“I f ind it worthy to hold an emptiness, to allot for empty space, because it is often within this space that something opens up within oneself.”
Earlier this year, American-Cambodian artist Amy Lee Sanford repeatedly broke and reassembled 40 Kampong Cham clay pots as a metaphorical reworking of her endeavour to return to her family’s past and reassemble the pieces of their memories. Her performance lasted for more than six days, starting with the breakage of the first pot and ending with fixing the final shard.
But one cannot conceive of Full Circle as just a reflection of a personal journey. After all, Amy chose to represent that story in this way, with these pots, over this period of time. It is an aesthetic piece, in which Sanford endeavoured to “create a performance with extra physical and mental space, which can be useful for self-reflection. I find it worthy to hold an emptiness, to allot for empty space, because it is often within this space that something opens up within oneself, or something that was hidden for a while comes to the foreground”.
Creation of reflective space is an immediate effect of Full Circle, which is first and foremost an ephemeral work, based in a repeated process but being itself unrepeatable. But Full Circle does not remain entirely isolated in its unrepeatable, irreplicable being. Photographs were taken, every second, from the side and from above. Even when Amy had no audience, the cameras ‘captured’ her working. These photographs will constitute another dimension to this work of art, existing alongside but never interfering with Full Circle as a performance piece in an upcoming exhibition, New Artefacts.
Australian curator Roger Nelson foregrounds the aesthetic of process over the marketable end product in New Artefacts, to be hosted at Sa Sa Bassac Gallery in August. Sanford is one of several artists to have documentation of their artistic process exhibited. Asked to what extent she agrees with Nelson’s curatorial proposition, Sanford remarks that the concept of New Artefacts is “interesting, because the public is generally unaware of the myriad of processes that lie within the art piece presented in a gallery setting. This introduces viewers to this other dimension”.
The dynamic between the performance artwork and the photographs which document that performance creates a dialogue between the work of art as unique and original object, and the work of art as repeated, technically produced product. This debate originates with German essayist Walter Benjamin, for whom modern art had reached crisis point with the introduction of photography.
Amy Lee Sanford does not reconcile this crisis, which sees the work of art as original creation and replicable object brought into the same space. “Art is, for me, a multi-tiered process,” says Sanford. “Sometimes it is ambiguous as to when one tier ends and another begins. The photos which began as documentation of a performance are now the starting point for more artworks, with the original performance as an anchor.”
Whether the photographs function as an autonomous series or as a means of prolonging the memory of a past performance, New Artefacts shifts the paradigm of performance being documented to documented performance to instigate new ideas. Sanford’s Full Circle is to be viewed alongside other Cambodian and Australian artists’ working documents. In a new climate, through a mechanical eye, Full Circle is reworked without being invaded.
WHO: Amy Lee Sanford et al
WHAT: New Artefacts exhibition
WHEN: From August 9
WHERE: Sa Sa Bassac Gallery, #18 2nd Floor, Sothearos Blvd.
WHY: Art is like an onion