Riika Haapasaari: Glass Performance- What is That?

GLASS PERFORMANCE, WHAT IS THAT?

Riikka Haapasaari MA Ceramics and Glass 2013 Royal College of Art 9884 words

Abstract  This dissertation discusses glass performance and its history and touches its possible future.

Through introduction to how the interest to this field has grown, its relationship to the Studio glass movement, and a brief discussion about performance in fine arts, glass art and glassblowing we arrive to the question why it is necessary to move on in the glass field.

The main body of the dissertation is an investigation of what glass performance is and a section of different categories that fall under glass performance and its immediate neighbours in the glass field. In the discussion section some of the discoveries of this research are discussed and possible questions about future presented.

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Acknowledgements I wish to thank the individuals who generously have provided me information about glass performance and their own artistic practice, views on glass and art, and given me examples I had previously no idea of. Thank you Karen Donnellan, Shannon Eakins, Emma Finch, Valeria Florescano, Jocelyne Prince, Alexander Rosenberg, Matthew Szösz, Tim Tate, and William Warmus. Especially helpful have been the members of the Facebook groups Glassies and Glass Secessionism. Thank you!

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Contents

Contents .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 4 Interest in glass performance ..................................................................................................... 4 Performance in fine arts ............................................................................................................... 6 Glass and art ...................................................................................................................................... 7 Learning glassblowing ................................................................................................................... 9 It is necessary to move on ............................................................................................................. 9 Glass and performance ............................................................................................................... 11 Glass performance categorized ............................................................................................... 15 1. Glassblowing demonstrations ........................................................................................................ 15 2. Glassworks with performative elements ................................................................................... 16 3. Unnecessary use of glass in performance .................................................................................. 17 4. Celebrating glassmaking .................................................................................................................. 18 5. Performance with glass objects ..................................................................................................... 21 6. Glass performance rebels and commentators .......................................................................... 21 7. Narrative glass performance .......................................................................................................... 24 8. Human body and glass performance ........................................................................................... 24 9. Glass performance and other creative fields ............................................................................ 25 10. Simply glass performance ............................................................................................................. 26

Discussion ....................................................................................................................................... 29 References ....................................................................................................................................... 32

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Introduction Can glass and performance create something interesting when put together? Glass is a versatile and interesting material, and present in the everyday life of human beings: we look through windows and consume drinks from glasses. Even though glass is not a natural material, it seems very humane, especially in the way a glassblower has a discussion with the molten magma when shaping it and breathing life into it when practicing the ancient craft.

Performance in the fine arts is new in comparison to traditional glassmaking and has become popular in the recent years – probably largely due to its capability to touch people in a deep level. Glassblowing and performance are both interaction: between glass and the glassblower, and between the performer and their audience. Thus, as Aristotle argues that the whole is more than the sum of its parts 1 , glass performance might have the potential of being something greater than simply glass and performance.

Glass performance is a topical issue in the field of glass art. A growing number of artists graduating from glass programmes in universities around the world are making performance pieces glass as a defining material in their work. Their work challenges the current way of looking glass art as an object-centred field of art. Using glassmaking processes and the material itself to create performance is a fairly new field, and there is not much research made about it. However, glass artists especially in the US are becoming more and more interested in the possibilities and prospects created by approaching glass from a new perspective: instead of making physical glass pieces, to use the glassworking processes as a means to discuss something else. Is this possible and how does the future of glass performance look like?

Interest in glass performance A noticeable board of people discussing the issues related to especially new winds in glass is a group called the “Glass Secessionism”. Currently, the discussion amongst the members of this group is on Facebook but their issues have been brought up in various other contexts as well – such as the annual Glass Art Society Conference in Toledo, OH in 2012 in Post-Studio

1 Aristotle 1941, 818

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Glass Panel2. The aim of the Glass Secessionists is to have a dialogue about the future prospects of the glass art field and also challenge the traditional conventions in glass art that still revolve around studio glass – a tradition that started in the 1960’s3. Tim Tate, the founding member of the group addresses the branches of glass secessionism: “So it seems there are 3 branches to this complicated topic. There is the narrative mixed media sculptural branch … there is the branch that discusses the huge leaps forward that is going on in architecture … Then there is the more nebulous performance and / or conceptual branch.”4 Glass performance is thus noted as one of the new directions glass art is heading to.

The amount of glass performances has exploded in the recent years, after the mid of 1990’s when the “B team” started touring some of the US colleges that provide education in glass and creating glass performances5. William Warmus points out that performance with glass is not a completely modern activity: “Performance art in the Studio Glass era was about the drama of the artist making work in the studio. Performance art in the Secessionist era usually starts with an idea other that the making of an object.”6 Glass performance is definitely gaining more popularity within the glass field, many of the artists being more interested in issues of fine arts or the society in general. However, looking at glass performance from the fine arts perspective, the situation is complicated. In the modern fine art world, boundaries between different art practices are blurred and maybe it is not even necessary to fit in clearly defined categories such as: glass is glass, fine art is fine art. However, when thinking about how the art piece is reached by its audience, this becomes an important question. Traditionally, glass and other craft-fields have had their own galleries and markets distinct from the fine arts – during the recent years these galleries have blurred the distinctions, as Tim Tate hints7. Even though galleries do not necessarily define what performance is and performance often does not even take place in gallery settings, galleries alongside museums define greatly how the art field in general behaves.

2 Post-­‐Studio Glass Panel, 16.6.2012 3 Schack von Wittenau 2005, 17-­‐18 4 Tate 15.5.2013 5 Page 2013 6 Warmus 27.5.2013 7 Tate, 20.5.2012

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This is why it is important to touch definitions and boundaries, and to try to understand how glass performance sits in the bigger picture of fine arts but also the glass art field. What glass performance has to offer to performance in fine arts and how fine art performance can benefit from glass?

Performance in fine arts The Oxford dictionary defines performance in two ways: “an act of presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment” and “the action or process of performing a task or function”8.

A huge amount of different activities fit underneath these definitions. Also, there is a significant amount of writing about the field and many attempts to define what performance is. However, many of the sources eventually point out that the area resists clear definitions, classifications and even categorizations.91011 The term “’performance art’ relates particularly to work made during the late 1960s and early ‘70s and is still identified with this period”.12 “Live art”, “performance”, and “performance art” are used to describe similar works – depending on the culture, country and the background and motives of the artist13. However, it seems reasonable to agree with Simon Herbert’s statement: “Live art, by definition is the ‘real thing’, which is experienced only be the artist and the audience”.14 Also, “Performance art does not present the illusion of events, but rather presents actual events as art”15. Therefore, performance is true.

Performance can also be approached from multiple fields: “Performance and performativity, as has often been noted, are almost ubiquitous tropes in the postmodern consciousness and owe allegiance to no particular field or discipline. Like other cultural terms, and especially essentially contested terms, “performance” must be understood by praxis, a praxis that is itself

8 Performance 9 Carlson 1996 10 Hoffman & Jonas 2005 11 Goldberg 2004 12 Hoffmann & Jonas 2005, 15 13 Carlos 2004, 12 14 Herbert 1991, 102 15 Hoffmann & Jonas 2005, 15

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contradictory, fluid, and protean.”16 The field of performance should thus be open to an extremely varying array of creative traditions: from craft to literature to music – even to basic human life.

Traditionally object-centred fields where the presence of the artist has not been important can merge to performance, as Tim Brennan elaborates: “I see live art as a sculptural activity that dispenses with the traditional role of the artefact.”17 It is clear that performance as a field of fine art has grown from other fields of art; it has not created itself from nothing but rather emerged as a continuation to the progress of the art field. Also on the individual level, artists often start in other creative fields such as painting, drawing or sculpture before they find performance.

While Tim Brennan roots performance to sculpture, Marina Abramovic places it just below music in the pyramid of hierarchy of the arts due to the nature of performance being almost immaterial (talk at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 5th April 2011). Abramovic considers music as the most pure form of art on top the pyramid since music is not tangible but it still touches humans on a deep level. Performance exists only momentarily and thus comes very close to music; it is “often an art of urgency and immediacy”18. Thus it seems that there is a long distance between performance and traditional craft fields such as glass art.

Glass and art Glass is a unique material. It is amorphous19, it can be transparent, and it has the potential to break but also to support or shield. It is present in the everyday life of human beings in the form of windows, drinking glasses, spectacles, and lamps. The process of making these objects requires precise knowledge about the material, and skill to produce them. Due to the inimitable nature of glass and the craft of making glass the material holds a great amount of potential for artistic purposes.

16 Carlson 1996, 193 17 Brennan 1991, 55 18 Ross 1991, 21 19 Schmid 1997, 5

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The earliest examples of glassmaking date back to around 3000 BCE20; it is an old material.

However, until mid-1960s artistic glass pieces were manufactured almost solely “in studio departments attached to major glassworks”21 but 1960’s brought a new movement, Studio glass movement, which started in America and later spread around the world. Studio glass movement brought glass outside the factories, and for artists to use the material for their expression without being dependant on professional glassblowers in factory settings and frames. It was time of experimentation.22 Ron Glowen goes as far as defining the goal of the Studio glass movement as to “ achieve a self-reliant condition and status like that of a modern painter, sculptor, ceramist or weaver”23. Glass was also introduced to fine art curriculums in colleges across America.

Studio glass movement did achieve its goals from its own perspective. However, what the movement did not accomplish – and it may well be that it was not even concerned that much about – was to present glass as a material or medium equivalent in the artist’s palette to other means of making such as painting, video, or installation art. Glass artists today have the possibility to use glass in their art to express whatever ideas they have and thus use glass simply as an artist’s material. However, looking at glass art from the perspective of other fine arts, artists involved in glassmaking are still very tightly rooted in the tradition and history of glass.

Glassmaking techniques are many, ranging from kiln-formed glass to glassblowing and neon.

While they all are intriguingly used in artistic works, glassblowing is definitely one of the most explored ones in the current glass art field. Also, among all glassmaking techniques the relationship between glassblowing and performance is the most obvious one: glassblowing could be defined as the act of a human being modifying molten glass – the presence of the maker in this glassmaking process is absolutely necessary.

20 Grose 1984, 9 21 Klein 1984, 245 22 Tuomi 1997, 64-­‐65 23 Glowen 1997, 17

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Learning glassblowing In the simplest sense, glassblowing is “the craft of making glassware by blowing air into semi-molten glass through a long tube”24. It is a skill, and learning to blow glass is a long process. A person wishing to learn that skill starts from the very basics and learning to understand the material. The process cannot be easily dressed into words – in the simplest sense, learning to blow glass consists of observing glassblowing, and repeating the act until it becomes the observer’s tacit knowledge. Learning to blow glass takes years and is a life-long learning process as a skilled master glassblower Stan Gill in his 70's told: ”I'll tell you when I've learned it all.”25 He implies that one can never wholly master the act of glassblowing.

Glassblowing as an act is thus something that has endless amount of unexplored ground.

Many glass factories and studios organise possibilities for the public to observe professional glassblowers at work. Often the factories organise opportunities for the public to try glassblowing in an exchange for a fee. Often the participant is allowed with the instruction of a professional glassblower to blow a basic bubble or play with making a paperweight. This is a very popular tourist activity. In reality the glassblower does all the work since it is impossible to learn to blow glass in a matter of a few hours. However, there are stories of people seeing glassblowing and knowing at that instant that they want to spend the rest of their lives with learning more about the material. For some, simply seeing the act is a life changing experience26.

It is necessary to move on Joseph Kosuth stated in 1970: “Being an artist now means to question the nature of art”27.

This is a valid statement for glass artists today as well: in order to create meaningful art the artist has to understand the field he is operating in and not take anything for granted. Artists

24 Glassblowing 25 Burke 2005, 7 26 Burke 2005, 7 27 Tilghman 1984, 90 9

working with glass have to step away from the material to see how the greater picture looks like. It is ridiculous in the modern world to work and live without being aware of one’s context beyond the immediate surroundings. Unfortunately the network of glass-related professionals such as artists, educators, collectors and curators supports this activity: glass artists have their own galleries, university and college programmes, conferences, wide network of colleagues and supporters – not to mention the astounding amount of people outside the network of glass professionals who are fascinated by the sheer sight of shining glass art pieces regardless the intellectual content of the art piece. A glass artist can create a successful career of producing meaningless pieces of shining glass. Fortunately, it seems that a new generation of (glass) artists has started to challenge the norms of this network of glass professionals.

It is challenging to question what is customary in the glass field: “No matter how far innovation and experimentation takes glass blowers beyond traditional and accepted forms, the materials, tools and techniques involved in the re-discovery and re-use of glass blowing are firmly planted on hallowed ground.”28 Even though glass art is still tightly rooted in the glass craft tradition, “the discourse and disgruntled voices about whether craft and art are in the same game” 29 is absolutely necessary in order to the field to develop. Repeating the history of glass art again and again is not innovative or interesting. Glass is a versatile material and in the hands of a skilful artist the possibilities to create exciting work should be limitless.

Glass artists still remain distinct from the other art world. Especially in America there are different galleries and market for glass artists.30 This seems absurd since today an artist working with glass might address exactly same issues in their work as for instance a video artist. However, both the video artist and the glass artist have to understand their chosen medium well in order to use it to convey the message in their work properly. Therefore it is superficial to place artists working with glass in a separate section outside the field of other fields of art. This does not only place them within a certain market and audience but also makes it difficult for the field of glass art to develop. Glass art is not contrasted against the shifts happening in other arts or even in the world and thus it remains superficial. For instance

28 Glowen 1997, 16 29 Petry 2008, 133 30 Page 2008, 15

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Heidegger notes that great art “possesses world-historical significance” 31 . This seems reasonable. Thus, by definition, glass art today is not significant in the larger worldwide scale.

Significance of an art piece to large volumes of audience is perhaps not necessary but being defined as “bad art” is lethal. Glass art lacks the understanding of the world outside the glass network, it could almost be defined as bad: “I think that we shall have come about as far as we can come towards an incontrovertible statement if we say that bad art arises from a failure of sentiment, that this is caused by some form of insincerity, and that this, in its turn, results from a form of social pressure in favour of that which society at large calls beauty.”32 Most glass art seems beautiful – even enchanting, but not more than that.

Looking at the history of glass art that is full of works that do not have anything more to them than just the material it is of the utmost importance that the new generation of artists pays attention to the fact that they themselves are the ones who are going to define the future. At the moment glass art is in crossroads: it has a rich history but it has started to repeat itself.

Something new has to be developed – quite appropriately new branches of glass art are developing, one of them being glass performance.

It is unclear where glass art is heading to but certainly knowledge and understanding of the new branches helps us to understand the whole field better. As On Kawara sees understanding:

“The only way we know things is to examine them at their edges. For

instance, defining shapes of objects depends on identifying their edges. Likewise, defining units of time depends on establishing edges.”33

Glass and performance “Clearly the general themes and questions associated with performance can be and are being productively applied to an almost unlimited range of human activities”.34 Performance can

31 Young 2001, 7 32 Bell 1989, 13 33 Weintraub 1996, 58 34 Carlson 1996, 195

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thus discuss everything. Glass performance on the contrary seems more limited since it is tied to one material. Does glass performance have potential beyond the material?

Glass performance is almost solely connected to glassblowing. Glassblowing centres on the glassblower’s body that is central in any kind of performance. Other glassmaking techniques are very rarely explored in performance.

Glassblowing is a performative act. This is not only evident when observing a glassblower at work but also how a person blowing glass perceives the material and reacts to it. Ann Warff describes glassblowing: “The glass is never with us in our hands to our body and centering like this. It’s always one meter distance between us, and the distance is the tool and the touch and everything. This distance is there and it’s a fantastic thing. And when you blow it up, you hold it against the sky once in a while and the sky is blue and red and yellow and violet and it breaks – the glass is hysteric, is neurotic. These are completely crazy things.35” It is possible to blow glass alone without assistants or other glassblowers. However, glassblowers often work in pairs or in groups. This applies also to glass performance, but working collaboratively introduces a new issue to making work, the question of authorship.

Glass performance groups have become fairly common in the past ten years, thus avoiding the problem since the author is the group. A common procedure for many artists who wish to use glass in their artwork but do not have the skill to blow glass is to collaborate with professional glassblowers or even simply have the glass pieces manufactured in a factory or a studio. For instance artist Kiki Smith often works with professional glassblowers and has even stated: “ I love working with people who know more than I do. 36” Collaboration is definitely an important element in glass performance since it enables the creation of more complex work but it can also be a trap: a glass performance can easily resemble glass theatre if there are multiple people involved.

Glass performance is quirky and difficult to define. Performance with the material goes against the glassblowing tradition since the goal is not to produce objects; glass performance is often not about the craft but about a human being’s relation to the material and the world.

As this branch of glass art is still fairly new, it is all about experimentation and ideas that start

35 Bernstein & Hansen 1980, 10 36 Petry 2008, 130 12

with “what if…”. Ann Warff’s idea about feeling herself inside her glass bowls is an example of how a glass performance might start to formulate: “I once thought – the transparencies, to look out and be within this – it would be wonderful to do really big things and sit inside. I was seriously wondering if I would do that once in that period. But you can close your eyes and have a feeling of being within the thing. I always imagine living in my bowls.37” The early studio glass movement years in the 1960’s holds the first performative glass acts.

Before the movement this field did not particularly exist, even though a few possible performances with glass possibly took place, one of them being Carla Grosh’s dance performance with glass objects in Bauhaus in Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

Studio glass movement brought artists from other fields to glass: artists working with other materials such as clay became interested in glass38. During studio glass movement, the material was the focus, not performance. Towards to the end of the 20th century glass as a material for performance has gained more popularity.

Ruth Dupré’s “Roker Breakfast“ (2005)39 and Burnt Asphalt Family performances40 follow the footsteps of what started in Pilchuck glass school in 1971. No record of a first glass event at Pilchuck exists but it is suggested that the glass events started as soon as the blowing started. A notable performative event that was also documented was Ruth Reichl’s pancake cooking during summer 1972. Reichl prepared the pancake batter and placed it over freshly gathered still hot glass patties. However, Reichl herself does not see the event as an art project but simply as “something interesting to do”. Later on during the summer Reichl continued cooking with hot glass and a video piece was made out of the event. Reichl describes what she thought about cooking with glass: “I mean, it’s food. There would be no point in doing it if you weren’t going to eat it. … It was the whole idea of art as about life … to see every minute of your life as an expression of your art.”41 Especially the early years of Pilchuck Glass School housed many experimental events and performative acts. Besides cooking with glass the artists at Pilchuck built shelters to live in – some of them very unique in design. John Landon describes how to relate to the shelter: “Live

37 Bernstein & Hansen 1980, 10 38 Page 2008, 11 39 http://www.ruthdupre.co.uk 40 http://theburntasphaltfamily.blogspot.co.uk 41 Oldknow 1996, 91 13

in your sculpture. That’s a good idea. Because then people instantly connect with where they are.”42 The hot glass studio was the heart of glass related events: the artists brought materials such as wood and water in and poured hot glass on to the materials while observing the materials reacting to each other. Later in Pilchuck’s history, around 1990, “end-of-session glass theaters” and performances had become a part of the glass school summer programs.

Bertil Vallien explains what happened in 1992: “ we had all this pressure from the other classes to create a drama … So I decided just to make it very [simple]. … We only worked with four candles and sand and no glass. And it came out … very beautifully, but there was no drama”. Previous performances, such as one in 1989 involved more dramatic elements with performers dressed in black and ritualistic apocalypse-like acts in the hot glass studio.43 Since Pilchuck has definitely been a noticeable part of moulding especially the American glass art field – artists studying, teaching, and visiting there from all over the world, it is reasonable to say that the glass school has been a part of creating the foundations for glass performance.

The “B team” was a collaboration of artists doing glass performance with a background in glass. Zesty Meyers, one of the members of the group, describes the ideas behind starting the group in the beginning of 1990’s in Massachusetts College of Art and Design: “It started very simply, as a way to take stock of what was happening in the world of glass in 1991 and to give something back.” The B team toured around colleges that taught glass in the US “to see what the next generation of glass artists was cooking up on college campuses.” They were “inspired by punk rock and the machine performance art of Survival Research Laboratories”.44 Both Pilchuck and the B team questioned the current glass field with their actions and performance, and they also reflected the new ideas and ideals in the world around their times: Pilchuck seems to have had a close connection to the hippie-movement in the 1960’s with the relaxed experimental glassblowing in the woods of Washington whereas the B team reflects the thoughts of the 1990’s punk.

42 Oldknow 1996, 94 43 Oldknow 1996, 232 44 http://www.urbanglass.org/?q=node%2F233&pid=144

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Glass performance categorized Glass performance is a relatively young area within the glass art field and is not much researched. Also, the term “glass performance” is not properly defined or established – thus leaving significant leverage for using the term and resulting in varying actions being titled as glass performance or performances left outside the glass performance realm. This causes confusion but as in any field, it is only a natural way of establishing a new term. By looking at what has been done in relation to glass performance a more clear vision of what “glass performance” is can be achieved. Categorisation helps to detect patterns and tendencies in the field but also to observe glass performance as an actual branch of glass art.

Glass performance always revolves around the material, happens only once and is tied to a particular place but everything else varies from performance to performance. Nevertheless, looking at a large volume of glass performances reveals that they can be categorised to groups that share similar qualities. The grouping is not completely definitive as some of the performances could fit in multiple categories but also, glass performances could be arranged in groups in different ways, for instance based on the purposes of the artist, cultural surroundings, time, or how glass is used. The categories used here are a mixture of many variables but they illustrate the different sides of what glass performance and its immediate neighbouring fields in glass are.

1. Glassblowing demonstrations Demonstrating glassblowing to the public or when teaching students is a common performance when it comes to hot glass. For instance UrbanGlass (Brooklyn NY, US), London Glassblowing (London, UK) and Tittot Glass Art Museum (Taipei, Taiwan) organise demonstrations for the public on a regular basis. Often this means that professional glassblowers work in the glassblowing studio to produce a glass object, sometimes explaining the steps of the process to the audience.

Some skilled glassblowers refer to their own practise as performance – or have their admirers refer to the act of glassblowing as a performance. However, this is only demonstrating the 15

skill, often with exaggerated movements such as throwing the blowing iron or drawing attention to specific steps of the process of producing a glass object.

Glassblowing demonstrations are not performance. However, they create a reference point to actual glass performances that take place in the glassblowing studio.

2. Glassworks with performative elements This is a topical field of glass art in the current glass art world. Simply beautiful and skilfully crafted glass objects seem to be an issue of the past generation. Today, the object is not enough. One way to answer to this change has been to draw substance or more meaning to the work from the making process: making glassblowing a crucial part of the piece itself and not always even ending up with anything physical but sometimes with a video or traces of making recorded in some other medium.

Alexander Rosenberg, an American artist, uses the act of blowing a glass tumbler to build a musical piece in his work “Composition for Glass Tumbler” (2010). The piece itself is a video of him blowing a tumbler and the musical composition is laid on top of it as a soundtrack. Also “Drawing” (2008) is a video piece in which the heat of hot glass that Rosenberg is working while moving in the hot glass studio is tracked to create a line drawing of the movements of the glass. The artist was interested in using the act of glassblowing to create a drawing. In an exhibition the moving line was projected on the blown vessel created while tracking the movements of glass in the studio thus removing the line from the actual glassmaking process and creating an endless loop of creation inside the created object.45 While Rosenberg’s works are composed of the act of working with glass itself, Anna Mlasowsky, a German-born artist uses performative qualities to create her work that is often physical objects. The works find their form also in video but happen in time and space thus approaching performance. In her work “Heritage” from 2009 she uses a wooden spinning wheel to spin hot glass. She herself has described the work as an installation. In her works “Hand-made” (2010) and “Point of Inflection” (2011) she investigates glass as a material and

45 http://www.alexanderrosenberg.net

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uses her hands and video to make something invisible visible.46 In order for the viewer to understand the tangible works knowledge of the making process is necessary.

Angus Powers combines both the making process and the object, neither one is more important or defining. Powers’ series “Objects Empowered; Glasses of Action/Context” (2009) is informed by the glassblowing process – it also is what the title suggests: the American artist blows tumblers in various locations. The actions are recorded as photographs and videos. Powers blows a “cup while rolling on mobile glass bench” when going down a hill, two “cups at once on a single double-ended blowpipe”, another cup “via a 300 foot rubber hose with blow partner on a cell phone” and another one “while in a canoe” – just to mention some of the artist’s cups.47 Powers literally takes glass out of the glassblowing studio in humorous ways but also at the same time discusses the studio-centred glassmaking culture, which is sometimes a limitation to the artist.

3. Unnecessary use of glass in performance Artists trained in glass have a tendency to use glass in their artistic practice even if some other material might suit the purposes of the piece better. The fact that the objects are made of glass, or that glassmaking processes are involved in the creation process – be it performance or not – do not give the works any additional value or add another layer to the interpretation of the piece. Sometimes using glass is a disservice to the work because the material has a long and specific history and might thus create more confusion to understanding the piece than any advantage. However, artists with a glass background have a strong inclination to use glass in all of their artistic practice that is only natural – this seems to be the case of glass performance as well.

Anna Mlasowsky’s piece “Pain” (2009) is a good example of using glass in a confusing way.

It is a video performance that the curatorial team Yuka + Anjali of How is this glass? describe as a possible performace48. In the video Mlasowsky is writing on a piece of paper with a glass pen that has the artist’s blood running into it. The pen is attached to a blood bag of clear glass

46 http://www.annamlasowsky.com 47 http://howisthisglass.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/exhibiting-­‐artists-­‐angus-­‐powers.html 48 http://howisthisglass.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/exhibiting-­‐artists-­‐anna-­‐ mlasowsky.html 17

from which a tube goes straight to the artist’s left arm from where the blood is acquired. The message is simple, an act of writing with your own blood. However, to the viewer it does not bring any more substance to the reading of the work that the objects used to perform this task of writing are made of glass – quite the opposite, the blood bag seems useless since it is not capable of expanding and the pen might break. Plastic would seem to serve this purpose better.

4. Celebrating glassmaking Many glassmakers, artists and even the general public see glassblowing as a performative act.

Alexander Rosenberg explains how he came to performance having glassblowing as his background: “We work in teams to blow glass, an audience often assembles, there is a narrative arc in the creation of a piece from start to finish and people have an emotional response to the events in that narrative, just like watching a movie. This is how I come to performance - I simply realized I had been doing it all along.”49 As artists have realised this connection, glass performance has become more popular: they are celebrating the performative qualities of the craft and even pay homage to the tradition.

Carlos describes performance art: “It rarely aims to seduce its audience and is more likely to unravel and examine critically the techniques of seduction, unnerving viewers in the process, rather than providing them with the ambiguous setting for desire.”50 This view strongly clashes with glass performance centred on the entertainment function of glass performance that celebrates glassmaking. While visually enchanting glass performance is still currently often considered as performance, it might be worthwhile asking the question: is this kind of glass performance only entertainment?

One of the first collaborations in this area has been “Circus Glass Royale” that started with a different name, “Circus I Glasriket” in 2008 in Sweden and has been active since. The collaborative does site-specific glass performances for entertainment purposes.51 Swedish Nina Westman of the performance group has also produced glass performance outside Circus

49 Rosenberg, 7.5.2013 50 Carlos 2004, 13 51 http://www.circusglassroyale.se/om-­‐oss/

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Glass Royale for instance in co-operation with Anna-Karin Johanson in the piece “Underbar Bubbelbar”. In this work glass performance was used as a mean to produce entertainment.

While being entertainment, the piece did address the inherent qualities of glass as well: “Due to surface tension, bubbles may remain intact when they reach the surface of the immersive substance”.52 The glass museums have been on the forefront of this branch of glass related performance.

The Chrysler Museum of Art Glass Studio in Norfolk, Virginia has developed a series titled “Third Wednesday”53. Different kinds of events take place in the glass studio on the third Wednesday of every month – these events are usually performance. They combine visual entertainment, music, culinary experiences, and performance with glass – mostly to entertain the audience. Recent examples include Liesl Schubel’s The Parthenon (2012)54 and Laura McFie’s Exquisite Corpse (2012)55.56 “Cirque De Verre” is a collaboration of Charlotte Potter, Kim Harty and Rika Hawkes started in 2007. The aim of the project is to create performances that draw from the performers’ knowledge about glass. They use means of circus to conduct the pieces.57 Cirque De Verre explains, “The line between art and entertainment is fluid and we are explorers in search of meaning and relevance. In an effort to make performance art accessible to the audience, we combine our postmodern artistic sensibility with the circus, which Vladamir Lenin referred in 1919 as “the people’s art form.””58 Thus it seems that the group of artist is also aiming at presenting glassblowing to the public more easily approachable. This seems like a very noble goal since up to date a mysticism has surrounded glassblowing – the play with molten magma happens behind closed doors inside glass factories that later distribute glass objects to the public. The process of making is a bizarre act: glass is gathered on one end of a long pipe, air is breathed in at the other end, and the dangerously hot piece of molten material is moulded with tools. Once finished, a human being can touch the object shaped by air and specific

52 http://www.ninawestman.se/index.php/underbar-­‐bubbelbar 53 http://www.chrysler.org/about-­‐the-­‐museum/glass-­‐studio/third-­‐wednesday/ 54 http://vimeo.com/60619078 55 http://vimeo.com/64509335 56 http://www.chrysler.org/about-­‐the-­‐museum/glass-­‐studio/third-­‐wednesday/ 57 http://www.charlottepotter.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=29721&Akey=Y44GHA99 58 http://cirquedeverre.blogspot.co.uk

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tools. While working with the almost magical-looking process of making, making fun of it, and still staying true to the material, this group of artists does indeed entertain their audience.

The Burnt Asphalt Family takes glass circus one step further, approaching social commentary. The family is a collective with a core group of American artists who create events or performances by using hot glass. They state: “Each event shares meals, demonstrates cooking, showcases edible sculpture, reinvents objects, activates space and explores the crossroads between art, craft, and design.” They prepare food and the act of cooking itself is entertaining for the audience. In addition to this, by “creating moments of beauty and spectacle and demonstrating various properties of glass, they create a venue to question tradition and experience.”59 The event titled “TV Dinner” (2009) at the Studio in Corning, NY showcases the glassblowing studio that was transformed to resemble a 1950’s sitting room with TVs and recliners. The performance discusses the American tradition of TV-dinners and the American history of the 1950’s in relation to cooking food in a glassblowing studio.

Entertaining glass performances in the hot glass studio are many but examples of other glassworking techniques are more rare. However, British-American artist Carrie Fertig, who works mostly with flameworked glass has created the Torcher Chamber Arkestra (2010) that is a “flameworking performance company”. The collaboration comprises of artists with backgrounds of “sculptural, neon, scientific, and bead flameworked glass” and the goal of them is to “educate, engage and entertain”. Fertig explains: “Torcher Chamber Arkestra takes the concept of hot shop (furnace glass) performance and places it within a torch arena to explode ideas of what flameworked glass is whilst exploring it's performance potential.”60 Fertig with the other members of the Torcher Chamber Arkestra are definitely pioneers in the field of exploring this kind of performance – especially taking into consideration the scale of the performances that combine ”fire, glass, music, and explosives” and have performed in the International Festival of Glass in Stourbridge, UK in 2010 and 2012.61

59 http://theburntasphaltfamily.blogspot.co.uk 60 http://www.carriefertig.com/page9.htm 61 http://www.carriefertig.com/page9.htm

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5. Performance with glass objects When discussing glass performance, it is important to acknowledge performance that has glass objects in important roles, in a positions where the material brings more substance to the performance – or even is a crucial part of understanding the piece. However, these performances should not be mistaken for glass performance, since the process of making the objects or how they were manufactured is unimportant. In glass performance the process of making is in a defining role – otherwise the glass performance becomes simply performance.

An early example of a performance that had glass in it is from 1929 and took place at Bauhaus. Carla Grosh wore a hooped skirt made of glass rods, put her head in a glass globe while carrying glass spheres. All of this restricted her dancing movements in the piece titled “Glass Dance”.62 One can imagine that the pace of the dance must have been slow if she did not want the glass to break, or composed of sudden movements if the purpose was to break the glass. In any case, her movements definitely have been defined by the fact that she was wearing glass.

Glass objects have a potential to break to dangerous pieces, which seems to be the most important reason to use the material in a performance. This is the case in Suzanne Peck’s happening from 2009, “Bread and Spoons” as well. The performance includes “glass spoons, perfect soup, crusty bread and an allegory”63. The happening space has a table in the middle of it, and on top of the table there is soup, bread and clear glass spoons with long handles. As the happening proceeds it seems impossible for the audience members to use the spoons to eat the soup by themselves but they have to feed a friend. The action of feeding others seems challenging but the fact that the spoons are made of glass does add an interesting layer to the happening: what if they were to break?

6. Glass performance rebels and commentators Rebellion is closely associated with especially American glassblowing tradition: the glassblowers play with fire, perform almost inhumane acts in the glassblowing studio, and

62 Goldberg 1979, 69 63 http://www.suzannepeck.com/bread-­‐and-­‐spoons.html

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more than anything question the hundreds of years of traditional glassmaking tradition.

Particularly in the last third of the 20th century a classic example of a glassblower was a tattooed, muscular man who smoked and drank heavily. The rebellion was against the common culture and conventions of the society but also the glassmaking culture that preceded. This was reflected to glass performance too.

The previously mentioned B team was definitely a collaboration that questioned the glass world. “The Butter Eaters”, a Seattle-based experimental art group that has made performances with glass, with members Jennifer Elek and Bennet McKnight,64 seems to be making fun of glassblowing with their projects, stating: “Their work in hot glass is rumored to be an attempt by aliens to influence American popular culture. The Buttereaters are currently planning a return to subsistence culture after the dawn of The New Times in 2012 AD.”65 While the B team’s work was simply rebellious and not always thought through Ruth Dupré added an element of social commentary to the haphazard performance in her piece “Roker breakfast” (2005). It is a performance in a glassblowing studio, where the artist plays with hot glass and food. Dupré is working with Anne Brodie and Luise Gilbert Scott. The artist is dressed in heels, fishnet stockings, and a black dress with pink lipstick on her lips. She lights a cigarette and hot glass is poured on a metallic tabletop. She cooks eggs, sausages, cereals, milk, bacon, coffee, and the like on hot glass, but none of it looks edible: it burns or boils over. However, later on the viewer notices a person of the performance team to eat something.

In the end of the performance Dupré’s heels (then no longer worn by the artist) are lit on fire by pouring hot glass on them.66 The whole performance seems ridiculous: all the performers seem to be doing is a huge mess. Nevertheless, that is exactly where the allure of the piece lies. Roker is a place in Sunderland, UK, know of its glass and close to the glass studio where the piece was performed thus adding another layer to interpreting the piece. With the tonguein-the-cheek attitude the performance is a rude gesture to the glassmaking world but also to Sunderland.

64 Liberman 2013 65 http://www.myspace.com/video/the-­‐butter-­‐eaters/the-­‐butter-­‐eaters-­‐ trailer/5796176 66 http://www.ruthdupre.co.uk/video.html

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Jocelyne Prince is an American artist who often works with glass. She has a very different approach to glass performance than for instance the more rebellious B team or the Butter Eaters. Prince has organised live events in which she works with other glassblowers or glassblowing students in locations around the world since 2008. In 2011 she arranged a performance titled “Cherry Blossom Live Event” in Korea National University of Arts, in Seoul, Korea. In 2012 she had a performance during the European Glass Context in Bornholm titled “Oluf Høst Sunrise Revisited” and a “Roda Blommor Live Event in a glass factory in Sweden.67 In these live events Prince works with hot glass but not to create objects. She focuses on creating a setting, an atmosphere, her goal is to “frame making in a fantastical and glorified light”68. She is interested in the studios, and how the “makers and visitors are immersed in the primeval connections elicited through the action of making”. Prince says: “These live events are about a desire to infuse the act of making with a new iconography and romanticism.”69 Also Shannon Eakins, an American artist has discussed the glassblowing process, in her performance at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma in 2004. Eakins says: “I was training dogs as one of my many jobs at the time and saw connections with the management responsibilities of running a glass blowing team and trying to communicate foreign concepts to my dog clients” by operant conditioning methods, by clicker training. Thus the artist accompanied the glassblowing team at the museum, did not speak to them or present any pictures of what she wanted the glassblowers to do but every time they did something right she “would click the clicker and throw a nickel into their tip jar. They had to watch me, try stuff, and listen for a reinforcement to stay on the right track. In the end we were able to accomplish most of the forms and the team had beer money for the evening.”70 The performance was an interesting investigation into how a glassblowing team works with a designer, and how it takes effort to develop a way of communication between the team and a person unfamiliar to them.

67 Prince 2013 (a) 68 Prince 2013 (b) 69 Prince 2013 (b) 70 Eakins, 23.9.2013

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7. Narrative glass performance Definitely one of the advantages of performance is the possibility to present a narrative in time – this applies to glass performance as well, often glass performance discusses the act of blowing glass and that is the narrative. However, fully narrated glass performances that discuss something in addition to the act of glassmaking are not as common. The downfall of this kind of glass performance seems to be that it comes close to premeditated play and possibly the only factor that makes them performance is them being addressed as glass performances.

Irish glass artist Karen Donnellan and American artist Mary Catherine Richardson did a collaboration piece in 2011. They orchestrated a performance with other glass artists and students at the Rochester Institute of Technology hot glass studio. The performance is titled “Dissolve, Compose, Release”. The piece was a response to the two artists working on the set of Matthew Barney’s piece “Khu” (2010). 71 72 The performance had an invited audience and a story of a play, and they used hot glass to discuss the alchemy of glassmaking.

8. Human body and glass performance In traditional performance, and especially in futurist performance, the body of the artist or performer is a crucial element73. In glass performance the material of glass has been more dominating – the artist or the performer is rather an operator to help the material to behave in a certain way. As these works involve the artist performing the piece it is interesting that the artist of the traditionally object-centred field “becomes his object”74 in the documentation of the work because the artist, in a sense, lives eternally and outside of the artist in the video, just like glass object of a traditional craftsperson or glass artist would.

71 Donnellan, 9.4.2013 & 10.4.2013.

72 http://artforum.com/diary/id=26563 73 Carlson 1996, 91-­‐92 74 Vergine 1974, 12-­‐15

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Solange Ledwith brings the body to equal importance with glass in her performance “Human Glass Wrap” (2007). In the performance the artist’s body is wrapped with wet newspaper and then covered with hot glass threads. Wet and folded newspaper is a normal tool used in glassblowing, but interestingly in this performance the newspaper represents the media that in today’s world helps an individual to relate to and to understand the surrounding world. The curatorial team Yuka + Anjali discuss the piece: “ Ultimately, the roles of the materials are reversed: the protective skin of paper symbolizes the bombardment of media and the subliminal toll that it takes on the individual and the seemingly “dangerous” material (hot glass) in actuality imposes no threat.”75 Other example of a performance where the body is a central element is Jin Won Han’s “Dream Space” (2008-2009). The work centers around a person by a flameworking torch who creates thin glass threads that she hangs around the room until she is trapped in the space and has to break the threads in order to get out from her trap. The piece contrasts almost dull and monotonous task of producing these glass threads with finally breaking the creation in order to escape.76

9. Glass performance and other creative fields Glassworking combined with another creative field in performance seems to extend the field of issues glass performance can discuss. What happens when glassblowing and dance, glassblowing and music or maybe even glassblowing and traditional performance are put together?

American artist Andrew Bearnot “explores the aesthetic potential and technical intricacies of the material world. He is interested in craftsmanship as a practice of both encoding and producing knowledge.”77 His performance work “Ballet Verrerie” (2007) is a dance company that performs choreographies inspired by the movements of glassblowing, simultaneously

75 http://howisthisglass.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/artist-­‐solange-­‐ledwith.html 76 http://howisthisglass.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/exhibiting-­‐artists-­‐jin-­‐won-­‐han.html 77 http://www.wheatonarts.org/creativeglasscenteramerica/fellowshipprogram/currentf ellows/2013fellows/bearnot 25

presenting the logic behind the movements and explores “their illogical fascination and allure”78.

Bearnot takes advantage of the ephemeral beauty associated with ballet – in a similar manner Seattle-based artist Etsuko Ichikawa combines classical music and hot glass in her live performance “Firebird”. The piece was performed in the hot glass studio at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, on September 11th 2010, and it combines Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” with hot glass and dance. Ichikawa creates abstract drawings with hot glass: the molten material leaves burn-marks on a large white canvas spread on the floor. While the artist paints with the hot glass, a dancer, Mizue Trinidad, responds to Ichikawa’s activity with dance. The whole performance was partially choreographed but left room for spontaneity, which in this case was a crucial element for the performance not to seem like a play.

Music is closely linked to other glass performances as well. Mark Stewart, a professional in the field of music created musical instruments of glass with a group of students during a residency at MIT’s Glass Lab. The residency culminated “in an ensemble performance in the spring of 2013.”79 The residency was an interesting collaboration between the professionals in music and professionals in glass. However, the project is more tilted towards music than performance thus not contributing much to the discussion of what a glass performance is.

10. Simply glass performance Glass performance that examines glass is in the core of glass performance. Central questions in this area are: what is glass? How does glass behave? And what is the relationship between glass and a human being (often an artist)? This is also the section of glass performance that seems to be most widely explored in the whole field of glass performance.

Sean Salstrom’s work “Untitled Glass String” (2005) was a piece in which helium balloons attached to a small amount of molten glass pulled a thread of glass when they were let to go up in the sky. After the thread had reached a length of about 100 meters the glass had cooled

78 http://howisthisglass.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/exhibiting-­‐artists-­‐andrew-­‐ bearnot.html 79 http://arts.mit.edu/cast/artist/stewart/

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down enough to become solid. The balloons “swayed in the wind for almost an hour until a gust of wind released the thread which floated away.”80 In his practice, Salstrom bridges “performance, action, and object” to investigate instantaneity.81 This particular piece is still very much rooted to glass, and to the material’s special characteristics: no other material can become from liquid to solid in this kind of timeframe, and talk about time in such a poetic way. The special, inherent ability of glass to transform from soft, almost liquid material to solid is investigated also in Matthew Szösz’s series of work “Untitled (expandables)” (from 2006)82. While Salstrom’s piece seems like a tribute to the material, Szösz has built a whole body of work and objects exploring “the demands of physics and the materials innate behaviors”. Szösz’s work is currently objects and “exploration rather than creation” but the artist says that he is likely to revisit the technique for performance.83 Looking at only the pieces that vaguely remind of an accordion, the viewer gets a completely different reading of what is going on in them than when looking at the documentation videos alongside the objects. To understand the pieces, it is necessary to see the video but performance would definitely present the process in the most complete manner.

Glass can seem delicate in all of its forms, but its ability to shatter and potential to hurt a human being can create quite an opposite effect. “Fractured” was a performance conducted by Brett Swenson at the Chrysler Museum of Art in 201184. The space of the performance houses tempered glass sheets, each one larger in size than a human being. The glass sheets were propped upright in wooden frames and people stood behind the frames heating spots in the glass sheets with torches causing the glass to partially melt. This created tension in the sheets and they cracked. However, because the glass was tempered, most of the sheets stayed intact.

In the end, the frames display amorphous shapes created by the cracked glass. Again, as in Sean Salstrom’s and Szösz’s pieces, this work displays typical characteristics to glass in an eye-capturing way.

Bohyon Yoon examined the qualities of glass that create sound. He is an originally Japanese artist now working in the US and uses glass in many of his projects, and in his piece “Glass

80 http://www.seansalstrom.com/string.html 81 Salstrom 2011, 4 82 http://matthewszosz.com/pages/project_expandables.html 83 Szösz, 29.9.2013 84 http://www.brettswenson.com/fractured.html

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Tube” (2012) he was “interested in challenging how to visualize invisibility.”85 Yoon created musical instruments from glass tubes by placing a metal mesh inside them and heating the end with a torch. There were a variety of tubes that made different kinds of sounds. When performing the piece, Yoon first heated an individual tube after which the changing temperature of the air going through the tube created a sound. A soundscape was created when he did this to multiple tubes in a row. This becomes almost a musical piece but the movements of Yoon become an important factor in interpreting the piece too. Also, the sounds show that the fairly similar-looking tubes (they vary in sizes though) are in reality very different from each other. The piece brings up a question: is it absolutely necessary to make this performance with glass? However, as Yoon mentioned, he wishes to visualize invisibility; clear transparent glass is very close to invisible and creates unique sounds.

While the above discussed pieces address more the material than the performer, Solange Ledwith tests her limits in glassblowing in a performance piece titled “9 Hour Cup” (2009) thus bringing her own body more visible on the stage. For nine hours she works on a single gather of glass by blowing a cup and then heating it to the point where it becomes a lump of glass again. And does the same steps again. She attempts to do a perfect tumbler but the process resembles more of a physical test: how long can she continue working on the piece?

Ledwith herself asks: “What does one go through to triumph failure after failure. And in the end, what are we left with?”86 The body is central also in Liesl Schubel’s piece “Vessel Punch” (2012). The work involves the artist hitting a large blown glass bubble still attached to the blowing pipe with body parts that she has cast in white material.87 The act is an attack towards a bubble, almost an attack towards glass itself. As the body parts are casts of Schubel’s own body the piece becomes an act of unleashing the possible frustrations or anger the artist has towards the material, even if the movements of hitting the bubble are noticeably phlegmatic. The thin bubble breaks from most of its parts but a large piece of the bubble stays intact with the blowing pipe. It seems that after all, the artist does not want to break it all. However, the piece visualizes the relationship the artist has with the material.

85 http://www.bohyunyoon.com/project_link/glass_tube.php 86 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2pdEQeobf8 87 http://vimeo.com/35172014

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Discussion The above-discussed ten different categories in relation to glass performance branch from non- “glass performance” trough rebellious actions to performance where glass itself almost becomes the performer distancing the maker-centred glassmaking tradition from the performed piece. The list of examples is not exhaustive of what is done in the history but it provides a picture of what has been done in the field and presents questions about the current field and about the future.

One of the most striking observations is that even though this research has been global, the vast majority of the artists are Americans or have a strong link to the US (such as studies or work). From the actual performances presented only Ruth Dupré’s rebellious “Roker breakfast”, Circus Glass Royale of Sweden, and Carla Grosh’s “Glass dance” have been productions of other cultures. Although this collection of performances is a selection of glass performances it does show that glass performance is a strongly American-dominated field.

Moreover, while Pilchuck Glass School has played a significant role in the development of glass performance, also Rhode Island School of Design in the US has been a major factor in the field since many of the artists have a connection to the school.

The audience of a performance is of the utmost importance. Glass performance does not have a wide audience – the performances most often have taken place in glass studios in museums and schools that narrow the possible audience since people already interested in glass are most often the ones who find their way in these venues, not people unfamiliar with glass. This selection of venues is only reasonable when taking into account the scale: for visually large hot glass performances it seems necessary to have proper facilities with enough space to move in but also running a hot glass studio is often economically challenging and thus not many individual glass artists can afford to use these studios for glass performance which rarely is cost-effective. Glass performances that are not dependant on hot glass facilities do not have similar space limitations. The above being said, it is still possible to take even hot glass outside the studio as Angus Powers has proved or bring new audiences in by crossdisciplinary projects such as Andrew Bearnot and Mark Stewart have demonstrated in their projects with ballet and music. For the most part, the artist can define their audience. In order for glass performance to grow as a respectable branch within the arts it has to be able to

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have a discourse with other disciplines and partially this happens through talking to new audiences. The artists have to understand what impact their selection of the audience has to their work but also to the larger performance scene.

It has been mentioned that glass performance is new but when placing all the performances in a timeline glass performance seems very young – also when measured in the scale of human life. Before 2004 only Carla Grosh’s performance for Bauhaus (1929), Pilchuck glass activities (from the 70’s) and the B Team performances (from early 90’s) took place. After 2004 the field exploded. This means that the field has been active only for ten years, which seems too young for any field of art to fully establish itself – from the original ideas to practice and the approval of a wider audience. However, it most certainly is about the time to do so or accept that glass performance might remain an activity of the glass community and never become a significant factor in the fine arts. The glass performances have already started to repeat themselves.

The performances discussed seem to revolve around and discuss about a few themes: glassblowing and glassmaking, rebelling against the norms (especially of glass tradition), the maker & the material, glass, and the relationship between glass and the world. It is only fair to state that glass performance has a close link to glass. This being said, what glass performance seems to lack is the discussion beyond the material. When a performance is this closely bound to something tangible it cannot address the central concern of performance that Anderson describes: “Live art is especially ephemeral.”88 Can glass performance ever get beyond the material or does it even have to?

Up to date glass performance does not seem to be able to discuss anything purely beyond glass and thus a question is raised: is it even possible for glass performance to exist within a wider visual arts scene – especially in connection to performance? Glass performance remains challenged between two standpoints: “good art has universal meaning and will stand up for itself anywhere regardless of its site or audience” (modernist view) or “meaningful art is produced out of an interactive and knowledgeable relationship with its audience or host communities” (post-modern critiques)89. Will glass performance continue to talk to glass

88 Anderson 2004, 6 89 Ross 1991, 16-­‐17

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audiences or continue beyond those boundaries? Also, does glass performance have to accept the theories of performance in fine art context or develop its own theories?

While there seemed to be a significant potential in glass performance in theory, the performances do not illustrate that well but seem superficial. The performances that discuss glass and its relationship with human beings and especially the maker seem to be the ones that are the most wholesome and successful. Although this research has raised more questions than it has answered it shows that when combining the knowledge of glass and observations of it, some interesting and insightful glass performances especially about glass and the tradition can be created while glass might be the only thing glass performance can ever discuss. Thus the future of glass performance definitely has some potential to it.

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Page, Andrew. 2013. Burning Down the House. GLASS Quarterly, Issue 130. Retrieved from http://www.urbanglass.org/?q=node%2F233&pid=144, 14.4.2013.

Solange Ledwith - '9 Hour Cup’ Feb. 2006. 2008. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2pdEQeobf8, 6.6.2013.

String, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.seansalstrom.com/string.html, 6.6.2013.

The Burnt Asphalt Family, 2013. Retrieved from http://theburntasphaltfamily.blogspot.co.uk, 27.5.2013.

The Butter Eaters Trailer, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.myspace.com/video/the-buttereaters/the-butter-eaters-trailer/5796176, 6.6.2013.

The Exquisite Corpse, 2013. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/64509335, 6.6.2013.

The Parthenon, 2013. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/60619078, 6.6.2013.

Third Wednesday, 2013. Retrieved from http://www.chrysler.org/about-the-museum/glassstudio/third-wednesday/, 6.6.2013.

Torcher Chamber Arkestra, n.d. Retrieved from http://www.carriefertig.com/page9.htm, 27.5.2013.

Underbar Bubbelbar, 2013.Retrieved from http://www.ninawestman.se/index.php/underbarbubbelbar, 2.10.2013.

Untitled(expandables), n.d. Retrieved from http://matthewszosz.com/pages/project_expandables.html, 25.9.2014.

Vessel Punch, 2012. Retrieved from http://vimeo.com/35172014, 6.6.2013.

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Video, n.d. Retrieved from http://www.ruthdupre.co.uk/video.html, 6.6.2013.

Correspondence, messages, unpublished sources and talks Donnellan, Karen. Messages to the author. 9.4.2013 & 10.4.2013.

Eakins, Shannon. Message to the author. 23.9.2013.

Lieberman, Walter. Message in Facebook group Glassies, 8.4.2013.

Post-Studio Glass Panel. Glass Art Society Conference, Toledo, OH. 16.6.2012.

Prince, Jocelyne. (a) 2013. Slide Script. Unpublished text.

Prince, Jocelyne. (b) 2013. Live Events (notes and thoughts). Unpublished text.

Rosenberg, Alexander. Message to the author. 7.5.2013.

Szösz, Matthew. Message to the author. 29.9.2013.

Tate, Tim. Message in Glass Secessionism group on Facebook. 15.5.2013.

Tate, Tim. Message in Glass Secessionism group on Facebook, 20.5.2013.

Warmus, William. Message in Glass Secessionism group on Facebook, 27.5.2013.

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