prayingproject

April 15-17, 2005 3-9pm

21 performance artists explore prayer as an act of creativity, contemplation and auto-analysis. Performances were presented simultaneously on 8 stages in the 10th Avenue and 36th Street windows of Exit Art.

A video of prayingproject is available on our podcast page. Go there now to see videos of all performances and more.  

ARTISTS

Rob Andrews, Sarah Chokyi Bauer, Paul Benney, Maria Bussmann, caraballo-farman, Karen Dolmanisth, Cécile Evans, Berioska Ipinza, Mayumi Ishino, Jae Rhim Lee, Annie Murdock, Nico y Katiushka, Laura Nova, Yasira Nun, Praxis, Pasha Radetzki, Chemi Rosado-Seijo, Aki Sasamoto, Jeffrey Schiff, Mark Stafford, Riva Weinstein, Beatrice L. Wolert

Exit Art, an experimental cultural center, explores the impact of faith on contemporary society with its upcoming performance series prayingproject. Realizing that faith has become one of the most relevant issues of the 21st Century, Exit Art saw a need for artists to respond to issues such as; the influence of the religious right on politics, the widespread interest in Zen practices, worldwide religious intolerance, use of religion to connect to personal heritage, mixing of business, politics and religion, the quest to achieve enlightenment, and many others. The twenty-one artists selected for prayingproject discovered their unique ways of praying - private, public, intense, sublime, vulnerable and powerful. Some prayingproject performances will last only 30 minutes while others last for 6 hours.

Many of the performances in this project are about stamina, like the performance proposed by marathon runner, Laura Nova. She began running to raise money for her brother who has a life-threatening disease. Running has not only turned into part of her art but it is also her form of prayer, for prayingproject she will run on a treadmill in one of the windows. Another artist testing her body’s resistance is Yasira Nun who will subject her body to a difficult test by resisting asphyxiation while her head is buried under a mound of sand

Exploring how to transform old rituals into new ones, Mark Stafford will type the same sentence, his mantra, over and over again on a typewriter to invoke a meditative state. By creating this unique form of prayer that suggests that spiritual retreat can take place even while working at the office, Stafford alters traditional notions of how, when and where prayer can happen.

Several other projects are based on artists Buddhist practices. Sarah Chokyi Bauer will attempt 1,000 prostrations as part of her vow to complete 50,000 prostrations in one year to help eliminate ego. Mayumi Ishino will practice a slow walking meditation on a see saw, calling to mind the delicate balance between life and death. And Beatrice L. Wolert will create an action that aims to connect sky and earth, body and soul through performing sets of 100 bows,.

A number of performances deal with the relationship between spiritual cleansing and cleansing of the body. Aki Sasamoto will repeatedly wash herself with suds created from a large soap made out of sacred materials such as cow dung, roots and saps, the sculpted soap is made by Sasamoto’s collaborator Jeffrey Schiff. Rob Andrews will perform a ritual cleansing by scraping his body with water and a butcher brush. Taking domesticity to a spiritual level, Karen Dolmanisth will be washing and rewashing pieces of fabric in numerous glass vessels as a meditative action combined with the act of sweeping.