- Venue
- VineSpace
- Location
- South East England
Last Thursday I had a one-night stand with Japanese artist Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki. It was a wonderfully slow and strange physical encounter that lasted for several hours, throughout which I could hear – and feel – the pounding of Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’s excited and over exerted heartbeat impacting upon my body. De Dun, De Dun, De Dun. The physical strain, the knee trembling, the impact of his heartbeat, all this was flesh and real and yet Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki and I never actually touched. And we didn’t actually have sex. ‘A One Night Stand With Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’ was the fourth in the series of VINEspace's ‘A One Night Stand With…’A one-night-only temporary exhibition that shows work of a transient nature, including exploratory projects, performances and installations which occupy the gallery for one night, and are gone the next morning.
‘One Night Stand With Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’ coincided with ‘Time Out First Thursday’, London’s monthly late night gallery opening, and the crowd of inebriated gallery goers on Vyner Street was the perfect setting for a furtive fumble, or one-night fling, with Live Art. The fumble in question, Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’s One Night Stand, was entitled ‘Zero Hour’ and was installed in Vinespace’s street-side project space. It involved the artist, dressed in silver body-suit, goggles and face mask (also silver), spray painting (silver) lines onto a clear glass pane to the amplified tune of his own heartbeat.
It doesn’t sound much like actual sex but there is real physical and emotional intimacy in this work, the artist lays bare what is private, interior and quite literally inside; ie his heart. And it’s the drama of Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’s heartbeat that is at stake. Each beat reverberates around the space connecting the body of artist with that of the audience, holding them in its visceral, compelling and slightly morbid rhythm; the tense fast paced highs, the relaxed slow thumps, and the irregular or missed beats that create a pause and serve as real life or death cliffhangers. The rhythm of the heartbeat is also fatal. It lulls listeners into anticipating or yearning for the break – or crisis- in the heartbeats’ performance, proving the point that one-night stands really can be hazardous to your health. The beating of the artists’ heart also serves as a keen reminder of time, both of the duration of the performance and the amount of time, or beats, left before death.
Zero Hour: it is faintly apocalyptic, like a bodily version of ground zero, but Zero Hour doesn’t simply refer to death. The Zero Hour in question refers to the end point or the Nth degree of progressive linear time that the temporal elements of this performance all work against or toward. The spray paint on the glass pane eventually turns into a reflective mirror that obscures Heart Beat Drawing Sasaki from view. This mirror stage is itself Zero Hour, with every stroke that is painted – in tandem with every heartbeat – performing the artists’ gradual disappearance. In turn, the Zero Hour of the artists’ disappearance is simultaneously both the purpose and process of Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki’s performance; this Zero Hour, is what makes his performance possible and the end point at which he will eventually arrive. In pitching itself firmly toward its own disappearance, its own Zero Hour, A One Night Stand With Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki becomes paradoxically and maniacally live. I haven’t experienced anothers’ body quite so intimately or physically in public – or had so much of a good time doing it – whilst being fully clothed for some time. Messages about safe sex aside, I recommend everyone have ‘A One Night Stand With Heartbeat Drawing Sasaki.
The Next in the One Night Stand series is 'A One Night Stand With Larisa Blazic' in which video artist Larisa Blazic presents ‘Wake Up Whitney’ a giant projection on the facade of the Victory Pub opposite the gallery.
