Nychthemer 1 & 2 - lee wen 李文
Nychthemer
Nychthemer 1 and 2
Performance 24 hours X 2 duration
November 8-9 1996 and 1997
8 Oxford Street, Singapore
“Nychthemer” is a Greek word for a 24-hour cycle consisting of a day and a night. Not all cultures measured time that way. We are so used to the Greco-Roman calendar that we forget there are other ways of measuring time. The universal acceptance of the Greco-Roman calendar and measuring time as a 24 hour day was one of the first steps towards the globalize situation we are in today.
We experience natural and social changes in periodic sequences. Our concept of measuring time serves as points of references by which other experiences can be located. The nychthemeral rythym is most important for living organisms. Our human rhythms of taking nutrition at meal times, sleep, body temperature and physiological functioning also has a cycle related to the nychthemeral rhythm, behaving like an organic clock. However this may have been affected our concrete feelings for time and distance, due to different or changed conditions of modernization or technological advances. For example, shift work duties affecting our meal times and sleep patterns, jet travel resulting in jet lag.
On an open field, I walked in a circle for 24 hours from sunset to next day’s sunset. One year later, I buried myself up to my waist at a spot on the same field for 24 hours. I was exploring my body and the environment I was in for a 24-hour cycle. The first time I was constantly moving, very slowly though. And one year later I was in a fixed position. Graphically, with my body I was drawing a circle first and then doting the center of that circle a year later. But it was not only a Cartesian question for me.
It was a physical trial experienced between sunsets. When I did the first part of walking in a circle, I did not know what I would do in the second one, except that I will do something at the same place one year later. One of the reasons that motivated me to do this performance was the increased bureaucratic difficulty of organizing art and especially performance art in Singapore. I wanted to do something without having to go through that. I distributed photocopies of a hand drawn pamphlet to friends and did the performance in my backyard garden. I was not worried about whether I had an audience or not. People came at whatever time suited them.
Performance 24 hours X 2 duration
November 8-9 1996 and 1997
8 Oxford Street, Singapore
“Nychthemer” is a Greek word for a 24-hour cycle consisting of a day and a night. Not all cultures measured time that way. We are so used to the Greco-Roman calendar that we forget there are other ways of measuring time. The universal acceptance of the Greco-Roman calendar and measuring time as a 24 hour day was one of the first steps towards the globalize situation we are in today.
We experience natural and social changes in periodic sequences. Our concept of measuring time serves as points of references by which other experiences can be located. The nychthemeral rythym is most important for living organisms. Our human rhythms of taking nutrition at meal times, sleep, body temperature and physiological functioning also has a cycle related to the nychthemeral rhythm, behaving like an organic clock. However this may have been affected our concrete feelings for time and distance, due to different or changed conditions of modernization or technological advances. For example, shift work duties affecting our meal times and sleep patterns, jet travel resulting in jet lag.
On an open field, I walked in a circle for 24 hours from sunset to next day’s sunset. One year later, I buried myself up to my waist at a spot on the same field for 24 hours. I was exploring my body and the environment I was in for a 24-hour cycle. The first time I was constantly moving, very slowly though. And one year later I was in a fixed position. Graphically, with my body I was drawing a circle first and then doting the center of that circle a year later. But it was not only a Cartesian question for me.
It was a physical trial experienced between sunsets. When I did the first part of walking in a circle, I did not know what I would do in the second one, except that I will do something at the same place one year later. One of the reasons that motivated me to do this performance was the increased bureaucratic difficulty of organizing art and especially performance art in Singapore. I wanted to do something without having to go through that. I distributed photocopies of a hand drawn pamphlet to friends and did the performance in my backyard garden. I was not worried about whether I had an audience or not. People came at whatever time suited them.
2. Dream Boat.
Werkleitz Biennale,
Tornitz & Werkleitz, Germany, 1998
http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale1998/text/cat/wen2E.html
Dream Boat
Lee Wen´s performance had an emerging factor of performance art which is considered almost criminal in other arts. What the situation is going to be, which is then brought to the light of day, and decided on the location just before the event. In this way, he did something else than what had been announced. The problem many performance artists are having is, that the presence in the place of the event determines the form of the performance, except if the performance creates the place of the event and that in any space.
He is shivering.
The small river Saale, windy, fleeing clouds with short breakthroughs of sun.
Continiously shivering.
Various short beginnings out of the audience, then diving back into it. Then he was standing at the edge of the dyke in an upright positioned zinc bath tub (which we already know). He had a piece of meat in his mouth, an oversized tongue, hanging out, started to shake it, stronger and stronger until it fell out. The bath tub had something of a sarcophagus. The way he stood in it, the tongue hanging around his neck, the head strechted out, bird-like, Egyptian, any second the tub could tip back over. He stepped out of the house, his head covered with pages of a newspaper, breathing heavily, holes torn out for the eyes and the mouth, taking a wooden spoon, putting the handle in his mouth, lighting a candle, attaching it to the spoon, standing in the tub again, the silhouette, a part of the face, the edge of the tub and the spoon with the candle, removed the newspaper from his head, with the calmness immanent to the archaic.
The candle did not go out despite the wind, on the spoon, standing on the grass.
Undressed, completely.
Yellow paint rubbed on, spread over the body, standing in the sarcophagus again, then taking the tub like the shell of a turtle, yellow shaking legs, and moving from the dyke to the banks of the river. The tub put into the river, more lying than sitting, drifting, spinning, rowing with the hands, myth of origin with yellow man.
What archaic-poetic images have, they touch quietly.
Boris Nieslony
Tornitz & Werkleitz, Germany, 1998
http://www.werkleitz.de/events/biennale1998/text/cat/wen2E.html
Dream Boat
Lee Wen´s performance had an emerging factor of performance art which is considered almost criminal in other arts. What the situation is going to be, which is then brought to the light of day, and decided on the location just before the event. In this way, he did something else than what had been announced. The problem many performance artists are having is, that the presence in the place of the event determines the form of the performance, except if the performance creates the place of the event and that in any space.
He is shivering.
The small river Saale, windy, fleeing clouds with short breakthroughs of sun.
Continiously shivering.
Various short beginnings out of the audience, then diving back into it. Then he was standing at the edge of the dyke in an upright positioned zinc bath tub (which we already know). He had a piece of meat in his mouth, an oversized tongue, hanging out, started to shake it, stronger and stronger until it fell out. The bath tub had something of a sarcophagus. The way he stood in it, the tongue hanging around his neck, the head strechted out, bird-like, Egyptian, any second the tub could tip back over. He stepped out of the house, his head covered with pages of a newspaper, breathing heavily, holes torn out for the eyes and the mouth, taking a wooden spoon, putting the handle in his mouth, lighting a candle, attaching it to the spoon, standing in the tub again, the silhouette, a part of the face, the edge of the tub and the spoon with the candle, removed the newspaper from his head, with the calmness immanent to the archaic.
The candle did not go out despite the wind, on the spoon, standing on the grass.
Undressed, completely.
Yellow paint rubbed on, spread over the body, standing in the sarcophagus again, then taking the tub like the shell of a turtle, yellow shaking legs, and moving from the dyke to the banks of the river. The tub put into the river, more lying than sitting, drifting, spinning, rowing with the hands, myth of origin with yellow man.
What archaic-poetic images have, they touch quietly.
Boris Nieslony