Rooms and performance art

This year 14 Rooms at Art Basel was a highlight for most visitors, including myself. For '14 Rooms', curators Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist invited fourteen international artists to each activate a room, exploring the relationship between space, time, and physicality with an artwork whose "material" is the human being. Artists included Marina Abramovi?, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono and Damien Hirst.

Performance art, put simply, is a performance intended for an audience, it could be carefully scripted and planned or completely spontaneous. Unlike theatre it's might not have constructed narrative and doesn't aim always aim to appeal an audience.

In contrast to some traditional art forms it shifts the emphasis from the end product to the process of making. It generally involves bodily actions and on occasion makes radical gestures that are bound to shock. At it's best, performance art questions established social hegemonies and poetically translates our rudimentary feelings and concerns into something more tangible. It makes us truly think about the foundations of human behaviour and our contemporary world. But I'll be honest sometimes it can be dull, boring, self absorbed and weird as hell.

But rather than simply listing a few performance artists for you to look at, in staying true to 14 Rooms, we've sought out works that stress the importance of the body in artistic production. We also concentrated on video works, So the next time your surfing the internet for something to watch, try some of these.

Tejal Shah, Chingari Chumma.
Bollywood meets feminism as Anuj our heroine is held captive by Tejal who play's the depraved villain. We anxiously await Amitabh Bacchan to come to the rescue, will he make it on time?

Nikhil Chopra, Man Eats Rock.
A naked man leads us through a spiritual journey through breathtaking landscapes across India. His explorations coincide with a decadently dressed man and his friends who enjoy a lavish picnic by a cliff. The dressed man ultimately sheds his attire to become one with nature. A comment of materialistic desires, consumer culture, postcolonial values, primitive man, our relationship to the natural world, a struggle to find oneself; and I got all of that in the first 4 minutes, I encourage you to watch the whole video.

Neha Choksi, Iceboat.
The artist rows into a lake in a boat made of ice, the action is both poetic and seemingly pointless. The boat ultimately melts and releases the artist into the water. Beautifully filmed, watching the artist struggle though the water left me wondering; is creating nothing is still creating?

Kiran Subbaiah, Flight rehearsals.
In this short video the artist taps into the secret of flight and discovers in a few steps the simple solution to defying gravity. I could tell you how he does it but it's worth uncovering Subbaiah's secrets and deadpan humour yourself.

Sonia Khurana, Bird.
Why should it be just men discovering the secrets of the universe? Sonia Khurana's practice is a deep questioning of her inner and outer experience, in Bird she momentarily abandons her usual earthbound practice, instead she strips down and attempts to take flight. Will she make it to the blue azure?

Shilpa Gupta, Unitiled.
This interactive loop video of 7 figures ( all Shilpa) projected on the wall seems to be an exercise in human psychology. The video runs on two monitors facing each other, the figures reflect each others actions. Dressed in army camouflage, they allude to an empty war, in which we are all but puppets ready to be manipulated into 'mindless violence'.

Ranbir Kaleka, Crossing.
Part painting, part video, the work challenges our notions of time and movement. The figures remain static in the foreground while the landscape behind them is constantly in flux. Occasionally though, the video images move away from their painted counterparts and the figures are literally split in two selves.