Journal of Undergraduate Research
Volume 1, Issue 2 - February 2000

Two Boys and a Girl Go to the Circus

Kelie Bowman, Alan Calpe & William Heath

ABSTRACT

The Cloud Seeding Circus of the Performative Objective consists of a core team of ten artists. Our project incorporates sculpture, installation, video, live performance, music and editioned multiples into a two-hour art event. Through this collaboration we hope to continue our personal artistic endeavours while drawing references and images from the circus as unifying a metaphor. Ultimately, our efforts will lead to a tour of the eastern United States in the fall of 2000.

INTRODUCTION

Cloud Seeding Circus of the Performative Object is a huge undertaking in concept and in form. Being part of a ten person collaboration, Kelie Bowman, Alan Calpe, and William Heath were introduced to Prof. George Ferrandi,s selected proposal through the University Scholars Program. We are all interested in different sectors of the circus but each of us draw form the rich and vivid history of the traditional circus to make new compelling and poetic work concerning 20th century issues such as gender, relationships and self awareness. Also, we each are in charge of different organizational tasks such as venue research, promotional package design, web design, box truck production, fink(souvenirs) production, and grant research. We are planning for a whirlwind tour up the east coast and parts of the Midwest promoting a 2 hour event featuring live performance, video, sculpture, and installation. We are literally running away with the circus attempting to gain national exposure and new experiences. This is truly a once in a lifetime experience because a project this encompassing could never be enacted with just one individual, it requires several dedicated and uniquely talented artists. We will perform out of a modified box truck that becomes our stage. This allows us to perform literally anywhere widening our audience possibilities by allowing us to perform in conjunction with traditional venues such as museums, university galleries, and alternative spaces and perform at non-traditional venues such as hospital parking lots, farms, and campgrounds. With the traditional venues we offer a lecture concerning varied topics such as the history of the multiple or the role of public art.

MISSION STATEMENTS

Kelie Bowman

I am interested in how circus acts engage in exaggerated metaphors for different situations encountered through everyday life. In the same way that we seclude ourselves in our own lives, the circus puts this into visual terms with elaborate settings, costumes, and high intensity vignettes. I am specifically intrigued by the fantastic, magical high flying women who are always featured in the circus. Often these images of women become objects of desire and beauty instead of real, tangible people. I am interested in, first, adding awkwardness to these perfect characters. Drawing attention to issues of balance stage-fright, and clumsiness Second, revealing the structure of the performance with the rehearsal and preparation becoming the main stage event. This helps to blur the lines between backstage and frontstage so that less is hidden from the viewer to further demystify the action. Third, creating a narrative around these objectified images to ground the viewer and the spectacle. This also helps the viewer relate to these characters rather than envy their untouchable feats. In addition, when creating this narrative around the character I take into consideration how the viewer projects their fantasies and expectations onto the person being observed. I love how we as viewers can create a long and dramatic story around the person who we saw run frantically across the street or the person sitting alone on a bench waiting for the next bus. It is fascinating what is lost and gained through this interpretation. This process of interpretation is similar to the structure of language and how we perceive and then try to interpret that perception through the use of language. Through this process our personal expectations filter in to help maintain ideals, specifically of women. Media plays a large role in this ideological apparatus and image spectacle to build our personal expectations of what is acceptable and non-acceptable. It is amazing how many signs are built into every gesture we put forth. In my work I also attempt to deconstruct these loaded signs. In conclusion, I do not try to push my philosophies onto the viewer, I just want to make them question these constructed ideals and where they came from.

Alan Calpe

I like people to grin, outright laugh at my work.

Interests in my own work have been one of overly exaggerative stagings, like a party joke with too much time on its hands. It takes with it a campy sensibility by drawing on those things that we've deemed perfect or beautiful and refers to old Hollywood,s ridiculously glittered musicals as its starting point. By turning everything on its head, I hope to reveal something quite intimate and accessible, and perhaps tragic, by allowing the viewer an opportunity to laugh heartily and, consequently, question their reasons for doing so. My involvement with Cloud Seeding Circus gives me this incredible space to merge these issues into the tradition of the circus, specifically the clown and the sideshow spectacle. Speaking of the complex relationships we have with the comic and the grotesque, I hope to show a commonality in performing circus acts and the way we come to perform our identity everyday, especially in the malleability of our gender and sexuality.

Will Heath

The most fascinating facet of The Cloud Seeding Circus of the Performative Object has surprisingly not been the creation of a vignette for the traveling exhibition as I had anticipated, but rather the micro-management orchestration of this event. The logistical puppetry of making this traveling exhibition a reality has recently captured my attention unexpectedly, and has become fertile experimentation grounds of group dynamics and project management. At the outset of this project, I could not even remotely begin to conceive how one would go about creating such an event, as well as promoting it, locating interested venues, and ultimately launching such a large scale traveling visual art exhibition. From the ground up, I and also my "co-University Scholars have seen this project develop from near infancy. All though the circus was conceived of by assistant professor George Ferrandi, the Circus really did not seem to have solidified shape until one long car trip back to Gainesville in what became known as the grant writing team. Over the following day and half we hammered out a mission statement. Within that mission statement we introduced ourselves and the project, focused target audiences, focused target sites,and located ourselves in the evolution of installation and performance art. Upon articulating or expectations of the project, we set to work on an elaborate promotional packet and developed a mailing list of prospective art institutions. Currently, circus members have become contact points of perspective venues. There is still so much planning yet to be done before our fall 2000 tour, but watching the logistics of our group dynamics and the delegation of tasks among the ranks has proven to be invaluable insight.

Photos by John Elderkin

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