Kathy Rose (Lecture Response) 3/4

Quotation

"The beginning and the ending are important."

Rose was asked about her teaching practice in relation to performance training. She mentioned that the placement of the choreography was really important to the piece because of the impression this placement can have on the audience. I had never really considered performance art in this respect and found it very interesting when described by Rose. It almost seems like a literary story in the way the audience is hooked and sustained.


3 Words

1) Mystifying
2) Organic
3) Epic


About Kathy Rose

One thing I learned about Kathy Rose that I did not already know is the extent to her performance and dance training. From my previous research, I didn't come to the conclusion that the performances would be so choreographed and detailed. You could tell from the way she uses her body to talk that she is physically expressive, and the performances she shared with us proved it.


Answers to Questions

1) "With the gold masked figure and dripping empty-eyed face in "Queen of the Fluids; the eerily floating head in "Interiosity", and the puppet constructs in videos such as "She" and "The Inn of Floating Imagery" - I am constantly creating a pictorial female art persona, often with inspiration from the supernatural figures portrayed in Japanese theater and art." - Kathy Rose

My first question involved this quote from Kathy Rose's website. I wanted to know more about what she meant by "creating a pictorial female art persona." Rose did not talk too much about the conceptual aspect of her performances and animations. Mostly, she talked about her inspirations and other artists. However, I understood her performances and animated juxtapositions as self reflections and reactions to her Japanese inspirations and environment.

2) My second question was about the mixed media that Kathy Rose works in. From viewing her work, I realized the performance and the animation or digital video have a lot of importance and relationship to one and other. The earlier work is a great example of this because Kathy Rose's performance and animation are so organic and amoeba-like in movement. The pieces were so reactionary and powerful because of Rose's command of her body in reaction to the animated environment. I found the flatness of the work really interesting, because of the dynamic power contained within the single dimensionality of the projections. I found the projections flattened the performance visually, however, incorporated the 3D movement into a 2D plane.


Compelling Piece

The most compelling piece, I found, was Rose's The Inn of Floating Imagery. Throughout her lecture, I found the concept of "flatness" coming up continuously. In this video, the flatness really added a visual and conceptual component. The female subjects floating around in the video seemed to be holding on masks, which were suspended and bobbing freely from their necks. The mask motif along with the cut-out visuals makes an important statement in the video.