- Venue
- Japan Society Lobby
- Location
BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) by Ei Arakawa and Amy Sillman
Ikebana is the ancient Japanese art of flower arranging, or Kadō (the ‘way of flowers’), the traditional practise of which involves great skill and accomplished craftsmanship after many years of being tutored in the correct Ikebana school. In Japan, Ikebana is also revered and loaded with cultural, artistic and religious (Buddhist) significance and continues to be a popular contemporary art form. It is wise, then, that for Ei Arakawa’s performance of BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) a large disclaimer "Warning: This is Not a Traditional Ikebana Workshop" was printed in the programme booklet. Traditional, harmonious, reverent and highly crafted, this performance installation was definitely not.
Instead, the audience for BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) were packed into the downstairs Japan Society lobby; tightly squeezed around a large make-shift installation that included paintings on canvas, polystyrene screens, data projectors -some rigged up, some strewn on the floor- sewing machines and unopened boxes of canned Blue Ribbon beer. We stayed like this, tense, shuffling and expectant whilst nothing happened, for some time until a Japanese man in tight leggings and a baggy tee shirt entered. He runs between the polystyrene screens, fumbles with the data projector, moves chairs around. The audience start to smile knowingly. Some of us start to take photos. The man senses our – misplaced – attention and, with some difficulty, holds up a metal table attached to a small microphone. Through the table-microphone he shouts: “This is not the performance. The performance hasn’t started. We are not ready yet!” The man has an altogether worried look on his face. Does he think this performance is all going horribly wrong as we, the audience, do? Perhaps it is because we think it is going horribly wrong that we carry on smiling even more and taking photos. Looking exasperated at this the man then lurches forward at the happy snapping audience: "No photos please, this is not the performance!".
Although this was the performance; BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) had already begun and Ei Arakawa’s performance persona was already in full force. With only a faintly ironic hound-dog expression, a baggy tee and a pair of leggings this likeable whirlwind of Japanese mischievousness already had us in the palm of his hand. We liked him, at least I did. And it didn’t matter that I was tired, crushed and not just a bit confused about what was actually happening.
Amid Ei Arakawa’s genuine protestations that his performance was not a performance, Japan Society staff, bored looking audience members and other ‘helpers’ of undefined status idly tinkered with the installation’s equipment, moved boxes and draped material over polystyrene screens. 20 minutes later and I think I can say with confidence that the performance had definitely started (again). The artist and his helpers collected the all important flowers that the audience had brought, then proceeded to besmirch and swat them mercilessly across floor, table, chairs, data projector and beer cans. Chaos still reigned 10 minutes on, some confused audience members left, and Ei Arakawa gave out cans of "little bit chilled" – read : warm – beer and performed a disorganised slide lecture about famous artists throughout history whose life and work had been indebted to the consumption of alcohol (Van Gogh, Kandinsky, some others I couldn’t hear). At some point in the middle of all this Ei Arakawa took US $150 from the audience and the American painter (Amy Sillman) was interviewed by a journalist for the Brooklyn Rail. It is unclear whether the money was ever given back (I very much doubt it) and if the interviewee really was the renowned Amy Sillman, or a younger stand in? It is in the rather punk spirit of BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) that all these questions – and many more – remain unanswered.
In a neat circle of self reflexivity the process for BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) – including the waiting, the nothing happening, the false starts and the non performance performances – is the work itself. BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) is at once the bare, shambolic, manic and sketchy bones of how a performance comes to be, or sometimes doesn’t quite happen, whilst being the final finished version of itself. In this way, Ei Arawkawa and co skilfully perform creative chaos while enacting the grey, shifting and difficult area of live work that reveals the different levels of Performance itself (Ei Arawkawa performing himself performing, or rather, not performing). Breaking down traditional and deeply suspect notions of artistic skill, craftsmanship and cultural relevance for our contemporary times, BYOF (Bring Your Own Flowers) was high class Japanese theatrics with no Theatre in sight: sheer adulterated joy.
