Tony Schwensen, born in Sydney (1970), is a Boston-based artist. He undertook a Bachelor of Arts (Art History and Criticism) at the University of Western Sydney – Nepean in 1988, which he followed with a Graduate Diploma of Visual Arts, Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney University, in 1991. In 2007, he completed a PhD at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, researching the influence and adaptation of the discipline-specific investigations of Samuel Beckett on and into historic and contemporary video performance practice. Schwensen charts contemporary culture through the use of his own body as a performative object.
Recent solo exhibitions and performances include SCABLAND as part of 48HR Incident, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, 2015; Performalism, Station Gallery, Melbourne, 2014; Monument, Waterloo Center for the Arts, Iowa, 2010; Regret, Remorse, Repent, Le Lieu, Quebec City, Canada, 2010; and Post-Colonial-Cluster-Fuck (with Trace Collective), Artspace, Sydney, 2009.
Working Title: Seven Silences
My performance addresses seven questions:
- Is it possible to make silence in the same way that we make noise?
- How does one perform silence?
- How does a performance of silence affect an audience?
- What are the contexts in which silence can function as a performance?
- How can a body become an instrument of silence generation?
- What is it to attempt to be silence?
- What is it to attempt to articulate silence?
A seven part performance appears to be the appropriate way in which to address the seven research questions via a practice based investigation. Accordingly, each performance will be titled after part of Beckett’s last sentence of The Unnamable.
It will be the silence, where I am? Silence as individual
I don’t know Silence as aggression
I’ll never know Silence as communal
In the silence you don’t know Silence as silence
You must go on Silence as acquiescence
I can’t go on Silence as protest
I’ll go on Silence as acceptance
