Rory Ronder, roving reporter, presses ‘The Iceman’ further

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IM/aim

Rory Ronder: Is it true you used to sing to the Block?

Iceman: I had a phaimse when I saimng a serices of staimndaimrd numbers. I found a baimlaimnce between the ‘entertaimning’ and the ‘aimotionaiml’. I didn’t ignore the aimudience even though the BLOCK took much of my aimttention. It was interesting to heaimr my voice, I think.

aim

Kafe Smictiric [art critic] goes out of his comfort zone to assess The Iceman’s recent zoomed Westminster performance art piece

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ICEMAN on ZOOHM

Performance art is out -side my field. Give me a gallery full of pictures and I will confidently give you my opinion, as I do of aim’s paintings. But take me to a “performance art” piece and I am left floundering for words. But I have to recognise that The Iceman has achieved something special with his recent “Westminster Block” live on zoom. Is it a satire of his own work, one wonders?

IM is connected to the earth in a way analogous to Bosco Soldi’s Tabula Rosa work. Like Soldi’s clay spheres, The Iceman sometimes gives his audience splinters or chips of ice, even the entire block on some occasions. Perhaps they too could be seen in the same light as Soldi’s seeds. Can IM’s ice-blocks create a form of fruition too? Could they out-live plant life? The Iceman’s work reflects a planetary awareness. It has gravity amidst its apparent levity and childishness.  Sometimes his work feels other worldly, like perhaps that of Joseph Beuys. It can’t be said to have the same intensity but it does show a sort of near obsessive commitment similar to the numerical notations of Roman Opalka.

The recent zoomed Block had its own sort of visual landscape and included his recent ‘Diamgraim’ painting on an easel. This he referred to with a bamboo stick, like some kind of Instructor.

There is a touch of Growtoski’s spirit of exploration in the way ‘The Iceman’ makes his own vulnerability clear. As soon as IM stepped on stage, the apparent box he inhabited became another space. It was both comfortable and uncomfortable .IM shows he realises that he is here, ‘now’, with his audience in present time, even though he may be referencing the past through showing polaroid photos of previous blocks or recalling icy incidents in past performances.

Grotowski, demanded an intense level of attention and awareness. Like one of Grotowski’s actors, IM seems to communicate through different types of energies to reach a different state of being and take the audience somewhere else at the same time. Many spectators have alluded to this experience . The evidence is there -IM has a strange capability to be extraordinarily compelling, even as he pretends to be a clown? But he is not Shamanistic in the way Beuys projects his persona. However, he does make self-marked ‘wice’ statements [which used to receive chants of “Deep! Deep!” which apparently were seriously humorous rather than sarcastic] Does The Iceman’s plastic Duck-whose loyalty he praises connect at all with the dead hare of Beuys?

Does The Iceman’s interactive dealings with his audience even on-line conjure up elements of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece or Marina Abramovic’s Rhythm 0.Interestingly, in connection with the latter which famously led to the incident with a ‘gun’, IM also incorporates a ‘gun’ in his piece, sometimes mistakenly pretending to shoot the Duck-his best friend! In this piece he claimed that the gunshot had deafened him, thus allowing him ‘not’ to answer questions, which he nevertheless did. He doesn’t utter zen like instructions like Yoko in her Grapefruit book but he does show how the Block is central to every performance he ‘melts’ in. By giving the Block paramount status,he is prepared to diminish his own profile. Is he too trying to show he is a social sculptor with his enigmatic asides. He may not use honey, gold leaf and felt, but he certainly has an array of equipment with which to affect the ice. This he highlighted in his zoom ‘talk’ The human, yet mechanical mark-making of the Iceman’s gestures towards the Block provide easy accessibility to his conceptual work,that’s for sure.

It was particularly moving in this zoom transaction that the ‘audience’ at Westminster already had their own Block of Ice [called Al-ice ,*see below, gender tbc]. Alice could be said to be upstaging The Iceman, if that was at all possible. But this near synchronicity was strangely affecting. The Iceman actually took a screen photo of Al-ice, leaving his own  Block completely un-jealous. I say ‘Block’, but in fact The Iceman’s Block had metamorphosed into two Blocks, perhaps to keep Alice in check. What on earth did the Duck ‘think’? I know I have raised many questions but The Iceman himself described himself as a “question-raiser”!

[Kafe Smictiric-art critic]

AL-ICE*