Elisa Shoenberger on lo bil

photo by Henry Chan

‘PERFORMANCE ART PERFORMING LIFE

The power of public performance art is the unknown encounter. It’s watching performers interact with the outside world, whether it’s the physical landscape they inhabit or their relationship to people and other animals around them. Naturally, the level of improvisation varies per performer and performance. Some are contained pieces, requiring little audience input, but not fully isolated from the world. Other pieces and performers invite participants into the performance.

In lo bil’s “Moving Weirdly: Research for the City of Dreams,” she rides her bike throughout Toronto, talking about theory of performance and art. She was taking us all on a journey where neither the artist nor the audience knew what would happen. While she explored the cityscape of Toronto, she talked about the role of improvisation in performance, specifically talking about the tension between intention and accident. In her statement for the piece, she wrote: “My primary actions are listening, accepting, responding, following and not imposing on myself a need to encode physical responses into language.” In other words, I saw this piece as exploring what happens if the artist brings the world into their piece instead of imposing it on the world.

Moving Weirdly: Research for City of Dreams
Video Still

by lo bil

Her introspection about her own work and performance theory reminded me a lot of James Joyce’s Ulysses that largely focuses on the movements of Leopold Bloom traveling through Dublin on a day in June. But while the artistry of the book lies in the story of Bloom wandering, lo’s piece explores the act of wandering, encountering, as theory and in my eyes, as art itself.

Interestingly, it reminded me of my days as a historical reenactor. While there may be moments of staged performance, much of the work is inhibiting a character and interacting with the world as it comes as. My favorite role was as a teetotaler, carrying around signs, in bars and beer festivals. It was fun to banter with the people around us as we “tried” to convince people to stay away from the demon drink. Our performances were predicated on the people around us. I distinctly remember one fellow who may have taken us too seriously, despite the fact we were dressed in period costumes.

My point is that improvisation is part of historical reenactments as much as it can be with public performance art. But obviously, these features do not mean the two are the same. As always, I am reminded of the brilliant distinction between performance art and theater in Marilyn Arsem’s 2011 manifesto “THIS is Performance Art” where she writes, “Performance art is real…It exists on the same plane as those who witness it. The artist uses real materials and real actions. The artist is no one other than her/himself.”

We were acting as late 19th and early 20th century temperance workers while performance artists like lo bil are themselves.

But if we are separating theater and performance, from the actor versus the artist herself, what about the line between art and the real world? Recently, I overheard a little girl tell her father in an art exhibition: “That’s not real, it’s art.” Where does real life stop and art begin? Or does there have to be a dichotomy - this is real life and that is art?

Moving Weirdly: Research for City of Dreams
Video Still

by lo bil

For me, this seemed another central part of lo bil’s performance/lecture. During her meanderings, she talked about ​​interjecting the everyday into your intellectual meanderings and looking on how to integrate theory into the world. She asked, why can’t we activate these theories and live these things?

Or to take it even further: Is it possible to live a life that is artistic? Can life be an artistic act? Or do we have to stop and start for art? (Of course, I don’t mean being an artist and living life—more like the act of living as art). Or would that be incredibly exhausting to be constantly living art? Performing is its own exhaustion. But performing and art do not necessarily have to be the same.

Maybe the answer is in lo bil’s piece. Maybe living an artistic life is more about introspection than outward appearances. It’s wandering around the city like the proverbial Leopold Bloom, taking in the sights and sounds, like staring at the pigeons and relishing in their energy or gazing up at the branches and leaves of a tree.

Living art doesn’t have to be overt or flashy, which can be exhausting to be “on” all the time—how many of us have been told we dress like artists— It’s more a state of being.