nightlife
last hurrah
A performance art class pays tribute to its teacher. And no, it's not a made-for-TV movie. BY PATRICK CADY
Roger Shimomura, University of Kansas professor, prepares his class for their upcoming performance. His class will be performing in the Art and Design Gallery on the Third Floor tonight.
Jared Soares/Kansan
Bradford Kessler, Pratt senior, glides across the classroom floor with his gown billowing behind him. A throaty feminine sigh of ecstasy pierces the air punctuated by Yo Yo Ma's forlorn cello melody. Kessler's form, in a flowing graduation gown, strikes a silhouette against the television and the grainy late-seventies era porn it radiates. His rollerblades draw him around the room in a smooth and dreamlike circle. Nothing like practice.
Weeks later, in the same area, a gray paper mache man hangs from the ceiling upside-down. An endless barrage of strobe lights pepper this installation making it resemble a twisted dadaist rendition of a modern day flasher. Everyday though, this is only an eighteenth of all that happens here.
This performance and installation were created behind thick wooden doors on the fourth floor of the Art and Design building as part of Distinguished Professor Roger Shimomura's performance art class. It was a strange yet fitting example of the practices and performances that have led to tonight's hour-long final exhibition of performance art at the Art and Design Gallery starting at 7. This performance will bring to those who experience it a tsunami of surreality, and mark the end of an artistic era. This will be the last performance led by Shimomura. He retires this year to travel the world and lecture with his wife after 34 years.
The process that has led to tonight's final performances, though, has been long and varied. Throughout the semester his class has perpetrated random happenings across the campus. Their trademark brand of artistic weirdness had led to such oddities as the elevator DJ and the man reading a newspaper with jumper cables. If you've heard the random echoing buzz of a chain saw, that also might just be their work. "I think humor plays a huge role in our art and most art," Kessler says.
The content of their art is widely varied and sprawling. The class learns to adapt all forms of media into their work. Like Kessler's piece earlier in the semester, popular music, movies and cinema are all fair game. Pushing the limits of the media is also important to them. That has been a goal of their semester to this point so they could have ample chances to refine their skills. Each of the 18 students all had their own pieces, as varied and as strange, to some, as the cello bathed roller grad. As their skills improved so did their philosophy role of performance art in general. "It shows how real reality is," Kessler says. "It's a pure art because it's there and gone in the moment; it could never be redone or resold."
The in-class activities helped also to cement the group together. It seemed natural, Kessler says, considering each time they performed they put a piece of themselves, or their ego, on the line. Despite their close-knit connections, even they don't know what everyone is doing until the day of a show. The sense of mystery surrounding a performance art exhibition then is very strong. A few days before the show even, Shimomura knows that virtually nothing in this art form, at least as far as the creative process goes, is permanent. "I know from experience that those pieces could change dramatically over the next few days," Shimomura says.
That means that tonight all the installations, monologues and happenings all are new, and a product of intense cultivation. Every single work is a separate and thought out entity unto itself — but the trick with this exhibition is that they all go at it at once.
Therefore, in the past, the performances have had the same general order and consistency as a metropolitan zoo after a hurricane. If you go you might witness the performers doing something as simple as repeating a mechanical motion, or they could be reciting an entire tragic monologue right in your face. Sometimes the performances are so wild that entire harness systems are set up so people could fly across the room, but then again, they may have something even more intense year.
Kessler hopes so, especially because this is Shimomura's last year. "We really want to end with a bang." Kessler says.
They will attempt it by designing the pieces under the theme of "colors," and taking full advantage of Shimomura's instruction. "His teaching style is a very novel one," Kessler says. "He's always very critical but helpful."
As time for the performances grows ever closer for the students, the pressure also builds for them, to finish and iron art out their ideas. Shimomura has been there before with his students, over the decades, and believes they'll be alright. "Most performance art students work best under pressure and trust their instincts on their creative decision making skills," Shimomura says.
Needless to say, the evening and the performance should be interesting. It'll be a special evening as Shimomura leads his final show, and everyone else experiences an art happening that will never happen again.
Patrick Cady, Jayplay writer, can be reached at pcady@kansan.com.
thursday, december 11, 2003
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