Outside Walls: The Human Fly, Trisha Brown and Jochen Schweizer

In performance and other mediums, the wall or walls of a space have haunted the production of art; either for or in rejection of the flat surface. Allan Kaprow in Assemblage, Environments and Happenings (1966) notably recognized performance and installation work during the 1960's that was moving away from the flat, sanitized-white gallery walls. He writes that artists such as himself, Jim Dine, Robert Whitman and the like were creating new ways of interacting with space by making new art-environments and creating assemblage that demanded the viewer to now become the implicated spectator that had to leave standing in front of the wall so as to walk around - into - under - on top of etc.

Here we'll look at three different moments in three different epochs of walking on the outside wall: Harry H. Gardiner's The Human Fly (1905), Trisha Brown's Man Walking Down the Side of a Building (1970) and Jochen Schweizer's acrobatic corporate-performances (Current). Though these three moments are by no means a rejection of the wall as a surface, we do find something different when the event is removed from the inside to - out.

#1

Harry Gardiner climbs the Hamilton Bank Building on November 11, 1918 to celebrate Peace Day

Now known as buildering, the event of climbing up a building wall was first made popular by Harry Gardiner. Dubbed ‘The Human Fly’ by President Grover Cleveland, Gardiner would climb skyscrapers (typically for an opening of a company building and always for hire) throughout American and Canadian metropolitan landscapes. Though little is known of his life, his legacy of the human fly has lived on in the western imagination - especially considering the powers of such superheroes as Spiderman, Batman and even The Human Fly from Marvel in 1976. Though his performances as The Human Fly were not politically overt or remotely conscious of the art world, they do strike a chord when we consider the performance workings of persona. Harry made his living as - The Human Fly and attracted public audiences in the hundreds of thousands.

#2

Trisha Brown, Man Walking Down The Side of a Building (1970) Photo by Caroline Goodden

In 1971, Trisha Brown, famous for her innovative work in postmodern dance both in the early years of the Judson Dance Group and her personal choreography, choreographed a dance for one man to walk down the side of a building in a small alley in New York. The audience was comprised of a few friends and colleagues and the performance only lasted about a minute. This was performance was later translated as Walking On The Wall (1971):

Trisha Brown's Walking On The Wall (1971). Photo by Carole Goodden

Though this piece takes place inside, it still transforms the traditional dance space of the ground to a vertical plane and attempts to defy the dancers bondage to gravity. The act of walking becomes extremely slow and calculated with extreme consciousness - the dancers are only supported by a fixed sling. Close to the end of the Vietnam War and in the wake of extreme global, political and social chaos - the act of walking on walls becomes: 1. A slowing down and re-evaluation of the body and 2: An absurd act indicative of the post war performance (think Butoh after WWII). The differences between this work by Brown and The Human Fly are mostly of audience and space: both, for Brown, are situated within the contemporary art world of the 1970's whereas The Human Fly's public is of the Masses or the public at large. Brown's audience are aware, educated and familiar with live art. Where The Human Fly is walking or climbing the wall for the sake of spectacle, Brown's postmodern project is to find the spectacle of walking.

# 3

Jochen Schweizer's VerticalCatwalk®

The third example is of Jochen Schweizer's 2004 'invention' of the Vertical Catwalk is not only registered but feels like a synthesis of the first two projects aforementioned. The Vertical Catwalk is made for hire - mostly as an apparatus for corporate fashion shows and store openings. Using essentially the same technology used by Brown, the Vertical Catwalk is definitely all in the name of spectacle - one so wrapped up in the commodity form you can barely take their calling it "Modern Performance Art" even remotely serious. Yet we see it's predecessor in both the 'modern' era and in the history of 'art'. It's interesting to trace this line and see it swaying to and from spectacle; from capitalism; from art. To situate these works outside of the binary of good and bad art - we can look at the outside wall, the audience and social and economic climates in which they were made. From modern to postmodern to contemporary we see the history in the present as something messy and daring; literally the past jumping off the roof and walking towards us. But with no answers or hypothesis I present these three moments next to each other - like opening up yearbooks from two different time periods and placing them on top of each other face to face in the now.

| Trisha Brown | The Human Fly | Jochen Schweizer |