THE NRLA IS AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE GENRE DOES NOT EXIST
Black Market International
Kirstin lnnes looks at the multiple barriers and connections between the performer and audience in the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow.
Glasgow‘s Tramway for four days of live art. performance and installation from an international cast of established and emerging artists.
For those with an open mind. the packed programme offers plenty to get excited by. Just don‘t attempt to categorise. Is it theatre? Much of the work on display is performed to an audience within a set time period. often involving physical movement and dance. But this year. programmer Nikki Millican has introduced work that could just as easily be described as music: Andre Stitt and Matt Cook. while both largely ‘performance artists”. play standalone gigs with their techno-punk band. The Panacea Society. Daan Vandewalle‘s improvised ‘piano marathon‘. Inner Cities. presents avant-garde music as installation. and would not be out of place at Glasgow‘s experimental music festival. lnstal. And NRLA has always had a very strong filmic element.
The NRLA is not just a collection of works that transgress genre boundaries: it creates a collective environment where genre does not exist. It seems
increasingly to resemble an artistic representation of
cyberspace. This is perhaps best encapsulated by Man in Icl spam by French company res publica. an attempt to map the human position in cyberspace using physical performers and computer-generated images.
The internet. of course. is currently undergoing a revolution known as Web 2.0. with an increased focus on user-driven or created content. Similarly.
ow in its 27th year. the NRLA is taking over
the act of performing and the physical presence of
the performer creates immediacy and forces the audience to interact. A piece of art rooted in or taking place on the body — which all of this year‘s acts have in common to some extent — runs the risk of being introspective and self—indulgent. By subverting the ways we interact with each other at surface level — skin level — and by occasionally transcending socially-prescribed comfort zones of intimacy. these works turn spectators into participants.
U_Raging .S'rum/sn'l/ by Belgian collective (‘rew (part of the umbrella New Territories festival which encompasses NRLA) requires participants to don virtual reality helmets and negotiate their way around an interactive narrative. Alexis ()‘Hara's finished work The Sorrow Sponge will be composed of the absorbed fears and worries of participants recorded throughout the festival. and what you take from the ongoing installation Black Market International. which will occupy Tramway 2 whenever the building is open. depends entirely on what time and in which order you encounter the l l performers. The meaning of each component of this year‘s NRLA relies as much on the individual response as the original artistic input. and in this way it offers a much more forward-thinking model of what artistic form can be than more didactic works. which can be limited by their adherence to tenre.
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Tramway, Glasgow, Wed 7-Sun 1 1 Feb. See www.newmoves.co.uk for more details.
Visual Art II“
THE BEST EXHIBITIONS
=i< Goya - Monsters and Matadors Three famous folios of etchings by the Spanish Master are dragged up from the bowels of the NGS for our delectation. ‘The Tauromaquia', ‘The Horrors of War‘ and ‘The Proverbios or Follies’ drip with muck scraped from the dark underbelly of our supposed humanity. See review, page 94. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, until Sun 25 Feb. Living in the Modern World Work recently purchased for the City Art Centre's collection with funds from the NCSS. The exhibition examines modern urban life and includes work by Nathan Coley, Graham Fagan, Will Duke, Martin Boyce, Tony Paterson, Rosalind Nashishibi. Carol Rhodes, Christine Borland, Kenny Hunter and Rose Frain. See review, page 94. City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sun 4 Mar.
>i< Julie Roberts New paintings examining the role that women play in the art world today, comparing it to how women faired at the beginning of last century. Roberts skillfully uses archival photography of Glasgow School of Art as subject matter; her ribbons of paint reaching back into an imagined past. Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, until Sun 25 Feb.
=l: Lorna Maclntyre A confident interpretation of the post-industrial mess we’re in, with sculptures, drawings, and photographs installed by Glasgow-based Maclntyre. ‘Natural’ elements somehow seem anachronistic; ‘man- made’ materials are awkward and persistent. See review, page 94. Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Fri 23 Feb.
1 if) l'ob ROCK THE LIST 93