Spacing and Counter-demonstrations

Do it! Act! Perform! For what? The presentation questions these imperatives through Demonstrations, an ongoing series of digital videos and performances that interrogate duration, embodiment, and self-perception. Demonstrations are works that partly appear on the Web (online) as ‘how to’ videos – http://www.robertluzar.com/demonstrations.html –, using plane materials such as elastic bands, masking tape – and even a pretzel. Viewers are given these works as actions they may or may not do. This suspension of engagement, or spacing, indicates a certain ‘counter-demonstration’. The prefix ‘Counter’ indicates a paradoxical experience of dislocation, spacing times in which the work takes place. What is the role of space, online and offline? And what is the nature of un-working, doing or viewing works that counter the effectiveness of process based Work? The presentation will therefore unpick such questions, examining how processes can be heuristic, experientially problematic, works stretching out in different times, distending in spaces virtual and real, online, offline – and perhaps even out of line.

Robert Luzar is an artist, writer and educator. He is Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the Bath School of Art and Design; his works are exhibited globally in venues such asPalazzo Loredan Venice (IT), Torrance Art Museum (USA), Talbot Rice Gallery (UK),DRAWinternational (FR), Katzman Contemporary (CA), and Künstlerhaus Dortmund(DE). His writings on art, culture and critical theory are published in books and journals such as Nancy and Visual Culture (Edinburgh University Press 2016), Mnemoscape, and Theatre and Performance Design (Routledge). http://www.robertluzar.com/