Category Archives: My Stories

my original and re-told tales

BodyStory Video Experiment 1 — Peacock and the Sun Goddess

BodyStory Video Experiment 1 — Peacock and the Sun Goddess

The Peacock and the Sun Goddess BodyStory was an experiment for a class presentation at the Face and Body Art International Convention in 2012 (FABAIC). For my class on storytelling I tried out a new idea (new for me – see below) of taking the methods I use for telling a story via facepainting onto a painted body — using a fully painted body in choreographed movements to accompany my narrative. I had done this with several performers and much assistance to perform the story Li Chi Slays the Dragon as part of our Bodies Alive! production at FABAIC 2008, but that felt more like a theatre piece and this was meant to stay closer to the stylistic quality of storytelling.

The Peacock and the Sun Goddess BodyStory was conceived and presented as a live performance. As the concept seems well designed for video I took the fotos and video we’d made as documentation and created this video in iMovie. (The wonderful music is Indian Fever by David Starfire, which I found on the album “Six Degrees Free Indian Music Sampler” on Amazon. The model was a non-professional, so I’ll withhold her name) The next step in the video experiment will be to create a BodyStory design specifically for video, and explore what is possible without the design limitations inherent in a live performance.

See the BodyStories Page to learn more about other BodyStory projects, including “Is This the First Story?” based on an 18,000 year old cave painting.

To be clear, nothing in art is ever truly new—especially in an art form as ancient as bodypainting. In saying that these experiments feel “new for me” I’m not saying that I’ve invented something here. Aboriginal Australian bodypainting may go back 40,000 years in a continuous line and in some cases, particularly in the context of ritual initiations, their bodyart tells complex mythological tales (to name just one precedent). Nothing is new.

To learn more about our programs and performances:  http://www.agostinoarts.com

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The 2012 Unique Art Awards

I am honored to say I have been nominated for an award by the Society of Unique Artists. I’m one of 5 finalists in the category of Unique Painting, and the winner will be announced at the Unique Art Awards event on September 29 in New York. Upon my nomination I was asked to submit a portfolio for the judges’ consideration, which I am posting here, including this short video artist statement:

Christopher Agostino’s Transformations

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I approach the art of transformation as a performance art, whether on stage or at an event.  Continue reading →

Before Cave Walls… at the National Storytelling Network Conference 2012

Thank you to the Jaguar, Liz Nichols, for her very positive description of my presentation at the NSN Conference, which she posted in Tim Ereneta’s blog: “Breaking the Eggs — Performance Storytelling in the 21st Century”. See the full post http://storytelling.blogspot.com/2012/07/conference-reflections-liz-nichols.html  An excerpt:

“The show was called “Before Cave Walls… The Story on Our Skin”. … About 25–30 of us sat mesmerized as he started with a lecture/demo on the human history of self-transformation through mask and body art, calling up volunteer after volunteer to be painted as he talked. Then he wove several stories in, some traditional and some in a folktale mode that he and his kids had created – and he used us as his canvas to show characters like jaguar, snake and lizard, and settings like tropical island and African savannah.”
Liz also talked about how the volunteers I painted during the program wore their new faces into the evenings events, for which I am especially appreciative — a mask-maker always hopes that the wearer will bring the mask to life like that. When Willa Brigham took the stage to MC that night’s Oracle Awards presentation in the very unusual looking Picasso/Nuba face, I’m sure many folk in the audience wondered what was going on, why were these people on stage with their faces painted in such strange ways? There were several hundred people in the audience, only a hand full of which were at my afternoon program, so most of them had no context for the painted faces they saw on stage. That uncertainty about what to make of a painted face is intrinsic to the art of transformation. Part of the power and function of the mask is to introduce a sense of mystery about the transient nature of form, to make us wonder  what else is possible.  Continue reading →