The performance had already begun when I walked through the blackout curtains into the "Platform" studio of the Oregon Center for Contemporary Art, which was once the location of Tahni Holt's FLOCK Sports Discovery Center, and is now the residence of Franco Nieto's open space studio. The performance has already begun, or rather, it seems to have just begun; the difference between the inattentive attitude of the performers and the tasks they silently accomplish among a group of sitting and standing audiences is not obvious.
Private Speculations is an installation and performance art work developed by Philadelphia multidisciplinary artist Emmanuela Soria Ruiz. It is part of a series of installations exhibited by Fuller Rosen Gallery and guest curator Laurel V. McLaughlin. It opens on Friday, December 3, and will be repeated two more times: Saturday, December 4 from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, and Sunday, December 5 from 3:30 pm to 5 pm, both also in Oregon Held at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Performed by the artist with Portland dancer and performance producer Ellie Hankins, the private speculation aims to bring to life the depiction of "Animal Ballet" by the Irish architect Irene Gray (1878-1976) of the 20th century.
"Emmanuela and I were introduced to each other by [curator] Laurel because we have a common interest in Eileen Gray and her work, and some of my previous and future works have also borrowed from these interests and influences," Hankins said Said to their cooperation. "I think the common curiosity and inquiry surrounding Gray and her weird character give us a common vocabulary, which feels very important."
Soria Ruiz's art is rooted in research, hegemony, literary and architectural investigations, walking around in the performance space, keenly paying attention to objects of interest around him; printed wooden slates, Faux fur rugs, zebra pattern rugs, chairs, a set of white pants and socks, and an electric kettle near a short pile of books. Hankins is a well-known local veteran of continuous performances and interactive installation displays. He joined Soria Ruiz with a certain and elegant atmosphere, showing a series of charming decadent embedded pictures and foot patterns.
“Laurel V. McLaughin and I organized this performance under the umbrella of my solo exhibition The Longest Leg [supported by the 2021 Make/Learn/Build RACC grant and Accion Cultural Espanola’s PICE liquidity grant]. These works for independence are related to each other on a wide range of themes, and extend the momentum of the exhibition and connection with the Portland audience to this performance. In addition, this has also become an opportunity to collaborate with Allie Hankins, his own performance work Considering Irish modernist architect Eileen Gray, Grey Areas (2020), I was familiar with it when developing Private Speculations," Soria Ruiz said via email. "These two works developed roughly at the same time, and both involve the dynamics of power: the longest legs related to narrative, vision, and experience, as well as some personal speculations related to Gray's biographies and objects and architecture, as well as animalism."
The items in Private Speculations seem to revolve around the main installation point—a small-scale replica of Irene Gray’s Brick Screen (1918) of the room divider—helping the development of a timeless and ever-changing panorama. For an hour and a half, Hankins and Soria Ruiz approached and moved away from each other, imagining images of planets in orbit, surrounded by remnants of the quaint living room scene. This is a microscopic and macroscopic illustration. The audience can take off their shoes, leave their seats and walk around in the space, attracting themselves into the private world of the performers—they sit and lie down with each other in the tender moments caused by the cool approach. By inviting the audience to cross the line, Soria Ruiz started a dialogue between the audience and the participation. The audience sees the performers changing clothes, putting on abstract horse-shaped costumes or Picasso-style rectangular square blankets, creating a sense of voyeurism. We have to decide whether to venture through the performance space and walk to the other side of the venue. In the room, check different object stations by surrounding the performer, or read text from one placard to another, such as "Irene designed a snake-shaped armchair for Damia".
Audiences can come and go as they please, and I strongly recommend that you participate in this provocative event as a thought-provoking art on the weekend. The following is a conversation between me and Emmanuela Soria Ruiz, creator and performer of Private Speculations.
What was the original idea behind this project? Why Irene Gray?
I am usually interested in exploring the conditions under which the body is both a subject and an object, so my interest in Gray is to study how the object maker shapes specific subjectivity through her works. This work was also influenced by media research scholar Jasmine Raoult's scholarship to Gray and her careful contextualization of Gray's work through queer lenses. ... The performance traced some of her ways of objectifying women by making furniture for women or using them to make furniture (I think this is a very simple metaphor for patriarchy and violence against women). While Gray designed this screen, she drafted some sketches for the animal ballet Ballet des Animaux (1916-1919), which I think is an interesting identification of animality and other sexuality. Her space is filled with furs and animal skins as decoration at the same time-so there is some violence and ambiguity supporting the work there.
The performance also looked at some of the ways Irene Gray drew inspiration from Orientalism to shape the interior space she wanted to build—recognizing this exotic identity or the identity of a sexual dissident as an exotic identity. It also looks at how her work was later contaminated by Le Corbusier—the images of these frescoes come from sketches drawn by Le Corbusier in Algiers, following in the footsteps of painters such as Jacques Delacroix. He started the trend of Orientalism in Europe.
I think the two are interrelated, because violence against animals is an important step and an important link to racism and colonial violence. My guess is that in order to create spaces and works that serve the private world of non-heterosexual women, Irene Gray hopes to configure this modernist aesthetic through animals and Orientalism. So, in a sense, she is both the perpetrator and the victim.
How much did individual performers influence and/or change the work? Does it remain stable or fluctuate depending on the individuals involved?
I find that my iterative performances always change greatly through collaboration with individual performers and the background of the way of presentation. In the previous iteration, the screen was installed as a sculpture in a group exhibition in 2021, titled "The Dividual at the Kunstraum of Leuphana, University Lüneburg", curated by Joshua Simon. In that case, the performance will take place during some opening hours of the gallery, and it feels more like a domestic invasion of a more boring exhibition space. In Portland, the "platform" space of the Oregon Center for Contemporary Art is more like a blank slate and larger, so this performance will slowly be expressed as a way of movement, and the audience can explore from many different angles. I am still trying to understand how the domestic factors of wandering and waiting work in this situation.
In terms of participation and cooperation, I am very happy to have the opportunity to collaborate with Ellie to make this work, so I came to Portland with some additional costumes and let us improvise together. I have some ideas and directions, and the process is fast-paced. It's great to be able to get some scores together. ...I found that my experience of performing "Private Conjecture" will change a lot according to the audience's attention type and interaction with the installation.
Do you have a different view of your role as a creator and your role as a performer, or do you think they are the same thing in this project?
I think they are one, but there is always tension between what I want and what I can do. Although I am very interested in improvisation and choreography, I am by no means a well-trained performer, and because I come from a background in making sculptures, most of my excitement and ideas come from thinking about objects (or in this In the case of costumes, props and costumes), or in the form of visual composition.
During the performance tonight, I noticed some repetitive scores and images. How many body performances are improvised and choreographed?
Most body performances are arranged by musical scores and spatial clues, and we have loosely interpreted them, because hanging out and changing are moments of inward folding and living. For example, there is a repetitive part. When I browse the music score, Ellie sits on me leaning against Rubinstein in the Russian Ballet, a famous dancer at the time and also a queer.
In Private Speculations, "The screen is allowed to perform or even transcend its architectural role as a spatial, physical, and visual organizer, extending to interlocutors, agents, and audiences." Can you talk about your relationship with the object? Do you feel that you have had a vibrant communication with the screen that is essential to the performance of your work?
Through iteration, the position of the screen has changed conceptually and physically, but it is still the core issue for me in this work. …In this iteration, I chose to make our participation softer, and based on the “normative” potential of this eye-catching object as an interactive room divider (for example, Ellie and I change clothes repeatedly), Activate queer screen reading. In this performance, the screen acts as a functional room divider and space and visual divider, and then makes it a structural narrative device.
I made this modification because I want to be affected by my experience of interacting with furniture. I think this experience is mainly about ignoring it, using it, touching it, and letting my family movements be affected by its existence. I also want to distinguish between the use of the furniture contained in the works (chairs and screens) that we use in a "functional" way, and the clothing I make, I let myself explore my identity and projected objects, and my own view of the inanimate interest of. I am very interested in this room divider. It is the boundary object between the wall and the object or between the architecture and the interior design, and the clothing is the boundary agent between the object and the human being.
Amy Leona Havin is a poet, choreographer, film producer and writer from Rehovot, Israel. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon, passing through San Diego, California. She studied the language of Gaga movement at the Batsheva Dance Company of Ohad Naharin in Tel Aviv, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Cornish College of Art in Seattle, Washington. Havin is the founder and artistic director of The Holding Project, a Portland dance company, through which she won an art residency at the Disjecta Center for Contemporary Art in 2016. Her films have been screened internationally in Israel, Greece, Mexico, Austria and France, and won awards such as the Mexico City International Video Dance Festival, Portland Dance Film Festival, Thessaloniki Film Festival and other awards. Havin is the founder and host of the irregular reading series It's Rhubarb. Her literary works can be read in publications such as The Dust Magazine, Unchaste Anthology, When She Rise and Gravity By Birds. Havin's growth process is rooted in her dual education. She weaves together works of collective introspection while respecting heritage and the natural world.
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