documentation

Cougar diary, June 13, 2012

By now you’ve noticed that I’m not a very good cougar.
I’m okay with that.

The intent for this project is one of endurance and continues my interest in producing durational works where the start and end of a piece is blurred by the time of contact with the viewer. It is also an homage to and continues a tradition of durational work by performance artists like Linda Montano who wore one colour of clothing each year for 7 years (7 Years Of Living Art, 1984-1998), Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano who tied themselves together with an 8-foot rope but not allowed to touch for one year (Art/Life: One Year Performance (a.k.a. Rope Piece), 1984), and Marina Abramović who sat immobile while visiting spectators took turns sitting opposite her for 736.5 hours accumulatively, at the New York Museum of Modern Art (The Artist is Present, 2010).

This project also speaks to durational documentation and (digital) practices in which the artist is both subject and documentarian; Tehching Hsieh’s (second) one year performance piece in which he shot a single frame of film of himself punching a time clock every hour on the hour for an entire year (One Year Performance 1980–1981 (Time Piece)) and Wafaa Bilal’s online work in which he transforms himself into a human tripod, having had a titanium plate surgically implanted onto the back of his head where a camera is attached to record and transmit images to the internet every minute, 24 hours a day (3rdi, December 14, 2010-December 18, 2011).

I’m sorry if I’m not living up to your expectations of a cougar.
We’ll talk about this more later.