The following conversation between artists, curators and writers, Sarah E. Webb and Andrea Cote took place by email over 10 days throughout the installation and opening of Andrea Cote's exhibition "Cut" at PanAmerican Art Projects in Wynwood, Miami, currently on view through November 20. In addition to discussing each other's work straddling performance and installation, they provide insight into their recent curatorial projects and share thoughts on impermanence, physicality, and memory.



SARAH: Andrea, I became familiar with your work eighteen months ago when I was curating Absence/Excess/Loss for the Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, Rochester, NY. My co-curator, Marni Shindelman, and I were seeking work that questioned how the process of repetition is interwoven to both an act of mourning (and forgetting), as well as to enacted remembrance. In the case of your work, Hair Fall, repetition converged with gesture and process as you redefined the physical space, painting upon the walls with your own hair, in spidery tendrils, looping across the surface. From the perspective of the viewer the work appeared languorous, but as I watched you work, I know that was not the case. Could you say a little bit about your working method, about what comes into play when you create an installation for a specific place?

ANDREA: I usually come in with some idea of the architectural space, either through previous visits or pictures, and I especially like working in the transitional zones: doorways, stairwells, corners, hallways. There's something about the spaces one moves through, that can't be absorbed all at once, are experienced physically, and create a narrative in time and space. I've been lucky lately that the curators I work with immediately pick up on that and select interesting spaces for me to work in. At ROCO, you and Marni gave me the long space in the middle of the gallery, a kind of long hallway with multiple angled walls and convex and concave corners. The walls didn't stretch to the ceiling and so I approached them as three-dimensional forms with an implied top, I had a vision of the hair spilling over the edge, falling with the weight of gravity, yet caught, tangled and hovering at that precipice. Once I was in the space, I responded to the other works and let the sensibility of the show affect the tone of the work. So because there were 3 floor works nearby, I wanted to draw the eye up. I wanted to take the viewer on a journey, coax them around corners, entice them to stop and look closely while they were moving between the galleries. I also wanted the hair to have a somber tone, and I was contemplating loss as I was working, so the gesture of the lines carry that. This is in contrast, for example, to some previous installations- I had just done a piece at the Delaware Art Museum in which the hair took on a fantastical, explosive and exuberant quality, and for another installation at Jack the Pelican Gallery for a show with a gothic tone, the hair had a creepy quality and originated from a wooden ceiling beam like a spiderweb. Each work has to be very different, site-specific, and I have to be surprised.

The other factor is time, and I like having a short intensified period of time to create on site. It forces to me to respond in an immediate way, it allows me to enter another psychological state- perhaps this is related to my experience with performance, or why I work in such a performative way. I spend much time beforehand thinking and preparing, but then the works are made in this heightened state. I've learned over the years that this method suits me best- whether I am working in performance, installation, or even drawing and video. I need to feel very free, almost lost, as if anything can happen in that space, and that allows the "magic" to come in and take me by surprise. It forces quick and decisive decisions. So for example, most of my recent installations are done in 3-4 days, working 8-12 hours a day (I do sleep.) I set up all my materials and start off by jumping right in, making marks, just covering ground, mapping out the space. I move around a lot, going up and down the ladder, walking back and forth through the space - I remember everyone was surprised at ROCO, because I know the work seems so methodical and meditative, but it's really quite chaotic - more like a methodical madness. Just as the piece is starting to take shape, usually somewhere around the middle to the end of the second day, I try to do something drastic to it, to surprise myself and force a response. It gets very hard to "see" the piece any more because I'm so inside of it. For example, in the ROCO piece, I reached a point where it felt too elegant and refined, so I went into several sections and "gnarled" it up, laid in some dark, heavy, messy places of energy. That gave me something to resolve the last day, and created the right balance of "desire and repulsion" or "absence and excess."

On a physical level, I leave less or more of the hair embedded in the paint and wall, but in the ROCO piece, I really wanted to emphasize the aspect of loss, through "trace" and only left an imprint of the hair on the wall. I was using only a few of the same pieces of hair over and over, so in the end I left those on the floor in little, almost invisible, tufts. While working on that piece I was thinking a lot about the cuts of hair themselves, the times in my life they signified, now gone, and the seeds of my current piece were germinating. I had a vision of an entire work made from a single haircut, which led to the creation of the video and performance "Cut," to be presented in less than a week. I start installation at PanAmerican tomorrow, and I have a whole bag of hair filled with my recent cut hair. I imagine that I will again leave just the trace of the hair on the wall, to emphasize that sense of loss and the translation of one material to another. I have a few ideas in my head regarding composition, and how the space and drawing will relate to the video, but when I walk in tomorrow I will start with a blank slate!



SARAH: One thing that interests me in both your work, as well as my own, is this interplay, or rather push pull between permanence and performance. I know we have both been influenced by the writings of Peggy Phelan, and she has written so perceptively that "the disappearance of the object is fundamental to performance; it rehearses and repeats the disappearance of the subject who longs always to be remembered." This theme resonates with me specifically when considering artists who work with ephemeral materials, or detritus. For example, by using your own hair, you have chosen a material that has the ability to grow and regenerate, as well as to be cut, and disappear. And while you might repeat the process of using your hair in your wall paintings, the work is never merely a reenactment of a previous work, but rather responsive to the new environment.

Within this context, I'd like to talk a little bit more about your current work, "Cut." The video creates the potential of a more permanent trace, whereas the wall painting (constructed from the hair clipped during the performance) will be erased after the exhibition is complete. Was the desire to create a more enduring piece central in your consideration to create a video? How do you see each piece functioning in relation to the other, and how do you intend for the viewer to perceive the two pieces as either unique, or indistinguishable?

ANDREA: Yes, I thought about Peggy Phelan quite a bit leading up to the performance of "Cut," especially when she talks about both the "exhilaration of embodiment" and the desire to escape our corporeality, which I see as so central to performance and the drama of the body. I certainly have always felt the dual impulses of both wanting to stop time - hold on to a gesture, and at the same time let it pass and disappear into memory (hence my very slow movement in some previous performances - where one physically feels this happening). I like the way Phelan emphasizes the idea of "rehearsal," as if we are practicing always. I think of how art is a "practice" for life, life is "practice" for death (the ultimate erasure.) Visual art often seems to attempt to defy the passage of time- there is this attempt to create some permanent record. This is the beautiful promise that a painting holds.

I am fascinated by the differences in art forms and mediums and the desire to both speak to the vocabulary of a particular medium and challenge it, or use the language of one medium to speak in another, which is often what determines the form of each piece I create. So I often attempt to create performances that use the vocabulary of painting, or drawings, prints and sculptures that are the staging of a bodily event. The impulse behind "Cut" was to let these converge in a new way. I had never created a performance for video before, but the act of cutting my hair after a traumatic event seemed to make sense to do in private. I wondered if it would be possible to create a video that functioned both as a performance and its record, that read as a painting or drawing and embraced its own making. This was a one-time performance filmed and presented in real time, it is an hour long. Each moment marks a "cut" in time- each time I cut off a section of hair with the scissors, it highlights a severing - both of time and of physicality. You see the moment where, with one snip, the hair goes from being a part of my body to becoming a remnant, and then a tool in the process of art. It gives a tangible sense of loss.

Immediately after I cut off the hair, I brush it with paint, lay it down on the paper, press it down and peel it away. I enact the desire to leave a record, while at the same time creating a large painting that all of these elements: artist's body, mark, tool, ground - are integral to. The video is also a trace of the performance and the drawing itself. The medium of video is so intangible itself, yet it creates this sense of the real. And this phantasmatic quality is only heightened when presented as a projection. And yet, as you stated, video does create a more permanent record than the performance itself. Unlike other performances I've done, this one cannot be re-enacted, at least until I've grown my hair again substantially, and at that time the hair would be a record of different experiences in my life and the cutting would mark a different time.



The other element in presenting the video as an installation is the site-specific drawing on the walls. I always intended for there to be this relationship between the video recording the origins of the hair, and the trace on the walls of the gallery that the viewer can experience in real time and space. And yet, as you noted, it also is impermanent, as it will be erased. Each time the video is shown, I will print the walls with this same hair, but it will never be exactly the same, in the way each mark made with the hair is unique. So the two formats complement each other, embody similar desires manifested in different ways. I guess I always want to have it both ways, but in the end it's all an illusion. I am drawn to elaborate attempts to create and represent the impossible, and it's in that failure that something poignant is revealed. This brings me back to a story Peggy Phelan tells of a book from her childhood where she impulsively tore out this pop-up anatomical drawing of a man. She says that it gave her pleasure, that there was a rightness somehow in this leaving of a hole in the page of the book, where the body had been removed. I can completely relate to that. Again it is the idea of trace and the "disappearance of the subject/object."

When you showed me images of your installation and performance "Waxing and Waning," I saw a work sprung from similar impulses. In the live performance you snip the heads of flowers and dip them in wax (a Victorian practice), filling a long table. You are wearing your mother's wedding dress and there is a video projection in which your daughter tears the petals of daisies, repeating "he loves me, he loves me not." There is this conflux of different media, of presenting the remnants of the performance as objects in an installation and the experience of time - as represented through 3 generations of women and the desire to preserve something that will change or decay (flowers, symbols, roles, love.) I am curious what your thoughts are on the subject of process and permanence, the trace of experience left on a body or embedded in an object. The depth of your investigations were evident in your curating of "Absence/Excess/Loss," and I was not surprised to see it as an extension of your studio practice.



SARAH: That is incredibly astute on your behalf. I consider my studio work to be process, or performative-based, frequently emphasizing ephemeral materials, (extra)ordinary labor, and a methodology of gathering, collecting, organizing, caring, and tending. For example, in Waxing/Waning, I considered how the Victorian process of waxing flowers was originally conceived to preserve the vibrant bloom of the cut flower. Yet, while the veil of wax may prolong the color, the technique proves to be only a temporary solution; the flower continues to wither and fade underneath its hardened shell. Obviously, flowers have traditionally functioned both as tokens of affection and as symbols of mourning. As ephemeral objects they bloom, and they decay. From the games of childhood to adult rituals of passage, Waxing/Waning referenced the organic nature of human relationships and how meaning is formed through the acts of repetition, accumulation, transformation. As objects, encoated with a protective skin of wax, the blossom remains as a durable trace of what once was.



Due to the nature of the materials, I had originally assumed that the work would only exist the one time it was shown at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY. However, that has turned out not to be the case because in addition to the primary video projection of my daughter's hands separating daisy petals from their stems, a second video was creating documenting the performance. It is within this work that an almost meta-performance occurs, mimicking the action I had repeated privately in my studio, when I dipped thousands of flowers into paraffin in preparation for the actual exhibition. The second video captures me walking through my daughter's projection, dressed in my mother's wedding dress, as I arrange the flowers on the table. Thus, a conversation is created linking three generations of women in my family. As I have since watched the performance, I cannot help thinking of Roland Barthes' thoughts on the experience of being photographed in Camera Lucida, for I am "neither subject nor object but a subject that who feels (she) is becoming an object." I have exhibited this second video in additional venues, with my mother's wedding dress, now also encoated with small droplets of white wax, and the text, "he loves me, he loves me not," embroidered in in a golden script around the hem and train of the skirting. Of course, it is different than the original work, but I think it is no less poignant - issues of physicality, memory, role playing continue to resonate.

My studio work is as much embedded in the intellectual act of research, as in the physical act of making. I frequently begin with an historical text, and then look for another story that might be embedded within the margins. The act of writing, rewriting, recovering, is intrinsic to all that I do, which is why I think I am drawn as much to the act of curating, and critical thinking, as much as I am to making. I consider each of these acts to be unique gestures, but they all define and inform the other. Which brings me to the topic of curating. Since we have each recently curated exhibitions of the work of others, in my case, Absence/Excess/Loss, and for you Posing, at the Abrons Art Center, New York, NY, can you talk a little bit about that process, and how that informed your studio work? After I saw that show, I kept thinking about the notion of "posing" per se, and the different ways that we present ourselves. Was the role of "curator" a different pose from say the role of "artist?"

ANDREA: For me the roles of curator and artist intersect and compliment each other in interesting ways. I have been involved in several collaborations- with musicians, dancers, choreographers, and many visual artists over the years, and I value my role as a contributor to a stimulating and supportive art community. I really enjoy studio visits and talking to other artists about their work. The exhibition, "Posing," began as a studio dialogue with my colleague Joelle Jensen while still in graduate school at SUNY Purchase.

At the time Joelle was recreating photographs from her childhood family photo albums in a series titled "Repose." My work was informed by my experience as an artist model, and I noticed the way my body would inhabit the positions particular to figure drawing, echoing the bodies in paintings almost unconciously. We discussed these different vocabularies of poses, the implications of time and the subtle and not-so subtle effects of gender, media, history, and the viewer on the pose. We discovered the essay, "Posing," by Craig Owens and found a rich extension of these ideas. Incidentally, we were both also inspired by Camera Lucida, which we were both reading for class, and which informed our eventual project - a subtext of the show focused on the influence the of photography.

It was really a very organic process. We looked around at our friends' and contemporaries' work, then went to Artists Space and looked through their slide files. We spent time writing about the ideas and each artist's work. At first we saw our work as a part of the exhibition- part of the impetus of the show was to create a dialogue between our work and others' - but eventually we took ourselves out. It was a long process, but the exhibition found a venue at the Abrons Art Center in the Lower East Side where it is on view as we speak.

We saw the exhibition as one part of a larger project, which also included a catalog and essay and a panel discussion with invited speakers. The project was a true collaboration- it involved us to take on so many roles - as organizers, designers, writers, curators, and very much as artists. I've always enjoyed being involved in every aspect of my exhibitions- from installation, to the design and writing of publicity materials, and the performances, events, and even food at the opening. In a sense, a conversation like the one we are having is an integral part of this role of being an artist. Audience and dialogue have always been important to me. The relationships one develops as a member of this amazing and extended art community are so rewarding. As a result of the "Posing" show, I've gotten to know artists in Montreal and California, and one in particular- Nikhil Chopra in India, a performance artist I've been corresponding with and sharing experiences with now for almost 3 years!


I have to say, that in the Spring, when I arrived in Rochester for the show you and Marni curated, it was an inspiring model for me of what a group exhibition could be. You arranged for all eight artists to stay in Rochester for up to a week, hosted by the local art community, with stipends. We spoke and visited with students at the local colleges, had the public visit during installation, there were countless discussions over meals, and everyone agreed it was an amazing experience. I've maintained relationships with many of the artists in the show, not to mention the curators. Can you talk a little about where you hope to take this into the future? I've come to start using the term "project" increasingly, for "exhibition", "performance", or "writing" often seem too limiting. I know you've edited a book, write regularly for art publications, and are discussing taking the exhibition "Absence/Excess/Loss" further. What directions are you considering, and how do you see the geographical and physical scope of your enterprises? It is interesting to note that here you are in Rochester conversing with me between Miami and Long Island about exhibitions with artists from all over the world for a journal based in Miami, but existing online and accessible everywhere.

SARAH: I can't help but echo so many of the points that you brought up in response to the complementary duality of "artist" and "curator." From my perspective, I would also add the role of "writer" into the mix. My own history as an artist has been profoundly influenced by the fact that I studied creative writing in college (rather than the visual arts per se), and then went on to complete an advance degree in Art History from Christie's Education, London, England. The interplay of text has always been critical to my work (for example I frequently incorporate language in my studio practice), and which is why I think I move fluidly between my role of writer, artist, curator. I don't value one more highly than the other in terms of my work - they simply are different approaches to my interpretation of visual creativity. The process of curating, and the decision one makes about how seemingly disparate objects can be brought into a cohesive whole, and inform one another, I find to be intensely creative. The decision of what to include (or exclude), mapping the space, how to place objects in relation to another, really mirrors how I approach making work in my studio. For Marni and myself, Absence/Excess/Loss, before it was an exhibition, per se, it was a conversation between the two of us about shared impulses in our work, the work of others that we were drawn to (Tara Donovan and Janine Antoni come immediately to mind), as well as an approach to making.

One point of difference between your experience curating Posing was that Marni and I relied on an open call/jurying process as means of selecting artists for exhibition. That doesn't mean that we didn't encourage certain artists to apply, but to a certain degree, we were limited to considering artists (like yourself) who "found" us. The other point that marks our curatorial experience as unique from yours was that we had our show accepted, based upon its thematic premise, by the Rochester Contemporary, in advance of choosing the work that would ultimately be included. I point this out, because as you are aware, the architectural space at RoCo, provides an interesting landscape for installation-based work. It is a similar to many galleries in that the space is open, but rather than being a white cube, the walls are angled which allows you to "come upon" work, rather than take it all in at once. When Marni and I considered which work to include, we were able to tailor our decisions to that site specifically.

I think one of the most enriching aspects of Absence/Excess/Loss was that it brought us into a continued conversation with the artists, such as we are doing right now. Because of the intensity of the installation process, which you have commented upon, everyone had the opportunity to watch work being made, or re-made, in collaboration with each other. It became an experience that was both dynamic, as well as intuitive, and lent itself to a closeness between artist and curator.

Specifically, you asked about the future direction of Absence/Excess/ Loss, and my response is different than the one I would have given you before I saw the show installed. At that time, Marni and I were convinced that we would try to travel the show geographically beyond Western NY. However, once the work was installed, we realized that one of the aspects that made the work resonate so strongly was the physical gallery space of the Rochester Contemporary, and that to merely duplicate the show would not provide as profound an experience. At this point, we too are moving into a more virtual realm in that the project will continue to exist via a web presence. Installation shots, a podcast of the artists' panel, and the text from the catalogue essay can all be accessed via our website. Thus, from a critical and theoretical perspective, we hope that the ideas brought forth will continue to endure, even if the work per se does not.

ANDREA: Well, that seems a fitting way to honor both presence and absence. To have created a physical event located in a specific time and place, now gone, yet to provide a link through visual and auditory memory. To re-phrase Peggy Phelan: you will be "enacting both the disappearance of the object and satisfying the subject who longs to be remembered."

Links
   Absence/Excess/Loss
    Gallery Diet