The Poetry of Berni Searle - Research Paper Example

The Poetry of Berni Searle Performance art works well when the artist’s concept is enhanced by the use of an event or a dynamic. When the artist themselves is integral to the concept, the performance is enriched by their presence. In the work of Berni Searle, performance is integral to the meaning of her work. She draws on some of the more traditional elements of performance: using her body as a canvas; dance and movement and symbolism to create her works integrating them with current film, display and editing techniques to make her work contemporary and at times very slick. She is an artist who continues to question ideas of race, identity and gender. similar imagery themes and techniques make sure that as a whole her work takes on a meta-significance and doesn’t buttonhole her into just one locale . This re-invention combined with thoughtful repetition of metaphors keeps her work fresh and relevant, while never letting the audience forget that she is allowing them to explore, through her exploration of identity, certain archetypal truths about humankind. The context of Searle’s work is as important as the techniques used to create it; she is thus usually presented as a South African woman in introductions to her work. The layers that these definitions offer are important in reading the works themselves. Movement and time passing are extensions of these definitions and it is thus the performance aspects or her work moves it from being merely a political and social statement into something poetic and timeless. If we consider the performance integral to much pre-colonial African art: the significance of dance and music, chants and group participation around ritual objects, we can draw on the power of human presence and altered identity as a means to finding truths and apply this to Searle’s work: apart from her body there are few other elements in any of Searle’s videos, stills and prints: all could be classified as performance pieces. She uses shifting, markings, the act of burning, dying rejuvenation and colour to reflect her heritage as a South African and subsequent ‘globalisation ‘-belonging to a wider first world culture. South Africa is also a melting pot of cultures and has an identity that has long been mired in political discontent and racial conflict. Drawing on traditions of so called indigenous people as well as the influence of colonialism and subsequent problematic integration, Searle is in a perfect place to explore her cultural heritage…not black or white but coloured a racial definition unique in the sense of its classification under apartheid law from the 1940’s to the 1980’s that encompassed cultural groups as far ranging as early settlers to people already populating south Africa when the first Dutch settlers arrived to the intermarriage of the cultures to create a mixed race. Citing the reciprocity between theory and experience also draws attention to African womens cultural expression as a vibrant yet often neglected or misrepresented form of theoretical and intellectual intervention. The exploration of subjectivity in Bas novel, the play with language in relation to self-expression and voice in the poetry published in this issue, the range of writing mapped in the report of the Women Writing Africa Project, and the critique of the politics of representation encoded in Berni Searles artwork all signal how ostensibly universal thought excludes certain voices and universalises others. These cultural texts reflect on subjectivity, relationships and questions of freedom that not only dovetail with and expand African feminist theoretical scholarship, but also-align our understanding of human experiences and universal cultural expression (Lewis, D, 2001, pp109) In one of her more recent pieces Lull, we enter perhaps into a post-apartheid, post-liberation South Africa. Like the process involved in the construction of her videos and stills which show a transition A child’s swing made from an old car tyre is hung in a tree. This piece is about different experiences compared to About to Forget 2003, an installation video about past generations, race and heritage. In this piece, soft disintegration of form is slow and sensuous – pigment bleeding from paper and made up of barely distinguishable photographs of relatives and archives, this is a past event in her and South Africa’s history. In contrast the intense colour and sharply focussed objects in Lull 2009 makes her work seem to jump from past to future. Searle is featured next to and on the swing. Seen from behind partially obscured by tree- the scene is pastoral and idyllic overlooking lake. She counterbalances the dark shape of the swing with the dark single form of her shot from the back.-then the swing is on fire and the incandescent oranges and yellow of the flames are almost too intense against the foliage. The fire becomes a ring of flame like a circus and the dark grey smoke moving and billowing becomes the most important element. It looks acrid and it seems to seep out- the viewer might feel suffocated. We are reminded of fire-an integral part to our existence but also the destructive element . People from most places could identify the fire with a war or event that engulfed and destroyed , and reminded them of the way things could so easily change, and link to certain destructive behaviours of humans towards each other and the elements to hurt one and other for instance the Iraqi war the xenophobia practiced in many parts of the world-basic intolerance and cruelty. This is Searle the mother figure, the child the baby the questioner. She alludes to past hurts because she wants the viewer to see how easy they scar, to caution against destruction, but is also a witness to its inevitability. She is on the sidelines, distancing herself, but always there. In the context of South Africa burning tyres are uncomfortably relevant – they are symbols of poverty and political unrest, used to burn people and for warmth but yet the swing is part of childhoods of many races. -the memories, but symbols remain and the past informs us. The last frames filled with swirling smoke and Yvette Grisle provides an astute description of the piece and of other significances of the burning tyre. She points out the discontent that is typical in a modern society1. In the article on Berni Searle and Feminism by Lewis, Searle is identified as an African and non-Euro centric woman. This piece in conjunction with her 2009 piece could be read as a criticism of the violence which characterises post-independent South Africa and her embracing the first world in content and as homeland. She seems to also be erasing a hurt by re-inventing an identity. She belongs or feels she belongs in a place for who she is. Her identity as a prominent, critically acclaimed artist provides a place for her in Europe beyond certain negative classification she feels she might not escape in South Africa, where racial classification has woven itself into identity. Posing still in Snow White she is Venus, a more credible Venus of woman than Bottecelli’s pink and white version borne on a seashell, she is a fertility figure. Her breasts are heavy and full and so is her stomach, she is a mother and a creator. She is powerful and grounded in her crouch, stable and balanced in the centre. She ends by creating dough for roti In the stills that are part Snow White 2001, there are images of her being coated with flour. Read as a cosmetic ritualised event or a race issue. Many people place her identity as black and not actually equally white and black. She is as close to her white heritage…she is more removed from a traditional South African black culture, which is far, more gender hierarchal than her own. But she alludes to being not white enough. She is also coated with spices and henna in the Colour Me series 1998 She seems to identify with many cultures. It is more a work about women than a particular race. Maybe in words an artist can appear to focus on a particular identity, but the artworks themselves transcend these. For Searle the use of olive oil is a personal reference to her grandmother describing her as having "olive skin", but more importantly the fluid quality of the oil literalises the idea of mutable identity. Capitalising on this we may relate the olive oil to the theme of cooking in Searles work through which she powerfully communicates the hybridity and instability of her own identity. Foodstuffs - the spices in Colour Me, dough for roti in Snow White and here olive oil - may be read as a reference to Searles ancestry, which she relates to tentatively through food. Her maternal great-grandfathers came from Mauritius (a cook) and Saudi Arabia, while her paternal great-grandfathers came from Germany and England. Attempts to trace this rich lineage become an ongoing process of filling in blanks, guessing and giving up on the crisscrossing lines of descent, many of which have become vague and inaccessible with the passing of time. (van der Watt, 2003, pp 24) A criticism of the narrow definitions that political comment offers can be seen in Gresle’s review of Searl’e work, “Despite the manner in which she positions herself, Searle has often been fixed in terms of the very categories she resists. In the numerous curatorial statements, reviews and articles that have emerged around her she is often defined as Black, as African and as Woman. In the walkabout she stated: "Categories of being Black; being African; being a woman are narrow… I do try to make my work more open-ended… The work can never exist without a context, but needs to be flexible enough. I like to transcend these narrow boundaries. But the only way I can do it is in the work itself." (Grisle, 2007,pp2) A Matter of Time is a work like Snow White that uses foodstuffs namely olive oil. In the work she focuses on different parts of the body all a journey in these feet. Her work seems to become more complex in execution, filming techniques and angles, perhaps as she has more access to funding and art making beyond South Africa. It’s how she uses her body, how she performs alterations of rhythm is subltle: a heartbeat, footsteps, sliding, swirling and bleeding.2 Desiree Lewis, in a review examining Searle’s work on a conceptual level discusses Searle’s use of installations and concludes that the transience of an installation reflects the ideas of things changing form that is constantly showcased in her work. Either the colour shifts out of something or it is burnt-a recognizable object becomes a lump of coal in her hands. Just as the installation is removed or dismantled after a certain time frame. This adds integrity to her pieces. She as a performer is engaged with showing something happen. Using such altered perspectives like a shot from a boat in Home and Away 2003 Searle is a minimalist in that much of her work is pared down to a simple repeated or looped or duplicated movement. In Home and Away she floats and the more random movements of her clothing in the water provides another rhythm. This work calls to mind the beauty and poetry in her work that is always present. It seems achingly beautiful and on some levels would work as a simple statement to the beauty of the way water moves. The colours and a layered fairy tale dress she is on her back and the fabric at times seems to represent blood and others the figure is in a process of abandonment given over to floating or drowning and others it is the beauty of the swirling motions that are at the forefront of consciousness. Some viewers complain of being bored by her performances. I think if they were three hours long or she created the performances as live acts without the interplay of viewpoints and especially the use of unexpected viewpoint, they would not hold the viewer, but Searle has times them perfectly and it is the disembodied nature of the performances which makes them compelling. Searle becomes a seer we are awed by her, she controls the environment and makes us ware she is a performer, but an artist as well who deals in images. She adds the dimension of time to her work, but strips away the detail…like slowly erasing layers of gloss or superfluous detail on an oil painting and presenting it as step-by-step images until left with the bare bones. Her style is very sophisticated… There is a tension between the messy or visceral wet and tangible things on the screens and their framing within sometimes sterile environments. The water and dye sand or smoke is not physically present. She may be commenting on the fact that most of our life is lived vicariously and through a TV, computer screen, or it could be the image itself she s capturing, her translated feeling. Like Cindy Sherman she plays with the presentation formats and reinvents them to comment on the objectification of woman. She claims the huge sky space gone to publicise a perfume of product using a woman’s body to using a woman’s body to tell a truth. The sounds that overlay her videos such as squeaky, sliding feet as the only sound at intervals of the feet sliding down seemingly sideways on the glass, with Searle’s head and body like separate orbs above in A Matter of Time 2003 is consistent with the minimal sound in her work.. In one of her most recent works, Home and Away the viewer hears her voice as she is shown reflected and inverted. She is conjugating verbs: to love and to leave in Latin. It is reminiscent of a chant a chant and more European than an African language. She is sparing with sound, like she is with her clothing and her presence. Her hair is cropped, she wears a minimum of expression or movement: just a slight frown or smile as in Mute or the black shift or suit of an actor in rehearsal that she wears in A Matter of Time. We see her face in mute, a slight frown, and somehow because she is identifiable alongside the other objects she becomes a storyteller. Her presence gives a human presence to the vignettes or scenes we are presented with, and this is at the heart of performance art. Today where so much expression is overt, the stillness of Searle’s work has more impact-the videos are short (7 or eight minutes), her installations are large, but not overwhelming and she uses angles screens and multiple screens as a showcase rather that of scale and volume, but it is not overt and the screens and prints are without adornment. There is a classical quality to her work and even the feelings of anxiousness from being witness to the ferocity of fire in Lull never descends into hysteria. This is perhaps a move away from a stereotypical use of madness and loss of control to classify woman’s artwork. Searle is remarkably composed. In her large size images blown up to fill a billboard in one of her earliest work from the Colour Me Series 1998, she becomes a sort of deity although her gaze pose and vulnerability show a slightly more amateurish concept of self and identity than her later work does . A retrospective of her work shows a maturing, a polishing and a slightly more heart-rending a personal poetry emerges from the images and presence of Berni Searle when the viewer can peruse the videos, stills and images of the installations that she has been carefully crafting for over ten years.. BIBLIOGRAPHY Catalogue Summer 2009/10: Projects, published by Michael Stevenson gallery Greslé, Yvette ‘Berni Searle review’, ART SOUTH AFRICA V5.3, 2007 Kley, Elizabeth, ‘Mystical cosmetics: Oliver herring, Stephen Oom, Berni Searle’, A Journal of Performing Art, 2002, pp102-104) Lewis, Desiree ‘The conceptual art of Berni Searle’, Agenda No. 50. African Feminisms One 2001 pp 108-117 Van der Watt, Liese Disappearing act ‘, Art South Africa, Vol 1, Issue 4, Winter 2003, pp22-28 WORKS CITED Greslé, Yvette ‘Berni Searle review’, ART SOUTH AFRICA V5.3, 2007 Kley, Elizabeth, ‘Mystical cosmetics: Oliver herring, Stephen Oom, Berni Searle’, A Journal of Performing Art, 2002, pp102-104) Lewis, Desiree ‘The conceptual art of Berni Searle’, Agenda No. 50. African Feminisms One 2001 pp 108-117 Van der Watt, Liese Disappearing act ‘, Art South Africa, Vol 1, Issue 4, Winter 2003, pp22-28 Red, Yellow, Brown: Face to Face. 2000 from the Colour Me series Digital prints on architects tracing paper/vellum, spices 18 prints, 300 x 91cm each Looking Back. 1999 from the Colour Me series Colour photographs, framed, backed with framed spices 9 frames, 52 X 45 cm each Edition of 1 + 1 AP Installation views (above and below) Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, Cape Town, 1999 view detail Snow White. Installation view, Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, exhibition The Space Between, 2003 A Matter of Time. Installation view, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California. 2003 Home and Away. 2003 Double-channel video projection, Shot on S16mm colour film, transferred to DVD/Flash cards Duration 6 min, colour, sound, synchronised, projected opposite each other, format 16:9 Edition of 5 + 2AP About to forget. 2005 Three channel video projection Shot on 35mm cinemascope film, transferred to DVD/Flash cards Duration 3 min, colour, sound, synchronised, 3 projections alongside each other, 4:3 format each Edition of 5 + 1AP Mute. 2008 Double-channel video projection, Shot on SD video, transferred to DVD Duration 4 mins 11 secs, Colour, no sound, synchronised, projected opposite each other, format 16:9 Edition of 5 + 2AP Lull. 2009 Single channel HD video projection 7 min 33 secs Ed. 5 + 2AP Day for Night. 2008 Four channel video projection Shot on HD, transferred to SD or HD discs/Flash cards Duration 6 mins 40 secs Colour, sound, synchronised, projected in square formation, format 16:9 Read More