of yoga poses and Christian prayers. The setting resembled that of her room typically during this exercise, candles and incense burning, soothing music playing, and Christmas lights hanging from the ceiling. Emphasis of the piece was on finding a ritual or method of relaxation that works for oneself, implementing pieces from different practices, even if it goes against what one has been taught.

Jenny Viera, "Paint Your Own Bible!"

“Paint Your Own Bible!”
Performance Art Piece by Juanita Jenny Viera
Time: Approx. 20 min.

Description: The table is set up with four bibles on each side, one at the front of the table, and one at the end. There are tea light candles in front of each bible. I am dressed in a conservative outfit consisting of a skirt, blouse, and white blazer, and my feet are bare. I commenced the performance by opening some oil paints and slowly painting the cover of the Bible in front of me. I let the audience decided whether they want to use the materials in front of them to start painting their own Bibles. The whole group was hesitant. Then I began spray painting the edges of my Bible with red spray paint. This initiated a few other people to start decorating their Bibles with watercolor, acrylic, oil, and spray paint. Some chose not to touch the actual text of their Bible, and instead they ripped out the dedication page, or table of contents, and painted on that. As this activity went on, the audio component of my piece could be heard throughout the room. I recorded three days worth of prayers that I had made on a tape recorder. Each time one of the prayers ended, I would say “Amen” and then continue painting my Bible. When the last prayer was heard, I knelt at the front of the table and said “Amen.” I went over to my book bag, and took out a pair of jeans, a hooded black sweatshirt, earrings and some sneakers. I transformed before the class into how I usually dress, and then I began to paint my nails black. When the change was complete I took my painted Bible, put it into my backpack, and exited the room. This signaled the end of my performance.


Artist’s Statement: This piece was inspired by my thoughts on ritual, religion, and tradition. I realized that as I had grown up in the Pentecostal religion, there were many aspects of it that I didn’t comprehend or agree with. I was told to wear skirts only, never dye or cut my hair, never paint my nails, not to dance, or listen to secular music, or swim, etc, I didn’t understand these restrictions and how they kept one close to God and separate from the world. I wanted to be a part of the world, because I had to live in it. Getting accepted into a performance arts high school changed my perspective profoundly. I realized that in a sense my religion was keeping me from culture. I learned that being close to God, or just maintaining a healthy spiritual life, does not have to consist of following a set of rules, but of one’s own searching and desire to know God and love him, and love others. I have learned metaphorically, paint the Bible in my own colors, in colors that I can understand and find beautiful. I find the testimonies of Jesus being open-minded and kind-hearted to all individuals deeply meaningful, and this is what I have chosen to focus on, not on the discrimination and guilt that people have taught me through their interpretations of the Bible.

This performance was not only a challenge for me in that it forced me to question my beliefs, and why I pray and read the Bible. It was also a challenge to my audience. The amount of knowledge and respect for the Bible was tested by the pressure I added unto my audience to paint on their Bibles. Revelation ends with these verses:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and [from] the things which are written in this book.
So there is an explicit warning against adding or taking away from the Bible, in the Bible itself. Despite this, I feel like the Bible is very subjective and has been used for good and harm. We all create our own meaning, and our sense of what it means to be alive, and who/what it is that’s above us.
The changing of my clothes symbolized the way I had transitioned from being a part of a religious community and into being a part of my peers at high school. It also was representative of the struggle I faced as I tried to embrace what I really wanted to wear, instead of what I had to. I think that humans are the only ones concerned which superficial issues and a higher beings would think of this as vanity.
The end product of my performance shows that this process of finding one’s own faith and meaning can be beautiful. Just as all the painted and not painted Bibles are.

Geoff Bennington

In this piece, Geoff Smoked cigarettes while writing the phrase "I Love You You Fucking Junky" on a piece of canvas as a way of coping with his older brothers death from a heroin overdose. In doing so he also created a ritualistic act to connect with addiction. Geoff smoked about 30 cigarettes within two hours for this, creating an object from his own discomfort. Later, to complete the ritual, he burned the canvas.

A Shift in Focus

This project addressed the ritual of a drug addiction. On one side was a huge mirror that Kristin cut lines (of plaster intending to look like heroin) out onto. On the other side she rolled logs of clay, creating a circular base and gradually building it up. At first, the lines were cut neatly and arranged in straight lines. The rolling of the clay was done with care and attention and proper attachment methods. More attention was paid to the clay, with a few interruptions to carefully cut lines. Gradually, the focus was shifted to the lines. The clay was rolled more quickly and slopped on, causing the shape to lose its stability. The lines got bigger and less attention was paid to their layout. The whole process became more and more frantic and the neatness and care was completely lost by the end.

This project was done as a tribute to a close friend of mine who has been struggling with a drug addiction to heroin for the past few years. I have watched as he tried to balance his sober, real life (represented by the clay) with his hidden addiction (represented by the plaster lines). At first, the drugs did not seem to affect his life in any intense way. Gradually, however, the addiction became more important than his real life, taking over. He struggled to balance is sober life with his addiction, but the beast inside created by the drugs became too strong. This project was intended as a tribute to my friend and a release for my own feelings of watching a beautiful life frantically turn into chaos.

Lauren Schleider

In this piece, Lauren gave a brief oral history of social control theory, stressing that informal social control is executed by a series of sanctions and punishments. The dialogue was directed towards gender theory, addressing the potential problems of such a strict system. The dialogue itself was split into six sections, the final of which confronted the audience asking if progress is being made. Between each part of dialogue, Lauren completely cubmerged her head in a tank of water for as long as she could hold her breath. When she came up, she immediately began speaking again, visibly in pain from her previous actions.

Water was used to symbolized women and femininity, as it often is in literature. Waer possesses great power, and people constantly (unsuccessfully) try to control it. The submerging was done to represent the pressure and punishment to which both society and individuals are subjected. Ultimately, the individual punishes herself for these imposed social laws, but the tank serves as a reminder that such pressure is put into place by outside forces and gives a graphic image of struggle.

Connie Shieh

"Once Unhappiness is Recognized, it Cannot be Ignored."

Having been part of several groups of extremely tight knit friends and unhappy with it, I had morphed myself into someone I was not comfortable being. As I was flipping through my archives, I realized that most of the groups that I had immersed myself in consisted of four people, including myself. This structure of four best friends is riveting because there tends to be a pairing off behavior which forces a struggle to maintain and/or further this grand ally. Having jumped from circle to circle with this particular group dynamic, I have found that time and time again, I was easily swayed to do something I did not want to do due to the fact that I did not want to disrupt what we had built.

In response to the Ritual Project, I decided to program a game where the player is trying to catch my unhappiness. Once I fully realized and brought into my consciousness that I was indeed not happy with myself nor the friends I had surrounded myself with, I could not ignore it. The unhappiness was there and its recognition forced me to take action upon it which in a sense broke a seriously detrimental ritual in my life.

Instructions:
1. Refresh browser
2. Click Play
3. Catch/click my grumpy face once you recognize it
4. Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 to play again,

Cindy Paauw

Sefira Bell-Masterson

“Now Enter Grief and Kneeling”
Sefira Bell-Masterson

The audience entered the room, which was empty except for a ladder, three mirrors, a clock on the wall and a scale piled high with used tissues on a white pedestal. Sefira was dressed in a white lacy dress, with chains and locks wrapped around her body and leg. She wore a white mask on her face with a line of safety pins down one side. The mask was chained to her body. Sefira was standing on the top of a ladder when the audience entered. She set the clock to 9:00 and made a hash mark below the clock in white chalk on the black wall. She then descended the ladder and approached the first mirror. She wrote “Day 1” and then a series of numbers in red lipstick on the mirror. She added the numbers, then returned to the ladder and climbed back up. At the top of the ladder she took out a tissue, blew her nose and threw the used tissue onto the pile on top of the scale below. She then set the clock to 12:00 and descended the ladder again. Below the first set of numbers she wrote a second set, climbed back up the ladder, blew her nose, threw the tissue onto the scale, and set the clock to 6:30. She descended the ladder, wrote a zero below the other numbers, turned to face the audience and told them “I’m not very hungry, I had a big lunch.” She ascended the ladder, blew her nose, threw the tissue on the scale, set the clock to 9:00, made a hash mark next to the previous one, descended the ladder, wrote “Day 2” and then a series of numbers on the mirror which she then totaled. She repeated this process five times. Each time she wrote a number much smaller than the others she would turn to the audience and make an excuse for not eating. Progressively the lipstick she was using to write on the mirrors smudged red onto her dress, her mask and the tissues she was using.

For years, as a womyn with an eating disorder, ritual dominated my life. There were the rituals of weighing, the rituals of counting, the rituals of exercise, the rituals of grieving, the rituals of examining myself and my favorite – the ritual of lying.

For this piece, I took these rituals and compressed them, enabling them to communicate new meaning. When combined, the rituals became self reflective. Grief was weighed on my digitally precise scale. The record of my caloric consumption and expenditure covered the mirrors, obscuring my image. My voice as I told one of my expertly crafted lies fell flat against the evidence irrefutably visually assembled.