VCU Lecture # 2: Kate Gilmore

Where is this magical school in Maine that both Kate Gilmore and William Pope.L have in common? I just want to go sit on the campus for a day and see what the hell everyone is doing there! Although I don’t think I will ever become a performance artist, this semester has influenced my way of thinking about the importance of performance art. I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can stand in front of the world and put themselves on display for the sake of their art. I love performing for my camera, when no one else is around, but as soon as other people are there I can’t concentrate and the meaning is lost. These artists however seem to thrive on the idea of an audience’s immediate response. Kate’s work has a strong entertainment element and the videos she showed were also formally and conceptually engaging. Her physical struggles in these performances often deal with the idea of the “perfect” character falling apart. Through this deterioration of character Kate is able to break conventional female roles. The characters in the beginning may seem inconsequential but as their struggle progresses so does our ability to empathize with them. Her performances also ask, what is it that motivates us to keep up the daily struggle in our lives? This concept was illustrated best in “anything”, where the artist constructs an impossible ladder out of chairs, string and a table in order to reach the camera overhead. Her willingness and determination to achieve her goal even in the face of danger is both comical and endearing. The one video that was hard for me to watch was when Kate was pushing her head through a star shaped hole in a piece of particle board. Although “Cake Walk” was probably more painful, overall I think there is something scary about a person hurting their face. While many of Kate Gilmore’s performances may seem lighthearted on the surface, one can still see a connection through certain elements to the more serious performance artists of the 1960’s and 70’s. Maria Abramovic’s work tends to be darker with little humor involved, however the two artists both base their performances on the element of danger and an action/ reaction situation where there is no way to be certain of the outcome. In my own work I often seek out places with an element of danger to perform. The risks of “being caught”, combined with the voyeuristic aspect of experiencing another person’s private life, are the dangers that work as a catalyst in the process of my art. The stranger or more unexplainable the circumstances of a place are, the greater is my desire to explore there.