Shana Robbins
May 10, 2009
Axis Mundi Remote Performance Video Clip
Axis Mundi is my remote performance that took place in January at Jokursalon, a glacier lagoon near Vatnajökull glacier in southeast Iceland. My only audience for the piece (besides the cameraperson) was several swimming seals, as I am interested in performances in remote locations with no audience except for the natural environment. My process often involves camouflaging my body; merging with or dissolving into a place or space-perhaps becoming more like an animal or plant, as a way of intercepting lost power and destabilizing static notions of the female body and of the natural realm.
Axis Mundi Remote Performance
Tree Ghost in Iceland
I recently curated an exhibition titled “LANDMARKS” (http://www.njcu.edu/dept/art/galleries/default.asp) that explores how women artists are utilizing nature as a performative space in a way that is distinct from feminist artists of the 1970s. I feel that your work is also exploring the theatrical possibilities of the landscape, yet you are also striving to merge with nature, which recalls Ana Mendieta’s work. Does she inform your practice?
I definitely feel a strong affinity with the work of the 1970’s feminist artists, like Ana Mendieta, Mary Beth Edelson, and even the fashion model/artist Veruschka. In Mendieta’s “siluetas” I find a connection with the remote performances I am doing– this notion of a merging with or dissolving into a place or space within the natural realm. Yet my work is very much about body language or gesture within the landscape.It is also tied into, as you mentioned,”theatrical possibilities” or ritualistic actions within landscapes in that I create fairly elaborate costumes that speak (overtly) to the idea of camouflage and shapeshifting.
Hi Shana,
I know that your work in Iceland was done without a live audience. Was that merely a result of circumstance, or do you develop certain projects knowing that they are only for the camera’s eye? It’s interesting to think about because of your exploration into camouflage–as it is something that might potentially elude the (camera) eye.
Hello Susan,
Thanks for the thoughtful question. Yes, now I am intentionally moving more into the practice of doing remote performances without a human audience. However, I do regard the living things in that environment as my audience. The camera(s) used to capture the performances are beginning to represent the eyes of the the natural environment in my work. In other words, my intention for future pieces is to place cameras in trees, on the ground, etc. in order to capture the multi-perception of the organic world, or to disseminate the eye of the camera within that realm.
I use Super-8 film as part of this process, because Super-8 has a kind of camouflaging effect in that the grains of color move around, overlap, and are generally fluid. Shapes and colors are continually and subtly merging and dispersing. This blurring of forms speaks to the idea of dissolving into one’s surroundings.
cold.
my bones feel freezing cold.
beautiful.
it made me appreciate the sensation of freezing.
or absolute trauma.
the appreciation of the sensation of the absolute freezing of trauma.
cheers.
jj
Shana,
I love this new work. It does make me feel chilled and a bit lost. I’m interested in how your sense of time and your observation of ritual might relate to the work of Khadijah Queen. Khadijah’s performance is intensely emotive on a visceral plane, as is that of Cindy Rehm. Yours is primal, and at the same time, is quite literally positioned at a cold, emotional remove. That’s the irony. Your desire is to connect with the natural world, but the performance has the opposite effect on me. I feel even more disconnected from that place you blend into.
Shana, we have a lot in common in terms of our processes. I also perform in front of the camera in solitude in the natural environment, and respond to the environment with movement. My movements, though, are based on insect behavior and are always awkward, kind of ugly, uncomfortable, folded, maybe funny too–whereas your movements have a kind of grace and beauty, and a frightening, ethereal and strange quality. I particularly love the moment near the end of your video clip where there are some jumps in the footage and your head and body jerk in a spastic, broken way–it’s so unexpected after the chilly calm of your slow tree gestures. Wonderful piece… thank you for sharing it.
Hi again Shana,
Thank you so much for your thoughts and questions about my work. I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to add a few more things to my previous comment. I just looked at your website and saw that you studied butoh in NY in 2007–how totally fun and exciting! That is a form that I became really interested in while spending a semester in Tokyo during college. I consumed a lot of performances, but I’ve never actually taken a class or participated. So I’m wondering if you would be willing to talk a little about aspects of butoh that have made their way into your work, or that influence the way you go about performing.
Hello Cathy and Julia,
Hope this message finds you both well. As I have been remiss in responding to your comments, I will address both of you here. Sorry for the delay! Cathy–you mentioned that my performance was positioned at “cold, emotional remove.” My response to that is that when I am immersing myself in certain types of natural environments, especially deserts, glaciers, and other more “desolate” areas, these are places where human emotions become irrelevant. Any emotion requires a certain anthropomorphic projection on our part, as performers, viewers, etc. This reminds me of one of my favorite poems by Mary Oliver called Wild Geese:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I should clarify that Axis Mundi is part of an ongoing exploration and dissemination of an ecofeminist character I call Monstrous Feminine. Various forms of Monstrous Feminine, such as Tree Ghost and Axis Mundi,“haunt” places in order to reclaim space on behalf of the animate realm. The camera is meant solely as a witnessing eye in this process. The videotaped performances capture my attempt to embody the natural surroundings. Axis Mundi happens to be in a cold, crystallized place that is perhaps telling us that our emotions do not belong there.
Julia–as far as the Butoh movement, I have been studying on and off for a couple of years now. It is a very intuitive, automatic form of body movement. Each person’s Butoh is different, and actually I can see a lot of Butoh in what you do. For me, it’s a way of moving energy and emotions (like electrical waves) through the body. It’s somewhat of a healing experience. I feel like I am tapping into a “primal” part of myself with Butoh. I was moving like this already, but then one day a dancer I was doing a performance piece with said “You’re doing Butoh…” At that time I had no idea what it was.I love that in Japan they call it “a revolt of the flesh.”
Thanks for your note, Shana. I’m glad to have found your work- it’s really remarkable! The Tree Ghost piece is fantastic.
Carrie Hott