Michael Portnoy

Last updated
Michael Portnoy
1 Michael Portnoy portrait.jpg
Michael Portnoy (2016)
Born (1971-08-02) August 2, 1971 (age 52)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Education Vassar College
Known for performance art, film, sculpture, dance, theater
Website strangergames.com

Michael Portnoy (born August 2, 1971) is an American visual artist, filmmaker, choreographer and performance artist. He calls himself a "Director of Behavior". He has been described in Art in America as "one of the most interesting performance artists anywhere", [1] and by Artforum as "the great Absurdist". [2]

Contents

Background and early work

Portnoy was born in Washington, D.C., and studied comparative literature and creative writing at Vassar College and theater at the National Theater Institute at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. After moving to New York City, he formed several short-lived experimental theater groups and then began concentrating on solo performance. His early performance works, such as Gymnastics and Schizophrenia and 5teen3sy: Kicking Games of Lip, were antic and unpredictable, and characterized by dense language play, song and movement fragments and rapid transformations of character. In the mid 1990s, Portnoy regularly performed in venues such as Surf Reality and Luna Lounge's weekly show "Eating It", the epicenter of New York's alternative comedy scene. His wild and abstract theatrical performances, which occasionally interrupted and challenged other comedians on stage, prompted Time Out New York to describe him as "the bad boy of comedy", [3] and the New York Post to dub him "the next Andy Kaufman". [4] At the same time, Portnoy started working as a dancer for the New York choreographer Koosil-Ja Hwang, and as an actor. He also sang and performed his own operatic, electro-progressive-rock music as XAR, and with the band The Liquid Tapedeck.

Soy Bomb

For Bob Dylan's performance of "Love Sick" at the 1998 Grammy Awards, Portnoy was hired by Dylan's production company to stand in the background with other dancers and groove to the music to "give Bob a good vibe". Instead, halfway through the performance, Portnoy ripped off his shirt, ran next to Dylan, and started dancing and contorting with the two-word poem "Soy Bomb" written across his chest. When questioned by reporters, Portnoy explained the poem's meaning: "Soy... represents dense nutritional life. Bomb is, obviously, an explosive destructive force. So, soy bomb is what I think art should be: dense, transformational, explosive life" according to Entertainment Weekly [5] and that "he meant Soy Bomb as a 'spontaneous explosion of the self' to re-invigorate the current music scene. [6] He has also said that the phrase is a combination of Spanish and English, meaning "the bomb of 'I am'". The Grammys chose not to press charges against Portnoy for the act, but he was not paid the $200 fee for the gig.

The event was parodied on Saturday Night Live , where he was portrayed by Will Ferrell, and on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno . In 2005, the band Eels included the track "Whatever Happened to Soy Bomb" on the double-disc album Blinking Lights and Other Revelations . In 2016, the TV show Broad City parodied Soy Bomb with a performance artist character played by musician Har Mar Superstar.

Portnoy: 1999–present

Michael Portnoy's TALUS abstract gambling table, 2007 Talus grab2-1.jpg
Michael Portnoy's TALUS abstract gambling table, 2007

Portnoy expanded his practice to include choreography, video, installation, sculpture, painting, participatory works and curation. His projects have included Google Office 0.2, a project for the 2010 Taipei Biennial that involved the formation of a think tank called The Improvement League, which operated by improving existing artworks in the Biennial by pruning and hybridizing in a cross between futurology and conceptual horticulture. Portnoy's long-standing investigation of social exchange, and the rules of communication and play, has been conducted through a series of 'abstract gambling' tables for Casino Ilinx (2008) and Filzzungeungewiss (2009); and conversation or inventional games drawing on 17th century universal or taxonomic languages for Fran Spafa Feda (2010); and the game-show format of 27 Gnosis (2012).

Relational Stalinism

Michael Portnoy, 27 Gnosis, 2012, dOCUMENTA (13) Michael Portnoy, 27 Gnosis, 2012. dOCUMENTA 13.JPG
Michael Portnoy, 27 Gnosis, 2012, dOCUMENTA (13)

Central to many of Portnoy's projects is his tongue-in-cheek concept of 'Relational Stalinism', a form of relational aesthetics that works against "the fashionable promise that an artwork might offer a democratic magic, transforming inter-relational codes into something nicer…" [7] Unlike other artists who produce participatory artworks, Portnoy undermines the creation of a harmonious community by setting as many limitations as possible on the participants and then introducing destabilizing mechanisms, such as changing the rules in the middle of the game. This breed of absurdist, dictatorial interaction with participants is "a clarification of the artist's imperious role as producer and performer". [7] Contrary to many contemporary participatory events, these schemes value confusion, complication, and ambiguity over predictable outcomes, and the goal is to stretch and dislocate the participants by complicating their behavior and language in the service of riotous invention. By acting as the "Director of Behavior" and constantly modifying the standards of the game, Portnoy forces the participants to construct unexpected worlds and new modes of communication.

Experimental comedy

Much of Portnoy’s work is also framed by what he calls experimental comedy, or "the injection of the sublime, the blatantly inscrutable, the abstract, the primal, the choreographic, the theoretical, the improbable, the generative, the post-rhythmic, the turbo-stupid, etc., into the frame of stand-up". [8] This has been manifested in the operatic stand-up routine of The K Sound (2006), Taipei Women’s Experimental Comedy Club (2010), and Script Opposition in Late-Model Carrot Jokes (2011), a project that investigated the "carrot joke", a term used in cognitive linguistics to describe a poem-like joke with a high degree of ambiguity, blunt omissions of information and logical faults and inconsistencies. In carrot jokes "incongruities are rarely resolved and just pile on top of each other … Since the ground or ‘script’ is always shifting, the listener keeps trying to determine whether there is an overall story that could explain what the hell is going on". [8]

Selected exhibitions and performances

He has presented work internationally in venues including: dOCUMENTA (13), The 11th Baltic Triennial (as co-curator), Centre Pompidou, The Taipei Biennial 2010, Performa Biennial 07, 09 & 11, SculptureCenter, The Kitchen, de Appel (Amsterdam), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Art Unlimited Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, Objectif Exhibitions (Antwerp), Wilfried Lentz (Rotterdam), IBID PROJECTS (London), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Gallery, Deitch Gallery, Roulette, Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), Foksal Gallery Foundation (Warsaw), Kaaitheater (Brussels), Beursschouwburg (Brussels), Migros Museum (Zürich), Le Comfort Moderne (Poitiers, France) and The National Review of Live Art (Glasgow).

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biennale</span> Event occurring every two years

In the art world, a Biennale, Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is a large-scale international contemporary art exhibition. The term was popularised by the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895, but the concept of such a large scale, and intentionally international event goes back to at least the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.

Marjetica Potrč is an artist and architect based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Potrč's interdisciplinary practice includes on-site projects, research, architectural case studies, and drawings. Her work documents and interprets contemporary architectural practices and the ways people live together. She is especially interested in social architecture and how communities and governments can work together to make stronger, more resilient cities. In later projects, she has also focused on the relationship between human society and nature, and advocated for the rights of nature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolas Bourriaud</span> French curator and art critic (born 1965)

Nicolas Bourriaud is a French curator and art critic, who has curated a great number of exhibitions and biennials all over the world.

Surreal humour is a form of humour predicated on deliberate violations of causal reasoning, thus producing events and behaviors that are obviously illogical. Portrayals of surreal humour tend to involve bizarre juxtapositions, incongruity, non-sequiturs, irrational or absurd situations, and expressions of nonsense.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Love Sick (Bob Dylan song)</span> 1998 single by Bob Dylan

"Love Sick" is a minor-key love song by American musician and Nobel laureate Bob Dylan. It was recorded in January 1997 and appears as the opening track on his 30th studio album Time Out of Mind (1997). It was released as the second single from the album in June 1998 in multiple CD versions, some of which featured Dylan's live performance of the song at the 1998 Grammy Awards. The song was produced by Daniel Lanois.

In art, institutional critique is the systematic inquiry into the workings of art institutions, such as galleries and museums, and is most associated with the work of artists like Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, John Knight (artist), Adrian Piper, Fred Wilson, and Hans Haacke and the scholarship of Alexander Alberro, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Birgit Pelzer, and Anne Rorimer.

Kai Althoff is a German visual artist and musician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taipei Fine Arts Museum</span> Art museum in Taipei

The Taipei Fine Arts Museum is a museum in Zhongshan District, Taipei, Taiwan. It is in the Taipei Expo Park. The museum first opened on August 8, 1983, at the former site of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. It was the first museum in Taiwan built for contemporary art exhibitions. The architecture is a local interpretation of the Japanese Metabolist Movement, and the building was designed by architect Kao Er-Pan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">My Barbarian</span>

My Barbarian is a Los Angeles based collaborative theatrical group consisting of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade. The trio makes site-responsive performances and video installations that use theatrical play to draw allegorical narratives out of historical dilemmas, mythical conflicts, and current political crises.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Smith (performance artist)</span> American artist (born 1951)

Michael Smith is an American artist known for his performance, video and installation works. He emerged in the mid-1970s at a time when performance and narrative-based art was beginning to claim space in contemporary art. Included among the Pictures Generation artists, he also appropriated pop culture, using television conventions rather than tropes from static media. Since 1979, much of Smith's work has centered on an Everyman character, "Mike," that he has portrayed in various domestic, entrepreneurial and artistic endeavors. Writers have described his videos and immersive installations as "poker-faced parodies" that sit on the edge between art and entertainment, examining ideas, cultural shifts and absurdities involving the American dream, consumerism, the art world, and aging. Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz called Smith "a consummate explorer of the land of the loser … limning a fine line between reality and satire [in] a genre sometimes called installation verité."

Participatory art is an approach to making art which engages public participation in the creative process, letting them become co-authors, editors, and observers of the work. This type of art is incomplete without viewers' physical interaction. It intends to challenge the dominant form of making art in the West, in which a small class of professional artists make the art while the public takes on the role of passive observer or consumer, i.e., buying the work of the professionals in the marketplace. Commended works by advocates who popularized participatory art include Augusto Boal in his Theater of the Oppressed, as well as Allan Kaprow in happenings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bili Bidjocka</span> Cameroonian artist

Bili Bidjocka is a contemporary Cameroonian artist best known for his installations and sculptures. He was born in Douala, Cameroon, lives in France since the age of 12, and works in Paris, Brussels and New York City.

LEE Mingwei is a Taiwanese-American contemporary artist currently living and working in Paris, France and New York, USA. Lee Mingwei creates participatory installations, where strangers can explore issues of trust, intimacy, and self-awareness, and one-on-one events, in which visitors contemplate these issues with the artist through eating, sleeping, walking and conversation. Lee's projects are often open-ended scenarios for everyday interaction, and take on different forms with the involvement of participants and change during the course of an exhibition. He has had solo exhibitions in museums worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, and Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others.

Claire Bishop is a British art historian, critic, and Professor of Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York where she has taught since September 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Lin (artist)</span>

Michael Lin is a Taiwanese artist who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium and Taipei, Taiwan. He was born in Tokyo, Japan, and grew up in Taiwan and the United States. Lin is considered a leading Taiwanese contemporary painter and conceptual artist.

Objectif Exhibitions (vzw) was a not-for-profit contemporary art center in Antwerp, Belgium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Derek DelGaudio</span> American interdisciplinary artist

Derek DelGaudio is an American interdisciplinary artist, primarily known as a writer, performer and magician.

Social practice or socially engaged practice in the arts focuses on community engagement through a range of art media, human interaction and social discourse. While the term social practice has been used in the social sciences to refer to a fundamental property of human interaction, it has also been used to describe community-based arts practices such as relational aesthetics, new genre public art, socially engaged art, dialogical art, participatory art, and ecosocial immersionism.

Defne Ayas is a curator, educator, and publisher in the field of contemporary art and its institutions. Ayas directed and advised many institutions and collaborative platforms across the world, including in China, South Korea, United States, Netherlands, Russia, Lithuania and Italy. She is known for conceiving exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Until June 2021, Ayas was the Artistic Director of 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Vanderlinden</span> Belgian art historian, curator and director

Barbara Vanderlinden is a Belgian art historian, curator, and director.

References

  1. Currie, Nick, "600 Words with Michael Portnoy", Art in America, August 2009
  2. Krasinski, Jennifer, "Absolutely Fabulist", Artforum, May 2017
  3. True, Cynthia. "Alterna Be thy Name", Time Out New York, June 5–12, 1996, pp. 43–44.
  4. PAGE SIX, New York Post, December 15, 1999
  5. Brunner, Rob. "Bombs Away", Entertainment Weekly, March 13, 1998, p. 14
  6. Derek Yip. "MICHAEL PORTNOY aka SOY BOMB, Upstart Pissing on the Contemporary Mix", Performing Arts Journal, No. 61 (January 1999), pp. 36-44
  7. 1 2 Tirdad Zolghadr. Creamier: Contemporary Art in Culture: 10 Curators, 100 Contemporary Artists, 10 Sources, Phaidon Press, 2010, pp. 192-193.
  8. 1 2 After Berkeley: Objectif Exhibitions, 2010–2011, Sternberg Press, 2012