Jacquie Severs

Trends are interesting to me because they seem to always hit me the same way. First I hear about something here and there and don't think much of it. Then there's always the wallop. Suddenly in the space of a week or so I'll hear about something constantly. That's what has just happened with Planking. Planking is simple. You lie down, face down, with your arms touching your side in public. Usually you then have a photo taken and post it on the internet. Sometimes it is done as a performance piece over a longer period of time.



Sometimes referred to as "the laying down game" or my favourite, "lazy Parkour", Planking seems to have originated in Australia and has become an out-and-out fad this year. This past May, things started to hit a tipping point when a man was arrested for planking on a police car, and shortly afterwards Australian Prime Minister John Key was pictured with his son, Max Key, planking on a lounge suite. The photo of the PM and his planking son made the front page of a newspaper and soon became a phenomenon.

The internet based version of planking certainly seems to be about absurdity and humour, the joy of capturing the bizarre. Some would call it an internet meme like extreme ironing or flashmobbing.

But what of this other, fine art element? When does it cease to be a plank-prank and become performance art?

Recently the curator of the gallery I work for was at the Venice Biennale, and shared pictures of Canadian (but Beijing-born and NYC-based) artist Terence Koh's installation "Tell it Like It Is" (pictured below.) The installation consists of him laying with his head in an ancient well for over ten hours. While I'm not sure the artist would himself define his performance piece as "planking" it certainly seems to me to be  a similar type of art experiment. Has Terence turned an internet meme/street trend into contemporary performance art? It certainly seems that way, and I'm not the only one to make this pronouncement.


This past weekend I was in Kensington Market, Toronto for their Pedestrian Sundays. I stopped to observe three artists participating in a similar performance piece. Three tall square white pillars were placed on the sidewalk, each with a performer placed on or beside it. In the middle, a man sat on the pillar, but with arms dangling at his sides, bent at the waist with his head between his knees. On either side, the artists leaned up against the pillars, with their noses resting just on top of the pillar, arms at their sides...as if they were 'vertically' planking. With no signage, I was unable to ascertain who the performers were (and also didn't have a camera unfortunately).  Here's a picture I was able to find of a similar performance piece on flickr.

I of course immediately think of planking when I see this because it has the same arresting effect. Especially in the hustle-bustle of Pedestrian Sundays, a completely still figure cuts a sharp contrast to the swirl and noise happening around it.

Observers seemed to look quizzically at the display for a moment or two, then moved along. Some stood and stared for a longer period. We stopped for a moment or two, and during the time we were there the fellow in the position pictured at left seemed to want to stretch his ankles and made tiny movements to do so. I wondered if they were falling asleep. He was careful to keep the rest of his body in the exact posture however, and his two companions were remarkably still during our time there.

While this long-term posing seems closer to what Terence Koh is doing, it also seems similar to me to planking. There is certainly a trend emerging of these long, still performance works. I'm no expert in performance art but I am also calling to mind the work of Marina Abramovic, whose work explores the relationships between performer and audience as well as the limits of the human body and mind. Her work won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale in 1997 and she had a major installation at the Museum of Modern Art in NY in 2010 called The Artist is Present. 

That seven hundred and thirty six hour long work involved the artist sitting still in a chair, with the possibility for an audience member to sit across from her and look into her eyes for a time. The work gathered much press (especially since celebrities such as Bjork and James Franco were in the audience and participated). Each person who sat with the artist had their portrait captured. Those pictures can be seen here and they are quite haunting.

This stillness - planking in unusual places, leaning on pillars in the midst of a bustling pedestrian-filled street, laying face down for ten hours over a well, or sitting in a chair for over 700 hours is a trend that I can't ignore. I'm not sure what to call it, so I've gone with Planking. If you have another term for me, please share. Perhaps it is the intensity and fast pace of our lives that has led artists to take time to demonstrate the opposite of this life experience through a complete rejection of action and tension.

(I'm posting this blog without discovering who the Kensington Market artist is - if you know, please comment, and I'm also continuing to research it. So if I find out, I'll update this post.)
Read More:
See pictures of planking around the world.
Link to the Toronto Planking Association
"Planking Turns Deadly" via the Globe and Mail
Photos of how the other half lives - Vito Schnabel's party celebrating Terence Koh's installation

I love this time in summer when all the colour comes out in people's wardrobes. This summer I'm obsessed with mixing multiple blues, teals and greens..


The old adage says, "Blue and Green should never be seen except in your mother's washing machine!" Well, I don't live with my mother anymore (though I do occasionally use her washing machine, especially when mine is on the fritz!) so I guess this means I can mix blue and green whenever I like.












I like mixing bright cobalt shoes with a soft teal necklace with navy blue blouse. Paired with a grey skirt the look is still soft and work appropriate, but allows colour experimentation.

Working teal into your wardrobe now will be a wise choice because as I've covered, teal is going to be an important hue for fall and will carry you through the next few years feeling fresh in your wardrobe.

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Combining multiple hues in the same section of the colour wheel is less garish than mixing opposites, and allows more experimentation.

Whereas last summer I was obsessed with wearing primary blue, red and yellow at the same time, this year I'm more interested in analogous colour combinations.






Analogous colour combinations are those that are created when adjacent hues are selected from one side of the colour wheel.  This method of colour mixing requires a bit of a natural sense of warm and cool - not all blues and greens are cool after all, but it's hard to go wrong if you stay over on one side of the wheel.

Some more inspiration:

I've been neglectful, dear readers. All has been very quiet here at jacquiesevers.com. Alas it is not for an entire lack of work, but a combination of factors. For one, Spring arrived and I suddenly realized I hadn't been outside in months. So much has gone on in my life in the past 8 months I feel that I need a bit of a vacation, in fact, deserve one!

Last night for example I spent some quality time at the lake front park enjoying a blustery seagull filled vista. I've been quite busy socially, travelling to Napanee, Kingston, Orillia and Hamilton in the past month! I am still blogging over at secretsfromyoursister.com as well as tweeting up a storm. At work I've been busy with a website redesign and newly launched blog as well, so keep your eyes peeled over there if you can't get enough of the Jacquie prose. I've also been doing some creative writing that will perhaps see the light of day someday, but I'm not quite ready to share it yet. It's good to work on creative projects once in a while, ones that don't align with work or career goals. I may never share it but it feels good just to get the words on paper  screen. The feeling of never having enough time is one that I adore, and if you wanted to keep up with local arts events lately you might share that same feeling.

Here's my Oshawa Express article for May, which covers some upcoming arts events around town, including a mention of the Peony Festival. Today I went over to the Oshawa Valley Botanical Gardens on my lunch break, and finally my spring allergies found me! Alas it was worth the sniffles as the peonies were just starting to bloom. I love peonies and they do smell like heaven. It will be a joy walking through those gardens as the June moves into full swing. The garden has over 250 cultivars of Peonies so it is quite the experience to behold.

Art surrounds us in Oshawa this Spring May 25, 2011 By Jacquie Severs/Columnist Conventional ideas about what “art” is are probably limited to the usual suspects; painting, drawing, sculpture. However art can be found, photocopied, installed and captured. It can be arranged, grown and designed. Art comes in many forms and exploring all of them can serve to expand creative minds and ideas.  Gardening, though perhaps thought of, as a practical trade more than an art form, becomes art when executed with precision and passion. The upcoming 6th Annual Peony Festival in the Oshawa Valley Botanical Gardens (June 11-12) includes artists of the gardening variety as well as the fine-art variety. Artists creating garden-inspired works will be on site alongside 300 varieties of peonies. Off site at Parkwood Estates, historic fashions, automobiles and games are ongoing throughout the day while tours of their gardens and the mansion expose visitors to arts of the past. At The Robert McLaughlin Gallery Ikebana artists will install floral arrangements during the festival. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging and is a disciplined craft that brings flowers and artistic composition together. The method draws attention to line, shape and form using leaves, stems and blooms to create symbolic arrangements, which are typically minimal in design.  Creative inspiration for gardeners, floral artists and those interested in slowing down to smell the peonies will flourish over the weekend. Photographers will surely be out capturing the event. Our local area has a vibrant community of camera enthusiasts who participate in a number of annual events. The RMG has just announced they are accepting submissions for their annual photography event, RMG Exposed, details of which can be found at www.rmgexposed.com.           The event, held in November, has opportunities for contemporary photographers from the amateur to the professional. The RMG is leading into this event with an artist talk by Michael Cullen, a Peterborough-based professional photographer currently exhibiting “The Last Brick”, a collection of twenty photographs that recorded his recent journey to Kansas. Michael will be at the gallery the evening of June 2 at 7 p.m. to help inspire other photographers with his story. He’ll discuss why he recorded the trip and encourage photographers to see the world through their artistic medium with new vision. The Broken Arts Collective, an Oshawa-based group, is preparing for their own arts festival this summer. In promotion of the July event they are participating in the RMG’s First Friday on June 3. Alongside live music and fine art, Broken Arts will host a zine-making station. Zines are small self-published magazines that contain anything from drawings to poetry to collage and comics. A RMG First Fridays zine will be the result and guests can hear about the upcoming Broken Arts fest.    Events from floral festivals to photography lectures, zine making to Ikebana displays offer opportunities for creative minds to be challenged into thinking about what art is and can be.