Artists Space

When Time Becomes Form:
Beech Forest

Performance
March 20, 2007, 7pm

When Time Becomes Form inaugural performance by Viola Yesiltac.
Curated by Marina Abramovic.

A woman stands, facing away from the camera. She is standing on a photo backdrop of trees in a forest, which covers part of the floor and is raised into the air by stand. Studio lights surround her, casting a slight glare off the backdrop.
Those Lost Trees by Viola Yesiltac (2005). [A woman stands, facing away from the camera. She is standing on a photo backdrop of trees in a forest, which covers part of the floor and is raised into the air by stand. Studio lights surround her, casting a slight glare off the backdrop.]

The German artist Viola Yesiltac has noticed in recent years that her performances have more and more resembled photographs (standing against photo studio backdrops, she would make only the most minimal and mundane movements), and her photography has more and more looked like a performance (palpable traces of activity and feelings hovering in empty spaces). In her new project at Artist’s Space, Yesiltac pinpoints time as the factor that charges her practice. In the place of Yesiltac, a paid actor will occupy the gallery at all times, standing in front of a photo backdrop sheet. Yesiltac herself will visit the gallery every night to draw on the walls, tracing from slide projections. Juxtaposing these elements, Yesiltac manipulates two types of nowness: the frozen moment of the photograph becomes a natural and inexorable growth of lines on a wall; the infinitely extended, always unraveling moment of human presence aspires to the fixity of a photograph.

When Time Becomes Form is an ongoing performance series of long-durational work curated by Marina Abramovic for Artists Space. The performance series grows from Artists Space’s commitment to experimentation across all art forms and recent efforts to return performance art to its central position within the gallery’s activities and exhibitions. The series consists of twelve distinct, but interrelated, durational performances, each created and presented by a different performance artist, each of whom is a member of the Independent Performance Group (IPG). Each of these five-day performances explores and questions issues of concentration, willpower, and determination, and uses the entire gallery space for 8 hours during each days of its presentation. The entire series will develop over the course of the next two and a half years.

Developed in 2003, IPG is an independent artists group founded by Marina Abramovic, the self-described “grandmother of performance art.” IPG’s 42 members hail from 22 different countries and are linked by their shared interest in exploring the boundaries of performance art as well as by their studies with Abramovic. Though varying widely in execution, the performance work created by the members of IPG explores concepts of endurance, concentration, perception, self-control, will power, confrontation, and mental and physical limits. Yesiltac’s performance is the first in this series at Artists Space.

A darkened gallery room with several standing lights pointing to illuminate a corner. In the corner, a figure stands, wearing a coat and a hat with her hands in her pockets, facing away from the camera. She is framed by an empty metal stand.
Beech Forest. Performance view, Artists Space, 2007. [A darkened gallery room with several standing lights pointing to illuminate a corner. In the corner, a figure stands, wearing a coat and a hat with her hands in her pockets, facing away from the camera. She is framed by an empty metal stand.]
Three standing lights point to illuminate a white wall. Standing beside them facing the wall is a figure wearing a coat and a hat with her hands lightly clasped behind her back. Barely visible on the wall beside her are stenciled outlines of trees.
Beech Forest. Performance view, Artists Space, 2007. [Three standing lights point to illuminate a white wall. Standing beside them facing the wall is a figure wearing a coat and a hat with her hands lightly clasped behind her back. Barely visible on the wall beside her are stenciled outlines of trees.]