Bivouac Show @ Vox

My favorite piece from the Bivouac show at Vox was Steve Roden’s video anything else &/or nothing at all (drawing circles for jackson mac low) from 2006. At first I knew nothing about the background of the piece and was just pleased by its aesthetic value. After talking to Andrew and reading the catalog description the work interested me even more. It is performance art, but the actual objects that are the outcome of his private performances are the artistic work.

Steve Roden’s theme is to create works that are abstract and random-looking with complex formulas that he comes up with. For anything else &/or nothing at all Roden created a formula that “transposed each letter, number, and symbol of Mac Low’s score into an equivalent color, mark, and duration for altering the found film” he used as a basis for the piece. For example, on letter can mean yellow paint, the number could mean he has to do it for 6 frames of the video, and the symbol could tell him what shape the yellow paint must be in, such as circles or squares. The found film was a 1950’s educational film that was used to teach children how to draw circles.

Roden’s drawings are created in the same way that anything else &/or nothing at all was, with the exception that he is forced to make decisions on where specifically he has to put the materials and shapes or lines on the paper. Roden took words from two different found text sources for each drawing that is in the show. For someone else to follow the directions he created for these drawings would create a totally different piece, they are directions, but the artist himself had to make the major decision of deciding “Yes, I will put that big yellow block there,” or maybe “No, it must be moved three inches down and one half inch to the left.” Roden’s drawings remind me of children’s scribbles, if it were not for the straight lines and the story behind the works, I would have guessed that they were made by a child.

Roden creates tension in his works by creating abstract forms by using a systematic set of specifically followed directions. The viewer must learn about the background of the artist’s systematic performances to create these works, otherwise they may also believe it is more like children’s art.

Roden’s work relates to the reading, Live Performance in a Mediatized Culture, from this week in that Philip Auslander talks about how television is “a hybrid of existing forms.” Roden has also created a hybrid of forms by combining an old film, with new abstract art, and mathematical formulas. Television is the new relationship between artists and the viewer, the artist can now get his work seen by more people because it is easier to access if he creates a video of it.

Auslander also talks about how drama on television is comparable to seeing drama on stage in a theatre; if this is true, than is it not true that seeing an artist’s work on television is not the same as going to a gallery to view it? Is a person not more comfortable in their own home than in a stark white-walled gallery, a person is outside of their comfort zone in a gallery, causing them to miss things. If a person could watch the work, such as Roden’s video anything else &/or nothing at all, at home in their comfort level, who is to say that they would not study it for hours as opposed to the five to fifteen minutes they would be comfortable watching it for in a gallery. I know that sometimes when I have to go to a gallery for class and it’s really cold or raining, I would rather see the artwork from the comfort of my home. I would probably spend more time with the pieces if I could view them at home, at least I would have time enough to see them and study them as much as I want. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy going to galleries, but I feel that with all the things people have to get done on a daily basis combined with the strange hours that galleries are normally open, it would be nice to view art at your own pace and time, just like I would have liked to spend more time with Roden’s anything else &/or nothing at all.

In conclusion, I feel that Steve Roden has discovered a new genre of art; mathematical art or maybe I should call it abstract mathematical performance art. I’m not sure if this kind of mathematical system exists in any other kind of art, except for maybe architecture or other three-dimensional works, but it is the first time I have seen anything like it and I have started to enjoy it.