Angela Bartram

A sense of becoming and alienation: the retrospective in the work of Jordan McKenzie

ABSTRACT The act of art retrospective, specifically that placed within a museum or gallery, is to reflect on, and give knowledge of something past. Retroactive in its overview of an artist’s practice, it is inherently backwards facing rather than future focused. As an act that specifies finiteness and conclusion, a living artist’s retrospective produces an ananomaly. In 2016, I simultaneously staged the Alternative Document symposium and exhibition. This included Retrospective 2027 by Jordan McKenzie, an event set in the future and staged by a living artist. Positioned as a keynote in the symposium rather than the exhibition it not only offered the retrospective as a representation of the artworks of the living, but also challenged traditional formats of structural placement. Situated within colloquialism rather than exhibition, the aim was to set it adrift from the gallery to open it to critical analysis and debate. This essay considers McKenzie’s approach to retrospective and how it differs from the conventional. Including my critical conversation with the artist, his performed, gestural and event-based approach is discussed for how it differs from the regular model of exhibition. The essay discusses the implications for the documentation of performance and the retrospective in McKenzie’s work.

Between Bodies: An Artist’s Account of the Oral Connection Between Human and Dog

In the essay Half Wild and Unwritten, published in Adrian Heathfield’s edited volume Live: Art and Performance, Brian Catling talked about the ‘strange beast of performance’ (Catling in Heathfield, 2004, p. 47). With this terminology, Catling suggested the live performing body as synonymous with animality, for in being observable it represents the objectifiable other. Attention is given to the body being animal as manner and physicality are observed. Created both physically and psychologically for Catling, the behaviour of the body seen ‘in the spotlight’ becomes synonymous with this image. Keith Thomas stated ‘it was as a comment on human nature that the comment of “animality” was devised’ (1983, p. 41) and this has bearing for Catling’s analogy. The spectator recognizes the performers’ body as close in physicality and sensibility to themselves and this allows for a sense of understanding of the actions in which it is engaged. However, the performer’s body is rendered as other and distinct through the process of observation. It represents that which is similar and different to the viewer. Situated as a public site of social intervention the performing body serves as a simultaneous human and animal referent.