One of the works to emerge from The This Project was a series of ‘flying experiments’. Having
discovered a feather in my garage one day, I was curious to see if it could fly. The word ‘go’ had been contributed to the project, leading to a rather more complex yellow stickie than others (rather than putting merely ‘go this’ on the stickie I had referred to a dictionary and added every word that goes with ‘go’).
After filming the feather (which, although in real time, I find reminiscent of slow-‐moving early Fluxus films), as it was a windy day, I stuck the stickie to the feather and let it go.
Figure 27: PringaDa (Bron Fionnachd-‐Féin), Feather Selected for Flying Experiment, 2011, video still
Figure 28: PringaDa (Bron Fionnachd-‐Féin), Flying Experiment #1, 2011, video still
While at first glance the Flying Experiments series may seem reminiscent of Igor and Svetlana
Kopystiansky’s video Incidents (1996/97) (a work that records various items blowing in the wind),
there are differences. Although I came across the feather in much the same way as Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky may have come across their random objects, the remainder of the process that formed the work carried an intent: they were experimental performances of a score that had
emerged from the complexity of The This Project. I would suggest, however, that Igor and
Svetlana Kopystiansky’s Incidents shares commonalities with the ‘matterings’ video works in this
project in which I record everyday emergent phenomena.
The difficulty in achieving this goal (of getting the stickie and feather to fly) is of course linked to failure. Many artists’ work has focussed on themes associated with failure as a position of resilience, an example being Bas Jan Ader, with acts of failing, including falling from a roof top in
Fall I (Los Angeles) (1970), cycling into a canal Fall II (Amsterdam) (1970) and loosing grip on a tree
branch Broken Fall (Organic) (1971).
To embrace failure is ‘daring to go beyond normal practice and enter a realm of not-‐knowing’ (Le Feuvre 2010, p.13). A self-‐mocking failure frequently appears in performances of Fluxus scores, it is both a Zen space and an experimental space where success is deemed overrated. In the interconnected networks of those who work with a Fluxus attitude today, the ‘professional success’ of a person is unimportant, even undesirable. As with the Zen Master who will readily deflate the ego of his student, within Fluxus-‐inspired networks those who exhibit an inflated ego rather than the work in hand can be very quickly shot down. An example is with those who speak out against Ben Vautier. I suggest that this could be a misunderstanding of Vautier’s intent (which
I believe is to détourne the artworld), or perhaps exasperation with his over-‐exuberance. To be concerned about failure, then, could be said to be very unFluxus and also unZen.
In a more serious and political vein, yet still a seemingly pointless exercise which is also located in
an everyday environment, is Francis Alÿs’s Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads
to Nothing) in which he pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until, after nine hours, it had finally melted. The title of this work also brings to mind the themes in this research,
including the dérive of the Situationists.
Figure 29: Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Doing Something Leads to Nothing), 1997, Mexico City The performance highlights inequalities in Latin America, that for many people a lot of effort is expended for little or no result. It also represents a dissipation of the aesthetics of mimimalist objects (Godfrey, Biesenbach & Greenburg, p. 82). Lorna Scott Fox says Alÿs often applies speculative rules such as in a Fluxus score and that the traces he leaves behind and the simplicity of his gestures prompt analogies that can change a person’s perceptions (Godfrey, Biesenbach & Greenburg, p. 194).
The political themes that run through Alÿs’s works make them aligned more closely to the
Situationists’ aims of détournement than the works in my practice which are not necessarily
prompted by political concerns. Although they may not be political by intent, political dimensions
sometimes emerge, such as in Performance of a Score by Allen Bukoff (2012).
The method of recording Alÿs’s performances raises issues relating to the challenges of documentation that have emerged in this research project. Many works suggest that a person other that Alÿs does the filming. In my own circumstance, another person to fulfil this role may not always be available and so I record all the footage myself. This places certain limitations on
my practice and the kinds of performance I may be able to conduct. In the videos of performances that I have done, when I appear this is most often through necessity in order to communicate an
idea, for example in Lullaby for a Grass Trimmer (2012) or the still images that are part of the
Modalities of Presence (2013) series. It is not intended to be a ‘selfie’ or putting myself ‘in the frame’ as the subject.