Student performance art debuts in University Center

When VAPA student Hannah Rocky sat down outside Jazzman’s on April 2, she didn’t ask for much. Just a silent person in the seat across from her and a little eye contact.

A sign in front of Rocky read, “Please join me for a few moments of silent eye contact” and that any participant could “stay as long as you wish.”

It was no staring contest, though. She and junior VAPA students Jordan Sveen and Aaron Greene were commencing the first week of a project for their VAPA 3900 class, Performance Art.

The project, “A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Humans Being, Humans Doing,” is what their instructor Jane Rigler described as a “re-performance” of performance artist Marina Abramovic’s “The Artist is Present.”

In her 2010 performance at the Museum of Modern Art, Abramovic and a man look silently at each other while seated at opposite ends of a table.

“A Bridge Between Two Worlds” does not use a table and will not last as long as Abramovic’s performance, but everything else about the setup remains the same.

“She originally did it for weeks on end for like eight hours a day,” said Greene, “and so we’re doing our own reproduction of it.”

He, Sveen and Rocky each spend a day of the week in one of the chairs for a four-hour period. They have attracted plenty of attention in the process.

“As time passes by, you get a lot of looks or glances or comments,” said Sveen. “Kind of a lot of confusion. We’ve had a few people that are kind of skeptical on the purpose of it.”

“It seems pointless,” said senior marketing major Wellington Mullings when asked what he thought about the performance. “It seems very pointless.”

Sveen disagreed with the assessment. “There’s this huge stigma on awkward silence for people and being in someone’s intimate space.”

She added that “A Bridge Between Two Worlds” would unite those spaces by invading them and potentially making people – including herself – uncomfortable in the process.

Other students like Cynthia Barram, a senior English major, took a moment to stop and watch the performance.

“It’s pretty wild,” said Barram, “I’ve seen these groups around campus pull similar stuff, so nothing should surprise me anymore.”

She cited one performance in which a woman had her long hair cut off into a “G.I. Jane” style and another in which a man was locked inside a cage.

None of the keys placed at the top of the cage would open it, and the performance ended with a group of students tying a rope to the cage and pulling off the door.

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen something like this go down on campus,” Barrum repeated, “but it always is kind of pleasantly surprising when I get to stop and see stuff that’s here.”

“A Bridge Between Two Worlds” will begin its second and final week on April 16.