Performance Art: Education and Practice 2022046079, 2022046080, 9781032055176, 9781032055190, 9781003197904

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Performance Art

Performance Art: Education and Practice is an introduction to performance art through activities and practice prompts that are framed by seminal moments in the history of the medium as well as the current theoretical discussions surrounding performance. The book begins by introducing the terminology related to performance art and its early history. The basic elements of performance, including the body, objects, space, the public, and the public sphere are approached through thematic and conceptual correlations such as objects as autobiography, body as an expression of gendered identity, performance and the everyday, the augmented body, the archive of performance, and public space as space for intervention. Case studies analysed in each chapter are accompanied by refective questions and discussion topics. The book proposes a wide range of exercises and comprehensive practice prompts that aim to enhance performance skills, promote experimentation, and encourage an experiential understanding of the theory, history, and concepts relating to performance art. Performance Art: Education and Practice is addressed to students of Fine Arts and Performance Studies from beginner to intermediate level, performance and visual artists who are interested in expanding their knowledge base and creative range, and artist-teachers who are interested in developing their own curriculum and workshop content. Angeliki Avgitidou is an artist working in performance and public space. She studied as an architect (BArch Hons, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and as an artist (MA, PhD, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design). Her work has been shown at occasions that include the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, its Performance Festival, the International Biennial of Performance Deformes, the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, and the 15th International Exhibition of Architecture of the Biennale of Venice. Angeliki is the author of Performance Art: The Basics. A Beginner’s Course Guide (2020). She is Associate Professor at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Western Macedonia. Angeliki has taught postgraduate courses at the University of Western Macedonia, the Hellenic Open University, and the Transart Institute.

Performance Art Education and Practice

Angeliki Avgitidou

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Angeliki Avgitidou The right of Angeliki Avgitidou to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Avgitidou, Angeliki, author. Title: Performance art : education and practice / Angeliki Avgitidou. Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: LCCN 2022046079 (print) | LCCN 2022046080 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032055176 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032055190 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003197904 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Performance art. Classifcation: LCC NX460.5.P47 A95 2023 (print) | LCC NX460.5.P47 (ebook) | DDC 709.04/0755—dc23/eng/20221221 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046079 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046080 ISBN: 978-1-032-05517-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-05519-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19790-4 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904 Typeset in Helvetica by Apex CoVantage, LLC

to my students

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Introduction to performance

viii 1 7

2 Materials in performance: objects

29

3 Body, gender, identity

55

4 Performing the self

77

5 The augmented body

94

6 Body and space

109

7 Performance and the everyday

129

8 Performing in public space

146

9 Performing radical interventions

169

10 Nature, bodies, environment

189

11 Beyond the live event

213

Index

223

Acknowledgements

My thanks go frst and foremost to my students who over the years inspired, challenged and taught me in so many ways. This book is dedicated to them. My years of teaching in the School of Art at the University of Western Macedonia in Greece as well as in the workshops I devised for other institutions, provided the testing ground for many of the practice ideas included in this book. I would also like to thank the various artists I have collaborated with, within or outside academia, for their generosity in sharing their time, ideas and creativity and for pushing mine forward. Over the years of working as an artist I attended various workshops that gave me the opportunity to familiarize myself with different approaches to teaching performance and contributed to my own explorations in education and art practice. The Pocha Nostra Summer School and John Britton’s physical theatre training stand out in this line up. I want to thank my colleagues in academia, Kostas Vasileiou, Marios Chatziprokopiou, Bill Psarras, Sofa Avgitidou and Alexandra Antoniadou, for discussing aspects of this book with them and receiving their precious feedback. I am also grateful to Stacey Walker and Lucia Accorsi in Routledge for believing in this book and guiding me though the publishing process. Massive thanks to the anonymous peer reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions and to the artists and their galleries for generously providing the amazing images included in this volume. Lastly, I want to thank my sister Sofa Avgitidou for her constant help and encouragement and my partner Fotis Georgiadis for his support, patience and enthusiasm with this endeavour, even when mine was fading.

Introduction

Why? The motivation for this book is the result of my own experience of practicing performance art as well as teaching it in academia. During my years of teaching, I have sought texts for guidance, relying heavily on history and theory produced in western discourse by established names such as RoseLee Goldberg, Richard Schechner and Marvin Carlson. They are frequently referenced in this volume. Although targeted on history and theory rather than practice, the literature on performance art was, if not abundant, growing. It was less the case on practicing and teaching performance art. This may have been a result of performance art being allergic to canonical structures education is associated with and the fact that the personal and subjective nature of performance practice raises doubts about the feasibility of performance art education itself. There were a few books around though, produced by practitioners of performance art, such as the various books of the members of La Pocha Nostra, e.g. Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy (2011) or the collection of approaches to teaching edited by Valentín Torrens, How We Teach Performance Art: University Courses and Workshop Syllabus (2014). They provided valuable insights and methodological approaches to performance pedagogy. Joshua Sofaer’s Many Headed Monster (2009) was innovative as much as pure fun. Books from related felds such as devised or postdramatic theatre, e.g. the recent Curious Methods (2021) by Leslie Hill and Helen Paris were also resourceful and inspirational. How to Teach Performance (2022) by John Britton was an inspirational guide aimed at teachers from the performing arts. My earlier attempt with Performance Art: The Basics. A Beginner’s Course Guide (2020) was focused on practice with accompanying theoretical texts. Some of the methods and rationale of that book are further developed or repeated here. What I felt was missing though during my teaching career, was an introductory book in performance aimed at practitioners, which would combine fundamental knowledge of the development of performance which would connect to wider contexts of history (of art), theoretical areas that have frequently been discussed in connection to performance, as well as

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-1

2

Introduction

guidance for performance practice. I envisioned these three different strands as interconnected in the pursuit of an informed performance practice that acknowledges connections across theory and practice. My ambition with this book is to contribute to such a pursuit.

For whom? This book is mainly directed to students of performance art, artists who would like to delve into performance art, performance artists who are interested in enhancing their skills and knowledge base and, of course, teachers. It is intended to provide motivation for practice and inspire associations across history, theory and practice. As performance artists we mostly come from a general education in art and related faculties such as the performing arts or marginally related felds such as architecture (myself included). However enriching this educational experience may be, it leaves open a desire for specifc training and study. In this book I have included activities and practice prompts specifcally designed for this purpose.

How? Chapters are organized thematically and intend to touch upon fundamental performance elements such as the body, space or the use of objects, subject areas associated with performance such as gender, identity, the self, the everyday and the public sphere as a context for ecological and political performance interventions. Each chapter begins with introductory observations and theoretical/historical references which are meant to provide a context for the chapter’s subject and guide the reader into reviewing the case studies that follow, usually divided into non-exclusive sections themselves. The theoretical/contextual introduction is not exhaustive but means to provide lines of entry into the chapter’s focus which the reader may wish to pursue further elsewhere. The case studies of performances in each chapter are indicative and intended to offer varied insights into approaches to the chapter’s context. They are usually accompanied by refective questions, meant to open-up discussion, enhance understanding and incite self-refection for the practitioner. They are at times presented as topics for discussion rather than actual questions. At other times they are followed by activities and practice prompts that directly or implicitly connect to them and/or the case studies. They will hopefully incite further research into artists and encourage performancemaking. The case studies are a mixture of well-known and well-documented performances, some already a part of history, and some lesser-known ones. In selecting and grouping these together I was guided by their connecting ideas rather than, for example, their chronology. Some case studies could theoretically appear in different chapters; e.g. Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of

Introduction

3

the Kitchen could equally appear in Chapter 2 in connection with the use of objects in performance and in Chapter 7 in connection with the exploration of the everyday. A choice was then made to highlight one element of the performance by placing it in a specifc chapter with the aim to push the discussion forward. Although there are exceptions to the rule, the case studies are predominately works of artists coming from Europe and the US. This is not just a result of the dominance of anglophone discourse but also partly because of the history of the medium. Activities included in each chapter are usually simple tasks connected to case studies and the topics of the chapter, intended to provide the condition and space for experimentation and exploration, not specifcally as a means to an end. They are open-ended and may be adapted to one’s circumstances. They are organized as solo, pair or group activities, the latter with an educational environment in mind. Sometimes they are accompanied by an invitation to a circle discussion (in case of a classroom or workshop situation), a discussion in pairs, a written proposal or a refection text.You are encouraged to adapt those accordingly. Some are proposed to take place in the studio or indoors and some are aimed to be carried out at specifc public or collective spaces. I have developed these in my teaching practice and some are inspired or adapted by the teaching of others, whom I reference. In reality, even in activities I repeat over the years, changes, surprises and new perspectives arise during the course of each activity. As a teacher you are invited to welcome these and incorporate them into your repertoire. While these activities are not designed as a path to an end performance, there are gems of inspiration that may arise, which artists may use in subsequent performances or practice prompts. Practice prompts are proposed performances with a specifc “brief”, again connected to the ideas of the chapter or to specifc case studies referred in it. At times, a preparatory activity has been proposed earlier.You may adapt these to your circumstances or preferences, combine them with an activity or just use them as inspiration for your own practice prompt.

What? Although in organizing these chapters I have begun with a chapter that introduces terminology and recounts the origins of performance and end with one on the discussion of the future of performance in the archive of performance and its various hybrid and digital transformations, there is no strict instruction to read this book linearly. That is, while the volume is divided thematically, there is no absolute order and chapters could be read individually. Having said that there is a rationale of starting from basics and increasing complexity as we move along. There are occasions when a reference to a previous chapter is made and chapters that are interconnected, e.g. Chapters 3 and 4 and Chapters 8 and 9.

4

Introduction

In the frst, introductory chapter we visit terms associated with performance art and review its associations with everyday life and society in ritual, social drama and performativity, through the works of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers of language and performance theorists. We also look for the origins of performance in the avant-garde and post-WWII movements and explore the ways that they connect with contemporary performance art. Chapter 2 discusses objects (including food) as one of the materials of performance art in relation to key concepts such as playfulness, agency, participation, duration, space, transformation, subjectivity etc. The aim is that performers understand objects as a material loaded with expectations and history, as a material whose function may be disregarded, may be interpreted through its use and may hold agency. Lastly, the role of objects in expressing/creating a narrative of the self is explored in the collection. Chapter 3 discusses gender as a constitutive part of identity in the feminist movement and the emergence of queer theory. The performativity of gender is discussed through the works of key theorists and in artists’ exploration of the limits of the body, the relations between bodies, the inscription of bodies and self-harm. The aim of the chapter is that performers recognize the gendered identity of the body, understand how this may be constructed and generally uncover the body as a key element of performance. In Chapter 4 we examine the connection of performance with life histories and autobiography in the performances of the self, including the performance of gender through masquerade, the narratives of personal histories, the exploration of the multiplicity of the self and the investigation of identity against stereotypical selves. The aim is that artists, through discussions and the fnal project, realize the multiple and contradictory sides of themselves and experiment with props and masquerade/cross-dressing to create their persona in a work of performed photography or a durational piece. Chapter 5 makes a brief reference to the augmented body in performance, from physical body extensions to technological modifcations and to wearables that visualize data.The aim is that performers examine subjective mediated experience and explore its conceptual ramifcations. We refer to transhumanism and posthumanism and are introduced to the term cyborg. Issues of race and gender, normality and monstrosity, the playful and the grotesque as well as ethical and social issues are challenges in the case studies examined. The element of space is the focus of this next sixth chapter. The aim is that artists perceive their body and their movement in space as part of an existing confguration but also as an active player in the arrangement of this space. We introduce space-specifcity and spatial characteristics such as geometrical features, history and function of the space. The different confgurations of body, space and audience are explored through case studies, activities and a fnal workshop on places of departure. Chapter 7 aims to highlight daily experience as an endless feld of inspiration and an apparatus for performance. Issues such as the inability to categorize and analyze the everyday, its problematic

Introduction

5

documentation, lack of surprise and anti-heroic essence are brought into the discussion by Henri Lefebvre, Michel De Certeau and Ben Highmore. Concepts such as the familiar and the unfamiliar, repetition and the trivial are also discussed in relation to everyday experience and references to the Situationists, Fluxus, happenings and feminist art. Chapter 8 begins with defning fundamental concepts such as public space and the public sphere and makes reference to the fâneur and the Situationists. Artists in trajectories in the urban landscape, creating rifts in the everyday, crossing spaces of self and other, exposing the disarray and arbitrariness of the everyday and revealing suppressed histories, overlooked connections and invisible networks are discussed. Activities and practice prompts aspire to help artists use public space as a place for creating a site-specifc performance, practice person-to-person interaction in public and appreciate urban space as a place of real and imagined stories. In Chapter 9 we approach terms such as political, activist, participatory, socially engaged and community-based art and consider the artist as social worker, constructor or pedagogue. We look at how artists create capsule realities or perform in temporary occupations of public space, offering a view of the city as stage and playground, bringing forward ethical and ideological concerns and creating space for civic intervention. Methods of assuming personas and practicing overidentifcation while touching upon issues of consumerism, globalisation, war, women’s exploitation and cultural imperialism as well as groups of artists with an antisystemic agenda moving between performance and activism are discussed in this chapter. Leaving public space and the public sphere, in Chapter 10 we explore nature as paradisiac, savage, threatening or under threat and discuss our phantasy of a lost harmony with it. We look at performances that engage with the raw materials of nature in an environmentally responsive, symbolic or ritualistic way or raise environmental concerns. Artists are invited to explore these issues through practice prompts in contemplating their own utopia for a performance and in creating a multispecies performance. In the last, eleventh chapter we discuss performance, its documentation, performance re-enactment and the archive of performance. We discuss the history and complexity of documenting and archiving the live event, the function and politics of the archive, the impossibility of recreating the original event and the possibility of an archive open to interpretations and touch upon the relevant issues brought up by the restrictions imposed because of the pandemic. The purpose is that performers appreciate how performativity may go beyond the live event and that they discuss the live event as mediated experience.

References Avgitidou, A. (2020). Performance Art:The Basics.A Beginner’s Course Guide. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press.

6

Introduction

Britton, J. (2022). How to Teach Performance. Torrazza: Amazon. Gómez-Peña, G. & Sifuentes, R. (2011). Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy. London and New York: Routledge. Hill, L. & Paris, H. (2021). Curious Methods. Bristol: Intellect. Sofaer, J. (2009). The Many Headed Monster. London: Live Art Development Agency. Torrens, V. (2014). How We Teach Performance Art: University Courses and Workshop Syllabus. Parker, CO: Outskirts Press.

1

Introduction to performance

Part I Introduction In this introductory part we look at the terminology used to describe what we now predominantly call performance art and trace the history of these terms. In doing so we briefy refer to the associations that exist between terms and specifc art groups and movements. We also try to establish the difference of performance art from the performing arts. Finally, we also refer to how the terms performance and performativity were used in sociology, anthropology and theater studies, highlighting the connection of performance with everyday life. We then move to Part II to look into the origins and the history of performance.

What is performance art? We will avoid providing a defnition for performance art, not only because as Peggy Phelan has acutely pointed out, performance “becomes itself through disappearance” (1996, 146), but because a defnition might curtail the interpretations and possibilities opened by performance itself. Of course, in discussing performance we may attempt some clarifcations, in the frst instance with connection to the other visual arts. Clarifcations may also arise later in the chapter, when we refer to the terms that have been used for performance art and their connection to the historical and art context in which they have emerged. As is generally the case in the visual arts, in performance art the artist creates drawing from personal concerns, interests and aspirations and does not follow a script or directions written by another. Performance is carried out by the artists themselves: the body is a constitutive element of performance. Performance relies less on scenography tools (see also Carlson, 2014, 71), while objects may acquire a symbolic, ritualistic or unconventional, in terms of their function, role in performance. Typically, performance responds to the context in which it is being presented, be it spatial, social or political. This context is also constituted in the live,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-2

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Introduction to performance

unprogrammed and unpredictable meeting of performers and audience. It is in this meeting that performance happens.

Terms The use of the word “performance” creates a lot of misunderstandings. Performance is a word that, outside the artworld, is used to measure productivity, relating to commodities, indicators or human resources, in commerce, the sciences, technology, sports and education. In these cases, performance acquires the meaning of endeavor for maximum achievement and has a positivist connotation. But even when the word has a performative meaning, the context that it refers to may be non-artistic. For example, we talk of political performance or preaching as performance. In the arts, performance is not only used in connection with the visual arts. It is also used in the case of a “musical performance” or in the “performing arts” in general. So, the frst distinction that we are to make is between performance art and the performing arts. We do not do this in defense of any kind of purity of performance art but in order to avoid ambiguity, within reason. After all, there are cross-contaminations between the arts and hybrid forms emerge constantly, so any kind of defense of purity would be misguided and unproductive. In the performing arts, however, the training differs from the one carried out in art schools and offers knowledge and skills in specifc felds such as music, theater or dance. We do not of course claim that all artists receive a formal education but that the nature of the media requires specifc skills. Characteristically, as we will later review, performance artists intentionally distanced themselves from virtuosity on any given medium and claimed their connection with the everyday. Not all scholars of performance identify with this distinction though. In all the editions of the history/anthology of performance art written by RoseLee Goldberg since 1979, reference to artists who have expanded the limits of dance (Pina Bausch), theater1 (Robert Wilson, the Wooster Group) and music (Laurie Anderson) is signifcant in scope. Respectively broad in spectrum is the programming that Goldberg does for the PERFORMA2 biennial that she directs. The terms used for performance art vary and regularly follow the historical development of the medium. So, apart from performance art, the terms happening, body art, aktion (action) and live art have been used. If we were to go back to the avant-garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century, explored later in Part II, we would then encounter a number of neologisms that were used solely in connection to specifc movements such as synthesis (sintesi), sound poems, etc. •

The term happening is applied in contexts beyond the art world.3 This is indicative of an ambiguity that exists in many of the defnitions used for performance. This ambiguity is not treated as negative by all

Introduction to performance

•

•

•

9

performance scholars but is considered rather a consequence of the “ambiguity that resides at its conceptual core” (Gallie, 1964 in Carlson, 2014, 60). Alan Kaprow, the artist who coined the term happening, has characterized it as “unfortunate”, revealing to us that its use had as its sole intention, the creation of distance from whatever could connect it with something established such as the theater and sports (Kirby, 1965). In his writings, he does not respond negatively to the widespread use of the term but suspects its epidermal use as an event that at best releases inhibitions. He later uses the term activity, creating also the Activity Booklets, including instructions for the happening participants. The term body art is one of the terms widely used in the past and which is used even today. The term is indicative of the primacy of the body in performance art and appears with the emergence of the “historical” performance of the 1960s and 1970s. RoseLee Goldberg (1998) discusses body art in connection with the works of Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Carolee Schneemann and others, situating it in the beginning of the 1960s. The term body art also appears as complementary to the term performance, e.g. in Lea Vergine’s Body Art and Performance: The Body as Language (2007 [1974]). It is, fnally, a term that, as was the occasion with happenings, has also been used for other purposes, e.g. in tattoo art and body painting. Alongside the term body art, more descriptive terms will appear, such as endurance art (Goldberg, 1998), since what characterized many of the performances in the 1960s and 1970s was that artists tested the limits of their physical endurance in various ways (pain, exhaustion, etc.). In the seminal record of conceptual art, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 … (1997 [1973]), Lucy Lippard refers to another aspect of performance, that of the convergence with the everyday, through terms such as art-as-life and lifeas-art (1997, xiv), or, more specifcally, identity works, on the occasion of the art of Adrian Piper (1997, xii). The term Aktion (German for action) is associated with the Viennese Actionists and essentially demarcates the time period of its use. The Viennese Actionists, with principal members Otto Muhl, Günter Brus, Rudolf Schwarzkogler and Herman Nitsch, from the end of the 1950s, created provocative actions, aiming to harshly criticize Austrian society. The Orgy Mysteries Theater of Herman Nitsch, comprising of actions with a ritualistic character, was the last activity of the Viennese Actionists to survive into the 1990s. The term action (or the more general event), divested of its connection to the Actionists, is a fairly broad term that is used frequently for performance. According to Torrens (2014) the term (art) action was used as a reaction to the prevalence of Anglo-Saxon culture.

10 Introduction to performance •

•

•

The most prevalent term though from the 1970s onwards is of course performance art (or just performance). Another term that has predominated is also live art, in connection with the live character of the medium. According to Goldberg (1988 [1979]) it is mostly used in the UK.4 In the cases that the camera plays the role of the viewer, that is for works that have from the start been conceived as a recording and not recorded live performances, we also use the terms performance for camera / performance on camera. The term video performance has also been used in the past, but it leaves margin for ambiguity. In contemporary art there have emerged hybrid genres that have broadened the limits of performance art. Performative art practices, as these are usually called, may be organized as collective, participatory or relational endeavors, activate techno-political means and utilize concepts from philosophy or architecture (Dafos, 2016).

Performance in everyday life, culture and society The everyday as a “raw material” for performances will be the subject of the seventh chapter. In this section we will deal with the relationship of performance and everyday life. Performance as the presentation / construction of the self, as a playing out of a role/s and a process of constructing subjectivity, has been studied by sociologists, social anthropologists and philosophers (philosophy of language). The relation of performance to everyday life is a given for the anthropologist Victor Turner (1982); he argues that all forms of cultural performances are in a way an interpretation of life itself. As we will see below, approaches to the relationship of performance to everyday life differ across researchers belonging to the aforementioned felds, but also converge or even complement each other. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (frst published in 1956), Erving Goffman argues that we are constantly enacting a role, aiming to create specifc impressions to those around us and to ourselves. These impressions depend upon a number of factors such as appearance and setting and the several means at our disposal (verbal, expressive, kinetic), means which Goffman describes in dramaturgical terms. We may believe in the reality of the self that we are presenting or we may not. However cynical we may appear in the second case, Goffman contends that this is not a question of ethics. Besides, he recognizes that a person may enact different roles in accordance with the context of the situation at hand, the people who are present or their interlocutors. According to Carlson (2014), Goffman focuses more on context rather that the action of the performer, something that Butler will, much later, elucidate. Stemming from the feld of performance theory, Richard Schechner (1985) introduces the term restored behavior, suggesting that there is no original

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action but that all of our activities comprise of repeated behaviors which we restate and shape at an aesthetic level (e.g. in theater), in everyday life or in ritual. Schechner will later develop the correlation of everyday life, theatre and ritual, through the defnition of social drama, a result of the research developed (also) through his very constructive collaboration with the anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner (1982) draws on Arnold Van Gennep’s study of the rites of passage, ceremonies that signify a transitional state for people, or even whole societies, in order to suggest a distinction between the terms liminal and liminoid. He relates these terms with the pre-industrial (traditional) society and the modern society respectively. In the frst instance, the liminal is viewed as separate from everyday life and may differ spatially from the rest of living: for example, in the rites of passage that signify the passage to adulthood. In the second instance, the liminoid opens up possibilities; it is “more creative and at the same time more destructive than the structural canon”. The liminoid is a state in which a change or a threat is lurking, and undoubtedly a state in which people are troubled and called to criticism. He nevertheless considers that elements of the liminal also lurk in the liminoid. The next distinction that Turner puts into place is between social and aesthetic or stage drama. Social drama for Turner comprises of the following stages: breech, crisis, regressive action, reintegration or schism. Turner recognizes a relationship that exists between socio-economical formations and the forms of civilization in traditional, post-industrial and modern societies. Referring to forms of crisis or confict on a personal or social level, he recognizes aesthetic forms that derive from theater or dance. He believes that ritual performances are the ways that societies deal with change and adjust. Therefore, the performances of ritual for Turner function for the redress or break between people or social groups, following the crisis: But ritual and its progeny, the performance arts among them, derive from the subjunctive, liminal, refexive, exploratory heart of the social drama, its third, redressive phase, where the contents of group experiences (Erlebnisse) are replicated, dismembered, remembered, refashioned, and mutely or vocally made meaningful. (1990, 13)

Schechner (2004 [1988]) appears to accept the structure of the social drama as put forward by Turner but locates the essential drama (instead of confict and its resolve) in the transformation which takes place in theatre, in dramatic action, its performers and the audience. Although he recognizes that some of the performances of the transformations of social drama instigate permanent changes, he considers that, on the contrary, in the aesthetic

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drama there are no permanent changes. There are however “fundamental, if temporary, transformations of being, not mere appearance…. The function of aesthetic drama is to do for the consciousness of the audience what social drama does for its participants: providing a place for, and means of, transformation” (2004 [1988], 192–3). Erika Fischer-Lichte (2008 [2004]) likewise discusses the transformative power of performance in her analysis of a performance by Marina Abramovic´. Fischer-Lichte argues that performance transforms viewers to actors and explains how the (re)actions of the viewers happen before they have a chance to think, refect or analyze what is happening in front of them. The relationship between performer and audience though is not a dichotomy, neither does it move from performer to audience, but it is a relationship the direction of which oscillates. The theatricality of everyday life is recognized by Judith Butler (1990), who maintains that there is no pre-existing gender identity, but that this is constructed in the repetition of acts, gestures and body moves: the subject is constructed performatively. Butler’s theory5 is based on J. L. Austin’s notion of performativity explained in How to Do Things with Words (1962). Austin distinguishes verbal utterances in those who say, declare, record or describe something and those in which the utterance of the words themselves is (part of) an action. He calls the latter utterances performative and he characteristically explains them in the following example: “When I say, before the registrar or altar ‘I do’, I am not reporting on a marriage: I am indulging in it” (1962, 6). He goes on to explain that speaking out the words is an external expression of a feeling or persuasion and that uttering these words may require the appropriate context (circumstances) or additional acts to be performed at the same time for them to be valid. In Part I we showed how the various terms that have been and are still used to name performance art have evolved historically starting off with the happenings, emerging during the 1950s and ending with the more inclusive term of performative practices. We then looked at how researchers from different disciplines framed performance as part of everyday life. For Goffman, we perform a role and adjust it to circumstances to create an image we mean to project to others and ourselves. Schechner claims that all behavior is a reiteration, what he coins as restored behavior, and he connects everyday life, ritual and theater through the social drama. Turner shares his ideas for the social drama and places rituals (including the performance arts as its descendant) at the stage that follows crisis. Schechner is instead interested in the aesthetic drama and the transformative, albeit temporary power it holds for its participants, something that Fischer-Lichte also discusses. Lastly, following Austin’s notion of performativity, Butler argues that the subject is constructed performatively, through the reiteration of acts, gestures and body moves.

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Part II Introduction In Part II we trace the origins of performance art in the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century: Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism and the Bauhaus. We also discuss happenings and the post-war groups and movements that acted in the context of what we now call performance. We explore these movements, their particular use of language and their employment of the manifesto through activities and action prompts. An activity in relation to Fluxus is also suggested. The aim of Part II is that performers acquire knowledge of the historical origins of performance, are able to distinguish the different movements and appreciate their common ground and differences, understand the relationship of these movements to contemporary performance and explore some of the methods and approaches of these groups and movements through individual and group activities.

Performance and the avant-garde The historical origins of performance can be traced back to the avantgarde movements of the early twentieth century. Although we cannot claim that there is a historical continuity between the activity of these movements and performance as we know it from the 1970s onwards, the element of bodily action, their subversive approach, the immediacy of their relationship with the audience and their response to social and political issues, elements that performance maintains to this very day, have their origin in these very movements. It is no coincidence that the movements of Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism and Surrealism, from which the frst performances spring, were born in the turmoil of the early twentieth century in Europe. This was a time of nationalist upheavals and social demands that culminated in the declaration of World War I (1914–18). Under the threat of World War I, many artists fed to Zurich to avoid enlisting and established Dada there. In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Russia, at the time under Tsarist rule. It was there that Constructivism began its dynamic course, a course that would be blocked by Stalin’s rise to power. Finally, the Bauhaus school was founded in 1919 in post-war Germany, under the infuence of the Deutscher Werkbund, which sought to rebuild the country through a partnership of production and art forces. Artists responded to the chaos, upheaval and horror of war by rejecting authorities in art and the established and accepted ways of expression, provoking, troubling and infuriating their audiences and society. Modernism had already denoted a rupture with the past and embraced the present:

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in post-industrial cities, the beauty of the crowd was praised by Charles Baudelaire, the alienation of city inhabitants was represented in Ernst Kirchner paintings and fragmented experience and individuality analyzed in the writings of Georg Simmel. At the same time, in Europe, thinkers and philosophers such as Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche had a strong impact on all the avant-garde movements. Futurism was founded in Italy by artists who came mostly from the literary arts. Its founder, Tommaso Marinetti, had seen Alfred Jarry’s play, Ubu Roi (1896) during his stay in Paris. As we will discuss later, this experience would infuence the course of the founder of Futurism. The assassinations of kings, vulgar language and the combination of the sexual with the scatological, coexist in Ubu Roi, without any explanation or disapproval (Bay-Cheng, 2004). For Bay-Cheng, avant-garde’s challenging of theatrical conventions has to do with the overthrow of scientifc certainties and the denial of God’s existence at the end of the 19th century. The Futurists’ persistent pursuit of publicity and prominence was evident from the outset, in the publication of their manifesto on the front page of the French newspaper Le Figaro (February 20, 1909), by Marinetti. The manifesto was an element shared by the avant-garde of the early twentieth century. It was a proclamation (or several) that included principles, aphorisms and, as a rule, generally absolute positions. In the Futurist Manifesto, the rejection of the past and the embrace of speed and technology went hand in hand with the defense of nationalism and misogyny. Among the various traditional artistic media Futurists would explore, they introduced performance. According to RoseLee Goldberg, the shift of the painters (members of the Futurist movement) to performance was related to their search for the provocation of a “dynamic sensation” and an immediate experience for the viewer (1988, 14).   Preceding the appearance of Futurism, semi-theatrical forms, such as vaudeville, variety and cabaret continued to exist in Europe and the US. Vaudeville, popular in the US, was a form of mass entertainment that combined circus numbers, theater, dance and curiosities which had no connecting components between them. The variety show appeared as a more elaborate form of performance than vaudeville, which had artistic elements and sought the active participation of the audience. Cabaret, on the other hand, introduced a political element and the critique of conventional life, society and its ethics (Selenick, 2001 in Carlson, 2017). The Futurists organized the serate (evenings), in which they copied the assortment of actions and performing arts that the variety show encompassed. Futurists desired and even provoked the, often violent, reaction of the public. They went as far as to ensure it by double-booking seats or applying glue to the seats and by performing extreme actions such as burning the Austrian fag (Goldberg, 1998). In another provocative act, Marinetti and his friends climbed to the Bell Tower of St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice,

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on a Sunday, waiting for the congregation to exit the church and then threw insults at them. The poet Marinetti advocated dynamic declamation as a way for artists to move away from established creative expressions, which he demonstrated in the performance Zang Tump Tump (1912) on the siege of Andrianoupolis. During his recitation he used hammers, blackboards, chalk and a drum in the next room, for which he called to be played by phone (Goldberg, 1998). In the Synthetic Theater that followed the homonymous manifesto (1915), Futurists explored minimalist versions of performance such as the partial view of the body (Marinetti, Feet, 1915), the setting as the main performer (Marinetti, They’re Coming, 1915) or the single movement / line (Bruno Corra and Emilio Settimelli, Negative Act, 1915) (Goldberg, 1998). The idea of simultaneity formulated by Marinetti, evolved from performing simultaneous unrelated actions, in the frst performances of the Futurists, into works where two or more scenes were played in parallel, with the action crossing them at some point in the play or even plays that were written in parallel columns (Goldberg, 1998). The manifesto of the Futuristic Aerial Theater (1919) and the manifesto of the Futuristic Radiophonic Theater (1933) would be the last signifcant contributions of Futurism. Concurrently, the Italians infuenced the Russian Futurists, who developed their own version of Futurism, starting with the manifesto A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, in 1912 (Goldberg, 1998). In fact, Marinetti visited St. Petersburg and Moscow in February 1914 to give lectures (Gurianova, 2012). As Gurianova informs us, during his meetings with the Russian Futurists, their differences and contradictions were strongly highlighted.What Cabaret Voltaire was to the Dadaists, the Stray Cat Cafe was to the Russian Futurists (Goldberg, 1998). Vladimir Mayakovksy and his friends frequented this St. Petersburg café. They roamed the city wearing sophisticated clothes, with painted faces and carrying sprouts as bouquets, proclaiming life and art’s freedom from conventions (Chondrou, 2006).The large productions of 1913, Vladimir Mayakovksy (tragedy) and Victory over the Sun (opera), shared the characteristics of distance from realism and from the logical progress of the plot, the idea of a total design, the collaboration of artists from different felds and mechanical movement. Later on, Constructivists went on to develop the idea of mechanical motion, linked action with propaganda (see also the use of Agitprop trains), and created large-scale multi-participant projects, taking performance away from the theater and activating daily working living places (Goldberg, 1998). In 1916, Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings founded Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where they had fed to escape World War I. In Munich and Berlin which they left behind in 1915, there were various cabaret performances with content subversive for the dominant morality and order. Cabaret Voltaire would become the center of Dada activity, attracting artists such as Tristan Tzara (who wrote the Dada Manifestos) and Marcel Janco. In The First Heavenly Adventure of M. Antipyrine (Première Aventure Céléste

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de M. Antipyrine), Tzara recited incomprehensible, meaningless monologues (Sommer, 2012). According to Bay-Cheng (2004), avant-garde theater does not deny the text but goes against the narrative progression of the plot observed in typical theatre. Even more destabilizing to the function of the text as a bearer of meaning were the sound poems of Hugo Ball. Ball, in a makeshift cardboard suit reminiscent of a bird and a tall hat with blue and white stripes like a doctor-magician, recited incomprehensible phrases: “Gadgi beri bimba…” (Chondrou, 2006). The Dadaists used the simultaneous recitation introduced by the Futurists. In one of their manifestos Tristan Tzara declared: “I’m writing this manifesto to show you that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, in one single, fresh breath; I am against action; as for continual contradiction, and affirmation too, I am neither for nor against them, and I won’t explain myself because I hate common sense” (Tzara, 2013 [1924], 4). The intensity of Dada, the impossible stake of serving the absolute and the nihilistic attitude of the movement soon led to its dissolution. With the dissolution of Dada, Tzara moved to Paris, in 1919, as most of the Dadaists joined the Surrealism movement. Dada and Tristan Tzara were already known to Surrealists. Surrealism, like Futurism, was created mainly by writers and poets, led by André Breton. Surrealists were interested in the absurdity of dreams and their link to the unconscious, creating the concept of automatic writing in order to explore them.Their characteristic performance was Francis Picabia’s Relâche (1924). Simultaneous events, actors moving in between the spectators and the screening of a flm in which Picabia danced dressed as a ballerina and Jean Borlin jumped out of a coffin, were the hallmarks of the show (Goldberg, 1998). Simultaneously with Tzara’s departure for Paris, a new school was founded in Weimar, Germany. In this groundbreaking school, Oscar Schlemmer explored the possibilities of body movement in space while Lazlo MoholyNagy attempted to break down the boundary between the space of the public and that of action through constructions and sounds coming from different directions of the room. He also used projections of flm and light as well as polymorphic costumes. We are of course referring to the Bauhaus, a school which pioneered innovation in art, design and the training of artists. The contribution of the aforementioned movements to art was manifold and is certainly not exhausted in the brief report we made for the purposes of this chapter. It would be an exaggeration to argue that there is a direct line connecting the avant-garde of the turn of the twentieth century with what will be later called performance art. Nevertheless, we may argue that the contribution of these movements, and especially of Futurism and Dada, in the development of performance art may be traced in the following: •

Breaking the distance with the public: The actions provoked the reaction of the audience but also breached the assigned spaces of performer and audience.

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•

•

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The direct correlation of performance with the “present” of society. These movements were directly connected with the political and technological developments of their time and addressed society, also through their harsh criticism. The departure from logocentric action,6 either in the absence of speech or in the contempt for the progressive evolution of the narrative or the meaning of the speech itself and the exploration of sound7 beyond conventional music. The amalgamation of the arts. The use of modes, materials and methods across artistic genres released new expressive tools, breaking down the barriers between the arts.

Case Study 1 Hugo Ball, Gadgi Beri Bimba…, 1916 “On June 23, 1916, Hugo Ball presented lines without words, namely ‘sound poetry’. He was wearing a cylindrical tube of blue cardboard that reached to the hips and restricted the movement of his legs, and on top a huge collar, crimson on the inside and gold on the outside, tied around his neck so that he could mimic the fapping of wings by waving his elbows, with a tall hat, like a doctor-magician, with blue and white stripes, he began to recite from reading stands placed on three sides of the stage: gadgi beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori gadlama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim Gadjama tuffm I zimzalla binban gligia wowolimai bin beri ban p katalominal rhinicerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo gadjama rhinocerossola hopsamen bluku terullala blaulala looooo…

When the audience recovered after the frst surprise and exploded, the tone of Ball’s recitation became sharper, his chords pronounced wilder, to end up in the cadence that characterizes the chants of the Catholic Church” (Chondrou,8 2006, 17–18).

Activity 1 This exercise is performed in pairs. It was introduced to me in a workshop9 by John Britton. One of the performers sits in a comfortable position, eyes shut. The other one may move at will. The roles are reversed at the end of the activity and the activity is repeated. Select a random sentence from a

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book, a magazine, a website, etc. Read it out loud, pronouncing the words as if they had no meaning. Experiment with the duration of the words, the intonation, the volume of your voice, etc. Note: It is suggested to “warm up” with vocal exercises.

Refective questions • •

What was the difference between the experience of reciting and that of listening for you in this activity? Was there a point at which you stopped distinguishing / seeking for the words behind the recitation? What condition allowed for this to happen?

Case study 2 Sophie Calle, Take Care of Yourself, 2007 Take Care of Yourself by Sophie Calle, was presented in 2007 at the French Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. The prompt for this work was a break-up email that the artist received from her lover, which ended with the sentence “Take care of yourself”. In the words of the artist from the accompanying press release: I received an email telling me it was over. I didn’t know how to answer. It was as if it wasn’t meant for me. It ended with the words: Take care of yourself. I took this recommendation literally. I asked hundred and two women, chosen for their profession, to interpret the letter in their professional capacity. To analyze it, provide a commentary on it, act it, dance it, sing it. Dissect it. Squeeze it dry. Understand for me. Answer for me. It was a way to take the time to break up. At my own pace. A way to take care of myself.

The installation at the Venice Biennale consisted of photographs of women participating in the project, videos of them reciting, dancing or “playing” the letter, as well as images of the processed letter on paper, e.g. by a graphologist. The text of this letter received multiple interpretations and performances in accordance with the profession of each woman. Calle has created works inspired by personal experience and/or with autobiographical content. In this particular work, the contrast between the personal content of the letter and, initially, its assignment for use to 102 women and subsequently its grand public presentation at the Biennale, is acute. The intimacy of a personal communication between a couple is annulled here on different levels. However, new relationships are created each time between the personal message and its performers. What interests us in this chapter is the way in which the repetition of the different use of text breaks the relationship between text and content, using words as raw material that are open to usage and interpretation.

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Refective questions •

What is the difference between the ways Ball and Calle use text?

Practice prompt 1: my manifesto After studying the following excerpts from the Dadaist Manifestos, prepare your own manifesto for art, life, or both, in order to present it. Think about whether and in what way the presentation of your manifesto is related to its content, meaning and style. UNPRETENTIOUS PROCLAMATION Art is putting itself to sleep to bring about the birth of the new world “ART” – a parrot word – replaced by DADA, PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief the talent THAT CAN BE LEARNT turns the poet into an ironmonger TODAY criticism balances doesn’t throw up any resemblances Hypertopic painters hyperaestheticised and hypnotized by the hyacinths of the muezzins of hypocritical appearance CONSOLIDATE THE EXACT HARVEST OF CALCULATION HYPODROME OF IMMORTAL GUARANTEES: there is no importance there is neither transparence nor appearance MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR BLIND INSTRUMENTS on the stage The BAZOOKA is only for my understanding. I write because it’s natural like I piss like I’m ill Art needs an operation Art is a PRETENTION heated at the TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, hysteria born in the studio We are looking for a straightforward pure sober unique force we are looking for NOTHING we affirm the VITALITY of every instant the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics At this moment I hate the man who whispers before the interval – eau de cologne – sous theatre. SWEET WIND. IF EVERYONE SAYS THE OPPOSITE IT’S BECAUSE HE’S RIGHT Prepare the geyser of our blood – the submarine formation of transcromatic aeroplanes, metals with cells and ciphered in the upsurge of images above the rules of the Beautiful and of its inspection It isn’t for those abortions who still worship their own navels… (Tzara, 2013 [1924], 15–17)

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Practice prompt 2 Following Tzara’s directions below and replacing the newspaper with your manifesto, create a new manifesto and present it. TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM Take a newspaper. Take some scissors. Choose form this paper an article of the length you want to make the poem. Cut out the article. Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag. Shake gently. Next take out each cutting one after the other. Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag. The poem will resemble you. And there you are – an infnitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd. (Tzara, 2013 [1924], 39)

Happenings, Cage, Fluxus We began discussing the historical origins of performance by referring to the avant-garde movements, connected with the historical events of World War I and the October Revolution. However, the center of western artistic creation after World War II shifted to the United States. On Hitler’s rise to power, the Bauhaus School was shut down and most of its professors emigrated, mainly to the US. In the US, they contributed to the newly established Black Mountain College (1933), an experimental educational

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utopia. Artists such as John Cage and Merce Cunningham would later join the college. John Cage was a musician who would in a way continue the musical experimentations conducted by the Futurists, in that he proposed a new concept of music that included non-musical sounds and introduced performance elements into his musical shows.10 He was associated with the Fluxus movement, which we will discuss later in this section. Cage proposed the daily noise of the city and virtually all sound as music, modifying existing musical instruments and introducing the production of music with objects which were not instruments.11 He devised the prepared piano, a piano that had various objects placed on its strings, e.g. screws, thus altering the sound produced on pressing its keys. His most renowned work, however, is 4΄33΄΄ (1952). In this performance a pianist goes up on stage and sits in front of the piano. He then raises his hand, as if to start playing, and leaves it suspended, avoiding pressing a key for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. During this time, the audience progressively begins to perceive the minor noises of the room, those that come from their neighboring spectators or even those produced by their own body. Cage himself explained his conception of music (co)creation: And here, more and more in my performances, I try to bring about a situation in which there is no difference between the audience and the performers. And I’m not speaking of audience participation in something designed by the composer, but rather am I speaking of the music which arises through the activity of both performers and so-called audience… (Cage, 1997)

In other words, Cage advocated public participation as active listening. This view was perfectly consistent with his positions on randomness and uncertainty as parts of composing. Coincidence and the association with the everyday are two elements which connect him with dancer Merce Cunningham, with whom he would collaborate and later teach for two consequent summer schools in Black Mountain (1948–9). Merce Cunningham introduced daily movements, such as walking and stasis, into dance while in one of his works he decided the order of the parts by playing heads or tails (Goldberg, 1998). The association of everyday life and art, the departure from artistic virtuosity and even its sabotaging and, lastly, the active participation of the public, also featured in various Fluxus performances and in happenings. The demand for linking life and art is of course not a new concept in the art world. It emerged in the Arts and Crafts movement in mid-19th-century England and resurfaced with the Deutsche Werkbund and subsequently the Bauhaus. It is also evident in the readymade and collages of Dadaists and Surrealists. According to Alan Kaprow, the founder of happenings: “The

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line between art and life should be kept as fuid, and perhaps indistinct, as possible” (2002 [1996], 260). Continuing to explain his positions in the same text, Kaprow declared his departure from the existing arts as a way to create space for new things to emerge, proposed the search for open and each time different places for happenings and declared the elimination of the public: everyone is a participant. To state this connection of happenings to life, in the (frst) letter-invitation to 18 happenings in 6 parts, Kaprow urged guests to consider their experience as something like a “Macy’s shopping spree; how to grow geraniums in New York” (Kaprow, 1965, 67). During 18 happenings in 6 parts, visitors were given specifc instructions on when to move from one place to another and when to applaud. A series of activities such as screenings, playing musical instruments, readings and painting, took place in the various “rooms”. In other works, Kaprow activated open-air and urban spaces and orchestrated the participation of other performers and the public. In these happenings, there was no political or other subversive content, which we will later observe in performance art. For example, in Household (1964), carried out in a garbage dump, men build a makeshift tower while women lick the jam spread on a car, taking turns in entering various stereotypical gender roles, without any critical or subversive objective. Happenings were also conducted by artists Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg and others. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic, in Wiesbaden, Germany, George Maciunas conducted the frst Fluxus concert, Fluxus Internationale Festspiele neuester Musik (1962). Fluxus was not a movement with specifc programmatic statements but rather a fuid group of artists united by an ideological approach towards art that rejected established values, broadened the defnition of art, adopted subversive practices and was indifferent to the art market. If happenings turned audiences into participants, Fluxus turned audiences into creators. Many of Fluxus’ works were series of instructions (scores) that anyone could perform. For example, Nam June Paik performed Zen for Head, 1962, under the directions of Le Monte Young, by dipping his head (and tie) into a bowl of color and tomato juice and dragging them onto paper, thus creating a straight line. Some instructions are brief, others extensive, general or detailed and specifc, plausible or impossible to realize. A number of these are included in Friedman, Smith and Sawchyn’s, The Fluxus Performance Workbook (2002): [Robert Bozzi] A piano is on stage. The performer enters wearing a crash helmet. He takes a stage position as far from the piano as possible. He lowers his head and dashes toward the piano at top speed, crashing into the piano with helmeted head. (2002, 16)

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[Yoko Ono] Painting to be Stepped On Leave a piece of canvas or fnished painting on the foor or in the street. (2002, 86)

Many Fluxus artists were musicians, but rejected their musical skills by playing instruments they did not master, by placing objects on the instruments (as Cage did for the prepared piano), by painting the piano and nailing its keys while someone was playing, etc. The experiments of Cage also resonate in the work Motor Vehicle Sundown (1962), in which the sound of various cars, marching and honking is conducted by a maestro. During the same period, in Japan, the group Hi Red Centre cleaned the pavement outside Hotel Plaza with toothbrushes in Street Cleaning Event. Here is the event’s description from The Fluxus Performance Workbook: Performers are dressed in white coats like laboratory technicians. They go to a selected location in the city. An area of a sidewalk is designed for the event. This area of sidewalk is cleaned very thoroughly with various devices not usually used in street cleaning, such as: dental tools, toothbrushes, steel wool, cotton balls with alcohol, cotton swabs, surgeon’s sponges, tooth picks, linen napkins, etc. (2002, 49)

Active in the Japanese scene was also the infuential Gutai Group, formed in 1954. According to Goldberg, Gutai Group “provided the initial connections between Japanese, European, and American Happenings and Fluxus activities” (1998, 12). Their actions incorporated performances, sound, light and media projections. In the Fluxus Manifesto (1963), George Maciunas wrote: Purge the world of bourgeois sickness, “intellectual”, professional & commercialized culture, PURGE the world of dead art, imitation, artifcial art, abstract art, illusionistic art, mathematical art, – PURGE THE WORLD OF “EUROPANISM”! (https://www.moma.org/collection/works/127947)

Joseph Beuys put his own stamp on the manifesto (literally), replacing the word “Europeanism” in “… Free the World from Europeanism!”, with the word “Americanism” (https://bit.ly/3r4hk96). Characteristically, for his performance I Like America and America Likes Me (1974), he traveled to the United States, without ever setting foot on American soil! Beuys few from Düsseldorf to New York, got off the plane wrapped in felt and was transported to the gallery in an ambulance. He would spend seven days there, in “conversation” with a coyote on site. The felt he sometimes wrapped himself in, the cane he held and a metal triangle hanging from his neck were parts of his personal biography/

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mythology and held a symbolic value for him. Felt appears in many of his works and is a reference to the felt in which, along with fat, he was wrapped by nomadic Tatars, to help him survive after the crash of his plane in World War II. In the gallery, there was also a pile of straw, and ffty copies of the fnancial newspaper the Wall Street Journal, which were delivered daily (Chondrou, 2006). “I wanted to concentrate only on the coyote. I wanted to isolate myself, insulate myself, see nothing of America other than the coyote … and exchange roles with it,” reports Beuys (Goldberg, 1998, 151). For Goldberg this performance was a response to the history of the persecution of native American Indians and European-American relations. Broader issues such as those of the human-nature and culture-nature binaries were also raised. Beuys would have a wide and long-lasting infuence on artists through his broader approach to art and life, which he did not perceive as separate. His art and teaching, partially in formal education at the Düsseldorf Academy up to when he got fred, was based on his belief that “art should effectively transform people’s everyday lives” (Goldberg, 1998, 149). “To be a teacher, this is my most important work of art” was one of his sayings (Chondrou, 2006, 49). For his participation in the distinguished exhibition of the sixth Documenta (1977), Beuys created a space for discussion and the exchange of thoughts, transformed into a classroom with blackboards where he explained and discussed his ideas. This connection with society would also be realized in his concept of social sculpture, a concept that embraced environmental concerns for the future of humanity.

Activity 1 Create groups of 3–5 people. Each group receives a set of existing instructions. These may be an aircraft safety card you may fnd on airplanes or safety instructions for the use of elevators, etc. You are invited to create a group performance of 5 minutes minimum, based on these instructions.You may interpret them as literally or abstractly / conceptually as you want.

Refective questions • • •

How did you negotiate your ideas within your group? Did you contribute to the ideas of other members of the group? Was your original plan altered in the course of the performance?

Case study 3 George Brecht, Three Yellow Events (1961), Direction (1961), Five Events (1961) Some of Fluxus’ scores (instructions) were very specifc, while others left much room for interpretation. See some examples for both below.

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Three Yellow Events

1 2 3

yellow yellow yellow yellow loud red

Direction

Arrange to observe a sign indicating direction of travel. Travel to the indicated direction. Travel in another direction. Five Events

eating with between two breaths sleep wet hand several words (Friedman, Smith & Sawchyn, 2002, 24)

Activity 2 Write a set of instructions following the steps set out by Fluxus. Exchange these instructions between the group. Do not reveal their content to anyone.

Practice prompt 3 Envisage a performance in response to the set of instructions you have received to be performed in the studio. Keep the instructions and put them up on the board. At the end of the performances, performers match instructions to performances.

In search of the origins of performance art In our search of the origins of performance, we referred to the artistic avant-garde of the beginning of the twentieth century. We emphasized from the start that one cannot claim a direct connection of the aforementioned movements with what we will from the 1970s call performance art. Also, as Marvin Carlson (2017 [1996]) pointed out, the actions of the avantgarde were group actions, in contrast to the solo performance artist as she will emerge later. Nevertheless, the avant-garde movements introduced important elements of performance such as the artists’ physical involvement and action, audience participation and performers’ response to contemporary political and social conditions. References to the similarities

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of performance art to unconventional or transgressive social behavior, identifed for example in the actions of ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes or of the holy fools (Avgitidou, 2016, Filippova, 2015 and others), cannot be considered as the historical origins of performance. The reason is that artistic activity is a conscious choice for the artist, which is indeed made with reference to the “real” (everyday) life but eventually presented in a different context. The performative turn of the 1960s has been studied by scholars from different but related felds who have speculated on its emergence. The approaches of theater-based scholars (such as John Carson) or art historians (such as RoseLee Goldberg) may differ, but they also share similarities. One of them is the reference to the role that Minimalism played in changing the viewer’s relationship with art. According to the article Art and Objecthood, by Michael Fried, pubished in1964, to which both of the above authors refer, Minimalism integrated viewers within the work of art, making them perceive themselves and their movement within the artwork as part of their experience of said artwork. Minimalism is also considered the movement Conceptual Art emerged from, in the 1970s, according to Lucy Lippard (1997 [1973]). As we will observe later, creative exchange and sometimes the identifcation of conceptual art with performance are very common. The flms and photographs in which Hans Namuth immortalized Jackson Pollock “on the job” were widely circulated in the early 1950s and had a major impact on artists (Goldberg, 1998). Some even tracked the origins of happenings in painting and collages (Seitz, 1961 in Kirby, 1965) and more specifcally correlated happenings with the “happy accidents” of abstract expressionist painting (Kirby, 1965). Kaprow himself named Pollock as the source of his inspiration for what he called action-collages, which would eventually turn into happenings (1965). The elements that came to the fore with abstract expressionism were the focus on the process of creating, which incorporated randomness, and the physicality of the artist, dynamically imprinted on the canvas. Besides, in addition to abstract expressionism, this movement was called action painting. In this chapter we visited terminology frequently used in referring to performance art and its connection to specifc historical moments and artistic movements. We also referred to the ways performance and performativity are approached by performance theorists, sociologists and philosophers of language. We then went on to search for the origins of performance art in the avant garde movements of the beginning of the twentieth century and visit specifc historical movements in the course of its short history. We consider this a basis and a starting point for anyone who is interested in delving into the practice of performance art and knowing more about it. We also attempted to frame performance within the wider history of art and performance discourse before going into the elements of the

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practice of performance, starting off with objects, continuing with the body and deepening further our understanding of performance in the chapters to follow.

Notes 1 We would place some of these artists in the felds of postdramatic theatre and devised theatre. Karen Jürs-Munby discusses the term postdramatic: “Thus, it will hopefully become clear that ‘post’ here is to be understood neither as an epochal category, nor simply as a chronological ‘after’ drama, a ‘forgetting’ of the dramatic ‘past’, but rather as a rupture and a beyond that continue to entertain relationships with drama and are in many ways an analysis and ‘anamnesis’ of drama. To call theatre ‘postdramatic’ involves subjecting the traditional relationship of theatre to drama to deconstruction and takes account of the numerous ways in which this relationship has been refgured in contemporary practice since the 1970s” (2006, 2). In devised theater, the fnal performance emerges through a collective and collaborative process in which all performers are involved and who can also shape the script of the performance. 2 https://performa-arts.org/about 3 Danae Chondrou mentions that “Diana Ross called love a happening, and a republican newspaper the democratic politician Bob Kennedy” (2006, 29). 4 See for example Heathfeld (2004). 5 We will discuss Butler’s views again in Chapter 3. 6 Carlson (2017) believes that the biggest contribution of Surrealism are the theoretical writings of Antonin Artaud, in which he goes against the “enslavement” of theater to the written word. 7 See for example the Intonarumori, the experimental instruments created and played by the Futurist Russolo brothers. 8 Translated from Greek by the author. 9 Workshop “Ensemble Physical Theater” realized in Thessaloniki, April 2011. 10 You can fnd an archive of his oeuvre in https://www.ubu.com/sound/cage.html and https://www.ubu.com/historical/cage/index.html. 11 In a Chicago concert in 1942, the musicians used beer bottles, plant pots, bells, disc brakes, etc. (Goldberg, 1998, 123).

References Avgitidou, A. (2016). Going against the grain: Drawing parallels between the tactics of performance artists and those of the holy fool. In Venice International Performance Art Week, 10–17/12/2016, Venice [unpublished symposium paper]. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words:The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bay-Cheng, S. (2004). Mama Dada: Gertrude Stein’s Avant-Garde Theater. New York and London: Routledge. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Cage, J. & Helms, G. H. (1997, Autumn). Refections of a progressive composer on a damaged society, October, pp. 77–93. doi:10.2307/779001 Carlson, M. (2017 [1996]). Performance: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge. Chondrou, D. (2006). Eikastikes Draseis (Art Actions). Athens: Apopeira.

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Dafos, K. (2016). Taktikes technopolitikon Meson, diadikasies Sygkrotisis Kinon Topon: Dronta Prosopa [Tactical Media, Processes of Establishing Common Ground: Active Subjects]. Epub: Kallipos. Filippova, D. (2015). Lineages of blasphemy and revelation – the holy fool tradition in post-Soviet political performance art. In Central European University VCS Conference “Dissonance”, March 2015, n.p. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008 [2004]). The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, S. I. Jain (Trans). London & New York: Routledge. Friedman, K., Smith, O. & Sawchyn, L. (2002). The Fluxus Performance Workshop. A Performance Research e-publication https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/fuxuswork book.pdf Goldberg, R. L. (1988 [1979]). Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson. Goldberg, R. L. (1998). Performance: Live Art Since the 60s. London: Thames and Hudson. Gurianova, N. (2012). The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde. Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press. Heathfeld, A. (Ed.). (2004). Live: Art and Performance. New York: Tate Publishing. Jürs-Munby, K. (2006). Introduction. In H.-T. Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre (K. JürsMunby, Trans.), pp. 1–14. London & New York: Routledge. Kaprow, A. (2002 [1996]). Assemblages, environments and happenings. In M. Huxley, N. Witts, (Eds.) The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, pp. 260–270. London: Routledge. Kaprow, A. (1965). 18 Happenings in 6 parts / the production. In M. Kirby (Ed.) Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology, pp. 67–83. New York: E. P. Dutton. Kirby, M. (Ed.) (1965). Happenings: An Illustrated Anthology. New York: E. P. Dutton. Lippard, R. L. (Ed.). (1997 [1973]). Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 … Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Phelan, P. (1996). Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Schechner R. (1985). Between Theater and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schechner R. (2004 [1988]). Performance Theory. London and New York: Routledge. Senelick, L. (Ed.) (2001). Cabaret Performance. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications. Sommer, K. (2012). ‘Dada is dead – long live Dada’: The infuence of Dadaism on contemporary performance art. In E. Adamowicz and E. Robertson (Ed.), Dada and Beyond. Volume 2: Dada and its Legacies (pp. 43–53). Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. Tzara, T. (2013 [1924]). Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampisteries. B. Wright (trans.). Surrey: Alma Books. Torrens, V. (2014). How We Teach Performance Art: University Courses and Workshop Syllabus. Denver: Outskirts Press. Turner, V. (1982). From Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications. Vergine, L. (2007 [1974]). Body Art and Performance:The Body as Language. Milano: Skira.

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Materials in performance Objects

Why objects? In this chapter we approach objects as one of the basic materials of performance and we introduce the concept of the agent (objects as agents). The aim of the chapter is to explore the materiality of objects we may use in a performance and the ways performers may interact with them. Performers experiment with the potential function of objects that goes beyond their ordinary use and are encouraged to see everyday, plain and commonplace objects with “fresh eyes”, perceive them as part of a performance vocabulary and incorporate them into future performances. The category object, for the purposes of this chapter, encompasses food. Food is perceived as a material that holds a signifcant space in the everyday, the social and the symbolic and is also frequently incorporated into performances as an object. Within this appreciation, corresponding case studies and activities are presented as a way of exploring food as a material in performance. The chapter ends with the exploration of objects as parts of material autobiography and the contemplation of their performative potential in collections.

Introduction The history of art, and essentially the history of the world through that of material culture, is the history of objects. A break in the timeline of the traditional space objects hold in art is instigated by the artist Marcel Duchamp. When Duchamp tips a urinal over and proceeds to sign and date it as “R. Mutt,1917”, he does more than create the frst readymade. The piece, called Fountain, is famous for its exclusion from the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists, a New York art show which any artist who had paid a fee could enter. However, Duchamp, having paid, was not included in the exhibition. The readymade is the point where high culture and low culture collide; the manufactured object enters the world of art and the creativity of the artist is distanced from the skill of handcrafting and specialized expertise. In proposing new ideas about what the artist does and how, Duchamp will infuence many generations of artists to come. As it has been quoted

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-3

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repeatedly by many, even conceptual art, to emerge over half a century after the Fountain, has been inspired by Duchamp. In Duchamp’s earlier work Bicycle wheel (1913) as well as in the surrealistic objects of Meret Oppenheim, produced a couple of decades later, everyday objects become the raw material of art, transformed by the gesture of the artists and, in the case of the latter one, invested with eerie, life-like qualities. In inventing the readymade, Marcel Duchamp deprived those objects of their intended use or of any function for that matter. Interestingly though, curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud claims that any use of an object is a betrayal of its original conception, because any use of an object is already an interpretation (Bourriaud, 2002b, 30–1). He comes to this conclusion stemming from Michel de Certeau’s oeuvre The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), discussed further in Chapter 7. In his book Postproduction (2002b), Bourriaud highlights personal choice as an equivalent of making, a hijacking of meaning that travels from products to cultural artefacts and, of course, art. While his interest lies in the ways that artists appropriate products, media, images and processes in their art-making, the idea of use as interpretation is also valuable in our own negotiation of objects and meaning. In the exploration of objects as part of performances and as agents in performance, we will use the concept of “use as interpretation”, a making anew of objects, in our performance activities and exercises. Performers will, by personal choice, invent new uses/functions/meanings for objects and even treat them as subjects (agents) in the performance. In a performance with agents, the performance artist may introduce ideas or give directions to the performance participants. Distanced from the notion of (historical) performance, which demands that the artists are present in their own performances, a performance with agents may be a performance that other artists participate in, who, within the general directions of the artist, are given a space for initiative and experimentation. Within the explorations of this chapter, we also address objects as agents in the performance and investigate the potential agency of the inanimate object and the idea of performing together or alongside the object. Agency is the capacity to act, have choice or infuence your life or any situation. So how may we consider objects as agents? The agency of objects has been addressed by archaeologists and anthropologists, more specifcally as part of material culture studies. Two remarks which have been made by them and are useful for our understanding of objects as agents are frstly that (social) context may change an object, the “mutability” of the object moving from one context to another, and, secondly, that objects may incite emotive reactions connected to the intentions of their creators (Hoskins, 2006). In performance, objects may be transformed from something with a specifc function and place in the world to something with a different function and signifcance with its placing in the performance space, its use and movement. Obviously, their entrance in the performance space is the result

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of the object’s manipulation from other performers, but, once there, an object acquires agency interacting with other performers and infuencing the course of action (see for example Case Study 2). The use of the word objects rather than props in this book, is chosen in the frst instance, in order to create a distance from theatricality, but also in order to address the agency of the object. In the introduction to her book Props: Readings in Theater Practice (2016), under the heading “Prop, Object, Thing or Puppet?”, Eleanor Margolies considers the focus on props as opposed to the more general word objects. Margolies traces the origin of the word prop (property), points out its negative associations (something dusty from the theatre storeroom) and highlights how the word object allows for connections across artistic and scientifc disciplines, from fne art to anthropology, while also cautioning about its perception as a non-subject. Things are subsequently presented as something that exceeds objects while containing the possibility of subjectivity and agency. Lastly, she notes that “every object is ‘loaded’ with past experience and anticipation” (2016, 10). In the following activities of the chapter, we will explore working with and against the loaded history and expectations that every object holds for us or we have invested it with (see e.g. how the above are explored in Case Study 6 below). Playfulness is an important factor in our exploration of the use of objects. In Homo Ludens (1964 [1950]), Johan Huizinga explains how play is an activity outside “ordinary life” that is considered non-serious but may potentially absorb us completely; we draw no material gain or proft from it and has its own time and rules. In our exploration of the use of objects, letting ourselves get absorbed into play will allow for new ideas and correlations to emerge. New functions for our objects may arise and new worlds, which our objects inhabit, may in the course be created. However, Huizinga cautions that play is not a forced activity, an activity that you intellectually decide to pursue but a voluntary activity guided by the pursue of pleasure. Play is in fact freedom itself! This is not oppositional with another characteristic of play that Huizinga puts forward: the fact that play “is order” (1964 [1950], 10). Play has its own rules and they are absolute. While an activity outside of everyday (serious) life, it has a life of its own, it is a heterotopia of sorts. Although Huizinga defnes play as an exclusively voluntary activity, he also locates a place for it in serious life, connecting it with obligation and duty: it is the place that rituals hold in our society. Connections between performance and play have been made by many scholars, mainly of the ethnographic tradition. Furthermore, performance theorist Richard Schechner (2006) identifed common properties between play, games, sports, theatre and ritual, in their use of time, the use of objects, their non-productivity, the presence of rules and the spaces they occupy. Expanding on the use of objects, Schechner comments on the lesser (market) value of performance objects (cheap, replaceable ones), a value that is altered in performance, as mundane objects may acquire an important

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or even principal role. Within the worlds created in play, games, sports and performance, the centrality and signifcance of objects makes the disparity between these worlds and the real one more acute. In Chapter 1 we referred to the connections between performance and ritual as discussed by anthropologists. In discussing the rites of passage, in From Ritual to Theatre:The Human Seriousness of Play (1982), Victor Turner introduces the notion of liminality, pointing out the blurring and merging of opposing states and social features. What interests us, within our own experimentations with objects, is the way that people in liminality, “… ‘play’ with the elements of the familiar and defamiliarize them” (1982, 61). Turner refers to the ideas of Brian Shutton-Smith, who views liminality as a source of cultural creativity. However, Turner makes a distinction between societies developed before and after the industrial revolution (examples of differences are the work-play continuum in premodern societies and the individuality of the creator in contemporary societies). Obviously, this proposed defamiliarization of the object in the following activities, does not hold the symbolic place it has in the rites of passage in traditional societies. The notion of liminality though may be helpful in contemplating the state we inhabit in this exploration. In our activities, in the current and following chapters of this book, the rules of play are the prompts/instructions of every activity. Play on these occasions is not, as Huizinga pointed out, a voluntary activity. That is why playfulness is suggested as something that we can create a space for in our daily lives and routines and not as something that we can decide to turn on and off for an activity in the studio. We also propose to activate, as methods, the practice of making the familiar unfamiliar and occupying a liminal space of neither or.

Activity 1: moving with a single object The purpose of this activity is to explore a plain object and discover its possibilities as much as the possibilities of interacting with it. The aim is that performers may realize the possibilities of everyday objects as performance objects and explore ways of interacting with such objects as partners in their performances. This activity has as its starting point an exercise introduced by Boris Nieslony in one of his workshops.1 Performers start walking within the space of the studio. They are allocated a sheet of paper by the instructor who also walks among them. They explore this paper as an object in whatever way interests them (the instructor may demonstrate the exercise by starting off on some of her own experimentations). After a few minutes of exploration, they choose some of their moves/interactions with the object in order to perform them. The center of the room is designated as the performance space. Performers enter and leave the performance space at random. A (small) maximum number of people that may be outside the performance space at

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any time, is designated, so that the majority of the performers are performing in the space at all times. When performers are outside the performance space, they can observe what the others are doing. When they are inside this space, they perform their chosen actions in repetition. They are encouraged to continue exploring these actions and potentially change them throughout the exercise. Subsequently everyone performs these actions in a small choreography in front of the group.

Refective questions • • • • • •

What did you fnd out about the exploration of the object that surprised you? What do you think were the criteria with which you chose the actions for the last part of the activity? Did your actions change when you were repeating them? What did you observe when you were in the performance space? What did you observe when you were outside the performance space? Which position (inside or outside) did you prefer? Do you know why?

Practice prompt 1: one object, one minute Choose an object from the studio or from a room in your apartment (e.g. kitchen) and sit down comfortably, taking the object onto your lap. If there is someone with you, you can ask them to randomly choose and bring you an object; if in class the instructor may allocate the objects. Close your eyes and imagine you are an extra-terrestrial who has landed on earth and is exploring this object. You know nothing of the object’s use and properties. Explore the materials this object is made of, its smell and temperature, the sound it makes, how it feels onto your body and how you may connect with it. Create a one-minute performance using this object.

Case study 1 Juliane Foronda, Accumulations Juliane Foronda’s various Accumulations (https://vimeo.com/65016256, https:// vimeo.com/86137929) are a good introduction to working with objects. Not performances per se, but stop-motion videos, these pieces introduce playfulness and disregard functionality, while still producing an installation that “works”. These videos challenge the notions of success, failure, intention and futility.

Refective questions • •

What if we are creating a world that functions on different terms? What if productivity is not the goal of our work?

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Materials in performance What if play replaced usefulness? What if you were a part of this accumulation?

Activity 2: objects as agents Part A: The room is set with different objects of different volume in various spots. We will consider objects, alongside performers, as partners in this activity. We move slowly in the room. There are obstacles that we may avoid. The options are: we may move within space; we may stand still; we may sit down. We may carry an object; we may move an object from one place to another, or we may observe it from afar.

Refective questions • • •

Who guides whom? What is your relationship with the object? Did you develop a comradeship with this object?

Part B: We then all move to one side of the room and use the space before the opposite wall as the performance space. On our own initiative (without taking turns) we stand one by one in the performance space. We continue in diptychs and triptychs. Create diptychs and triptychs with performers and objects as agents. Objects are moved from a third performer, outside the composition of the diptych/triptych.

Refective questions • •

How does the presence of an object affect your performance? Discuss your perception of object as agent after your experience of Activity 2.

Practice prompt 2 Practice moving with/along/in-connection-to an object while moving in pubic space. This may be urban infrastructure, litter or moving objects (e.g. a plastic bag moving in the gusting wind).

Case study 2 Erwin Wurm, One Minute Sculptures Erwin Wurm has famously produced his self-explanatory One Minute Sculptures by placing himself or members of the public with, up or against everyday objects and furniture. These people were his acquaintances, people he found through ads or visitors to the gallery who followed instructional drawings that were open to interpretation (Wetterwald, 2002). Objects in these

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performances act as extensions of the body or they are offered as supplementary to the body. These body-object syntheses, may create a fragile equilibrium that momentarily challenges gravity, such as trying to balance on two plastic balls, or holing an array of balls with your head pressed against them and against the wall. The strange genealogy performed by members of the public, solo and more rarely in pairs, is produced with the help of chairs, buckets, utensils and so on. Wurm’s imaginative use of objects, coupled with a distinct sense of humour, creates unique results. As Élisabeth Wetterwald points out, in these works “… it [the body] is released from any affective burden and any symbolic quality and rid of its psychological attributes to become material to sculpt.” (2002, 72). We might add that the individuals who pose for the artist – and thus ourselves, through a process of empathy – are able to see themselves, this once, represented in a way contrary to the ideal images conveyed by advertising and the media. It is as if we feel a need to compensate for uniformity and the way we are manipulated by our environment with imperfection, abnormality and difference. Just as Wurm uses deformity, the bizarre and the attributable as counterpoint to the classical sculptural ideal, so does he reveal contemporary fgures in their weakness and imperfection, even their ontological ridiculousness: the oddball (down)fall of humanity, if you will. (Wetterwald, 2002, 78)

Refective questions • •

How is authorship challenged in this participatory artwork? Is there a place for humour in (performance) art?

Figure 2.1 Erwin Wurm, The Idiot II, mixed media, 2003. Performed by the artist. Photograph: © Bildrecht, Vienna 2021.

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Practice prompt 3 Use Erwin Wurm’s concept of One Minute Sculptures to create your own sculpture and experiment with creating alternatives with the same object/ set of objects.

Case study 3 Charles Ray, Plank Piece I–II, 1973 In this work which consists of two black and white photographs, the artist’s body is held against the wall of, what appears to be a studio, perhaps at his college as, according to Tate’s website, he was a student at the time (https://bit.ly/3yQKEnh). His body weight gives in to gravity, his body held up almost lifeless by the plank. In this equilibrium exercise he might have been inspired by the work of sculptor Antony Caro, whom he admired (https://bit. ly/3yQKEnh). The rise of conceptual art at about the same time though leads us to make connections that take us away from sculpture. In conceptual art the idea is paramount, works are often ephemeral, produced with cheap everyday materials and are “unpretentious” (Lippard, 1997 [1973], vii). This documentation of Charles Ray’s action connects both with conceptual art, in that it is a simple unpretentious representation of an idea and the emergence of performance art, in that the body is used as a material and its physical limits are being challenged.

Refective questions •

Do you fnd any similarities between performance and sculpture?

Case study 4 Eva Meyer Keller, Death is Certain, 2002 Keller has repeated Death is Certain in a few different settings, using similar objects and strawberries/cherries as materials. Everyday materials that are to be found in the kitchen cupboard or the shed are displayed in an orderly fashion on white table-tops or table clothes and the artist is similarly dressed in a white apron or coat. Strawberries or cherries are also grouped and lined-up on the table. They are one by one picked up by the artist and used together with the utensils and tools, the latter acting as deadly weapons. Strawberries are painted, pinned, ironed, squashed and quartered. The exhaustive utilisation of everyday objects as deadly weapons, the artist’s subtle humour and the obvious connotation of the red colour of the fruits, elicit mixed reactions from the audience. The performance ends when the whole population of strawberries has been annihilated! (Find a version of the performance online at https://bit.ly/3c0L0O3).

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Figure 2.2 Eva Meyer-Keller, Death is Certain, Ruhrtrienale, Bochum, 2021.  Photograph: Sabrina Richmann. Courtesy of the artist.

Refective questions • • • •

How does Keller organize her objects in space? What does this setting indicate? Are there any further props and staging that aid the narrative of the performance? What do you think these performances negotiate and why? How do they comment on repetition?

Case study 5 Marina Abramoviс´, Rhythm 0, 1974 This performance took place in Gallery Morra in Naples and lasted six hours. Naples was at the time a hotspot of artistic creativity in Europe. Abramovic´ had laid 72 objects out on the table, including a lipstick, nails, a knife, a feather and even a loaded gun. Instructions written by the artist called the audience to act upon her body in whichever way they desired. Abramovic´ stood still looking into the void while the participating audience played with her, progressively becoming bolder and more violent. The audience went on to cut her skin, ridicule her in creating different appearances and postures and even put the gun to her head (the gallery owner stopped them from acting upon the apparent threat). Abramovic´ recounts her experience: On the table there is even a loaded gun. I could have been killed. The idea was: to what extent can we be vulnerable? How far the audience can go

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Materials in performance and what it can do with your body? It was a terrible experience. I was just a thing, elegantly dressed and facing the audience. In the beginning, nothing happened, but then the audience became more and more aggressive, projecting on me three images: the Madonna, the mother and the whore. The weirdest thing is that the women almost didn’t act, but they were telling the men what to do. (Abramovic´, 2002, in De Maria, 2004, 297)

Although the artist has not discussed this performance in connection with the, at the time, rising second wave of feminism, it is difficult to perceive this performance outside the discussion of the stereotypical images and impossible demands society places on women. Marina Abramovic´ is one of the leading artists in performance art and also a controversial one. She has produced work since the 1970s, in the beginning in collaboration with partner Ulay and later on by herself. As with many of the performance artists of the 1970s, her work explored the limits of the body, endurance, exhaustion and pain. She experimented with drugs, shamanic and eastern practices and later on developed her own method, bearing her last name.

Refective questions • • • •

How do we orchestrate audience participation? What risks are there? Are there limits to audience participation? What limits would you set? What happens in the case of unsolicited audience participation?

(Discuss the above in connection with another fundamental element of performance: its live nature).

Case study 6 Forced Entertainment, Table Top Shakespeare, 2015 Forced Entertainment is a six-member group who have been producing performances since 1984, while also exploring other artistic media. This ground-breaking ensemble has worked extensively with improvisation, using collaborative methods of performance production. Their works have infuenced many artists across disciplines and contributed to live art, experimental and devised theatre. “In Complete Works six performers create condensed versions of all of the Shakespeare plays, comically and intimately retelling them, using a collection of everyday objects as stand-ins for the characters on the one metre stage of an ordinary table top” (https://bit.ly/3p5inEI). Shakespeare’s characters are represented as everyday objects; for example, Richard III as an

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Figure 2.3 Forced Entertainment, Table Top Shakespeare, 2017, Athens Epidaurus Festival. Close-up of shelves on stage. Photograph: the author.

upside-down black plastic cup, the guards as batteries and the dead King Henry as a Colgate box. The stage is accessible to viewers before and after the performance. It includes selves stacked with all the object-actors, each self allocated to a play, the play’s name written on masking tape. The plays combine the exploration of objects as actors as well as the power of storytelling. Following the pandemic, Forced Entertainment released the At Home edition, a version of the plays livestreamed from the performers’ homes and later made available for online viewing.

Refective questions • •

What is the difference in the use of objects in this case study and the previous one? Do your own experimentations lean towards either?

Case study 7 Kelly Dobson, Blendie, 2003–4 For Blendie, Kelly Dobson modifed a 1950’s blender, introducing hardware and software so that it became voice activated. In a playful exploration of this new function, she interacts with the blender, the latter placed on a counter

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that she ends up climbing on (watch it here: https://bit.ly/39oEm5O). Dobson describes the human-blender interaction as follows: The experience for the participant is to speak the language of the machine and thus to more deeply understand and connect with the machine. The action may also bring about personal revelations in the participant. The participant empathizes with Blendie and in this new approach to a domestic appliance, a conscious and personally meaningful relationship is facilitated. (https://web.media.mit.edu/~monster/blendie/)

And she concludes “Everyone may talk with Blendie, though Blendie does have moods, desires, and preferences, of course.” Dobson here speaks of the agency of Blendie and its unpredictability of behaviour. It is interesting though that she chooses a 1950’s Osterizer model, manufactured around the time that many electrical appliances were introduced in the household, proclaiming to free women’s time, only ending up entangling them more in housework.

Practice prompt 4 Repeat practice prompt 1 (one object, one minute) using an appliance from your household. Take into consideration Dobson’s rationale for Blendie.

Case study 8 Adrian Piper, Catalysis IV, 1970 Catalysis was a series of performances made by Adrian Piper in 1970-72, in the city of New York, its streets, shops, public transport and buildings. We will visit one of the performances of this series subsequently described by her in an interview to Lucy Lippard. … Catalysis IV, in which ‘I dressed very conservatively but stuffed a large red bath towel in the side of my mouth until my cheeks bulged to about twice their normal size, letting the rest of it hang down my front, and riding the bus, subway, and Empire State Building elevator.’ (Lippard & Piper, 1972, 76)

This is the frst case study we examine that takes place in public space. Public space will be discussed in a separate chapter as the conditions of performing in it differ signifcantly from performing in galleries and in generally more controlled environments. Performances in public space are frequently unannounced, as was the case for the Catalysis series, and it is in this unexpected encounter with the passer-by/viewer that meaning is created. This encounter is impossible to predict; the performance may go unnoticed, or evoke unwanted attention and even violence. In Catalysis IV, performance object and performer come together in a bizarre image that

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acquires its full meaning in its clash with the everyday life of the city. With no apparent reason for being there, or any function to serve, the towel cries for our attention in the bus, subway and elevator. Piper’s cheeks look stretched out in the photo and we assume that she was able to breathe only through her nose. Making no other sense of Piper’s image, we are confronted by our own unquestioning endurance of life’s demands and pressures.

Refective questions • • •

How does the use of objects in Piper’s Catalysis differ from the ones in Erwin Wurm’s One-minute Sculptures? How do they connect with Schechner’s observations on performance objects? Do you fnd an affinity in your work with either?

Figure 2.4 Adrian Piper, Catalysis IV, 1970. Performance documentation. Five silver gelatin print photographs. Each 16" x 16" (40.6 cm x 40.6 cm). Detail: photograph #2 of 5. Photograph: Rosemary Mayer. Collection of the Generali Foundation, Vienna, Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin and Generali Foundation.

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Food as material Why is food included in a chapter about objects in performance? Food is not an object but has frequently been used as one or in order to create one for performances. Food products have equally a transformative quality (they get transformed into something else through manipulation) and a live quality (they grow and age), both of which have proven very inspirational for performance artists.As a material in performance, food opens up a lot of possibilities, some of which we will subsequently explore. The connection to our previous discussion and practice in this chapter, lies within the exploration of familiar items, which are connected with our daily life and routine, as potential materials and partners in performance. Within the following activity, practice prompt and case studies we will contemplate the place of food in the everyday, the social and the symbolic, and investigate it as a static as well as a live and ever-changing substance.

Activity 3 Each performer brings something of the following: a packet of sugar, four or salt, or various fruits and vegetables, etc.These items are to be used collectively for the purpose of the exercise. Choose one of these materials (e.g. sugar, an apple) in order to explore them as object and agent, in your interaction with others, while moving around the space or while occupying a specifc place.

Refective questions • • • •

How do you move with food? Does food create space? Does food move itself? Does food have agency?

Activity 4 A group workshop in the studio: participants have been asked to bring in the studio something edible and something inedible. Four boards dedicated to specifc subjects relating to food are set for brainstorming with pen in hand: care, product, excess, waste. Participants move from board to board and note down their free associations.They are then asked to work in pairs with one of the items brought and one of the words/expressions written on the board as materials.

Case study 9 Allan Kaprow, Sweet Wall, 1970 In 1970, the father of happenings Alan Kaprow, together with a dozen people, constructed a 30-meter long wall out of cinder blocks, using bread and strawberry jam as mortar. Food is hardly holding these blocks together as they are

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held by gravity and their own weight. The wall, which was placed in an empty urban lot by the actual and fully functioning Berlin Wall, was torn down later in the day. Kaprow is using food here as an everyday routine (jam on bread breakfast) that enters the social (serious) world in an attempt to understate this seriousness. Kaprow’s mock wall and its subsequent demolition though, additionally demonstrate how easily borders are built up but also torn down.

Refective questions •

How does this happening differ from Kaprow’s previously mentioned work in chapter one, Women Licking Jam off a Car (1964)?

Case study 10 Rikrit Tiravanija, Untitled (Free), 1992 Tiravanija uses cooking in his performances for the purposes that food has always served: feeding people and bringing them together, only this time in a gallery setting. During an account of his own work, Tiravanija refers to food’s therapeutic potential, more in a social than in an individual level (Tiravanija 2006). Participation is a precondition of these events; there are no viewers. The events the artist orchestrates around Thai food, food that is connected to his identity, are low-key situations where art and the everyday collide. His work has been widely discussed as a typical example of relational aesthetics. Relational aesthetics was a term coined by Nicolas Bourriaud (2002a [1998]), in order to describe art that emerged during the 1990s, which distanced itself from the modern tradition of the object as “process-related or behavioural” (2002a [1998], 7): The possibility of a relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space), points to a radical upheaval of the aesthetic, cultural and political goals introduced by modern art. (Bourriaud, 2002a [1998], 14)

Relational aesthetics were heavily criticized in the art world, more polemically by Claire Bishop. One of the main points in her book, Artifcial Hells (2012), was that in investing art projects with a social role, we refrain from any criticism or evaluation of them as art projects. Art gains its validity as having a political meaning and an emancipatory effect. In short, the invitation for participation (a diffusion of authorship) is considered as positive and is de facto linked to democratic dialogue. What may at the time get obscured though, are economic conditions and power relations involving also the artists orchestrating the participation.

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Case study 11 Tatsuo Majima, Sausage in Batter, 1990–2003 Majima creates sculptures by dipping them in batter and then frying them during a performance in the gallery, including the half-sized statue of Venus de Milo. Majima, like Tiravanija, brings an unlikely activity to the gallery, moreover connecting it with references to its traditional role, creating mixed emotions for the visitors.

Figure 2.5 Tatsuo Majima, Sausage in Batter, 1990–2003. Image of performance and Venus de Milo statue. Photograph: © Tatsuo Majima. Courtesy of TARO NASU.

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Majima’s clownish minimalism present glamour and luxury from the other end of the spectrum, demonstrating a deliberate confusion of values and desirability of the objects through punning. Fried up Venus de Milo is supposed to incite the viewer’s diverse appetites, while the freeze-dried noodles coagulated and drenched in International Klein Blue celebrate and desecrate the memory of the implicit macho activity of splashing the canvas with a female nude drenched in blue. (Sharjah International Biennial, 2003, 164)

Refective questions • •

How does the artist use the history of art in his work? Has this been done before (maybe in other art forms)?

Case study 12 Santina Amato, Dis-rupted, 2018 This performance is built on the artist’s previous performance Untitled (Dough Project, Kneading), 2015. Amato has utilized dough a lot in her ephemeral sculptures and videos. According to her, there is a connection of her work to being brought up in an immigrant Italian household, in Australia (www.santinaamato.com). In Dis-rupted, female performers who act as agents, create an enormous amount of dough on the foor of a gallery, that they manipulate with their whole bodies. They then lie on the live dough while it continuous to grow around and over them, embracing their whole bodies. Amato’s piece is a comment on the female body, the act and physical effort of caring. The time of the piece is the time of growing and developing of the dough until performers and raw material become entangled in a love-like affair, sensuous but maybe, also, asphyxiating. The performance’s duration is what Richard Schechner has termed event time. Schechner explains that in event time, the steps of the work must be completed no matter the length of time this takes. The performance may also be called durational. This points to a long duration that may take up from a few hours to days. Durational performances are often discussed in connection with Abramovic´ and the works she produced either with Ulay or solo, and involve body endurance and exhaustion. More recently, the yearlong performances of Tehching Hsieh, discussed in Chapter 6, make for a characteristic example.

Practice prompt 5 Create a performance that employs food as material. How do you utilize food? Is it a mere object or a partner in your performance? Does food carry meaning? Does it create meaning? Experiment with participatory performance or performance with agents.

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Figure 2.6 Santina Amato, Dis-rupted, Crosstown Arts Center, Memphis, Tennessee, 4.12.2018. Photograph: Jamie Harmon. Courtesy of the artist. Performers: Santina Amato, Caitlin Hassinger, Ashli Aaron, Megan Travis-Carr, Bianca Phillips, Mary Jo Karimnia, Lily Anderson, Julianna Johnston, Erica Vanhaute, Madelyn Altman, Asayah Young, Elizabeth Elder.

Case study 13 Chengyao He, The Kiss, 2008 During this performance He invites members of the audience to share an ice lolly with her by putting it in their mouths from each end. As the lolly gets consumed and/or melts away the participants come closer. Food mixes with saliva and drips in between them creating awkwardness for participants and audience. The romanticism that the title may invoke is replaced by the messiness of intimacy (unofficial recording of the action: https://bit.ly/3NfDrn0).

Case study 14 Carolee Schneemann, Meat Joy, 1964 Schneemann is mostly known for her feminist performances of the 1960s and 1970s. The current performance should be viewed in the context of the 1960’s sexual revolution in the US. Schneemann was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, combining her fne arts training with movement in her kinetic theater. In Meat Joy, originally performed in Paris, and later made into a 5.2 min flm, eight men and women in their underwear move within space, in a semichoreographed routine. At a certain point, raw chicken, fsh and sausages are thrown on them, with which they are supposed to interact. Schneemann refects:

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The concept of Meat Joy (1964) demanded that I train participants who had no prior experience in dance or theater whatsoever. My cast included a poet, a painter, a balloon salesman, and a teacher. Envisioning the erotic rituals for Meat Joy  incited a physical response to the actual fesh of chickens, fsh, and sausages. I was now in a position to enter the arena I myself had choreographed to discover an ecstatic state. But by entering the work, I was separated from my painterly principles of consistent observation. I also lost the immense beneft of isolated concentration. Every moment was action. (Schneemann, 2018, n.p.)

Schneemann created a sensual, hectic and even humorous performance that attempted to cross boundaries of appropriateness. Raw food and carcasses are used in a coming together of ritual and sensuality. The artist attempts to readdress the symbolization of the female body by projecting the roles of ancient goddess and priestess while claiming bodily pleasure as an emancipatory act.

Refective questions • • •

What is the social role of food, beyond nutrition? Discuss the sensuality of food. How about food as waste (consider Case Studies 13 and 14)? Do you relate to Schneemann’s description of her experience of entering the performance space? How does what she states connect with what we already discussed about play?

Collecting objects, narratives of the self and the world With collecting it is decisive that the object is released from all its original functions in order to enter into its closest possible relationship with its equivalents. This is the diametric opposite of use, and stands under the curious category of completeness … a grandiose attempt to transcend the totally irrational quality of a mere being-there through integration into a new, specifcally historical system, the collection.” (Benjamin, 1982, 271)

We saw how Marcel Duchamp with his ready-mades deprived the objects of their use, giving them a new role, that of the work of art. Benjamin informs us here about another mutation of the objects, which occurs together with the loss of their function and this time takes place in their participation in the collection. In the collection there is a link between the objects; the collection is a whole, created by the accumulation of similar objects, something that Benjamin boldly calls a historical system. On the other hand, Susan Stewart notes the way that collections replace history with classifcation, an

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unhistorical order beyond time (1993). In fact, they both speak of a closed system with its own inherent logic. The collection is a form of art as play, a form involving the reframing of objects within a world of attention and manipulation of context. […] Yet unlike many forms of art, the collection is not representational. The collection presents a hermetic world: to have a representative collection is to have both the minimum and the complete number of elements necessary for an autonomous world – a world which is both full and singular, which has banished repetition and achieved authority. (Stewart, 1993, 151–2)

In this last section on exploring objects in performance we will look at the role of objects in constructing a narrative. Specifcally, we will explore the ways that a collection may be activated as an expression of subjectivity. In our discussion of the case studies we will also visit the concept of the Wunderkammern, the curiosity cabinets of the sixteenth century. These were actual cabinets in which heterogeneous objects and materials that could arouse the admiration or curiosity of the owner and his visitors were stored. Potentially, they included small-scale works of art or crafts and jewellery, but mainly contained small objects from “distant lands”, gemstones, fossils and other fragments of the natural world, archaeological relics, etc. The sixteenth century is also the era of European colonialism, where travelling to distant places increases the curiosity for the Other. The Wunderkammern were owned by those who had access to these rare objects, e.g. merchants and of course by those who could acquire them, mainly various aristocrats and hegemons of the time. These cabinets were not a display of wealth; objects were not necessarily of great value, but they served as an orchestrated refection of the owner’s personality as someone knowledgeable of the world, interested in science, art and culture in general. In a way, Wunderkammern serve a performative purpose for the owners, which is realized in their display to others.

Practice prompt 6: the anarc(h)ollection You are invited to organize the collection of stored objects in the studio (or any other space) into groups of your own conviction. These groups may be based on affinity of color, shape or size but also personal references or assemblages that may emerge by chance. The foor and furniture of the studio may be used for the purpose of this practice prompt. If you are carrying out this activity as a group, you are asked not to use speech during this exercise in order to communicate your ideas but to observe and experiment with following or leading the process. Move to the edge of the room when you think that the process has concluded. The process may then be repeated or used as a starting point for an object exercise.

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Practice prompt 7 Read and discuss the following excerpt: Collecting and collections are part of our dynamic relationship with the material world. Object groupings, like other social constructs, are born from the essentially mysterious workings of the communal and individual imagination, sanctifed by social custom but capable of growth and change. But for an object group to count as a ‘collection’, whichever of a range of words may appear suitable for this activity and its outcome through time, it must have been created as a special accumulation, intended at some point in time to fulfl a particular social and psychic role, and considered by the collector’s society to be appropriate for this role, a view which, however, the collections themselves will actively infuence. (Pearce, 1995, 33)

Refective questions •

• •

Why do objects hold a value for us? What is the nature of that value when it is not monetary (personal, sentimental, a connection to life history, to loved ones, to a special event/a milestone, etc.)? What brings a collection together? Is the collection who we are, who we were or who we want to be?

Practice prompt 8: the collector In her book On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition, Susan Pearce writes: “Collections are material autobiography, written as we go along and left behind us as our monument” (1995, 272). Create a collection of objects that you will present to us as an image. Create an imaginary collector by contemplating their preferences, decisions and personal history. Who is this collector? Present them to us in the form of a biography, a letter, an article in a newspaper, a diary entry, an Instagram profle, etc., alongside an image of their collection.

Case study 15 Surasi Kusolwang, $1 Market, various dates Surasi Kusolwang has performed $1 Market on various occasions and in various countries, usually adding the name of a small denomination in local currency to the title in whichever country he is exhibiting (e.g. ‘$1 Market’ in the USA). He uses colorful plastic and other cheap items bought at Bangkok street markets, which he displays on equally colorful tables while going around in a suitable attire urging people to buy. In these events we can observe the usual gallery–goers engage in unlikely gallery behavior

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involving humble or kitsch objects. His participatory performance is a comment on our commodity-based culture and consumption guilt. It is also a subtle underscoring of the cheap, massive amounts of disposable items produced outside Europe and the US. In Golden Ghost (The Future Belongs to Ghosts), 2011, he referenced another massively wasteful industry, the clothing industry, when he invited visitors to rummage through masses of thread for gold necklaces which they were allowed to keep if found.

Refective questions •

How does this work connect with Case Study 10: Rikrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free)?

Case study 16 Martha Rosler, Meta-Monumental Garage Sale, 2012 Rosler’s Travelling Garage Sale (1977) was later restaged as MetaMonumental Garage Sale (2012) at the MoMA, and was built around a collection of items usually sold in garage sales, accumulated, organized and displayed by the artist, that visitors could haggle for and buy. This massive display of personal objects varies from banal (embroidered cushions) to art objects (a cloth displayed on the wall that is not for sale). According to Randy Kennedy, Rosler’s “… fascination with garage sales — as portraits, through possessions, of the people who hold them; as economic end runs engineered mostly by women; as suburban sacrament and social gathering — goes back to seeing them for the frst time after moving to California in the 1970s.” (Kennedy, 2012, n.p.). The display of a “garage sale” in a museum setting is a translocation of everyday (private) practices into the public realm that falls into Rosler’s interest in social, political and institutional critique (Moss, 2013).

Refective questions • • •

Which are the functions of a museum that correspond with the activity taking place in Meta-Monumental Garage Sale? Why is this piece considered as institutional critique? Which are the different roles objects held in Rosler’s and Kusolwang’s pieces and what is the position of the artist within each piece?

Case study 17 Laura Belém, Landscape of Leblon at Carnival, 2002 For this and many other similar works, Belém rummages through the streets of mega-cities after a popular feast (in this case study the beach) and collects the excess and debris of human activity. She takes her time for this

Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

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Figure 2.7 Julie Anand, Gold Bluffs Beach via Skunk Cabbage Trail from the Material Histories series, 2010, inkjet print. In this series Anand explores material culture and subjective experience, issues of display and ecological concerns.

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activity; for example, in this piece she collected materials for a week. Her objects end up in a display, an odd collection of the discarded. With her work Belém also comments on value and validity in art, and questions what is signifcant and interesting. New associations and histories await to be animated by the viewer.

Practice prompt 9: the collection Using Figure 2.7 as inspiration, create a collection of found material by moving around the city. Envisage the histories of each item and contemplate the reason you were drawn to it. Display them in an arrangement of your choice. Contemplate the performativity of the display, the performativity that each item may hold and your own subjectivity in collecting, arranging and displaying these found items. Consider, instead of creating a display, presenting them in a live performance.

Case study 18 Mark Dion, The Thames Dig, 1999 Mark Dion conducts large-scale projects in which he critically questions the role of “experts”: archaeologists, anthropologists, historians and art curators. In his projects, in which he invites viewers to participate actively, he aims to challenge the systems through which experts and institutions process and classify knowledge. During this actual (surface) dig on the shores of the river Thames, Dion, together with a group of assistants, searched, collected and catalogued found material such as pieces of glass, kitchen utensils, plastic toys and debris. The “fndings” of the excavation included pieces of glass, broken ceramic household utensils, plastic toys and shells. After their assembly, the objects were transferred to the courtyard of Tate Gallery where they were cleaned and recorded in a tented area. The recorded objects were then exhibited in a room of the Tate Gallery in showcases and cupboards made of mahogany, while elements related to the production process of the project were placed in the space. Throughout the project, the artist consistently played a role supported by the materiality of the action and the adoption of rules and codes of experts. During the excavation, Dion wore a beige uniform while his assistants were dressed in phosphorescent vests and PVC boots, wore yellow gloves and used special tools. In the cleaning and logging tents, the uniforms were changed to white robes and gloves, while the tools were magnifying glasses and small brushes. In their conversations with the public during the three weeks of the cleaning process Dion and his colleagues assumed the role they had in the project. Finally, the furniture in the exhibition space evoked images of Wunderkammern and showcases of the Natural History Museum in London.

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Refective questions Douglas Crimp argues that the museum “removes objects from their original historical context not as an act of political commemoration but to create the illusion of a universal knowledge” (1993, 204). •

How does this statement connect to The Thames Dig?

Concluding notes In this chapter we explored the use of objects in performance, including food as an object within this exploration, and discussed how objects may act performatively within a collection. Starting off with the appearance of the ready-made in twentieth century art, marking a distance from functionality and the artist-creator, we referred to Bourriaud’s idea that any use of an object is an interpretation. We moved on to explain the reasons for opting for the word object (and not prop or thing) and how objects may be used as agents in performances. We also explained the value of play, and the state of liminality in this exploration. In the various case studies and activities, we investigated the sculptural and live qualities of objects in their interactions with performers, acting as agents and revealing the agency of the performer. Their involvement in performances challenges intentionality, function and the idea of success, exposes the violence of the everyday, incorporates humor and entertains a subversive potential. Food’s live, transformative quality and malleability into an object was deliberated in case studies that revealed tensions between the social and the personal, “high” and “low” art, care and intimacy smothering. Lastly the accumulation of objects in collections marked by Benjamin as “the opposite of use” was discussed as the creation of an enclosed world and in connection with the Wunderkammern. In the case studies and activities which included participatory events that fused private and public, objects were explored as excess, debris or commodity, features transformed in the collection, exposing systems of knowledge, challenging value and commenting on consumption culture.

Notes 1 The workshop “How performance entered my life” was conducted by Boris Nieslony on May 26th, 2009, as part of the Performance festival of the 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki.

References Bishop, C. (2012). Artifcial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso.

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Benjamin, W. (1982). Das Passagen-Werk, vol.1. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Bourriaud, N. (2002a [1998]). Relational Aesthetics. S. Pleasance, Fr. Woods, M. Copeland (Trans.). Dijon: Le presses du réel. Bourriaud, N. (2002b). Postproduction. New York: Lukas & Sternberg. Crimp, D. (1993. On the Museum’s Ruins. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. De Maria, C. (2004). The performative body of Marina Abramovic´: Rerelating (in) time and space. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 11 (3), 295–307. doi:10.1177/1350506804044464 Hoskins, J. (2006). Agency, biography and objects. In C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, P. Spyer and M. Rowlands (Eds.), Handbook of Material Culture (pp. 74–84). London: Sage. Huizinga, J. (1964). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press. Kennedy, R. (2012). No Picassos, but plenty of off-the-wall bargains, The New York Times, 16.11.2012, https://nyti.ms/31FVsZe. Lippard, R. L. (Ed.). (1997 [1973]). Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972 … Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. Lippard, L., Piper, A. (1972). An interview with Adrian Piper. The Drama Review. 16 (1), 76–78. Margolies, E. (2016). Props: Readings in Theater Practice. London: Palgrave. Moss, K. (2013). Martha Rosler’s photomontages and Garage Sales: Private and Public, Discursive and Dialogical. Feminist Studies Vol. 39, No. 3 (2013), pp. 686–721. Pearce, S. M. (1995). On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. London and New York: Routledge. Schechner, R. (2006). Performance Theory. Routledge. Schneemann, C. (2018). Carolee Schneemann on Judson Dance Theater. Artforum, 57 (1), n.p. shorturl.at/jFKPQ Sharjah International Biennial 6 (catalogue). 2003. Museum of Art, The Museum of Arab Contemporary Art and the New Expo Centre, 8.4.2003–8.5.2003. Sharjah, UAE. Stewart, S. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Minute, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Tiravanija, R. (2006). No ghosts in the wall, 2004. In C. Bishop (Ed.) Participation, pp. 148–53. London and Cambridge, MA: Whitechapel and The MIT Press. Turner, V. (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. PAJ publications. Wetterwald, É. (2002). The art of doubting. Parachute, (105), 64–83.

3

Body, gender, identity

Being a constitutive element of performance, the body will preoccupy us for a few chapters. More than an “expressive tool” imminently available to the artist, the body is a performative expression of gender and identity (Chapter 3), recounts life histories (Chapter 4), mediates experiences of space, movement and relations (Chapter 5) and works together or against the dynamics of space (Chapter 6). In this chapter we will discuss gender as a constitutive part of identity through the connection of performance with feminist and queer theory. We will refer to the discussion on gender inequality and the subjective experience of women through the frst and second feminist waves, the critique addressing the second feminist wave and fnally discuss the theory of gender performativity. We also examine the emergence of queer theory and the connections with feminist theory. In parallel we present and analyze performances which place the body at the center of the creative exploration of gender identity. The aim of the chapter is that performers recognize the gendered identity of the body, understand how this may be constructed, explore gender issues through their work and the work of other artists and, generally, uncover the body as a key element of performance through activities and practice prompts.

Gender in the feminist movement The debate on gender, the exploration of social relations from a gendered point of view, and the correlation of gender with wider political and social assessments, will begin with the feminist assertions that take place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The frst feminist wave, as it will be later called, and the Suffragette movement (from the French suffrage1) focused on elementary claims such as the right to vote and the right to representation, education, divorce and property. The second feminist wave (1960s–80s) focused on female identity, its relationship to reproduction and sexuality, and the assertion of women’s control over their own bodies. Simone de Beauvoir’s statement “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” (2010 [1949], 330) is the characteristic statement of second-wave feminism. This statement is basically anti-essentialist, in that it argues that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-4

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there is no inherent and timeless substance that exists and determines the identity of women. In The Second Sex (frst edition in French 1949), de Beauvoir explains that female identity is a construction which is the product of social roles and broader conditions, while the biological difference of women is used as a basis to justify discrimination against them. The separation of gender and sex(uality) will be further discussed and analyzed in the second and third feminist waves. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the feminist slogan “the personal is political”2 pointed out that private and public life were not two separate and unrelated spheres. That is, the labor and care that has traditionally been undertaken by women in private life, was a role imposed by the dominant patriarchy, had a political content and social implications, and required political action in order to be overthrown. The main trends of the feminist movement at this time are radical feminism, which considers that all women have the same problems and the source of these problems is patriarchy, socialist feminism, which considers that inequality comes not only from male domination but also from class exploitation, and liberal feminism, which believes that discrimination against women may be resolved through corrective interventions in the existing system, e.g. by changing the legislation. During the 1960s and 1970s the term gender becomes more prevalent. This is a term used to defne sex beyond its biological dimension, that is, defne sexual identity as a social and cultural construct. Gender, masculinity or femininity, are proposed as a set of relationships, attitudes, interests, beliefs, ways and preferences that constitute roles that we learn in society. Criticism of the second-wave feminism will focus on the fact that it is a heterosexual, white, western middle-class movement that excludes other subjectivities, sexualities, races, and ethnicities. Angela Davies, in Women, Race and Class (1981) discusses how societal and state-imposed systems of oppression are interconnected, and Audre Lorde points to the fact that the refusal of white feminists to acknowledge their privilege blindness is hampering change, proposing instead to consider difference as strength (2018). Similar accounts were exercised in the context of post-structuralism and post-colonial critique, taking place in the felds of philosophy, literary criticism and art theory. The third feminist wave discussed the politics of otherness and argued that there is no single (female) identity but that identities are multiple, fragmented, fuid and performative. Alongside the historical approach to the explanation of gender and gender inequality, there are Marxist-feminist approaches and psychoanalytic approaches (Scott, 1988). Amongst a Marxist-feminist approach that is itself critical to Marxism, sits Silvia Federici’s view that women’s exploitation in unwaged housework, controlled sexuality and reproductive labor was one of the bases of the birth of capitalism (2012). On the other hand, Luce Irigaray (1991), working within psychoanalytic post-structuralism,

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intends to demarcate a feld for women that is not based on male speech, experience and knowledge which presents women as lacking. She is also interested in creating a space for the defnition of the sexes without interdependence on one another. In this attempt she turns to the study of laughter, hysteria, female (non-phallic) orgasm and the female body in general. Naturally, these developments affected artists. Women artists from the 1960s turned to the medium of performance as the most direct and expressive of media to present works that raised concerns about the representation of the female body, the place of women in a patriarchal society, the role of women in private/public life and their status as professional artists. At the same time, the presence of the artists’ often naked bodies in their performances became a constitutive part of the content and the performative materiality of their work.

Feminist art In the late 1960s and early 1970s a series of seminal events and (young) people’s reactions, formed the context of the emergence of performance and conceptual art, in the western world. This context was shaped by the outbreak of the student and workers’ uprising in May 1968, in Paris, the development of the anti-war movement following the Vietnam War, the antiracism movement and the feminist movement. The wide-ranging challenge of established values, lifestyles, modes of thinking and governance deeply affected the art world. The emergence of an art that sought exhibition outlets outside the established spaces, created ephemeral works or art made with cheap materials, rejected the commercialization of the work of art or even its materiality, took place in this context. We are referring of course to conceptual art, emerging alongside historical performance. Women artists embraced performance art for a variety of reasons. They had limited access to the art world3 (see the data published in the Guerrilla Girls’ works) and their position in society restricted their professional development. In performance they could use their own bodies to create art, a “material” directly available to them. At the same time, their bodies afforded them a direct (albeit essentialist) connection to female identity, something that concerned many of the women artists of the time. The presentation of the female artist’s own body in the work as a carrier of meaning and not as an object (model) under the gaze of the male artist apparently disturbed the art world (Goldberg, 1998 [1979], 95). A milestone in the history of feminist art is Womanhouse, a building set up in 1972 as an exhibition and performance space by female students and teachers in the Cal Arts “Feminist Art Program”, among the latter, Judy Chicago. Many of the performances and installations that took part in this “women’s house” commented on women’s daily lives as repetitive, pointless work entrenched in the home, as well as on the restrictive nature and implications of society’s imposition of particular roles on women.

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Figure 3.1 Guerrilla Girls, Do Women Have to be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum? 1989. Photograph: © Guerrilla Girls, courtesy guerrillagirls.com.

Woman object – woman subject In her article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) and in her subsequent book, Visual and Other Pleasures (1989), Laura Mulvey discusses cinematic pleasure based on Freud’s psychoanalytic approach. She refers on the one hand to the pleasure of looking at another person as an object of sexual desire (scopophilia) and on the other hand to narcissism, the pleasure of being the object of the gaze, where the identifcation with what I look at is part of the constitution of the ego (Mulvey, 1975, 10). In this situation, the one looking is male (active) while the object of his gaze is female (passive). The male gaze projects his fantasy on the female fgure, while the woman recognizes that she is looked at and that she remains in (continuous) exposure. The feminist movement recognized the objectifcation of women in Mulvey’s analysis: the woman is projected as a carrier and not as a creator of meaning. Many women artists engaged with the subject/creator – object/ model binary and some of them tried to overturn the established gender positions of this binary. Let us not forget that so far women in art had a place mainly as the models of male artists. The Guerilla Girls’ poster from 1989 refers to this fact when they ask “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”. They also include the following data in their poster: “Less than 5% of the artists on the Modern Art sections are women, but 85% of nudes are female.” In their revised 2012 poster the percentages have changed to 4% and 76% respectively (https://bit.ly/36D9BWp).

The performativity of gender In Gender Trouble (1999), frst published in 1990, Butler begins the discussion on gender by assessing as problematic the position that female identity is established and unchanged, a position based on modernism’s idea of the subject as having a fxed identity.4 She also assesses as problematic the

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idea that there is a “common identity” shared by all women, pointing attention to the multitude of interconnections with “racial, class, ethnic, sexual, and regional modalities of discursively constituted identities” (Butler, 1999 [1990], 6). She also argues that biological sex is not a given nor does it pre-exist the social; the body is not a passive organ in which “cultural meanings are inscribed” but biological sex is also already social. In Bodies that Matter (2011), frst published in 1993, she argues that there is no gender behind the expressions of gender, expressions that we learn and follow unconsciously. In other words, gender is composed performatively through the imposed and regulatory repetition of acts related to a specifc gender, so naturally that it “conceals or dissimulates the conventions of which it is a repetition” (2011 [1993], xxi). The performance of gender, however, is not an individual matter of choice but the result of the exercise of power. When one escapes normality, when you perform your gender in a “wrong” way, there are consequences. The performative, as we have seen in Chapter 1, was introduced by the philosopher J. L.Austin (1962) as an utterance that in its enunciation accomplishes an action. Austin provides a number of examples of its use in everyday life and explains how the use of a performative if said on stage would be “hollow”, the basis of Derrida’s disagreement in “Signature, Event, Context”. (1988 [1972]). Parker and Kosofsky Sedgwick demonstrate that Austin’s exclusion of theatrical iterations from performative utterances is not simple, but assumes a connection with the “perverted”, the “abnormal” or the “decadent”, concluding that “the performative has thus been from its inception infected with queerness” (1995, 5). The word queer, originally used in a derogatory way for homosexuals, who later appropriated it, has now taken up the meaning of what is foreign to normative culture, what destabilizes the mainstream ways of integration and categorization. During a pride march in New York activists distributed “QUEERS READ THIS/ A leafet distributed at pride march in NY/ Published anonymously by Queers/ June, 1990”, in which they defended the use of the term queer and claimed it from their persecutors. WHY QUEER? Well, yes, “gay” is great. It has its place. But when a lot of lesbians and gay men wake up in the morning we feel angry and disgusted, not gay. So we’ve chosen to call ourselves queer. Using “queer” is a way of reminding us how we are perceived by the rest of the world. It’s a way of telling ourselves we don’t have to be witty and charming people who keep our lives discreet and marginalized in the straight world. We use queer as gay men loving lesbians and lesbians loving being queer. Queer, unlike GAY, doesn’t mean MALE. And when spoken to other gays and lesbians it’s a way of suggesting we close ranks, and forget (temporarily) our

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Body, gender, identity individual differences because we face a more insidious common enemy. Yeah, QUEER can be a rough word but it is also a sly and ironic weapon we can steal from the homophobe's hands and use against him. http://qrd.org/qrd/misc/text/queers.read.this

Amelia Jones (2016) places the origins of queer art (and also queer theory) in the 1980s and early 1990s as a response to the AIDS crisis, the poor reaction of the Reagan administration to the crisis and the homophobia that ensued. In the context of queer theory, the binary social-biological sex is considered problematic. Eve Kosofsky Sedwick (1994) comments on the ways that heterosexuality is constructed around a series of presumptions about identity that mold into a supposed totality involving different aspects of life. “Queer” then opens up possibilities where meaning (surrounding gender) is not clearly or strictly demarcated. She also refers to the way queer has transgressed gender to serve identity issues surrounding e.g. race and ethnicity. Agreeing with Kosofsky Sedgwick, José Muñoz discusses queer identities as constructed in fragmented, complementary or antagonistic pieces, something accepted and negotiated. He asserts: “(T)hus to perform queerness is to constantly disidentify, to fnd oneself thriving on sites where meaning does not properly ‘line up’” (1995, 84). “To queer” then, used now as a verb, becomes a way of embracing otherness, deconstructing conventionally accepted “naturalness”, following deviant lines of inquiry. In the third feminist wave we saw the deconstruction of social and biological gender. If there exists “natural” sexuality, then there is no defnite gender, while all gender identities are open, fuid and unstable. Aside the (pre-existing) women and gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, as well as queer studies, have now been added. The latter emerge as a feld of theory that opens up possibilities and defends the fuidity of identifcation while proposing new approaches to research methodologies.

Feminist performance: my body Women artists advocated for their role as artists-subjects through their performances. According to Chicago and Lucie-Smith, the shift of feminist art to the body “recognizes the body as an active force in its own right” (1999, 170). Chicago and Lucie-Smith also connect this shift to performance art with the fact that the rest of the media had been “so tainted with patriarchy” that new means had to be sought and with the attempt to capture the public’s attention through “the element of shock” (1999, 170). Women artists commented on the male gaze, disrupting the conventions of its condition, incorporating taboo functions of the female body, and discussing the challenges of a patriarchal society and a male-dominated artworld.

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Case study 1 Valie Export, Action Pants: Genital Panik (Aktionhose Genitalpanik), 1969 and Tap and Touch Cinema (Tapp- und Tastkino), 1968 Valie Export reverses the subject-object relationship in her works, returning the gaze to the viewer and claiming her place as an (artistic) subject. In the performance Action Pants: Genital Panic (Aktionhose Genitalpanik, 1969), held in a cinema, Export is dressed in trousers cut triangularly at the crotch so that her genitals are exposed. The artist walks between the rows of seats, in front of the seated spectators, who slowly get up and leave (https://bit. ly/2RWbt8D). The performance will later be reproduced as a photo, with Export sited and holding a machine gun, with her legs open and her crotch cut out. Her confdent gaze is directed at the viewer; she has complete control over their relationship. The title of the performance is a direct reference to the fear of castration as put forward by Freud: man’s shock at the sight of a woman’s genitals, creates the fear that he will lose his own. In the performance Tap and Touch (Tapp- und Tastkino, 1968) Export “wears” a model of a theater stage where two curtains open to reveal her naked breasts. Her boyfriend invites passers-by to touch her chest through a loudspeaker. Export meets the male gaze again in this performance while also commenting on the rights of women to their own bodies.

Refective questions • •

How does Export organize her relationship to the viewers in these two performances? What are the results?

Case study 2 Shigeko Kubota, Vagina Painting, 1965 Shigeko Kubota was a member of the pioneering Gutai Group (discussed in chapter one). In Vagina Painting, a performance at a Fluxus festival in New York, she attaches a brush to her underwear and crouching down she paints the foor red, a direct reference to period blood. For many, this is a critique of Pollock’s abstract expressionism, prominent in the artistic establishment of the time (see e.g. Chicago & Lucie-Smith, 1999, 171).

Refective questions • •

Is this a feminist performance and why? Comment on this work, taking into account the position of women in art at the time. Do you relate to this work today and why?

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Figure 3.2 VALIE EXPORT, Aktionhose: Genitalpanik, 1969, Selbstinszenierung. Copyright © VALIE EXPORT, Bildrecht Wien, 2022. Photograph: Peter Hassmann. Courtesy VALIE EXPORT.

Case study 3 Yoko Ono, Cut Piece, 1965 In Cut Piece, Yoko Ono sits on the foor of a theater stage, dressed up, while next to her lays a pair of scissors. Through instructions which are given to the public, people are invited to approach her and cut a piece of her clothing.

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Throughout the performance, Ono maintains a passive role, leaving room for the audience to negotiate their relationship with her in whichever way they choose. Reactions vary and reveal more about the audience than about the artist’s intentions. Ono’s attitude as that of a deep acceptance of the present is related to her position on peace and has been infuenced by Buddhism5 (Concannon, 2008).

Refective questions •

•

Watch the videos that have been recorded from this performance and are available online (e.g. https://bit.ly/3qBEZ0u). What strikes you about the reaction of the spectators? Discuss the call of the spectators to partake of the performance. How does this call to participation “beneft” the performance? What “risks” are there?

Case study 4 Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975 In this performance, Schneemann climbs on a table and takes off her clothes, except for an apron, having stated that she will read from her book Cézanne, She Was a Great Artist. She then paints lines on her body with dark paint. She reads from her book, taking various static “model” poses, and then pulls out an elongated paper from her vagina and reads from it a dialogue she had with a structuralist director: Interior Scroll Scroll 2 (from Kitch’s Last Meal, Super-8mm flm, 1975)  I met a happy man a structuralist flmmaker —but don’t call me that it’s something I do— he said we are fond of you you are charming but don’t ask us to look at your flms we cannot there are certain flms we cannot look at the personal clutter the persistence of feelings the hand-touch sensibility

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Body, gender, identity the diaristic indulgence the painterly mess the dance gestalt the primitive techniques… (Nickols, 2015, n.p.)

Refective questions •

•

Examine the ways the artist uses personal experience in her work. Is this something you have observed happening in performance or in art in general? Do you think that the personal experience of the artist concerns/ interests the public and why?

Case study 5 Nezaket Ekici, Inafferrabile/ Greifbar Fern, 2004 In this performance, Ekici stands at the center of the space with her back turned to the public and wearing a white wedding dress with a long tail and unbuttoned zipper. During the performance she tries to lift the zipper on the back of her wedding dress, which is apparently a small size. Her effort is arduous and develops into a desperate and even comic one. The effect of her efforts is enhanced due to the microphones located next to her mouth and close to the zipper. At one point she asks for the audience’s help, but to no avail. In the end, she leaves the room with her zip undone and her back open. The performance is a commentary on the pervasive standards of social roles that go beyond the institution of marriage and on the selfimposition of such rules in our quest for integration.

Refective questions • • •

Discuss the scenography of the body position in the space. What does this staging offer? Comment on the role of the hesitant participants. How do we orchestrate audience participation? How have you seen participation taking place in the case studies discussed so far?

The limits of the body: inscribing on/with the body In her book The Transformative Power of Performance, Erika Fischer-Lichte cites cultural contexts in which self-harm practices are not only acceptable but “even laudable and exemplary” (2008 [2004], 13). She refers mainly to the context of religion where she recognizes a relationship between saintliness

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Figure 3.3 Nezaket Ekici, Inafferrabile/Greifbar Fern, Performance Installation, 2004. Presented at Gasag Kunstpreis, 2yk Galerie Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben e.V., Berlin 10.9 – 8.10.2004. Photograph: A.D. Camera: Andreas Dammertz, editing: Nezaket Ekici. Courtesy of the artist.

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and extreme physical exertion: the exertion of the body is associated with the promise of transformation for the self-inficting sufferer. However, she also mentions fairs, where the spectacle of danger, the defance of death by the performer and her power and ability to avoid it, cause the admiration of the public. The connections made by Fischer-Lichte help us understand the spectators’ projections in performances where the body is subjected to extreme conditions and its endurance and its limits are tested. It should perhaps be expected that the emergence of the body as a “key tool” in performance would be accompanied by the exploration of this “tool” through tests and transformations, in many cases painful ones. Many performances, especially during the 1970s, will be accompanied by the presence of blood and occurrences of self-inficted injury, often disorienting the discussion about the performance and its meaning. In 1971, Chris Burden was shot in the arm by a friend, at the artist’s request (Shoot), while in 1974, during the performance Trans-fxed, he was nailed to the back of a Volkswagen with his arms open in the shape of a cross. Discussing the previous performances, Goldberg argues that “these sensational events had a tremendous impact on other performance artists, in part because they emphasized the ultimate reality of performance art over other forms of drama in theater” (1998 [1979], 107). However, as Mary Kelly argues, pain “became a means of enhancing the authenticity of the artist’s physical presence” (Kelly in Wilson, 2015, 108), especially around the 1970s. Fischer-Lichte’s reference to religion as a context in which self-injury is accepted and carries with it a promise of transformation, reinstates the debate about the relationship between performance and ritual. In the 1960s, the group of Viennese Actionists (from the German word Aktion=action) created a series of performances with violent, aggressive and ritualistic content. Valie Export is also connected with this group, which, like Fluxus, is not identifed with a specifc program.

Case study 6 Marina Abramovic´, Lips of Thomas, 1975 The following description is based on its reference in Fischer-Lichte’s aforementioned book (2008 [2004], 11–13). The naked artist approaches the wall and pins up the photo of a man. She then sits on a chair placed in front of a table with a white tablecloth, on top of which there is a jar of honey from which she eats until it is fnished. She then drinks wine from a glass, emptying a bottle that was on the table. Subsequently she breaks the glass with her hand, stands next to the photo against the wall and carves a fve-point star onto her stomach. Then she kneels, facing the photo looking away from the public and fagellates her back, causing it to bleed. Afterwards, she lies on ice cubes that form the shape of a cross, while an electric radiator hanging from the ceiling above her stomach instigates more bleeding. After half

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an hour, the performance is interrupted by the intervention of the spectators who remove the artist from her place. In many of her performances, Abramovic´ explores the limits of the body, through physical pain or endurance in the long durational performances. The fve-pointed star and the cross that appear in her performance are symbols that have been used by various cultures over the centuries. The fve-pointed star, however, was also on the center of the fag of (former) Yugoslavia, Abramovic´’s country of birth. It also appeared as a shape in the performance Rhythm 5 (1974), a performance that was also interrupted by the audience.

Refective questions • •

Is it necessary to be aware of the biography of the artist in order to interpret her work? Discuss the correlation of personal history and symbols in performance.

Case study 7 Ana Mendieta, Body Tracks, 1982 In this performance, Mendieta is wearing white clothes and standing in front of a gallery wall, on which three white papers are hung. Mendieta dips her arms in a basin of animal blood and tempera.6 She then places them on one of the papers and slowly pulls them down, lowering her body and fnally leaning on her knees. She repeats this twice on the other papers, leaving three different imprints of her movement. She then leaves the room. The performance has been linked to the rituals of the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria.7 It has also been linked to the issue of violence against women, as have her other works8 (Blocker, 1999).

Refective questions • •

How does this work differ from Jackson Pollock’s action painting or Yves Klein’s Anthropometries? How is it different from Marina Abramovic´’s The Lips of Thomas? How do you think these differences relate to the ideas and messages of the performances?

Case study 8 Wangechi Mutu, Throw at Pace, 2016 Mutu made this performance (which has also been described as actionpainting) in an exhibition space for an audience of few. According to the artist she used a lot of magazines which were piling up in her studio, usually put into use for her collage paintings, in order to create a pulp that she then added ink to. Tea and food dyes were added to this pulp which fermented

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and acquired an odor. In the performance, Mutu entered the gallery room dressed in black, wearing black gloves and carrying a big bag of this material. She then began to take this black substance out of her bag and throw it on the white wall opposite her until the bag was emptied out. The substance was glued to the wall and remained post-performance, as an installation. Mutu conceives this act of throwing as a defant protest that connects it to the practices of women in Africa and the rest of the world. She comments on the organic substance: “it’s vile, it’s alive, it’s dead, and its deadness is meaningful” (Bourland and Mutu, 2016, n.p.). She also talks about “the soul” and “the heart of blackness” and her action as “speaking up in a space that is silent”. The artist is “inventing” a material, something that appears natural, but is tainted with civilization, something that is alive and changes. In her ritualistic performance and her direct references to identity, the material becomes an agent for identities in-between. Her performance leaves a trace reminiscent of the violence of the action, the violence in scorned identities and violence as a consequence.

Case study 9 Gina Pane, The Staircase (L’ Escalade), 1971 In The Staircase, a performance made with only the photographer taken into account, Pane goes up and down a staircase on the steps of which blades have been positioned. Pane created performances whose perception was infuenced from their chronicling by her longtime photographer, Françoise Masson, under her own direction (Maude-Roxby & Masson, 2004). In Sentimental Action (Azione Sentimentale), the artist pressed rose thorns into her forearms and cut her palm with a razor, recreating the stem and bloom of the fower, while recorded voices read correspondence between two women, in Italian and French (shorturl.at/tBDR3). This action was carried out twice, once with red roses and once with white ones. Pane created images of synthetic purity evoking the contrast between violence and beauty, with a clear reference to the female body as a place of inscribing, enforcing and projecting the above.

Refective questions •

Discuss the use of documentation as constitutive of the meaning of performance.

Case study 10 Ron Athey, 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life, 1994 In 4 Scenes in a Harsh Life, the body becomes a place and carrier of actions and messages. Participating artists, apart from Athey, are Divinity P. Fudge, Julie Tolentino, and Pig Pen. In this performance various scenes

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and visual iconography are created. Athey writes on the body of the other performers and imprints it on paper. There are many references to the history of art, from the renaissance pieta to the anthropometrics of Yves Klein. We also see the artist sitting down and injecting his heavily tattooed arm and later removing needles from his eyebrows, letting the blood run. All the above scenes create images of high aestheticism. Athey uses autobiographical elements, such as his childhood memories, when speaking from the pulpit and in tongues (he was raised to become a priest, as he has said in various interviews). This intricate performance, incorporating various ritual elements, ends in a lesbian wedding that turns into a celebration with drum playing and dancing. According to the Hemispheric Institute, “While the performance addresses body politics, it also works to affirm the gay male body as a site of reverence during the AIDS pandemic.” (https://bit.ly/3CJSsuz, n.p.). “The heart of my work”, he [Athey] wrote “has always been in bringing overdone gothic religious tableaux to life.” Using “medical based s/m techniques,” and a cast that “took pride in being marginalized (not only being s/m queers, but having hard-core physical appearances)” he created “a pageant of erotic torture and penance.” (Goldberg, 1998, 119)

Athey was from the start open about being HIV positive at a time (the 1980s to the 1990s) when AIDS in America was causing panic and polarizing society. As a result of ignorance and intolerance, the public’s interest focused on the existence of blood in his work and any of the performance’s artistic qualities remained unnoticed. In fact, the delusional reactions of the public sphere to the existence of blood in his performance resulted in his exclusion from the American art scene and from funding for ffteen years (Athey & Obrist, 2021, 289).

Case study 11 Franko B, I Miss You, 1999–2005 This performance took place in a space fashioned like a catwalk. A strip, where the artist moves, is illuminated with fuorescent lights placed on its edges, while the public occupies both sides. The artist, with a white-painted body, walks up and down the aisle. Blood is dripping from his hands from two cuts he has previously made. At the end of the corridor he pauses, while the photographers’ cameras fash repeatedly. The sound of camera shutters is the dominant sound of this performance. Franco B does not pose, but merely stands in front of the cameras, more naked than nakedness itself, undressed of symbols and signs, even of the countless tattoos that exist on the surface of his skin. Due to the pause he makes at each end of the aisle, a small pool of blood is accumulated there. Drops of blood trace the rest of

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his journey. The audience witnesses this as a spectacle but also become a spectacle themselves of the spectators opposite them.

Refective questions •

Haghpanah-Shirwan remarks: “Isolated and exposed on stage, his blood was offered as a refection of society’s vulnerability. ‘We are all bleeding inside’ Franko B avowed” (2015, n.p.). How do you perceive this statement?

Figure 3.4 Franko B, I Miss You, 1999–2005. Photograph: Manuel Vason. Courtesy of the artist and the photographer.

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Case study 12 Cassils, Becoming an Image, 2012 Cassils initially performed this work at the One Nation National Gay and Lesbian Archive, a commission of said archive. In a completely blacked out room, the artist assaults a 1500 pound (680 kg) mass of clay. The audience can momentarily view them in actual fashes, coming from the camera of a photographer. Suspended images “burn” in the retina of the spectators but also the artist, resulting in them performing blindly. The sounds from exerting this effort connect us to “real” (continuous) time. According to the artist (https://vimeo.com/673222376) the people in the performance have the roles of witness, aggressor and documenter. Cassils refers to the under- and misrepresentation of transgender persons, the violence they are confronted with and the role and responsibility of society in witnessing it. Cassils use their skills as a fghter in this performance, having a long career as a trainer, one that followed a ghastly illness in adolescence and subsequent weightlifting practice as a way to recover from it. He views the body as a “sculptural object” (https://bit.ly/3dt1uSJ), thinking of trans as “a continuing becoming that occupies a space of interdeterminacy, spasm and slipperiness”.

Refective questions • •

What do you think the failure to “capture” the image of the performer means? Spectators of the performance commended that it was “exhausting to watch” (Aloi, Cassils and McHugh, 2021, 30). What do you think the orchestration of this experience aimed at?

The limits of the body: bodies between Many artists explored relationships through their performances, either their relationship as a couple, e.g. Abramovic´ and Ulay, or relationships in general, addressing issues of dependency, refexivity, antagonism and power. In Abramovic´ and Ulay’s performance, Rest Energy, 1980 (a four-minute performance for camera), the two artists sit face to face in a static but fragile equilibrium, at both ends of an armed bow. Ulay holds the string in his hand, with the arrow head pointed at Abramovic´’s heart while they both look into each other’s eyes. A relationship of trust but also the vulnerable position of the woman in this performance are apparent and the danger is real. In the performance AAA-AAA, they sit facing each other at close range shouting “Aa…ah” at each other’s face. The intensity of their shouting increases and their faces get distorted by the effort. In Light/ Dark, Abramovic´ and Ulay sit on their knees facing each other, slapping each other successively, at an increasing rate. According to Ulay, these

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performances are not related to violence but to traumatic fears of relations (https://bit.ly/3AjoNFN, n.p.).

Case study 13 Marina Abramoviс´ & Ulay, Relation in Space, 1976 In this performance, which took place at the Venice Biennale, Ulay and Abramovic´, start walking from opposite sides of the space and cross over repeatedly, constantly changing sides. Their naked bodies meet in the middle of the path and their shoulders touch momentarily. Progressively their pace increases and they begin to fall into one another. Their meeting gradually becomes more violent and the sound of their bodies clashing audible. By now, after colliding with one another, they return to their respective sides. Abramovic´’s lesser physical strength in this confrontation is noticeable; at some point in the performance she even falls down after her collision with Ulay.

Case study 14 Angelika Fojtuch, 4U, 2009 This performance begins with the artist positioning herself behind a spectator and unplanned participant of the performance. Fojtuch takes a gauze out of her bag and carefully wraps his foot with hers, and carries on to the other: left foot with left foot, right with right. She continues wrapping and joining in this way his torso with hers, and proceeds to join their whole bodies with gauze. The participant, who is also an artist, has his palms out of the gauze and holds her bag, essentially aiding her. When she fnally puts her hands inside the strange cocoon she has created, disappearing into it, the participant’s head stays out of it as he is much taller.There are several minutes of anticipation when nothing happens and later some of the participants start unfolding the two persons. This process takes a few minutes, and when all the gauze has been undone, Fojtuch remains with her hands clasped around the participant’s chest. His attempts to free himself are in vain; he is sweating and starts to walk around the exhibition space. The spectators react with uneasy laughter, make jokes and converse with him. Time goes by, he is visibly exhausted and tries to detach himself in various ways and positions while Fojtuch holds him frmly. Eventually, with a violent movement, he manages to free himself, immobilizing her on the foor, almost an hour into the performance.

Refective questions • • •

What do you think is the central concept of the previous performance? What role did the audience play in this performance? Are there similarities and differences with the performances of Abramovic´ and Ulay discussed in this chapter?

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Figure 3.5 Angelika Fojtuch, 4U, 2009. Photograph: Jean Claude Cote. Courtesy of Angelika Fojtuch archive.

Activities 1–2 The following activities are suggested in preparation for the creation of a two-person performance. The aim is that performers develop control of their

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movements, develop the ability to observe others in public view from a distance and without being noticed and are able to perceive the everyday as an endless repository of ideas that may be used in performance. Hopefully performers will develop the ability to observe themselves, to identify what draws them and to allow themselves to attach importance to the small, the momentary and the insignifcant. 1.

2.

Walk freely and at your own pace in the space. Copy someone else’s pace while watching them from afar using your peripheral vision. Keep alternating between your own pace and someone else’s. Move within the space in pairs. One of the persons in a pair may use space freely and change positions, directions and pace. The other person copies their movements/pace while following them from a distance or up close. Alternate distances between yourselves and the range of your movements (micro/macro).

Practice prompt 1 You are invited to observe people on the street, in the markets, in the queue, in the cafe, etc. and to copy the movements that you like, you are attracted to or fnd interesting, making a mental note of them. These can be mundane movements such as the brushing of hair or the tidying of clothes, etc. Create a repertoire of at least three movements that you will “bring” with you to the studio. In class these may be used as part of a tableau vivant or they may be the starting point of an individual performance.

Practice prompt 2 On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (November 25) you are asked to devise a performance. You can explore violence as a specifc issue, as something that is related to everyday experience (underlying violence), as violence against others and against oneself, femicide, etc.

Concluding notes Throughout the chapter we have discussed gender as a constitutive part of identity in feminist and queer theory. Feminist claims in the frst wave concentrated on women’s rights to vote, representation, education, divorce and property. In the second feminist wave, matters of identity, reproduction and sexuality were discussed on the basis that there is no inherent and eternal substance that is a woman and that “the personal is political”. In the third feminist wave, eager to shake off essentialist accusations, the politics of otherness were discussed in connection with race and capitalism and the discussion

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about sexes was broadened beyond the male-female dichotomy. The performativity of gender constituted in the reiteration of acts recognizably belonging to a gender, as introduced by Butler was creatively explored by artists. Queer, implying deviant and initially used in a derogatory way for homosexuals, also signifed foreign to normative culture, opening up possibilities and destabilizing clearly defned sexes, behaviors and categorizations. Feminist art became engaged in the representation of the female body as a subject (and an artist) with agency and commented on the role and status of women in private and public life, breaking down taboos concerning the female body, its physiology and sexuality. Testing the limits of the body, self-harm, inscribing and ritual, exposed the body in all its vulnerability to talk about the violence and restrictions imposed on bodies. Dependency, refexivity, antagonism and violence were also explored in the relationships between bodies within society.

Notes 1 Vote and also the right to vote. 2 “The Personal is Political” was the title of an article by Carol Hanisch in the 1970 anthology, Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation, edited by Shulamith Firestone and Anne Koedt. In 2006 she explained that the title was provided by the editors of the volume (https://bit.ly/2NBsjFp). 3 For a record of the conditions, a result of institutional structures under which “there have been no great women artists”, see Nochlin’s essay from 1971 included in Nochlin (1988). 4 Butler’s work forms part of the upheaval of the cartesian model of the world attempted by theories of social constructivism, phenomenology, social anthropology, and feminist theories. These interacting theories relativized what was considered a unique, dominant body with defned boundaries and identity and projected hitherto excluded from the discussion issues around the female and the queer body. Through them, the role of the body as single, neutral and unambiguous is deconstructed and its manifestations are highlighted as a feld of politically, socially and racially determined registrations. 5 It is interesting to note in Concannon’s article (2008) the different interpretations of this performance in connection with the time they were pronounced. 6 For a detailed description of this performance see Walker, 2009. 7 See https://hemisphericinstitute.org/en/hidvl-collections/item/2689-ana-mendietabody-tracks-1982.html. According to Blocker (1999), the connection between the work of Mendieta and her Cuban descent is frequently referenced. 8 See e.g. Rape Piece (1972).

References Aloi, G., Cassils & McHugh, S. (2021). Interview with Cassils: Becoming an image. In G. Aloi & S. McHugh (Eds), Posthumanism in Art and Science, pp. 25–33. New York: Columbia University Press. Athey, R. & Obrist, H. U. (2021). Ron Athey interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Atrocity Exhibition, Autre, 12, 289–92. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words:The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Bourland, I. & Mutu, W. (2016). Wangechi Mutu talks about her work in “Blackness in Abstraction” at Pace Gallery. Artforum, 12 July 2016, https://bit.ly/3wcFxy3. Blocker, J. (1999).Where is Ana Mendieta? Identity, performativity and exile. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Butler, J. (2011 [1993]). Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of“Sex”. London and New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1999 [1990]). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge. Chicago, C., Lucie-Smith, E. (1999). Women and Art: Contested Territory. East Sussex: Ivy Press Ltd. Concannon, K. (2008). Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece”: From text to performance and back again. PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 30 (3), 81–93. Davies, A. (1981). Women, Race and Class. London: The Women's Press. De Beauvoir, S. (2010 [1949]). The Second Sex, C. Borde & S. Malovany-Chevallier (Trans.). New York: Vintage. Derrida, J. (1988 [1972]). Signature event context. In Limited inc, S. Weber (Trans.) (pp. 1–23). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Federici, S. (2012). Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. New York: PM Press. Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008 [2004]). The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics, S. I. Jain (Trans). London & New York: Routledge. Goldberg, R.L. (1998). Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. London: Thames and Hudson. Haghpanah-Shirwan, B. (2015). When There's No Future How Can There Be Sin? http://www.franko-b.com/Personal_Political_Poetic.html Irigaray, L. (1991). The Irigaray Reader, M. Whitford (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Jones, A. (2016). Introduction: Sexual difference and otherwise. In A. Jones (Ed.) Otherwise: Imagining queer feminist art histories, 1–13. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. (1994). Tendencies. London: Routledge. Lorde, A. (2018). The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Penguin Classics. Maude-Roxby, A., Masson, F. (2004). On Record: Advertising, Architecture and the Actions of Gina Pane. London: Artwords Press. Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual and Other Pleasures. New York: Palgrave. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16, 3, Autumn 1975, pp 6–18. doi:10.1093/screen/16.3.6 Muñoz, J. (1995). The autoethnographic performance: Reading Richard Fung’s queer hybridity. Screen, (36), 83–99. Nochlin, L. (1988). Why have there been no great women artists? In Nochlin, N. Women,Art and Power and Other Essays, 145–178. Icon Editions, Harper and Row. Parker, A. & Kosofsky Sedgwick, E. (1995). Introduction: Performativity and performance. In A. Parker & E. Kosofsky Sedgwick (Eds.), Performativity and Performance (pp. 1–18). London & New York: Routledge. Scott, J. (1988). Gender and the Politics of History. New York and Oxford: Columbia University Press. Wilson, S. (2015). Art Labor, Sex Politics: Feminist Effects in 1970s British Art and Performance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Walker, J. S. (2009). The body is present even if in disguise: Tracing the trace in the artwork of Nancy Spero and Ana Mendieta. Tate Papers, 11, https://bit.ly/3A0dTUl, accessed 28 May 2021.

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Performances of the self and autobiography In the previous chapter we discussed how personal experience and the artists’ stories, connected to broader issues of gender and identity, act as starting points for art performances. In this chapter, we will approach the subject of autobiography as primary subject and methodological approach in performance art. Performances’ connection to life histories can be viewed as continuing the art-autobiography relation, forming part of art history. Artists have in the past depicted events of their life as well as their self-portraits in paintings. As became more evident during the Renaissance1 and the emergence of the artist’s self-portrait, the likeness of the artist was used as a conscious effort for the “construction” of the self, what was coined selffashioning. Artists attempted to promote an idealized version of themselves in their self-portraits, through their association with more appreciated forms of art such as music (for example painters playing an instrument), through calculated appearances and bold postures. It is remarkable that the scenography of space, the costumes and the body positions staged in such paintings, are also elements manipulated in the contemporary performances discussed in this chapter. We discussed how the use of the artists’ bodies in performances, especially in the case of female performers, accommodated the correlation between body and personal history. The correlation made was not neutral, but part of the critique which claimed that performances were interesting or meaningful only for the artists themselves or assumed that they were a form of self-therapy. Artists’ statements at times unintentionally supported these accusations. It is however impossible to ignore the connection that has existed between life history and performance. The immediacy of the art of performance and the involvement of the artist’s body rendered it an exceptional vehicle for the exploration of subjectivity, the promotion of the visibility of women and queer artists, and the exploration of otherwise marginalized selves. Many of the works in this chapter opt for the use of performed photography and self-portrait for the exploration of identity and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-5

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the self, gender forming a part of this investigation. The exploration of the self, the multiple, possible selves and life history as a constitutive part of the self, will be discussed next through performance for camera/performed photography works.

Gender masquerade in the interwar years In a 1920 photoshoot, Man Ray photographs Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy, wearing a hat and a coat with a fur collar, looking in the direction of the camera in a three-quarter profle. The hands that hold the collar belong to a female acquaintance. Rrose Sélavy appears also in the label of the bottle of Belle Haleine, the supposed “face” of this made-up perfume. In a characteristically Dadaist trick, Duchamp simultaneously comments on the construction of female identity and its conversion into a product. The use of objects of “disguise” and the adoption of a posture that refers to the stereotypical images of women posing in pictures of the time, are the elements with which Duchamp constructs his new identity. But Rrose is not a disguise, but an identity Duchamp also uses to sign some of his works. For Alice Marquis it is an opportunity for Duchamp to highlight parts of his identity that do not ft with his established artistic identity (Marquis, in Katz 2008). According to Katz “Duchamp used Rrose to create works of art that were more avant-garde than those he created under his own name” (2008, 4). In her opinion, Rrose’s persona liberates Duchamp’s creativity. After all, masquerade, in its traditional role in festivals such as a carnival, acts in a liberating way for participants, who can “try out” identities and behaviors that would not be acceptable in “normal” life. In any case, cross-dressing was not an unknown aspect of art and life in interwar Paris, as we may observe in the portraits of Barbette, photographed by Man Ray and the photographic work of Pierre Molinier. In the 1930s, Brassaï photographed the nightlife of Paris and its gay scene in portraits and instants of Parisian café life. The work of the artist Claude Cahun, which we will discuss below, also developed during this time.

Multiple selves and gender masquerade As Butler (1990) argued, gender is performed through the reiteration of actions, gestures and representations of an imagined, idealized and desired identifcation with a falsely established sex. Muñoz speaks of a constant disidentifcation (1995) to highlight the fragmentation, ambivalence and hybridity associated with gender. In the following works, artists employ observations on gestures, actions, and representations to comment on the construction of the self, to project the simultaneous existence of multiple selves, and to comment on the fuidity of gender.

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Case study 1 Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Stills, 1977–80 Untitled Film Stills remains a seminal work in the history of photography and performance. As the artist has repeatedly declared, these black and white photographs are not self-portraits. The artist appears in different “roles” in these flm stills belonging to hypothetical movies, which were shot indoors and also in urban surroundings. The spaces, clothes, make-up and wigs of the artist form a narrative for an imagined character. Her body posture and gaze are of constant anticipation. The series comments on gender stereotypes and in particular the stereotypical portrayal of women in North American flms of the 1950s: the housewife, the secretary, the star etc.

Refective questions •

How would you comment on Untitled Film Stills bearing in mind what Laura Mulvey discussed in her work Visual and Other Pleasures (1975)?

Case study 2 Claude Cahun, Self-portait, 1928 Claude Cahun created works of performed photography, aided by her partner Marcel Moore (aliases of Lucy Schwob and Susanne Malherbe respectively)

Figure 4.1 Claude Cahun, Self-portrait (refected in mirror), 1928. Photograph: courtesy of the Jersey Heritage Collections.

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for more than forty years. In most of these self-portraits she appears in cross-dressing. In this particular work we can see both her and her refection in the mirror, in a three-quarter profle, facing the camera. She is wearing a garment with a chessboard pattern and holds its raised collar. She wears a short haircut, has blonde hair and lipstick on. Cahun doubles her image by depicting her refection in the mirror. She repeats this doubling effect in other works, not only with mirrors but in photographic duplication during the processing of the flm or with the use of collage. According to Jennifer Shaw (2006), the work brings to mind the iconography of women in their boudoir, their usual depiction in paintings but also the theme of Narcissus. According to Tirza True Latimer (Latimer in Shaw, 2006), at that time narcissism was associated with femininity and lesbianism. In another self-portrait (1927) she appears in a boxing uniform and elements of hyper-femininity such as painted nipples, hearts painted on her face and dark heart-shaped lipstick. She wears a T-shirt that reads: “I AM IN TRAINING / DON’T KISS ME”. For Cahun, it seems that all these manifestations of self / gender coexist but are also hidden within her. As she notes in a collage included in her book Disavowals [Aveux non avenus] originally published in 1930: “Under the mask another mask. I will never end up revealing all these faces” (2007 [1930], 183). Performative photography, her collages and texts are the means and the manifestation of these revelations.

Refective questions • •

How do you think the myth of Narcissus connects to self-portraiture? Do you observe a connection of this work with the aforementioned work by Duchamp?

Case study 3 Yasumasa Morimura, Doublonnage (Marcel), 1988 In this obvious reference to Marcel Duchamp, Morimura recreates his selfportrait as Rrose Selavy. Doublonnage contains the double, the copy and repetition within a variety of connotations. Morimura’s face is painted with the white make-up he usually uses, a practice dating back to the performances of the traditional Japanese theater, kabuki. In fact, in kabuki performances, specialized male performers, the onanagata, played the roles of women. According to Katherine Mezur “the onnagata did not aim at ‘representing’ women; they performed their own many layered ‘vision’ of a constructed female-likeness” (2005, 2).And, as Blessing argues, white can be associated with the conventional view of whiteness as an ideal image of female femininity (1997). But in combination with the double hands responding to different races, it also acquires a racial hue. Continuing in the same text, Blessing comments on issues of race and ethnicity as issues that are usually taken

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for granted and come to the fore in this work, together with the issue of the diffusion of Western culture into the rest of the world. After all, Morimura often makes reference to Western culture and the history of art in his works, when, for example, he “performs” the actress Vivien Leigh or poses as Monet’s Olympia or takes on characters representing women in more contemporary art works. As in Duchamp’s work, the fact that we realize we are not looking at a woman is essential for the meaning of the work and can be placed in the category of gender bending. In the same category we can classify the polaroid photographs of Andy Warhol in Self-portrait in Drag (1982).

Figure 4.2 Yasumasa Morimura, Doublonnage (Marcel), 1988. Photograph: courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine.

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Refective questions •

Do you know of any other artists who have appropriated the work of their peers in this way? Discuss how this appropriation affects meaning.

Case study 4 Ulay, S’he (1973–4) In this work Ulay uses his favourite medium during the beginning of his career, the polaroid photograph, taken with the classic SX70 model. In these three photos, part of a broader series of photos (Renais sense) he appears in portrait, left and right profle. He is dressed up and has put on make-up so that half of his face appears feminine and the other half masculine. On the “female side” his face is shaved and his eyebrows are plucked. In the various photographs in this series, Ulay will explore different aspects of himself, the ways in which his selves are intertwined and revealed, often through make-up and cross-dressing, but also by using the possibilities of the photographic technique. Maria Ras Bojan perceives this exploration as a strategy for understanding the self, recognizing the fragility of gender roles and as a desire for an androgynous union (2014).

My story: confessions and inventions Performance artists as well as artists from the visual arts in general, have used life histories as a source of creativity. Their work records and underscores events and subjectivities neglected from representation. It is used as a method of understanding and empowering the self that transcends the limits of the personal. Seminal examples of the above approaches are Jo Spence and Mary Kelly. According to Deidre Heddon, such works and above all autobiographical performances, were created after the second feminist wave and were a means for women to “reveal otherwise invisible lives, to resist marginalization and objectifcation and to become, instead, subjects with self-agency” (2008, 3). A particular class of such works is confessional art, an art practice developed during the 1990s, especially in the UK and the US, in which the personal experiences of the artist were the work’s core subject. A confessional culture that emerged during the 1990s, mainly in the domains of art and literature, but also in popular culture through shows such as The Real World2 and Big Brother3 promoted personal testimony as a privileged version of experience, directly and truthfully deriving from it. Confessional art is associated with autobiography and the diary, coined as documents of life in sociological research (see e.g. Plummer, 1983). Confession, defned as a revelation of secret or unconscious thoughts and actions, suggests a connection with the very truth of the self, parallel to the way the

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“autobiographical pact” (le pacte autobiographique) operates. According to Philippe Lejeune, such a pact is some kind of “contract between author and reader in which the autobiographer explicitly commits himself or herself not to some impossible historical exactitude but rather to the sincere effort to come to terms with and to understand his or her own life” (see Eakin 1989, ix). The content of confession refers to parts of our life history that we may want to keep secret or which may violate a secular or religious law or may transgress acceptable social behavior or personal ethics. We will see below how these associations, meant to distinguish the private from the public sphere, either assist or undermine the construction of meaning in the works that follow. In the following works we will also observe how artists employ the formats of the video diary, reality television and documentary to create new formats that mimic their technical, visual and conceptual characteristics in order to create new narrations for existing, alternative or projected selves.

Case study 5 Jo Spence, Beyond the Family Album, 1979 The photographer Jo Spence will reinvent the family album (starting with her own) and later on develop this process into a method she will call phototherapy. This method will emerge with the collaboration of psychotherapist Rosy Martin during cocounseling sessions. Reenacted photographs of the family album, but additionally new images with the participants assuming various roles from people in their environment, referencing signifcant persons and events of their life, are created for this re-invented album. Jo Spence herself explained that phototherapy is a kind of “serious game” that is done through a participatory process; “it is not done for you” (1995, 165). The whole process she believed to have a therapeutic effect on the subject, to provide insight into the lives of the participants, promote understanding and aid change. In this “photo-theater of the self”, as she calls it, we see her being photographed in the pose of her infant self, lying naked on the couch, but also representing her mother in a role play that connects her desire for parental acceptance and the need to reject her parents. Such issues, along with her struggle to accept her middle class family decent, are openly discussed in her writings. Annete Kuhn argues that this return in Beyond the Family Album, leaves no room for us to perceive it as a “nostalgic escape” (1995, 21) while Anne Boyer will call the process “a politicized way of self-portrait” (2016, 5). Jo Spence will also record parts of her autobiography during her illness from cancer and later from leukemia. However, this is not just a representation through self-portrait and its variants, but also research on medical treatment, the roles that the patient is called to take on (victim, fghter or survivor) and the change in life and personal choices brought about by disease. Spence will even try to get involved with, inform and help the wider

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community that may face similar issues. The interpretations of the self-portrait she makes in the works The Image of Health? (1982–6) and The Shock of Cancer (1982), do not attempt to reveal an existing identity but are, like her previous works, an exploration of the possibilities of the subject and its transformations.

Activity Select a photograph from your distant or more recent past and “reinvent” it. Why did you choose this photo? What does this reinvention mean to you?

Case study 6 Alex Bag, Untitled Fall 95, 1995 Untitled Fall 95 is a single screen video starring Bag as an art student at the School of Visual Arts, of which she was a graduate. Alex Bag, in her characteristic deadpan style, faces the camera in close-up, embarking on a confessional narrative in stand-alone clips that correspond to different semesters of her studies. In each clip she adopts a different persona that encapsulates the changes that occur in her interests, her ideas, her sources of inspiration and her perceptions of the school environment from semester to semester. These changes are expressed not only through the storytelling and the language used, but may also be observed in her appearance (clothing, wig, glasses etc.). Her initial enthusiasm as a student at last away from the parental home, is replaced by her frustration within the male-dominated school environment. Finally, creative life circumscribed within the school collapses in her encounter with the “outside” world for which, she discovers has not acquired any skills. The set-up of the video makes reference to vlogs of the time, investing in their association with the true and authentic experience. The constructed series of subjectivities does not however use this scenography to persuade us of the videos’ veracity but employs it as a tool in the narration of the self. According to Klein, Bag uses humor and satire “through techniques of disguise, exaggeration, and transposition” (2008, 52) for constructing her critique of the social and cultural context.Techniques such as masquerading, imitation and transgression are, according to Marsha Meskimmon (1996, 202), common ways among female artists of the twentieth century who used self-portrait in order to discuss issues that have to do with sex difference and representability. For Gregory Williams, these are “invented mythologies” (1997, 94), a tactic used by artists like Alex Bag for the exploration of the self. The personages that Bag makes up are caricatures of the characters she describes, but her humor has a bitter taste. As Shaila Dewan notes, you do not need to be an artist to recognize these episodes of narration as “mental rites of passage” (1997, n.p.), rituals associated with pain, loss and disillusion.

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Refective questions • •

Do you identify with any of the narratives of this student from 1995? Discuss the issue of using personal experience in performance as a way of communicating relatable issues.

Practice prompt 1 Create a self-portrait in the format of performance for camera. What elements of yourself do you wish to convey? How direct or abstract do you want this self-portrait to be?

Case study 7 Annie Sprinkle, Post Porn Modernist Show, 1989–96 During this show Sprinkle projects in slides and orally recounts moments of her life during the past twenty years, which included life as a sex worker and in the sex industry. With disarming candor, she discusses subjects that are probably taboo outside of the performance space. On one occasion she lies with her legs open and a speculum inserted in her vagina and invites the audience to come closer and take a close look with the use of a torch. The set-up naturalizes a behaviour that would be unthinkable in everyday non-medical environments, calls for the education of the audience and the acceptance of sex and pleasure in everyday life. Her recent activist and art activity, in collaboration with her partner Elisabeth M. Stephens, is in the feld of sex ecology (see http://sexecology.org further discussed in Chapter 10). The amorous relationship with earth lies on the core of this activity that includes educational seminars and workshops, walking activities and marriages to earth, rocks, the moon and so on.

Case study 8 Tracey Emin, Why I Never Became a Dancer, 1995 In this 6 min 32sec flm, Emin recounts her experience, as a teenager growing up in provincial England and gives a specifc account of a dance competition she partook of, one she was going to excel in, were it not for the abuse thrown at her from boys she had sexual encounters with. The video ends with a cathartic dance dedicated to these boys from her past. Emin’s works are characteristic examples of confessional art and represent a diary-like record of her traumatic experiences such as her rape, as well as everyday episodes such as a drunken night.4 As has been said of Emin, her work “speaks of the unspeakable” (Fanthome, 2006, 30). Moreover, as these works have a personal and often autobiographical element, they are very easily categorized as dealing with “women’s themes” (Love, 1999) and in

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this way become marginalized, presented as mere self-healing or as works only related to their authors without the capacity to communicate with the rest of the (art)world.

Refective questions •

Have you seen or made any performances with autobiographical context? How did you negotiate what to include in the work and not?

Beyond stereotypes During the twentieth century we encounter self-portrait as a means of exploring identity and its stereotypical representations but also as a visual statement for marginalized groups, usually excluded from representation. In this sense, self-portraiture is activated by artists belonging to marginalized groups as part of visibility politics, while the representation of their stereotypical identity is used as a means to overthrow it (Avgitidou, 2003). Marsha Meskimmon discusses this reading of self-portrait for women artists in the twentieth century as a reversal of an established historiography that excludes them and as a revelation of the self as a social construct (1996, 73). Identity politics of the 1980s and 1990s also form the backdrop for the projection of racial and ethnically stereotyped identities within the context of post-colonial critique.

Case study 9 Carrie Mae Weems, Mirror, Mirror, 1987 Carrie Mae Weems is an artist who, according to her website “has explored family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems and the consequences of power.” (https://bit.ly/3yNJOtS). In Mirror, Mirror, a combination of photography and text, the artist stands in front of a mirror in which another woman appears. The text at the bottom of the photograph reveals the roles of the two women: “Looking into the mirror, the black woman asked: ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fnest of them all?’ The mirror says ‘Snow White, you black bitch, and don’t you forget it !!!’”. The reference is to the well-known fairy tale of “Snow White and the seven dwarfs”, while the association of white (skin) with beauty made here is also evident, something that the artist “should not forget”. Chicago and Lucie-Smith (1999, 153) refer to the frst flm adaptation of the fairy tale by Disney (1937) and the affinity of whiteness and goodness throughout the work, while pointing out the feelings of inferiority it would have created in generations of black children who would not have been able to identify with this representation. The artist uses this characteristic representation of the female in front of the mirror, a favorite painterly subject dating back to the sixteenth century, but she averts her gaze from it. The denial here is therefore dual, not only against beauty standards of her time, but of the tradition of mainstream art history itself.

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Refective questions Look for paintings from art history with similar imagery. • •

How do they differ from the work we examined? What story do they tell about women’s lives and their time?

Case study 10 Catherine Opie, Self-portrait, 1993 The portraits photographed by Catherine Opie are not just portraits of people of the opposite sex, but as Judith Halberstam puts it, they are images of “determined female masculinity” (1997, 184). The transgender people (Being and Having series) in these overly cropped photos look at us directly, boldly or inquisitively. According again to Halberstam, these bodies, marked with various tattoos and piercings, create multi-layered identities that cannot be traced to the boundaries of “man” and “woman”. In Self-portrait the artist is photographed with their back to the public, a method they have used for the portraits of others. On the bare back there is an image inscribed onto the skin which appears to have been drawn by a child. A house, the sun rising from the clouds and, on the front, two fgures wearing skirts and holding hands. The stereotypical image of the heterosexual couple as a model reproduced in children’s drawings, is replaced in this sketch by the image of the lesbian couple. However, this substitution is not a simple process but it involves pain. Asked about the meaning of this image, Opie tells us that one of the meanings is “that I have my back to you” (Halberstam, 1997, 187). The symbolism of this act of negation is intensifed by the fact that in every self-portrait we will look for the face in order to recognize, explore, and perhaps understand the person in the image. This deprivation may indicate that the artist wants to communicate on their own terms, in a reality which has ignored them.

Refective questions •

Look for the works in the previous chapter in which the artists inscribe their body. What is the role/symbolism of these performative actions?

Case study 11 Oreet Ashery, Marcus Fisher, 2000 Marcus Fisher is Oreet Ashery’s alter ego, initially appearing in a series of photographic self-portraits of the artist (Marcus Fisher 1–5, 2000). Disguised as an Orthodox Jewish man in these photos, associated with her Israeli descent, she enters stereotypically male spaces, such as Turkish cafes in Berlin and gay bars in London (https: //bit.ly/3qS7dUM). This subsequent

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Figure 4.3 Oreet Ashery, Self Portrait as Marcus Fisher, scanned Polaroid, 2000. Photograph: Manuel Vason. Courtesy of the artist.

series of public interventions will be part of the pseudo-documentary biography of Marcus Fisher, which will include the appearance of her persona in his wake (Marcus Fisher’s Wake, 2000). Oreet Ashery explains that this persona was born on the occasion of a friend’s decision to cut off all contact with her when he became an Orthodox Jew. She talks about the appropriation of her own culture, from which she feels excluded as a woman but also as the daughter of a mother who left her orthodox family. However, she does not consider herself impersonating someone or trying to do so, but recognizes

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the symbolic and semiotic value of the image she creates for others. Her presence in places and contexts in which it would be even dangerous to be discovered, offers her highly emotional experiences. Infuenced by reality TV, she will create Say Cheese, in which Marcus Fisher meets his audience, one on one, for fve minutes in a bedroom setting in a non-scripted interaction. The visitor may take a photo during this meeting. She recounts: The power relationship in the interactions is fuid and complex, Marcus appears nearly passive to allow participants to act out their fantasies, still he is in control of the piece as the artist. If some of the interactions are to be viewed as potential theatrical or cinematic scripts, are they an equal collaboration? What states of ‘self’ or identity come into place in the interaction? Whilst Marcus is simulating a ‘Jew’ and a ‘man’ for some participants the experience of meeting Marcus is as good as meeting the ‘real’ thing. Is the artist’s background and her relationships to Marcus creating something, which is as ‘near to the real thing’ as one might hope for under the circumstances? And what about the Jewish thing? For some participants Marcus represents ‘the Jew’ that which works as a cultural signifer, therefore any ‘issues’ be it guilt, perplexity, curiosity, or fetish they have with Judaism they can ‘try out’ with Marcus. (Ashery, n.d., n.p.)

Practice prompt 2 Create a persona and present it through performance for camera pieces. Consider the idea of a mock documentary.

Case study 12 La Pocha Nostra La Pocha Nostra is a group of artists that originate mainly from the fne arts and dance with alternating members, the central fgure remaining Guillermo Gómez Peña. The word pocha in urban lingo means an American-Mexican who tries to speak Spanish but makes various missteps in the language. Some of the members of this group originate from Mexico or are second and third generation immigrants but the idea of non-purity and in-between cultures and identities, goes beyond the specifc interpretation of the word pocha. The artists of the group fully adopt this intermediary state between coexisting diverse identities, creating, according to Peña, a “multicultural Frankenstein” he calls ethno-cyborg (https://www.guillermogomezpena. com). According to Fotini Kalle “[The] performance for Gómez Peña is essentially nothing but an extension of life itself, where all those deviations of the self that do not fnd space to exist in the consciousness of the individual, this surplus of the ego that does not ft the way the subject is structured,

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are released like ‘demons’ leaving Pandora’s box open” (2018, 184). Their iconography combines elements of pop and ethnic culture, religion and ritual and objects from the “day of the dead”, the sex industry and sports. They create living dioramas, a term they use to describe their practice that combines installations and performative compositions of baroque sensibility and calculated geometrical syntheses. Their work has a strong political dimension that touches on issues such as colonialism, borders, immigration, race and gender. 

Practice prompt 3 Bring to the studio images of favorite multi-person paintings from the art history book. Use these as a starting point for “living dioramas”. Explore the prop closet for items you can use. Have someone take pictures in order to observe how your ideas develop retrospectively.

Case study 13 Guillermo Gómez-Peña και Coco Fusco, Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, 1992–3 In the narrative that is constructed in this performance, Guillermo GómezPeña and Coco Fusco originate from an unexplored area of America and they are presented to the public as exhibits, mainly in museums. The performance takes place in a cage built inside the museum and includes various supposedly ethnic elements in combination with modern technology objects, which are used by the artists during this durational performance. The artists wear costumes that appear traditional as well as modern sunglasses, a Mexican wrestling mask, cowboy boots, etc. The assistants and the staff of the museum support this fabricated narrative by providing explanations for the “exhibits”, guiding the chained performers in and out of the cage, etc. The performance bears reference to the captivity and display of people from various ethnicities during the period of Western colonialism. The combination of traditional and modern elements and tropes creates an absurd, nevertheless, in many cases, believable condition. The performance had a high number of visitors and a variety of reactions, including ridiculing and attacking the performers and, in rare cases opposing the performance on an ethical basis.5 Although the performance was presented in a purely artistic context, in many cases it was not perceived as art. The performance raises issues in relation to identity, our relationship with the Other, personal responsibility, etc. At the same time, it may be analyzed in the context of institutional critique, that is, artistic practice that focuses on the institutions of art in order to expose them as a system and reveal their organization and function as a constitutive element of the art that is produced and exhibited within them.

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Refective questions Consider this work in connection with the Mark Dion project (C.S.18) in Chapter 2. •

How do you perceive of these two works in the context of institutional critique?

Practice prompt 4: alter ego Create your persona / alter ego.You may perceive it as an extension of the self, a concealed self struggling to emerge, a self that will be revealed during the creative process, an aspect of yourself that does not meet the expectations of those around you, or even multiple selves. Present your persona as a performance for camera or as the documentation of a durational performance: e.g. you may decide to live as your alter ego for a week, go shopping as your alter ego, etc. Keywords: persona, alter ego, doppelgänger, super ego, masquerade, caricature.

Concluding notes A performative exploration of the self can be traced back to Renaissance self-fashioning, the construction of an idealized self in artists’ self-portraits of the time. During the interwar years gender masquerade and persona assumption will liberate artistic creativity. In fact, the immediacy of performance art and the direct involvement of the body in it, will afford a direct link to artists’ life histories and the exploration of the self as multiple selves or by means of gender masquerade. Artists will explore stereotypical representations of gender exposing the fragility of gender roles by utilizing the tools of doubling, copying and repetition. They will reveal invisible, marginalized or excluded from representation lives, in confessional and autobiographical art by mimicking the formats of video diary, reality TV and documentary. They will invent their own formats like phototherapy (Jo Spence) or defne identity states like ethno-cyborg (Gómez-Peña) and reveal possibilities of subject transformation and reinvention. They will expose identity politics in gender, racial and ethnically stereotyped identities of ambiguous personas. Lastly, they will present the self as multilayered, not easily fxed or read.

Notes 1 For a historical review of the use of self-portraiture in Renaissance see WoodsMarsden, J. (2000). Renaissance Self-Portraiture:The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

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2 The Real World was launched in the US in 1992, and was one of the frst reality shows on TV. Additional components of this mass culture were widely popular shows in the US, such those of Oprah Winfrey and Jerry Springer, shows that focused on the problems and the secrets of everyday people, confessed by themselves in live broadcast. 3 The show was originally produced in the Netherlands in 1997 and frst aired in the UK in 2000. The title refers to George Orwell’s book 1984. 4 For an analysis of Emin’s use of autobiography see for example Smith & Watson, 2001. 5 Fusco recounts the diverse reactions of the public and the wider context of their performance while coining the term reverse ethnography (1994).

References Ashery, O. (n.p.). In and out of love with Marcus Fisher – an alter ego and an art project. https://bit.ly/3krYcQP. Avgitidou, A. (2003). Performances of the self. Digital Creativity, 14 (3), 131–8. Blessing, J. (1997). Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender performance in photography. In J. Blessing (Ed.), Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography (19–119). New York: Guggenheim Museum. Bojan, M. R. (2014). Breaking the norms: Poetics of provocation. In M.R. Bojan & A. Cassin (Ed.), Whispers: Ulay on Ulay (pp. 20-47). Amsterdam: Valiz Foundation. Boyer, A. (2016). The kind of pictures she would have taken: Jo Spence. Afterall, 42 (3), 4–11. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble. London & New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1999). Bodies that matter. In Price, J. & Shildrick, M. Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader (234–45). New York: Routledge. Cahun, C. (2007 [1930]). Disavowals, De Muth, S. (trans). London: Tate publishing. Chicago, C. & Lucie-Smith, E. (1999). Women and Art: Contested Territory. East Sussex: Ivy Press Ltd. Dewan, S. (1997). About the exhibition (Fall 1997 International Artist-in-Residence Program), n.p. Retrieved 19 February, 2017, from http://www.artpace.org/works/iair/ iair_fall_1997/alex-bag Eakin, J. (1989). Foreword. In Lejeune, P. On Autobiography, vii–xxviii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Fanthome, C. (2006). The infuence and treatment of autobiography in confessional art: Observations on Tracey Emin’s feature flm Top Spot. Biography, 29 (1), 30–42. Fusco, C. (1994). The other history of intercultural performance. Theater Drama Review, 38 (1), 143–67. Halberstam, J. (1997). The art of gender: Bathrooms, butches, and the aesthetics of female masculinity. In J. Blessing (Ed.), Rrose is a Rrose is a Rrose: Gender Performance in Photography (176–89). New York: Guggenheim Museum. Heddon, D. (2008). Introduction. In Autobiography and Performance: Performing Selves. Hampshire & New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Kalle, F. (2018). Live Art and its politico-historical identity: Pedagogical fndings and approaches in the examples of the groups La Pocha Nostra and Non Grata [Unpublished PhD thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki]. National Documentation Center. https://bit.ly/3ckoOij Katz, R. P. (2008). Marcus and Rrose : Cross-dressing, Alter Egos, and the Artist. https://bit.ly/3B0IcNt

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Klein, S. R. (2008). Comic liberation: The feminist face of humor in contemporary art. Art Education, 61(2), 47–52. Kuhn, A. (1995). Introduction. In Spence, J. Cultural Sniping:The Art of Transgression (19–23). London and New York: Routledge. Latimer, T. T. (2006). Acting out: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. In L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t Kiss Me:The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (56–71). London: Tate Publishing. Love, K. (1999). Experience preferred. In K. Love (Ed.) Experience: Four Essays on Experience (2–8). London: Loose-Leaf. Meskimmon, M. (1996). The Art of Refection: Women Artists’ Self-portraiture in the Twentieth Century. London: Scarlet Press. Mezur, K. (2005). Beautiful Boys/Outlaw Bodies: Devising Kabuki Female-Likeness. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. Screen, 16 (3), 6–18. doi:10.1093/screen/16.3.6 Plummer, K. (1983). Documents of life: An Introduction to the Problems and Literature of a Humanistic Method. UK: Unwin Hyman. Shaw, J. (2006). Narcissus and the magic mirror. In L. Downie (Ed.), Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (33–450). London: Tate Publishing. Smith, S. & Watson, J. (2001). The rumpled bed of autobiography: Extravagant lives, extravagant questions. Biography, 24 (1), 1–14. Spence, J. & Martin, R. (1995). Phototherapy: Psychic realism as healing art? In J. Spence, Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression, 164–80. London and New York: Routledge. Williams, G. (1997). Missing things. Performing Arts Journal, 19 (2), 94–9.

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Continuing the chapters directly associated with the body, in this chapter we will be looking at the “augmented” body, bodily transformations in performances that mediate our experience of the environment and our relations, and alter our sense of self. From physical extensions to wearables, we will explore how augmented aptitudes and the mutability of the body may be connected with the alien and the monstrous, new bodies making up for loss or connected with desire and imagination. We will examine how artists have augmented the body through prosthetic-like extensions to create unfamiliar images, explore relationships to other bodies and to space and decentre our perception of otherness; how they use technological means as a sign of excess or question ethics in biotechnologies and negotiate our networked existence in the omnipresence of digital media. The discussion on transhumanism and posthumanism will aid us in this exploration.

More than human The end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty frst century will witness speculations in philosophy, critical theory and epistemology of what it may mean to be human. The discussion will intensify from the 1980s around concepts of transhumanism and, mainly, posthumanism. Transhumanism emerged as a movement that took notice of the technological and scientifc advancements and the existing and possible future opportunities for enhancements of the human body, to project a future where technology and biology merge for the advancement of humanity. Transhumanism’s quite positivist futuristic projections are shared by its different branches such as libertarian transhumanism, democratic transhumanism, and extropianism (see more in Ferrando, 2013). Posthumanism on the other hand, while maintaining an interest in technology and biology, decentres the discussion on the future of “humanity” away from humans as the overarching species. It opens up this discussion to include animals, aliens and possible species. In her book Simians, Cyborgs and Women:The Reinvention of Nature (2015 [1991]), Donna Haraway talks of a post-gender world where the discussion is removed from

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-6

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a Marxist or psychoanalytical analysis of gender. The writer proposes the post-body as emancipated from birth and past, where there is no distinction between the physical and non-physical. In an earlier essay she had announced that “… we are all chimeras, mythic hybrids of machine and organism, in short, cyborgs” (1983, 149). Coming from a feminist posthuman approach, Haraway does not only talk of a “growing fuidity” of humans in relation to new power structures, but even questions what human is. As we mentioned, this is also an ethical issue that debates the primacy of humans as species. Within this reasoning, the cyborg is proposed as an entity that crosses the boundaries of the recognized categories of race, gender and class. Rosi Braidotti (2016) notes that biogenetic capitalism intends to lift the boundaries between species with the intention of profting from this. She connects this with the “data miming” of lives, information being the current capital. Braidotti invents the term “zoe” (from the Greek word for life) to defne the “nonhuman vital force of life” (2016, 686). Haraway and Braidotti both remove the human from its central position in discourse and advocate a more egalitarian approach to species. Thus, Haraway’s cyborg, void of the categorical distinctions associated with humans may act as a potential connective agent. Aloi and McHugh (2021), editors of Posthumanism in Art and Science, discuss the possibilities and transformations posthumanism brings in creative practice, ethics and considerations of identity as post-identity. They also appreciate the questions (rather than answers) that art may bring into posthumanist discourse and they “argue for maintaining the posthuman as an inclusive yet provocative conceptual and political framework for emergent ecologies and ontologies” (2021, 8). In this new feld that opens up, old categorizations do not have a place and the need to invent new taxonomies arises. See for example how, in the previously mentioned volume, Catts and Zurr present their concept of “Extended Bodies” as “semi-living semi beings” (2021, 45). They begin with the idea that there are fragments of bodies, of differing scales of e.g. cells or organs, which are separated from their bodies of origin. Their discussing of the possibility of a new life in the “Extended Body” by means of technologies, is more a conceptual and artistic project than a scientifc reality, that nevertheless opens up enthralling questions about identity and the politics of survival.

Body extensions In this section the augmented body is a body transformed through the physical extensions of constructed or ready-made props. The resulting images and performances create “new bodies”, uncanny images of new species that have modifed capabilities and affect. At times these are metaphors of possibilities rather than actually augmented capabilities, based on imagination and desire.

96 The augmented body Case study 1 Rebecca Horn, Berlin Exercises in Nine Pieces (Berlin-Übungen in neun Stücken), 1974–5 Rebecca Horn’s activity spans performance, sculpture, installation and flm. Horn has created objects that have served as body extensions for a number of these works (fnd descriptions and videos on https://bit.ly/3DpVWQv). Below we will revisit some performative works from Berlin Exercises in Nine Pieces that connect to “body augmentation”. In Exercise 1: Two Hands Scratching Both Walls (Mit beiden Händen die Wände berühren), Horn walks up and down the room of a gallery in Berlin with wooden, fnger-like extensions which she has constructed. Similar constructions were used for Finger Gloves (Handschuhfnger), the performance included in the 1973 flm Performances II. The long extensions, reach the surface of the walls on either side of the room when she extends her arms, creating a scratchy, eerie sound. Horn dominates and determines space by extending and subtracting her arms, going up and down the room, flling out space in this dynamic performance. Whorrall-Campbell (2021) explains that the near coincidence of the room’s edges to the flm frame adds to the effect her movement has on us. She also views this performance as an attempt for communication with the world, one that connects to the artist’s severe illness in the past, but also as an attempt to a female mutable body that denies objectifcation. In Exercise 4: Keeping Those Legs from Fucking Around (Die untreuen Beine festhalten), she performs with actor Otto Sander. They both wear black and have white tape with attached magnets on their left and right leg and hip respectively. They move through the gallery room trying to keep their legs apart, and each time these are separated they are forced together by the powerful magnets. The uniformity of their outft creates a comic twolegged creature but is also a comment on the loss of self in a couple and the impossibility of individual course.

Activity 1 (pairs) Walk around the room and team up with a partner. Move through the room with your shoulders attached to one another. Explore paces and directions without any verbal communication. When you feel you have exhausted this activity create a different point of connection between yourselves and navigate through space trying to stay in constant contact with one another. In order to complicate your movement, each one may use different parts of the body, e.g. head and waist, elbow and leg, etc. Lastly, create even a small scenario/route for this activity: going to the cafeteria to get something to eat, taking a stroll in the park, etc. Observe yourself “becoming one” with the other person.

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Activity 2 (pairs) Use a lightweight (plastic or aluminum) rod and create a point of connection between yourself and the other person. Follow the steps of the previous activity.

Activity 3 (solo) Use the rod of the previous activity and connect it to a part of your body. Navigate through space and explore your relationship to space and the people in it.

Case study 2 Rebecca Horn, Performances II, 1973 A few of Rebecca Horn’s performances appear in this flm, for which the artist has made special apparatuses. In Pencil Mask (Bleistiftmaske), a mask made of bands which pencils are attached to covers her whole face. Horn proceeds to the wall and moves her head from side to side, creating pencil marks on the white surface. As in Exercise 1, sound is central in the experience of the work. The aggressiveness of the mask’s appearance is coupled with the scratch-like marks on the wall. As in the other works of Horn, the body extension functions as an interface with the world. In the next piece, Cockfeather Mask (Hahnenmaske), we observe the exploration of close relationships we saw in Exercise 4, although within a more intimate setting. Here’s how the artist describes the piece: The cockfeathers are attached to a replica of my profle, half an inch wide, which is strapped to my head. With the feathers I caress the face of a person standing close to me. The intimate space between us is flled with tactile tention. My sight is obstructed by the feathers – I can only see the face of the other, when I turn my head, looking with one eye like a bird. (Vergine, 2007 [1974], 115)

Activity 4 Use your clothing and materials that exist in the studio to modify (augment, restrict or change) your haptic and visual experience. Move around the space and interact with the space and the other performers. Keep a written record of your experience, noting down things which you found interesting or were surprised by and ideas you may want to explore further in your performance work.

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Figure 5.1 Lisa Bufano, performance at All World’s Fair in San Francisco, CA, USA, Feb 23, 2013. Photograph: Julia Wolf. Courtesy of Bufano family. Licence: Y CC BY-SA 2.0.

Case study 3 Lisa Bufano, One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart, 2007 Lisa Bufano was a dancer and a performance artist. Bufano used wooden stilts that were queen Anne style table legs in her performances (her feet and fngers were amputated when she was 21), but also explored other kinds of body extension as was the case in her underwater video. In One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart, created and performed by herself and Sonsheree Giles, both artists use these limb-like extensions which determine the way they move, create challenges and open up possibilities. Her movements and those of her partner create the image of animal-like fgures, which merge to form a new species, challenge, connect, or submit to one another. The intense relationship on stage is one of constant negotiation. According to her, “the dominating theme [in her work] is the visceral experience of alienation, embodied by creatures, real and imagined” (http://www.lisabufano.com/info.php).

Refective questions In her interview with Andrea Shea, Bufano (2007) makes reference to characters in comics where a common person undergoes extreme transformation and has to come to terms with a new identity. •

Did you make any similar connections in your activities 1–4?

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Case study 4 Narcissister, IN*TANDEM (2010) Narcissister is an artist that engages with performance, flm and other media in her ‘persona’ as Narcissister, a term that she invented to refect that she is a woman of color but also coming from a place where stereotyped white female beauty thrives: Los Angeles (artist’s interview https://bit.ly/3lTnYgI). Her masked persona, according to her interviews, liberates her from physical and identity limitations. For IN*TANDEM (2010), she has put on two jointed heads with high Victorian wigs and exposed white breasts, while we can observe the different color of the rest of her torso. An umbrella and the rest of her clothing point to the same Victorian-Asian look. Lucian Gomoll (2011) argues that her appearance resists any defned identities that may relate to race, gender, etc. calling her an “organic-inorganic monstrosity”. This ambiguity and resistance to identifcation obstructs any recognition from the part of the viewer.

Refective questions •

Discuss notions of race, the other and the monster in connection with this work.

Case study 5 Mari Katayama, Bystander (2016), On The Way Home (2016) Mari Katayama uses photography and sculpture to create her self-portraits. With the use of patchworked fabrics, lace and pearls that she has stitched together, an activity she exercised since childhood, she creates stuffed sculptural limp-like extensions to her body. Both her legs were partially amputated when she was nine. In her photographs, indoors and in outdoors settings, she stages herself with these sculptural elements as if they were one, or she stands by them or in their company. Some of these sculptures reproduce the shape of her amputated limps while others appear like hands. In different interviews she talks of a world operating for the “correct body” and the liberating effect of photography for her (Katayama & Matsumoto, 2002).

Body modifcations In this section we include modifcations made on the body that alter its appearance, create unfamiliar images and have conceptual, gender and existential connotations. Unfamiliar forms and images of the body connect to our ideas of normality and the uncanny. Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen explains how after the Middle Ages and up to the 19th century in Europe, dwarfs, the bearded woman and other “monsters” populate the royal courts and literature to end up in fairs and circuses (Laneyrie-Dagen in Rigopoulou, 2003, 535–6). To this discussion of otherness as monstrosity what is also useful is

100 The augmented body the notion of the uncanny.The uncanny, explored by Sigmund Freud (1990) in his homonymous 1919 essay, is related to fear and horror.That which is frightening though is not necessarily uncanny. Something new to us may become uncanny, but something must be added to it in order to transform it. In fact, he informs us, something is uncanny because there already exists in it a sense of the familiar. It might not even be a case of something new but instead of something familiar which has been alienated through repression1. The performances in this section begin with Stelarc’s seminal work highlighting the way technology has been incorporated into our daily experience and researching the transformations on human experience. Rather than thinking of these forms of body augmentations as bodily extensions Marco Donnarumma (2017) proposes to think of them as bodily incorporations, creating a hybridity rather than a sum of parts.

Case study 6 Stelarc, Third Hand, 1980–98 Stelarc is one of the pioneers of performance with work that spans from earlier explorations of the limits of the body in suspensions with hooks to a more sophisticated and technologically enhanced exploration of the augmented body that blurs the boundaries between art and science. The idea that traverses his earlier and later work is that the body is obsolete. One of the latter case’s frst examples is the Third Hand  (1980). The third hand was a mechanical hand attached to the artist’s right arm and actuated by the electrical signals from his body muscles. The Third Hand  has a pinch-release, grasp-release, 300-degree wrist rotation, clockwise and counter-clockwise and a tactile feedback system for a rudimentary sense of touch. It was intended as a semi-permanent extension of the artist’s body but physical complications made him abandon this idea. This intention of having a permanent addition to his body has remained with later works such as the Extra Ear Project, surgically constructing an ear on his arm. Although this resulted in a serious infection, the ear has become a living part of his body. The intention is still to electronically augment the ear to internet enable it as a remote listening device for people in other places. According to the artist’s website “The Third Hand has come to stand for a body of work that explored intimate interface of technology and prosthetic augmentation – not as a replacement but rather as an addition to the body. A prosthesis not as a sign of lack, but rather a symptom of excess.” (http://stelarc.org/?catID=20265).

Refective questions •

Review the later works of Stelarc, such as Exoskeleton and Body on Robot Arm (http://stelarc.org/projects.php). How does the relationship between the artist’s body and machine develop throughout his works? What happens to agency?

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The artist frequently refers to himself in performances as “the body”. How do you perceive the distance from the self implied in this approach?

Figure 5.2 Stelarc, Third Hand – Handswriting, Writing one word simultaneously with three hands, Maki Gallery, Tokyo, 1982. Photograph: Keisuke Oki. Courtesy of the artist.

Case study 7 Stelarc, The Extra Ear Project/ Ear on Arm, 2006 Stelarc made a number of attempts at creating and integrating an ear in his body, starting off with the creation of a ¼ scale ear from the cultivation of human cells.The next stage of this exploration was to create an ear made from soft tissue and fexible cartilage and surgically insert it in his arm. The idea was that this ear would not hear but emit sound. Furthermore, the intention was that the ear would acquire internet connectivity via a modem.An infection caused by the transplant resulted in abandoning this idea of the transplant and instead using a synthetic cast of the ear that remains under the artist’s arm. The project goes beyond body augmentation and manipulation into interconnectivity. It also touches upon issues of ethics concerning biosciences.

Case study 8 Paddy Hartley, Face Corsets, 2002 Artist Paddy Hartley initially conceived his face corsets, developed from cloth and PVC “to brutally mimic and parody the results of extreme cosmetic surgery procedures” (https://bit.ly/3dLa3W8). Corsets worn over the face and neck will

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Figure 5.3 Stelarc, Ear On Arm, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, 2006. Photograph: Nina Sellars. Courtesy of the artist.

Figure 5.4 Paddy Hartley, Face Corsets, 2002. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

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exaggerate facial characteristics usually manipulated in plastic surgery. The borderline grotesque results challenge our perceptions of beauty and our preconceptions of the correlation of visual and psychic characteristics. The possibilities that these artworks open up will fnd applications in medical research, with bioglass facial implants for facial reconstruction and later fashion design.

Activity 5 Explore the notions of distortion and metamorphosis of the face with objects and materials in the studio. Early references include Bruce Nauman’s 1968 Making Faces, a direct reference to children’s play, incorporating both the playful and the grotesque. Create your own corset following your experimentations.

Case study 9 Lucy McRae, Evolution, 2008 Lucy McRae is an artist and self-proclaimed “body architect” who explores how technology and the body interface, to imagine bodily experiences in the future. In this lo-f body of work (2007–9), produced through the collaboration with textile artist Bart Hess, we observe various bodily augmentations with the use of ordinary or unexpected materials that provoke narratives of a future existence and may even hint the comic. McRae has also collaborated with (medical) scientists and institutions in order to create immersive experiences that intend to “prepare” the human body for the future. She orchestrates her operations in alien environments in order to trigger the creativity that may lie in vulnerable experiences. Her education in dance and architecture creates interesting juxtapositions of body movement and space in her cinematic works.

Activity 6 In Tetsuo (The Iron Man), 1989, a low-f cult cyberpunk flm, directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, man and metal mix to form the Iron Man.You are invited to research sci-f flms and note down what you fnd interesting about the futuristic projections of humanity. Create your own sketches of modifed humans of the future.

Practice prompt 1 Use your wardrobe as a depository in order to create an augmented self. Navigate through public space and have a friend take photographs of your interactions with the environment and the people.

Case study 10 Peter de Cupere, Sweat Performance, 2010 Peter de Cupere realized this performance on the invitation of Jan Fabre and with the participation of fve dancers. Peter de Cupere is an artist who works with smell to create meta-sensory experiences for the viewers. This

104 The augmented body piece started with the artist preparing fve sets of different dinner courses for the dancers. During the performance the dancers wore transparent full-body plastic suits and were interconnected with PVC tubes coming out of their suits and from their mouths. Their very different sweat smells were travelling through these tubes from one to the other. In the end, their sweat was sprayed to the wall and was placed into a glass box. The audience could approach and smell it through a small hole.

Refective questions •

How has the meaning of this performance changed post-pandemic?

Case study 11 Orlan, Surgery-Performances As a performance artist, Orlan has worked with the body and the (female) body’s image since the 1970s. She is mostly known for the surgical operations performed on herself, as performances transmitted live from the operating room. These plastic surgeries were intended to change her appearance to various female representations which appear in the paintings of the Old Masters. In 4th Surgery-Performance, called Successful Surgery (Quatrième Opération Chirurgicale-Performance dite Opération Réussie), in 1991, Orlan organizes the stage of the operating theater. Large scale photographs of her previous works lay around the room. A black and white cut out image of her as Venus from her previous work, Incidental StripTease Using Sheets from the Dowry (Strip-tease occasionnel à l’aide des draps du trousseau), indicates an early preoccupation with representations of the ideal female body in art. In this 1974–5 performance for camera, Orlan progressively transformed herself from a “Madonna with child” to Botticelli’s Renaissance Venus. In 4th Surgery-Performance Orlan wears a metallic silver gown matched by the surgeons’ futuristic outfts. A basket of fruit and lobster, and one black and one white cross used as props complete the scenography. During the operation, Orlan, under partial anesthesia, reads from the psychoanalyst Eugénie Lemoine-Luccioni’s book La Robe. In 7th Surgery-Performance called Omnipresence (1993), the operating theater is covered in lime green plastic and the surgeons wear matching gowns. On the wall, there are three clocks showing the time in New York, Toronto and Tokyo, while the surgery-performance is broadcasted to galleries around the world. In this pre-internet world, the audience is able to communicate with her via telephone and fax. Orlan is able to speak and answer their questions during the surgery (https://www.orlan.eu/works/performance-2/).

Wearables In the introduction to the special issue of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media dedicated to “Bodily Extensions and

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Performance”, editors Sita Popat et. al. (2017) comment on the multifaceted incorporation of bodily extensions in our lives, from medical applications to the omnipresence of digital devices, affecting capabilities and abilities, and perceived as enabling by some or restrictive by others. Performance is proposed by them as the arena par excellence to explore our lives as “fesh-technology entities”. In this section of the chapter we will examine how wearable technology and wearables in general are used performatively in contemporary art.

Case study 12 Jennifer Crupi, Ornamental Hands/Tools for Contact/ Guarded Gestures Jennifer Crupi creates silver sterling and acrylic sculptural extensions of the body that serve as a kind of splint for bodily communication semiotics. Their medical appearance is due not only to their smooth metallic fnish but also to their prosthetic-like appearance. Ornamental Hands, which could also be classifed as jewellery, has the appearance of a complex “glove” and directs the wearer to assume the highly decorative hand positions seen in Renaissance and Baroque paintings. In similar complexity but assuming a more conceptual approach, Crupi creates Tools for Contact, a design that guides our return to contact via touching. When they are being worn, Tools for Contact, #1, place a reassuring hand on the other person’s shoulder. On top of the fngers lie spring-loaded plungers that push the fngers down on top of the shoulder. In her variations on Gestures (Guarded / Unguarded / Power) her designs encourage various positions corresponding to the title connotations. According to Sara Hendren “Crupi makes a shrewd comment on science of body language and the ways humans say both what they want to express and what they wish to hide” (2017, 144).

Practice prompt 2 Become acquainted with Vsevolod Meyerhold bio-mechanical exercises, Oscar Schlemmer’s ballet and references to automata in science fction. Observe the gestures of vendors in open markets, public speakers, professors, etc. Select one of these professional groups as presented in the public sphere and create your own bodily extensions in order to serve or comment on their activity.

Case study 13 Rain Ashford, Doki Doki, 2020 Doki Doki was a response to imposed restrictions and the changes in our attitudes in social interactions caused by COVID-19. It created a framework for nonverbal communication by visualizing basic physiological and environmental/spatial data, e.g. unwanted proximity. Worn as a kind of neck corset that goes over the shoulders, it contains a plug and play circuit. Data, such as heart rate, is visualized as patterns and colored led lights. The wearer can

106 The augmented body choose which data to project with the help of buttons. The actual garment is built with traditional corsetry methods that allows the wearer to adjust it to their needs. A bespoke plug and play circuit can be made and the board can be reprogrammed if the user is familiar with programming (see more at: https://bit.ly/3tq5bxZ).

Case study 14 Gordan Savicˇic´, Constrained City:The Pain of Everyday Life, 2008 During this performance Savicˇic´ travels in the city with a metal corset on his upper naked body. The corset is augmented by GPS and wi-f sensors that receive electromagnetic transmissions which exist in the city. The corset responds to the received transmissions by excreting pressure on his body. His body becomes a trace of the temporary fows of transmissions as he moves within space. At the same time, he is converted to a “hybrid fâneur” “embodying a cartography of the pain of networks” (Psarras, 2021, 194). The data collected from this walk is placed on a map, post-performance.

Refective questions •

Discuss the visualization of affective and “objective” data in the previous two works. Discuss the “translations” of this data.

Figure 5.5 Gordan Savicˇ ic´, Constrained City: The Pain of Everyday Life, 2008. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

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Concluding notes The augmented body as an opening up of possibilities that may expand beyond human experience and existence has preoccupied discourse and art alike from the late twentieth century. Transhumanism and posthumanism are both fascinated by the opportunities that science and technology introduce. For transhumanism, these bring forth enhanced human futures, while posthumanism moves beyond dualisms and the primacy of humans, towards a more egalitarian approach to species. Donna Haraway’s “cyborg” has formed the seminal starting point of this discussion. Artists explore mediated experience from physical extensions of the body, to body modifcations and wearables that inform understandings of the environment and transform relationships. These “new” bodies, connect to otherness in ways that comment on normality, the alien and the monstrous. They are new bodies of desire, realized or imagined, “invented” species, mutated selves. They, lastly, visualize invisible processes and conditions connected to the social and phycological conditions of contemporaneity.

Notes 1 Freud turns to psychiatry and literature for his next examples that enlighten this concept. Reading Ernst Jentsch, he points to the doubts of whether something animate is alive and whether something lifeless is animate as sources of the uncanny, with waxworks, dolls and automata as examples of the latter or automatic gestures in humans. Turning to the author E.T.A. Hoffmann and the story of the Sandman, he frstly mentions the doll Olympia whom the protagonist of the story falls for and later connects the fear of losing one’s eyes with the fear of castration. He continues with further psychoanalytic observations about the factors that convert something frightening into uncanny: repressed impulses, what he calls the omnipotence of thoughts, attitudes towards death and involuntary repetition.

References Aloi, G. & McHugh, S. (2021). Introduction: Envisioning posthumanism. In G. Aloi & S. McHugh (Eds.), Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader (pp. 1–21). New York: Columbia University Press. Braidotti, R. (2016). Posthumanist feminist theory. In L. J. Disch & M. E. Hawkesworth (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of feminist theory, pp. 673–98. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bufano, L. & Shea A. (2019, March 19). Artist takes inspiration from amputation (interview). https://n.pr/3rB0dhF Catts, O. & Zurr, I. (2021). Towards a new class of being. In G. Aloi & S. McHugh (Eds.), Posthumanism in Art and Science: A Reader (pp. 43–6). New York: Columbia University Press. Donnarumma, M. (2017). Beyond the cyborg: Performance, attunement and autonomous computation. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13(2), 105–19. doi:10.1080/14794713.2017.13388

108 The augmented body Ferrando, F. (2013). Posthumanism, Transhumanism, Antihumanism, Metahumanism, and New Materialisms: Differences and Relations. Existenz: An International Journal in Philosophy, religion, Politics and the Arts, 8(2), 26–32. Gomoll, L. (2011). Posthuman performance: A feminist intervention. Total Art Journal, 1 (1), 2–15. http://www.totalartjournal.com Haraway, D. (1983). The Ironic Dream of a Common Language for Women in the Integrated Circuit: Science,Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s or A Socialist Feminist Manifesto for Cyborgs. Submitted to Das Argument for the Orwell 1984 volume. Downloaded from: https://bit.ly/3a1Dm8a Haraway, D. (2015 [1991]). Simians,Cyborgs,and Women:The Reinvention of Nature. London and New York: Routledge. Hendren, S. (2017). All technology is assistive: Six design rules on disability. In J. Sayers (Ed.) Making Things and Drawing Boundaries: Experiments in the Digital Humanities, pp. 139–46. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Katayama, M. & Matsumoto, M. (2022, April 4). Meet the rising Japanese artist who uses her amputated legs to question what is a ‘correct body’ (interview). Artnews. https://bit.ly/3t0ZHti Popat, S., Whatley, S., O’Connor, R., Brown, A. & Harmon, S. (Eds.). (2017). Bodily extensions and performance. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 13(2), pp. 101–4. doi:10.1080/14794713.2017.1358525 Psarras, V. (2021). I sygchroni poli os epifaneia, diepaf kai roi: Keimeikes egkatastaseis, diadrastika perivallonta kai performances me mesa epikoinvnias di’ entopismou [The modern city as a surface, interface and fow: Textual installations, interactive environments and performances with locative media]. In A. Avgitidou (Ed.) Dimosia Techni, Dimosia Sfaira [Public Art, Public Sphere] (pp. 179–200). Thessaloniki: University Studio Press. Rigopoulou, P. (2003). To soma: Apo thn ikesia stin apeili [The body: From Supplication to Threat]. Athens: Plethron. Vergine, L. (2007 [1974]). Body Art and Performance:The Body as Language. Milano: Skira. Whorrall-Campbell, E. (2021). Desirous dreams: The feminist erotics of Rebecca Horn’s ‘Berlin Exercises in Nine Parts’ (1974–5), Another Gaze, (4). https://bit. ly/31u9jCb  

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Body and space

Approaches to the perception of space Why is space important in a performance? The space in which a performance will take place, already has, before our action, characteristics that we need to take into account, as these characteristics co-shape the experience of the spectators and the meaning of our work. Below we will discuss space as a key element of performance, focusing on indoor spaces, that is, private and collective spaces, since the particularity of public space calls for a dedicated chapter (Chapter 8). Our perceptions of space are shaped differently in each time period and are linked to the theories and views on art or architecture. In the twentieth century, the perception of space as an empty, neutral ground on which modernist architectural visions were projected, later received severe criticism. Historically, this position of modernist architects made sense in the context of the emancipation of design from past and pre-existing architectural styles (e.g. classism). However, contempt for the history of the urban landscape and its localized particularities and the severe failure of some of the applications of the principles of modernism on built space brought about this harsh criticism. Phenomenology approaches space as something that has intrinsic properties associated with its experience. It is a philosophical approach that focuses on the investigation of conscious experience with Deckard, Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty as its main representatives. An almost idiosyncratic analysis of the geometric features that we will use below is the phenomenological approach of Gaston Bachelard to space (the house), in his oeuvre The Poetics of Space (frst edition in French 1958, English translation 1964). In this work, elements of space such as corners and nests are treated as small worlds and are associated with the conditions of the self and with emotions. These connections are made through primary images and almost primordial feelings such as the pleasure of the nest. More contemporary approaches to space will highlight its complexity in contrast to the concept of place and the analysis of social, cultural, racial and other parameters. Doreen Massey (1994) for example will highlight the non-physical

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-7

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dimensions of the place, linking the identity of the place with social correlations, correlations which remain unfxed. Furthermore, she will attest that places are gendered in the way that they refect gendered relationships but also in that they play part in the construction and understanding of gender. Elizabeth Grosz (1995) attempts to map the relationship of time and space in the book Space,Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. According to her: The exploration of conceptions of space and time as necessary correlates of the exploration of corporeality. The two sets of interests are defned in reciprocal terms, for bodies are always understood within a spatial and temporal context, and space and time remain conceivable only insofar as corporeality provides the basis for our perception and representation of them. (1995, 84)

Grosz examines this correlation of body and space through diverse felds such as psychoanalysis and phenomenology, for which both she recognizes a meeting of perspectives. Beginning with psychoanalysis, she refers to how frst Freud and then Lacan discuss the infant recognizing itself and its place in space. She refers to the mirror stage, which Lacan has defned as the stage in which the infant identifes with its image in the mirror. This mirror not only projects the image of the subject but also “duplicates the environment, placing real and virtual space in contiguous relations” (1995, 87). According to Grosz, phenomenologist Henri Bergson also believes that there is a stage in the development of the infant where there is no distinction between virtual and real space. For Henri Bergson, space is not something empty and independent of its contents, but it is related to the objects that are inside it and especially to the relations that the subject develops with them. Our position in space (as a subject and as an object for the others that exist in it) and especially our movement are what create the various relationships that ultimately defne space. For this reason, he does not accept a scientifcally unexperienced conception of space, but considers that the sense of place and orientation “are defned with reference to the apparent immediacy of a lived here-and-now” (1995, 93).

Space and site-specifcity in performance In the 1970s performance artists left the art gallery in search of alternative spaces, at the same time as conceptual artists activated spaces outside the typical exhibition venues, something that happened within the context of their challenging of established art practices of the time. Performance artists following a rationale of self-institutionalization and acting outside the art market, moved their activity to places of work, commercial spaces, abandoned buildings, private spaces, etc. As we may realize in our exploration, space is

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not only an element of performance but marks an approach to practice itself. In these versatile spaces, performances often responded to the site’s specifc features, leading to the creation of the term site-specifc performance, also referred to as site responsive performance. A site-specifc performance is a performance which has taken into account the particular characteristics of space, was developed particularly for this space or has taken space as its stimulus. But what are those specifc characteristics? •

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Geometric features: geometric features have to do with the size and the volume of space; consider for example the differences between a room with high ceilings and a basement with low ceilings. Of course, the sense of size is also shaped by other elements such as (natural) light. Spaces with geometric particularity can be transitional points such as stairs, doors, passages, thresholds; intermediate spaces such as corridors; minor spaces such as niches but also spaces in, between and under fxed and movable elements such as furniture. History: perhaps it is easier to understand history as an element of space when the performance space is somehow associated with a characteristic era or event of the past. For example, we may have been invited to give a performance at an historical building (furthermore visibly connected to history through its architecture) or at a venue where a signifcant event has taken place. But even less prominent buildings and spaces have a past, as a result of them being enliven spaces. They refect the experiences and life stories of the people who inhabited them, whose traces may be visible. In the frst example we mentioned, it is almost impossible to ignore the history of the place. We defnitely need to take it into account as the distinctiveness of the space may even act competitively with the performance we organize. In the second case of less prominent spaces, the space is not “imposing” its history on the performance but continues to carry narratives of the past that may open associations with which we might be interested in interacting. Function: as we already mentioned, many artists are exploring places outside the established venues or are invited to performed in them. Many of these spaces are abandoned workplaces (old factories, shops, etc.) or residential areas, while in some cases performances take place in a work environment that continues to operate during the performance. The complexity of this situation that consists of mixing the work of art with everyday life will be discussed further in the chapter eight. The function of each space carries elements from the previous two characteristics (history and geometry) but also charges space with the narratives associated with living, working, and the usage of space in general. It is also an element that may be used by artists as a starting point for a performance.

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Body and space Space is also shaped by presence, that of performers and the audience. The position of the performer in space, her idleness or movement create a different sense of the geometry of space. Consider MerleauPonty’s claim that our movement in space creates the relationships that defne said space. See for example how in the performance of Janine Antoni which we study below, the movement of the performer reduces the sense of the space of the viewer, at the same time enlarging the space of the performance. Or, in the previously mentioned work of Nezaket Ekici (Case Study 5 in Chapter 3), how the symmetrical placement of the body in space and its static position, focuses our gaze and condenses performance space. Finally, the distance that the audience will decide to keep from the action taking place, changes their appreciation of the space of the performance.

Of course, space is not only an element that we need to take into account but also something that can be produced by performance either in a minimal gesture, as in the case of Bruce Nauman (Case Study 1 below), or engaging in greater interventions of a scenographic character. In any case, it is an element of performance that we need to consider and can be a source of challenges and ideas.

Lines, limits, borders In the following works, the artists’ intervention in space, as well as their own action is minimal. Our aim in discussing these case studies, as well as the activities that accompany them, is to appreciate how we can create space with minimal gestures, how we may perceive “emptiness” as space through our intervention and how we may shape space through our movement within it. The minimal gesture of line creation in the following performances may acquire conceptual content such as boundary, border, procession, union, etc. Finally, space may “appear” and continue to exist through the trace of our own action, which remains after the end of the performance.

Case study 1 Bruce Nauman, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Around the Perimeter of a Square, 1967–8 This ten-minute video, shot on 16mm flm, would today be considered a performance for camera. A performance for a camera has been conceived from the beginning as a work that will not be seen live but as a flm. Despite the absence of the “live condition”, the work functions performatively for the artist with the camera in the role of “spectator”. Many of the performance-for-camera works from this era have been flmed with the camera placed centrally and in

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a fxed position while the staging of space is minimal. The minimalist effect is intensifed (today) by the quality of the black and white flm. Nauman has taped the shape of two squares on the foor of his workshop, one inside the other. He is stepping on the outer square, walking by moving his weight from one foot to the other, creating this unusual visual effect he calls “an exaggerated manner”. The artist defnes the space by creating boundaries with his movement on the perimeter of the square but also with the position of the camera and its specifc feld of view. A mirror leaning against the wall opposite the camera provides viewers with information when the artist disappears from the viewfnder (video may be found at: https:// mo.ma/3EXuV8W).

Activity 1: empty space For this activity we choose a “white cube” type of space. In case the space is larger than we need, we can defne a smaller “stage space” with marks on the foor. It is important to emphasize here that the position of those inside this space and the position of those outside is an active one. Action and observation are equally important in this activity. We are called to stand in this empty space in any position we wish. We observe how the presence of someone in space changes our sense of emptiness, our perception of space and creates other sub-spaces. We continue this activity, entering the space one by one, two by two or in groups. At the end of the activity we discuss our experience and our observations.

Activity 2: brainstorming “on the limit” Standing up, we form a circle with short distances between us. We start a collective brainstorm on the word “limit” (you can choose the word “border” or “line” if you want to make it more abstract). You are asked to think of words, images, concepts, etc. that come to mind when we hear the word limit. A ball can be used to determine who is speaking. We throw it at each other until our ideas are “exhausted”. We throw the ball rapidly, without pausing to think. If someone can’t think of a word, they may repeat the last word heard and carry on throwing the ball.

Activity 3: limits We form pairs. Each pair receives one masking tape as the only item they may use. We create a performance on the concept of “limit”. It may last from one to fve minutes. This is an opportunity to make creative use of space, explore its possibilities and dynamics for the purpose of the activity and also manipulate it with the use of the masking tape. The end result needs to refect the contribution of both participants.

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Case study 2 Nam June Paik, Zen for Head, 1962 During this minimalist performance, Paik, a pioneer of electronic art and a member of Fluxus, dips his head into a bucket of paint and then uses it as a brush to draw a line on a piece of paper he has placed on the foor. With this minimalist performance, Paik creates an image which also references his heritage.

Refective questions • •

Are there any other similar works by the artist? Discuss the correlation of tradition and modern technology in his art.

Case study 3 Francis Alÿs, The Green Line, Jerusalem, 2004 Francis Alÿs’s work will be discussed later in the context of performance projects in public space. However, we will discuss this emblematic work here as it connects with the issue of borders. Alÿs cites the axiom behind this work as “Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can become poetic.” In the title of the performance Alÿs makes reference to the dividing line between the Israeli and Arab territories which also crosses Jerusalem, and, as is well known, was drawn with a green pencil.Alÿs uses a box of green paint to trace his path along the green line.The work, apart from this performance, includes discussions and interviews with local artists and writers (Medina, Fergusson & Fisher, 2007). Documentation of the performance may be found at: https://vimeo.com/132929393.

Refective questions In his work The Leak (2002) Alÿs uses a similar method, walking from the Museum of Modern Art across Paris for about a quarter of an hour. • •

In what way does this work differ from the aforementioned one? Discuss how place has provided the context in your own work.

Activity 4 Repeat Activity 3 having as your only material a piece of chalk. Try to use different spaces than the ones in the previous activity. The activity may be carried out in pairs or as a solo performance.

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Refective questions •

What changes do you detect in your ideas and methods following the brainstorming in Activity 2? Discuss them with your partner and report to the circle.

Creating micro-environments In the works of this section, the artists respond to basic geometries, activate spaces with a specifc function, such as a domestic bathroom, in a diverse way and create minimal sets for a specifc action. Their creative exchanges with the elements of space are infused with a spirit of experimentation but are also the result of a carefully designed action. These micro-environments are not installations where a performance takes place but from the outset exist as elements of the action itself.

Case study 4 Bruce McLean, Pose Work with Plinths, 1971 This project started as a play with plinths left over from an exhibition. The three white plinths were of different sizes. Bruce McLean later developed it as a series of 12 photographs in which he creates a composition of his body and the plinths. In these compositions he experiments with the limits of balance, narrow space and the variety of the postures his body can take. According to the Tate website, the work reacts to the seriousness of sculpture and the work of Antony Caro, the artist’s professor at Saint Martins School of Art (https://bit.ly/2ZQiKut).

Activity 5 Using a chair or a table in the studio experiment with different positions of your body. Present this as a series of photographs or a continuous movement.

Case study 5 Paul Harrison and John Wood, Twenty-Six (Drawing and Falling Things), 2001 This is an installation of 26 video screens, each dedicated to a performance, flmed in the artists’ studio, which according to them is something like a “cheap TV studio” as well as a “garden shed” (https://bit.ly/39PuE9u). Each of Harrison and Wood’s performances was frst sketched on paper. The artists construct objects or uncluttered cinematic sets which they use to create short, simple and paradoxical actions. The clarity of the images they create is a result of their careful design which includes the neutral appearance of

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Figure 6.1 Paul Harrison and John Wood, Twenty-Six (Drawing and Falling Things), 2001. Photograph: courtesy of the artists and Cristin Tierney Gallery, New York.

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the performers and the calculated position of the camera. In contrast to their expressionless faces, many of their performances have a subtle sense of humor.

Refective questions •

Does drawing come into your performance preparation? Do you prefer text descriptions?

Case study 6 Manolis Iliakis, Body Wall, 2005 The performance takes place in a domestic bathroom designed by architect Manolis Iliakis (idea/direction). The dancer Joanna Toumpakari explores the space and its objects in an original and playful way, through improvisations

Figure 6.2 Manolis Iliakis, Body Wall, 2005. Joanna Toumpakari during the rehearsals. Photograph: Manolis Iliakis. Courtesy of the artists.

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in a semi-choreographed performance. Through her movement and by using simple materials such as toothpaste or her shoes, she creates various microenvironments, inviting us to focus our gaze. At other times, she (re)measures her body in relation to space, looking for the boundaries of both and constantly reconstructing their relationship. The music score and the video editing play a crucial role in the end result, a double channel video. Choreography is by Filipos Mendes Lazaris and Joanna Toumpakari and a complete list of contributors and video can be found at https://vimeo.com/12130236.

Up, down, against and through: confrontations with space In the following works space becomes a component and possibly a motivation for the creation of a performance. The aim of the study of these works is to recognize how space already provides a framework for performance which is built around its spatial characteristics. These characteristics are not neutral but in lived space they connect with the social and political, they direct movement and organize behavior. The aim for the study of these cases and activities is also to appreciate how the body can work together or in opposition to the dynamics of space, create new dynamics, and develop strategies for experiencing space.

Case study 7 Bruce Nauman, Wall-Floor Positions, (1965) 1968 During this hour-long performance, Nauman invents various ways of positioning his body against the bare foor and wall of a room, constantly changing positions. The variety of positions is produced by improvisation but his assertive rhythmic moves emit a sense of choreography. The sound of his body members banging on the foor and the wall is part of his decisive action (https://bit.ly/3kLSj0T).

Case study 8 Dennis Oppenheim, Parallel Stress, 1970 This work is presented to us as two photographs from different Oppenheim performances with text in between. The artist explains in the text that the frst photo, in which he stretches his body holding on to two parallel walls, was taken before his stretched body collapsed from the effort. In the second photo, the artist takes a similar stance, this time letting his body take the shape of the curve of the ground. In the frst photo the artist is positioned parallel to the two bridges on either side of him, those of Brooklyn and Manhattan, while in the second performance lasting one hour, he is

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in an abandoned sump (Kastner & Wallis, 2005). The industrial, suburban and declining/abandoned environment forms the background of the performances. Similar spaces were used by conceptual artists as alternative spaces for the creation or exhibition of their works.

Refective questions • •

What are the characteristics of the spaces in this work? How are spaces altered by the artist’s presence?

Case study 9 Marina Abramoviс´ and Ulay, Imponderabilia, 1977 The performance was set at the entrance of the Galleria Communale d’Arte Moderna, in Bologna, during an exhibition. A frame was constructed at the entrance of the space that signifcantly reduced its width. On either side of the opening, with their backs to the frame, stood the two artists, naked, one opposite the other. Those entering the gallery had to pass between them and, as the width of the entrance was very small, they had to decide which one of the two performers they would face. On passing the entrance, spectators could see a text on the wall that read: Imponderable. Such imponderable human factors as one’s aesthetic sensitivity / the overriding importance of imponderables in determining human conduct. (https://bit.ly/3iFQX6H)

Throughout the performance, the artists were focused on each other’s gaze.The scheduled three-hour performance was terminated half-way through, following police intervention. In the documentation of the performance, we observe the visitors, their choices, their meeting with the gaze of the performers but mostly the absence of this meeting (https://bit.ly/3DoLMj8). Some visitors turn their head after passing through, perhaps to appreciate what they have experienced.Artists create a state of “enforced” intimacy, albeit momentarily, by testing the boundaries between bodies, bodies and space.The relationship between the artists and their relationships with the visitors of the exhibition are evolving in parallel.

Refective questions • •

Observe the performance video. Which elements of the live performance do you fnd impossible to sense in this recording? Discuss this performance in connection with their performance Relation in Space (Case Study 13 in Chapter 3).

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Figure 6.3 Janez Janša, Life II [in Progress], International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, 2014. The exhibition opening. Photograph: Nada Žgank. Courtesy of the artist.

Case study 10 Janez Janša, Life in Progress, 2008– According to the artist, the work is a series of instructions of various types (written, visual, photographic, etc.) which may be interpreted by anyone, regardless of whether they are related to the visual arts. The following instructions have a direct reference to the previous work of Abramovic´ and Ulay: Find a person. Stand in the doorway, facing each other. Take off your clothes. Look each other in the eye. Let people walk past you. (Janša, 2012,107)

This is a durational work (in its repetition) which follows the lives of the participants. Several times, the couple sitting at the door frame are women in advanced pregnancy. We see them in subsequent photos with their babies in their arms, or, in the company of a child running in the space. According to Adrian Heathfeld “The redo becomes a test site for collective memory, the shifting borders between the personal and the public, and the public negotiation of ethics of violent acts in altered times” (2012, 238).

Body and space 121 Refective questions • •

Discuss this participatory work in terms of collective authorship. In what way do you think Imponderabilia was utilized as material for this performance and in what ways does Life in Progress depart from it?

Case study 11 Kira O’Reilly, Stair Falling, 2013 In this performance, presented inside the Olympion cinema of Thessaloniki (one of the reiterations of this performance), the artist descends with slow movements the monumental staircase of the building, as if falling down. She is naked except for a leather glove that helps her control her “fall”. This fall is very slow, resulting in a one-hour “descent” of the fve foors of the building.Viewers follow the fall from the same staircase. Her slow pace intensifes their anxiety and nervousness. As spectators, we are aware of the feeling of cold marble on the warm body, of the soft skin against the edge of the stairs. The body of the artist creates instantaneous images with the architecture of the space, sometimes in a dynamic contrast with it. Her body upside down is viewed in awkward positions that we are not used to seeing bodies in. Are we being voyeuristic? As has been said for O’Reilly’s work, the presence of the audience and the perception of the “spectacle” through our bodies is one of the components of the work, which creates a sense of responsibility that makes us want to continue to watch and at the same time look away (Duggan, 2014).

Practice prompt 1 In The Poetics of Space (1982), Gaston Bachelard refers to how, according to Victor Hugo, Quasimodo associates himself to the cathedral building: “the cathedral has been successively ‘egg, nest, house, country and universe’” (1982, 117). “It was his home, his nest, his envelope …” Bachelard adds. Bachelard discusses the primordial feeling of shelter, withdrawal, repose, intimacy but also the trust in the world that you need to have in order to make your own nest. You are asked to explore nest and body in relation to space. Look for a place to accommodate this effort of yours or construct a structure / installation for this purpose. Explore simultaneously the implication of scale in this relationship of space and body (how do we go from nest to universe and back again?).

Case study 12 Kira O’ Reilly and Jennifer Willet, Occupy Science, 2008 Kira O ’Reilly and Jennifer Willet both work in the feld of bio-art and have produced a number of works in collaboration with scientifc institutes and

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laboratories. In the present performance, the two artists are in a scientifc laboratory, in a sterile chamber, performing tissue culture protocols. Of course their sole presence in the chamber “contaminates” it, while the presence of their naked bodies, according to the curatorial statement, gives the impression that they are rather part of the experiment: “In fact, this refusal to follow the rules it is not merely an artistic intervention but the frst seeds of a movement to ‘occupy science’, reclaiming the laboratory for an artistic performance, and contaminating it in the process” (https://bit.ly/3BNS5N5). The artists here orchestrate a strong contrast between formal activity, strict procedures and performance, by using the procedures themselves in order to overthrow them.

Refective questions •

Can you think of places where the organization of the space indicates the activity that takes place? Consider how you would organize a performance for such a space.

Activities 6–8: occupy space (indoors) Activity 6. You are invited to explore the dynamics of an indoors space by placing your body in a static position within it. Explore different areas within the building. Notice which places you fnd interesting. Activity 7. Explore the dynamics of space in pairs. Experiment with the different relationships of your bodies in space. Notice how your action and your perception of space progresses by the presence of the other body in it. Note: An unfamiliar place may provide more opportunities for experimentation so, if you are in college, it may make sense to visit another department or a building outside of campus. Activity 8. Create a group of 4–6 people and choose a route within the building that includes points of interest which you have identifed in the previous two activities. Move through this route with your group, occupying space. Experiment with positions and rhythms and take into account the sound that is produced by your action.

Body, space, audience In the following works we will examine different confgurations of performers, audience and space. The spaces of performer and audience may be defned or even fxed, they may change dynamically or even function antagonistically to one another. Performances and the actions of the performer in space may work towards the realization of their intentions for the audience, create (enforced) intimacy and enhance observation skills.

Body and space 123 Case study 13 Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1993 In this performance, Janine Antoni dips her hair into a bucket of Loving Care black hair dye and, dragging her hair, gradually covers the gallery foor, crawling backwards and towards the exit, effectively pushing viewers out of the gallery space. Antoni here connects two activities stereotypically related to women with the creative act – beautifcation (hair dye) and cleaning (see how she moves her hair in mopping movements) – with her action as a performer. This work has also been considered as a commentary on abstract expressionism, which was predominantly represented by men and especially by Jackson Pollock, whose action painting represented in the emblematic photographs of Namuth, almost turned him into a painting “idol”. The artist here claims space as a gendered subject and simultaneously her position as an artistic subject.1

Refective questions •

How does Antoni address the vulnerability/dynamics of her body position in space?

Figure 6.4 Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1993. Performance with Loving Care hair dye, Natural Black. Photograph: Prudence Cumming Associates at Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London, 1993. © Janine Antoni. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

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Case study 14 Dan Graham, Performer/Audience/Mirror, 1977 In this performance, which Dan Graham has recorded as a series of instructions that take place in four stages (https://bit.ly/3lsChcR), the space is organized into the space of the audience where the spectators are seated and the space of the performer, the front, where Graham is moving. Behind Graham there is a large mirror that occupies the entire wall and is an important element of the performance. Graham begins by describing in detail his posture, the position of his limbs, and his movements, sometimes commenting on their signifcation. He then turns his attention to the audience, describing their facial expressions, their reactions to what is happening and comments on how these appear to him. In the next stage he turns his back to the audience and now looking at the mirror, he repeats the description of his movements and then the reactions of the audience. Performance becomes an exercise in observation, at the same time probing questions about its objectivity. It also prompts the audience to appreciate their place in the performance and contemplate how this perception may change depending on the point of view. According to Goldberg (1998), the artist’s attempt to raise the spectators’ awareness of their place in the performance has Brechtian origins. Bertolt Brecht distanced himself from the Aristotelian idea of theater and the idea of theater as an imitation of reality and argued that spectators do not hold an illusion of reality for what unfolds on stage, but they confront the action as social beings and with a critical disposition.

Case study 15 Vito Acconci, Seedbed, 1972 This work took place at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York in 1972. In a gallery space, a ramp was constructed next to its foor. In the narrow space under the ramp, the artist stayed for a few hours a day according to the program that had been posted and masturbated while imagining the visitors of the exhibition. There was no eye contact between him and the visitors, but they could hear him talking about his sexual fantasies through loudspeakers placed in the corners of the room. In this performance, the absolute spatial separation of performer and audience takes place simultaneously with the creation of an extremely intimate, albeit on an imaginary level, relationship between them. Acconci considered this work connected to the other two of his works exhibited in the rest of the gallery at the same time.

Activity 9 Devise settings where the audience has partial view of the action performed, has no visual or can see the action through semi-transparent surfaces. How do these settings affect the signifcance of certain elements of performance? How does it affect your initial intentions for the performance?

Body and space 125 Case study 16 Marina Abramoviс´, House with the Ocean View, 2002 For this 12-day performance, the artist created 3 structures that corresponded to domestic rooms: the bathroom, the living room and the bedroom. These rooms, located 5 feet from the foor of the gallery, were about one and a half feet apart and had a large gap in their side walls. The communication with the foor, however, could only be done through a staircase, the stairs of which had been replaced with butcher knives that had their edges facing upwards. A white line on the gallery foor alerted viewers to how close they could get to the installation/performance. Throughout the performance, the artist drank only water and did not talk to anyone. The condition for entering the gallery was that you would be silent and engage in an energy dialogue with her. The design of the rooms was minimalist: rectangular, white boxes, open from the front with wooden, geometric, basic furniture. The furniture refects her ascetic action. An additional item in the rooms is a metronome. In the space of the audience there is a telescope which the public may use to observe the artist. According to James Westcott (2003), the artist moved always very slowly even when at some point she had to turn off the water that had begun to food the space. The only thing she repeats on the various days of his visit is a Slavic lullaby. At the end of the performance Abramovic´ made a speech: I have never made a speech at the end of a performance but this time I needed because it’s completely dependent on the audience. The work could not continue without you. Always I was watching you. Some of you came in every day and I feel like I know you so well. I was fasting not for political reasons but to make myself feel everything, to be in the here and now. […] I had to create obstacles for myself and also the standing on the edge to make danger because you have to fght the dizziness. With your mind you can do anything. […] I want to dedicate this work to New York and the people of New York. In a city that has no time I wanted to create an island of time. (Westcott, 2003, 136)

Refective questions •

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The “furniture” of the rooms has been made especially for the performance and has a minimalist approach. What would change if the furniture consisted of used, everyday items? What do you think is the role of this minimalist approach in the scenography of this space? One of the visitors to Abramovic´’s work talks in the aforementioned article, about the visiting of exhibitions as a religious experience. Watch Bill Viola’s Catherine’s Room (2001) https://bit.ly/3mCKmei and discuss

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Body and space the relationship between a work of art and religious experience. What is the role of space in this experience? What is the relationship between action and space? Does this project take on a new meaning after the experience of the pandemic?

Practice prompt 2 A practice prompt for a group intervention in a public service building. Organize a performance that will take place in a public service building during working hours. In preparation, observe the space and discuss with your group its main features and the activity that takes place there, its movable and fxed elements, the unpredictability of the movement of people, the changes that occur in space and the activity during the course of one day. What elements have caught your attention? How will you use the space? How will you manage your (uninformed) audience? What will be the starting point of the performance? Will you repeat the performance on another day?

Activity 10: places of departure This activity has been designed as a workshop that lasts for a few days, a few hours each day, depending on the number of the participants and the number of workshop exercises. The workshop is carried out in places of departure such as bus or train stations. The aim of the workshop is not the creation of a fnal performance but the exploration of the elements involved in the realization of a site-specifc performance and the “unearthing” of positions, movements and other elements through semi-structured improvisations carried out by the participants; these will be added to their performance repertoire.

1st stage: research Participants frst explore the concept and experience of departing from and arriving at one place, through personal experiences, the stories of others, literary and cinematic works and works of art. Through a discussion in a circle, interests may already emerge, e.g. someone may be interested in working with other people, e.g. employees, commuters or people waiting in arrivals. In the discussion in the circle we make reference to “non-places”, a term that was extensively analyzed by Marc Augé in his book Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (Non-lieux, Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité, frst edition in French 1992, English translation 1995). Augé traces non-places at departure points such as stations, airports, the metro and public crossings. In these places there is a constant movement of people, the uniformity of the crowd that moves hastily.

Body and space 127 These places have no history and no particular (spatial) identity: an airport in Zurich may look the same as an airport in Athens. According to Augé, excessive consumption of images and experiences is needed to create personal moments in non-places. Non-places are typical of the life and movement of people in the 21st century. In the discussion in a circle, we ask which of the characteristics of non-places apply to the space chosen for the workshop.

2nd stage: workshop exercises In these exercises we invite the participants to explore the special features of the space through their action. Previous activities such as Limits (Activity 3) or Occupy space (Activities 6-8) may be adapted to the needs of the space. We also invite the exploration of micro-environments that may exist in the space or may be created by the participant’s activity. In the exercises we work with narrative and conceptual tools that are related to the specifc space or that we try to relate to space; for example: “baggage”. Bearing in mind what we have explored in the activities of the second chapter on performance objects, we invite participants to create an action in space based on the word baggage. What do we “carry” with us? What do we need? Other notions that may act as starting points for these exercises are “memories”, “holiday post”, “departure/arrival”, etc. Although the aim of the workshop is not a fnal performance, solo and group performances may develop from this activity which can later be performed.

Concluding notes In this chapter we have attempted to highlight the signifcance of space as a context in performance art and explored its dynamics with a view to enhance the ability to use and activate it for our performances. Phenomenology explores the intrinsic properties of space while theorists such as Massey underlines the ways in which the identity of a place is associated to social and cultural properties and how space refects gendered relations but also constructs them. Grosz reviews the beginning of our relationship with space through reference to psychoanalysis and discusses Bergon’s idea that our presence and movement in space creates relationships that defne it. In our exploration of site-specifc performances, we listed the basic characteristics of space as follows: geometric features; history; function; the presence, position and movements of performers and audience. In the case studies, we reviewed space as something that is created with minimal actions which may also hold a political signifcance; we showed how performers respond to elementary geometries and how they incorporate humour and poetry in creating micro-environments; we observed how space may serve as component and motivation for performance, steer movement, organize behaviour and work together with or in opposition to the body. Lastly, we discussed

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different confgurations of body, space and audience, their fxed, dynamic or antagonistic relations. In Practice Prompt 2 we proposed exploring the features of collective spaces. With space we conclude the basic elements that make up a performance: objects, the body and space.

Note 1 See more on the relationship between space and gender in Massey (1994).

References Augé, M. (1995 [1992]). Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, J. Howe (Trans). London & New York: Verso. Bachelard, G. (1982). The Poetics of Space, M. Jolas (Trans.). Boston: Beacon Press. Duggan, P. (2014). The art of Kira O’Reilly. Performance Research, 19(4), 85–7. doi: 10.1080/13528165.2014.947140  Goldberg, R. L. (1998). Performance: Live Art Since the 60s. London: Thames and Hudson. Grosz, E. A. (1995). Space,Time, and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies. London and New York: Routledge. Heathfeld, A. (2012). Introduction. In A. Jones, A. Heathfeld (Eds.) Perform, Repeat, Record: Live Art in History, 238–40. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect. Janša, J. (2012) Life [In Progress], Performance Research, 17(5),1079. doi:10.1080/13528165.2012.728449 Kastner, J. & Wallis, B. (Eds.) (1998). Land and Environmental art. London and New York: Phaidon Press. Massey, D. (1994). Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Medina, C., Fergusson, R. & Fisher, J. (2007). Francis Alÿs. London and New York: Phaidon Press. Westcott, J. (2003). Marina Abramovic’s “The House with the Ocean View”: The view of the house from some drops in the ocean. TDR, 47(3), 129–36.

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Performance and the everyday

Defning the everyday Researchers of the everyday generally agree that the defnition of the everyday is both difficult and problematic. As they point out, the approach to the everyday cannot be done with the known tools and methods of a scientifc analysis. For Maurice Blanchot, the everyday cannot be approached cognitively, acting subversively against any institutional and intellectual power, while for Henri Lefebvre the everyday lies on the margins of scientifc analysis (Johnstone, 2008, 15). Similarly, Mike Featherstone argues that the everyday “resists rational categorization” and “lacks method” while characterizing it as a residual category, where we place what does not ft anywhere else (1995, 55). The attempt to defne it is also problematic as, for Lefebvre, any such attempt “tends to immobilize what it seeks to defne, presenting it as timeless and unchanging” (2008, 30). And yet, he continues: “as is often the case with defnitions, it takes one view or part of it as a whole”. For Ben Highmore (2008), simply trying to locate the everyday generates problems, as this effort runs counter to the everyday’s own characteristics, such as its continued existence: you cannot isolate it from the rest of life. Highmore raises another issue related to the everyday and that is its recording; he refers to the “official” documentation of the everyday through the archive. Highmore mentions a number of difficulties in documenting the everyday such as its breadth (is it possible to include everything in one record?) and the risk of manipulating records to form a uniform narrative in order to create meaning for the archive, thus converting the everyday into an exception through its documentation. Michel de Certeau, in his foreword to The Practice of Everyday Life, points out that in order to be able to discuss the everyday, we need to develop “theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives” (1984, xiv). According to de Certeau, people use tactics in their everyday lives as insubordinate actions in a world controlled by complicated systems. He distinguishes tactics from strategies in terms of their power and their use of time and space. A tactic seeks for opportunities to enter the space of the other and depends on time as these opportunities may arise at any moment. For

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-8

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example, walking though the city, people may move against defnite purpose and objective geographies. De Certeau’s conceptualization of everyday activity as potentially resistant and subversive, has infuenced artists and is often used as a context for discussing artistic interventions.

The everyday in art and performance The everyday as an art subject is not exclusively associated with the twentieth century.The everyday, in the opposite place that the sublime occupies, parted with historical and mythological narratives and was legitimized as a subject in western art due to specifc historical and social conditions. For instance, during the 16th century, the rise of Protestantism in Central Europe deprived artists of their main patron, the Catholic Church. Subsequently, artists turned to portraiture, the depiction of city life, urban and outdoor landscapes, thus indulging their new clientele, the upcoming bourgeois-merchants. It is therefore important, in this short survey of twentieth century art’s connection with the everyday, to correlate artistic pursuits with the vicissitudes, historical events and social demands this century brings on several levels. In the frst chapter we discussed Dada and Futurism as the origins of performance art. We also pointed out that, although these movements remain chronologically and ontologically distant from what we nowadays defne as performance, they are the ones that introduced into art the artist’s action, chance and audience participation, while at the same time connecting it to contemporaneous matters. They also despised “high art” and ridiculed society and its hypocrisy. The departure from art with a capital “A” was formulated as a demand and described as a method in the Futurist manifestos and also demonstrated by Dadaists and later Surrealists in their appropriation of everyday objects or the creation of ready-mades. Chance, audience participation, everyday materials and the departure from “high art” are therefore avant-garde’s contributions to the emergence of the everyday in art. In the United States, during the mid-1950s, happenings introduced scripted participation of the audience in actions that incorporated randomness. These actions, in their mostly unpoliticized conceptualization, integrated elements of play. Play, an element of everyday life that distances us from seriousness and creates its own relationships and hierarchies, was activated during the Situationists’ roaming of the city as part of a method of turning citizens into actors, into people who will take over their daily life and create environments of rich experiences (atmospheres). Politically, they originated from the left and their brief activity in Paris included extreme actions and scandals, marginal life and explosive relationships between its members. Their activity will be discussed further in Chapter 8. In the “Introduction to performance” in Chapter 1 we also referred to Fluxus, a loosely associated international group of artists, committed more to constant experimentation than to a specifc manifesto. Fluxus moved away from art as

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virtuosity, for example in their playing of instruments they didn’t master, went in search of the everyday, used everyday objects in their actions and proclaimed that anyone could be an artist.These approaches to art will lead Fluxus to proclaim that there is no distinction between art and life, a triumph of the everyday! As we have seen so far, the meeting of art and everyday life is accompanied by a subversive approach to art and marks a rupture with narratives and terms such as artistic authority, the authentic, the sublime, the exceptional and the timeless. During the decades of the 1960s and the 1970s, sociopolitical upheaval marked the western world. May 1968 and the emergence of second-wave feminist, anti-racist and anti-war movements in the United States were directly linked to the emergence of conceptual art. Conceptual art proclaimed the primacy of ideas over permanence of the art object, creating ephemeral works with cheap everyday materials as well as works that existed only as instructions which anyone could carry out. The search for exhibition spaces outside art galleries was an additional step towards the proximation of art and the everyday. In the 1970s, performances introduced the everyday into art, in challenging the limits of art and the value system imposed by the art establishment, repudiating the power of the artist-creator and thus bringing art closer to life. At this time, many women artists created works which commented on gender inequality and the oppression of women forced into specifc and constricting roles and proposed personal experience as a legitimate subject for art. Feminist art discussed, among other things, the everyday life of women in the roles of housewife or mother, and highlighted the experience of this daily life in their art. Domestic life was the subject of a number of performances and emerged as a social and political issue through works involving the public sphere such as the works of Mierle Laderman Ukeles with the New York Department of Sanitation. Such works brought to the fore and bestowed value on the unrecognized daily labor of women or social groups. The issue of the value of everyday life was one of the topics to which the debate on the everyday was de facto driven. Art’s occupation with the everyday did not stop in the 1970s but the debate expanded to include existential concerns in diary and autobiographical records and issues of repetition, boredom and the trivial, in a life of increasing urbanization and technological dependency. In the following case studies, we will look into approaches to domestic/family life, the transformation of daily rituals such as eating and the uncanny that is built into the everyday.

Subverting the normality of the everyday As we saw in the third chapter, placing the everyday at the center of artistic creation is a move with political and social weight, within the context of the second feminist movement. At around the same time, conceptual art re-introduces cheap and everyday materials into the work of art (artists

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associated with Dada and Surrealism were the frst ones to do so in the twentieth century). Many women artists, especially in the 1970s, created performances which emanated from domestic and family life. Everyday household chores that fall into the stereotypical role of women, such as cleaning, cooking and the raising of children formed the context of these performances. At the same time, these performances commented on the absurdity of everyday life and the violence inherent in it.

Case study 1 Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975 During this six-minute single-channel video, an expressionless Rosler demonstrates the use of cooking utensils, following an alphabetical order.The camera is placed in front of her and the space we view within the camera frame is that of a domestic kitchen. The composition of the frame and the activity taking place refer to cooking TV shows and Tupperware parties, both of which were linked to a stereotyped role of women. The absurdity of the absence of food in the demonstration of the use of tools and utensils for cooking and the mechanical movements of the artist perhaps indicate the emptiness and the absence of meaning in the repetitive everyday routine, still associated exclusively with the female sex. Rosler’s actions gradually become abrupt and even marginally violent, thus implying the violence inherent in the oppressive restriction of women’s life in the domestic/private sphere. The mere amassing of culinary objects instead of freeing time, traps the subject in its complexity. There might also exist some criticism of the consumerist system, part of which is domestic work. Rosler’s reference to “semiotics” connects the language system with systems of organization and ultimately identifcation of the subject. She states: “I was concerned with something like the notion of ‘language speaking the subject’, and with the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs that represent a system of food production, a system of harnessed subjectivity” (Source: https://mo.ma/3liUM2r).

Refective questions • •

Are there any works we have seen in other chapters that use household items and appliances to create a performance? Do you recognize in Rosler’s performance any of your own object experimentations in performances?

Practice prompt 1 Copy and adapt elements from the language, the gestures and the setting of a tv show or similar media to create your own performance for camera. Does the subject of your performance relate to the show you have chosen?

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Case study 2 Women with Kitchen Appliances (W.W.K.A.) Women with Kitchen Appliances are a group of women artists who have performed with different syntheses from 1991 to 2013. More than 50 people have taken part in the performances of W.W.K.A. They appeared on stage as a group with identical aprons or kitchen gloves and used electric cooker racks, dusters, glasses and cans to create a soundtrack with the help of amplifiers. They stated: “We are three, four or five or six. Identical. Interchangeable. Disposable. And dead serious. We are a rock band, a sound project, a cabaret act, a synchronized rubber glove routine, a BBQ chicken washing machine, a confectionary flour Christmas jingle and Kitchen certification service” (Source: https://bit.ly/3jqubjX). W.W.K.A. activated Fluxus methods in using non-conventional instruments to create sounds, having a loose group composition (everyone can be an artist) and an open-ended organization of their performances (the elements of randomness and improvisation). See their presentation at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Montreal (MAC) at https://bit. ly/3ytfFvQ.

Activity 1 Head to the kitchen cupboards in search of various utensils that you will use for sound experimentations. Observe which utensils you choose to work with. Explore short and long sounds, repeated sounds, etc. Lastly explore how movement and sound may be combined in your action.

Case study 3 Bobby Baker, Daily Life Series, 1991–2001 Bobby Baker uses everyday objects and situations such as cooking utensils and shopping at the supermarket in a paradoxical and humorous way; for example, using fruit as ammunition or wandering around the supermarket with a can of fsh placed horizontally in her mouth. The above is part of the Daily Life Series (1991–2001) which consists of the Cook Dems, the Kitchen Show and How to Shop. In her works, Baker has consistently, humorously and ingeniously responded to her life events, which included raising her children (Drawing on a Mother’s Experience) but also her mental illness. One of her frst installations included the creation of “sculptures” of family members made with cake which the viewers were invited to eat, while the artist served tea. The exhibition of her sketched diaries that she kept during the years she remained in the psychiatric hospital was the prompt for her systematic engagement and effort against the marginalization and stigmatization of the mentally ill.

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Practice prompt 2 You are invited to plan a visit to the supermarket as a performance. What is the role of the products in your performance? How did you organize your route in the store? What role did the uninformed audience play in your performance? Record your experience in a 300-word text.

Case study 4 Raede Saadeh, Vacuum, 2007 Raede Saadeh is a Palestinian artist who comments on issues related to identity, gender and borders. In this dual-channel video installation/performance for camera, Saadeh vacuums the naked mountains near the Dead Sea. Her impossible and pointless task is an allegory for the endless confict between Palestine and Israel and the persecution of the Palestinian people. But it is also a commentary on her position as a woman in a patriarchal society, the perseverance of women and their margin for action. In one of her performance-for-camera photographic works, Penelope (2011), the artist knits from an endless ball of yarn while sitting on building ruins. The reference to the mythical Penelope, the latter’s patience and ingenuity and the image of the ruins again interweave the private with the public, the personal with the political, gender and place.

Figure 7.1 Raede Saadeh, Vacuum, 2007. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

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Refective questions Compare this work with other works we have seen in the chapter. • •

What is their relationship with their political and social context? What are their differences?

Practice prompt 3 In her work, Saadeh activates a popular method among artists, that of displacing objects and activities to a new, out of context environment. Consider an action that activates this method in public space. Record your experience from its realization.

Case study 5 Thanasis Chondros and Alexandra Katsiani, 51 Saturdays, 1996 Thanasis Chondros and Alexandra Katsiani, an art couple from Thessaloniki, have created work that has spanned 25 years (1979–2004). In their work 51 Saturdays they presented performances and installations during the 51 of the 52 Saturdays of the year of 1996, On the 20th January 1996, the couple presented the action Familiarity Strategy: Pillar. Round loaves of bread were hung from strings attached to the ceiling. In the middle of the room there was a one-metertall reproduction of a Doric pillar.The artists stapled the loaves together to extend the pillar up to the ceiling. The people present at the action helped them. In the action Pocket of chaos: Someone’s wisdom could be determined by the room for evil one leaves to one’s imitators carried out on the 10th of August of the same year, Chondros and Katsiani read out the whole of the Thessaloniki phone book, over the course of 14 hours, while at times making noises with various objects in the space, as music and rhythmic noises came out of tape recorders. The preoccupation of Chondros and Katsiani with the everyday embraces more than the use of everyday objects and materials borrowed from the kitchen cupboard and the desk, the tedious work of painting a wall, the preparation of food or sewing. It is accurate that one of the strategies of the artistic avantgarde is to render the familiar unfamiliar (Highmore, 2008). In this respect, the previous performances alienate the act of reading the phone book by stretching out its duration and defeating its purpose, loaves of bread are not for nourishment but instead are used as structural elements and thread does not bring two parts together but is creating a border. Failure is also built into these actions: names and numbers in the phone book lose their value as information only to be transformed into a mantra in their repetition, the failure of bread in the role of a supporting pillar is almost comical and thread assembles a boundary too brittle to uphold. Their inadequacy to inform, sustain or restrict assists us in acknowledging failure as part of our everyday routines and life.

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Figure 7.2 Thanasis Chondros and Alexandra Katsiani, Familiarity Strategy: Pillar, 1996. Photograph: courtesy of the artists.

Case study 6 María Teresa Hincapié, A Thing is a Thing (Una cosa es una cosa), 1990 In her performance A Thing is a Thing the artist carries bags of stuff from her home to the exhibition space and places them on the foor, one by one, in a geometric organization. The duration of her placing the objects on the foor (eight hours) is the duration of the performance itself; the piece is not just an installation. In the description of Una Cosa es Una Cosa included in the Re.Act.Feminism archive we read: “…  Hincapie made and unmade

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series of labyrinth-like concentric squares on a gallery foor using dozens of her own domestic objects (kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies, beauty supplies, bed sheets...). For 12 hours, 18 days in a row, in a careful and slow ceremonial way, she combined prosaic and singular gestures, materiality and ephemerality, everydayness and ritual, gender and artistic issues.” (https://bit.ly/2Xrqodz).

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Discuss the organization of the objects in this performance in relation to your own experiences from the anarcollection (Practice Prompt 6 in Chapter 2) and the geometry of their organization. What is the purpose of order in everyday life? Can you think of a similar project that uses disorder?

Time, repetition, boredom We have already encountered the term durational performance, a longterm performance that may or may not have a specifed end. In the works to follow the duration of the performance is also the duration of the actual time that passes. The identifcation of the time of performance with the time of life itself in these cases is of particular importance since we are faced with the lack of exceptionality of everyday life, the element of repetition and the concept of continuity as an attribute of time. As for the latter, the tendency to perceive time as a series of actions and not simply as the “purely ontological success of existence” (Bachelard, 2000 [1950], 27), the basis of our perception of time on either action or its absence (a temporal duality according to Bachelard), raises a number of questions about action itself, but also about the value of the work of art. When Adrian Heathfeld remarks that Tehching Hsieh’s action “lacks visible function and utility” (2000, 109) he makes a point of the difficulty to defne this action, separate it from the rest of life that just goes on and, so, bestow it with signifcance. Time, but also the tension between private and public, are subjects we will discuss in the following performances in connection with the everyday.

Case study 7 Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance, 1978–9, 1980–1, 1981–2, 1983–4, 1985–6 Tehching Hsieh is an artist living in New York, having immigrated from Taiwan. He has made a series of performances that each lasted a year, one in collaboration with Linda Montano (1983–4). In all of these performances he organized a very formal way of certifying the simple condition he had set at the beginning of each performance. For the frst one he remained in a cell

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built inside an apartment for a year. For the entire duration of the performance, he would not talk to anyone, read/write/watch TV or listen to the radio. Each day was documented in a passport format photograph. In the sum of these photos we are able to observe the passage of time in the progressive lengthening of his hair. For the 1980–81 performance, again carried out indoors, he proclaimed that he would punch a card every hour, on the hour, for a year. An assistant/witness signed the card at the end of the day while each day corresponded to a frame, shot with a 16mm camera. To make the passage of time more visible he had shaved his head at the beginning of the performance and let his hair grow. During1981–2 he would be outdoors continuously for a year while he would spend 1983–4 tied with an 8-foot rope to Linda Montano. The condition of the latter performance was that, remaining bound for the entire duration of the performance, the artists would not touch each other.The testing of the limits of art that occurs in these performances goes to extremes when for the next performance he decides not to do/discuss/see/read art but also not to go to galleries and museums for a year (1985–6), while in 1986 he decides that for 13 years he will make art but he will not show it in public.

Refective questions • • •

Discuss the concepts of isolation, freedom and restriction in relation to the previous performances. What is the long-term performance you would like to do/would like to have done? What place does the documentation of performances with photographs/ flm occupy in the project?

Case study 8 Georgia Sagri, Shop Window, 2001 For this project, Sagri “lived” for a week in the shop window of an Athenian store, to which she had transferred the contents of her bedroom. The identifcation of public and private and the viewing condition are key elements in the experience of this durational performance. Everyday life as a spectacle, the modernist spectacle of the storefront, is connected here with the female gender under constant observation and monitoring in public space. According to Maria Konomis: “The performance explores the indistinguishable boundaries of private and public life and their individual and social implications, highlighting the inviolability of privacy by emphasizing the monitoring of our private lives thanks to the support of technology” (2021, 208). As early as the 1990s, monitoring and recording private life through technology was widely discussed in the public sphere. At the same time, the voluntary exposure of the everyday life of anonymous internet users through webcams was widespread. But the use of a commercial space in this work also comments on the exchange value of the work of performance art.

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Figure 7.3 Georgia Sagri, In the Shop Window, 2001. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

Refective questions In 1980, Anne Jud performed Summer break (Sommerpause). During this durational performance she lived outdoors, in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, in a simple setting with indoor furniture (see https://bit.ly/38oDmLr). The performance, scheduled to last a week, ended after a day, when the artist was attacked. •

What are the differences between the conditions, the viewing and the ideas raised by the two performances?

Case study 9 Jamie McMurry 365 Performances, 2006 During 365 Performances, McMurry made a performance a day, starting on the 23rd of September 2005 and continuing to the 22nd September of the next year. The performances are recorded in a DVD of video footage and photographs and are also archived meticulously in three copies. Carried out in and around his studio, his house and in some cases in public showings, McMurry’s performances range from the humorous to the absurd. Performances include the artist walking around his studio with chairs attached to his feet, forming a line across a road of seeds that pigeons later feed on, swirling an armchair continuously and writing “#91” on snow.

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His often-playful activity reminds us of a child’s play or boyish dares, incorporates violence but “the pain of the work is circumstantial – much as it is in everyday life” (McMurry, DVD booklet, 2007). Performances carried out at his studio induce a sense of purposelessness and isolation. In some of the photographs of the actions it is unclear what the action is considered to be. The immateriality of much performance work denies the artist tangible “proof”. The DVD 365 Performances reinfuses McMurry’s work with materiality. There is meticulous documentation and archiving taking place, adhering to bureaucratic practices (e.g. flling of forms in triplicate). This is closer to the archive than to the diary, in that there is a predetermined, conditioned program of actions that is being documented, intended from the start to be communicated to the public, albeit not live.

Practice prompt 4 Consider making a performance that incorporates long duration, repetition and documentation. What is the nature of your repetition?

Everyday relationships – rituals of the everyday In this section we approach some performances that focus on relations, on the invisible work and rituals of the everyday, and may incorporate autobiographical elements. Some could be characterized as participatory or relational: artists either invite other artists as agents in their performance, or work with a group of professionals/a social group, or invite participation mainly through viewing. Perhaps more complex in their orchestration due to their relational dimension, it is also interesting to think of them in terms of the concepts discussed in the previous section: time, repetition and boredom.

Case study 10 Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, nine-channel video installation, 2012 In this nine-channel video installation, Ragnar Kjartansson, along with eight other musicians, each in a different room of a historic building in upstate New York, simultaneously play a song with lyrics from a poem by Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir titled Feminine Ways. The appearance and manner of each musician, despite the existence of professional technical equipment in the room, gives us the impression that they are in their private space; Kjartansson himself, for example, lies naked in a water-flled bathtub with guitar in hand. The classicist grandeur of the other rooms contrasts with the intimacy of the activity that takes place in them. Wandering between the screens of the installation evokes a sense of loneliness and, at the same time, collectivity.

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Figure 7.4 Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors, 2012. Photograph: © Ragnar Kjartansson. Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik.

The lyricism of the music and the immersive environment created by the nine-channel installation, create a moving and powerful experience. The title of the project derives from the title of ABBA’s last album.

Activity 2 Explore the condition “alone/together” in a pair in the following exercise. Starting from two points with enough distance between them, and facing the same direction, move parallel to your partner. Without any prior consultation and using only your peripheral vision, interact with your partner by exploring movements, rhythms, gestures, etc.

Case study 11 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Maintenance Work, several dates In 1969, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, frustrated by society’s competing expectations of her as mother and artist, wrote the Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969!, Proposal for an exhibition ‘Care’ . In subsequent art she would frame the works of care, cleaning and maintenance as works of art. In Washing/Tracks/Maintenance: Outside (1973), Ukeles cleaned the Wadsworth Atheneum as a performance, and in 1976 for I Make Maintenance Art One Hour Every Day, for fve weeks, she talked to the workers in the

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maintenance service at the Whitney Museum, asking them to classify their work as art and documenting this work on polaroid pictures. In Touch Sanitation Performance, she met a total of 8,500 New York City cleaners to shake their hands and thank them for their service. This time-consuming task (8–16 hours of Ukeles daily work) lasted 11 months and included discussions with employees, presentations of her own work and recordings of her visits on maps. According to Jillian Steinhauer, the political dimension of the work was not exhausted by the artist, who could have taken a position on the work issues of the cleaning staff, who were in successive strikes when this work started (2017, n.p.). Nevertheless, the work contributes to the assignment of the daily and unrecognized work of cleaning at the center of artistic creation, asking questions about the value of the (artistic) work and the authority of the artist.

Case study 12 Tamar Raban, Dinner Dress – Tales about Dora, 1997 At the performance Dinner Dress, part of the Dress Trilogy, 24 people have been invited to a fve-course dinner (https://bit.ly/3kxm1pl). The constructed round table around which the guests sit, is an extension of Raban’s dress, placed in the center of the table and into which the artist emerges, at the same time dressing it. In each seat there is a round screen which displays a live image from a camera on the artist’s head. She is sitting on a spinning stool, hidden under the table, speaks into the microphone she has in her ring and recounts memories of her mother, Dora, her mother’s thoughts about Germany which she violently left under Nazi threat, being a Jew, and diary-like narratives. In the performance there is also a cook, a musician and an artist who sews words on an embroidery, sometimes with a thread from Raban’s hair that the artist passes to her on a needle inserted into improvised sculptures that she makes in the moment with food and parts of her clothing. The food is served with audio instructions about the time available for its consumption. The perfectly staged and organized performance is combined with live music that includes the use of dishes as drums. In the fnal scene, the artist takes off her dress and stays in black leotard while walking on the table. She cuts the prosthetic breast she wears over the leotard and serves its edible material to the guests. Artists Buky Grinberg, Zachi Bukshester / Daniel Zach, Ilan Green and Pnina Reichman participate in the performance.

Activity 3 Contemplate the ways daily activities are organized in a formal or less formal way. Organize a performance around one such activity (e.g. dinner) which will include participants and a score.

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Case study 13 Joshua Sofaer, Perform Every Day, 2008 In his book Perform Every Day (2008), Joshua Sofaer presents us with four sets of information systems: photographs, instructions, narratives and notes. Each set of 33 items is numbered and, generally, entries in different sections with the same number relate to one another. As the author notes in the book’s accompanying leafet: “The sections are separated to allow the threads to come together slowly and not to force interpretations on the reader – and also to give a sense that the book can be picked up and opened at any page” (Sofaer, n.p.). All the parts of the book can be assumed to have autobiographical origins although this is nowhere stated. The narration in, for example, number 22 speaks of someone, who, during the long hours of inactivity in his work as a hotel receptionist, would rearrange the objects in his desk and invent stories about them. In the other sections corresponding to the same number, a set of objects is pictured in a photograph while there is a proposition to “rearrange objects to tell yourself a story” and references to books on “chance” and “collecting”.According to the author, the book “seeks to establish a relationship between everyday activities and performance. It encourages us to perceive the activities we go about day to day with the sensibilities of an artist” (ibid., n.p.). In A Mundane Manifesto, Wayne Brekhus comments on sociology often “neglecting the ordinary in favour of the extraordinary” (2000, 1). In his view “the everyday and the ordinary are both important and interesting” and one of the methodologies that could be employed for their study is marking everything with the same weight, thus “marking everything”. To go back to Perform Every Day, the book can be perceived as a proposal to mark everyday experience (events, thoughts, discussions, encounters, etc.) as a potential constitutive element of performance art, thus not only investing in the everyday but empowering everyone with the possibility of living a life within art; indeed almost equating life and art.

Practice prompt 5: the performance of the everyday For this project on the performance of the everyday it is suggested that you organize a performance in your home. The space and objects of your house are the elements you will be using; you can organize them accordingly. In case this is not possible, you can present the performance in the studio or a gallery and bring what you need in terms of furniture and objects. Consider the position of the spectators in your space. Take into account what you have already found out about the use of objects, the correlation of body and space, rhythm and movement and plan the beginning and the end of the performance. It is essential that you choose a topic that interests you in the general theme of the performance of the everyday.

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Concluding notes In this chapter we dealt with the elusive everyday. As a subject, it is difficult to consider it systematically through known tools and methodologies, while researching it may create false continuities and uniformity. The mere act of documenting it bears dangers, as it may convert it to an exceptional event. The avant-garde’s contribution in infusing performance art with the everyday, lies in the introduction of the artist’s action, audience participation, everyday materials and its scorn of “high art”. Happenings, Fluxus and the Situationists employed randomness and play with different objectives and rejected the authority of the artist by ceding it to participants of their actions (happenings) or plainly rejecting it altogether (Fluxus, the Situationists). Conceptual art connects to the everyday in its use of ephemeral, cheap materials and its opening up to non-dedicated exhibition spaces. Feminist art highlights women’s domestic and family life or the political tensions between private and public life, exposing the violence and absurdity of the everyday and bestowing it with value. Failure, purposelessness, isolation, the monitoring of private lives and the rituals of the everyday are some of the subject matters which artists bring to the fore. “Rendering the familiar unfamiliar” (Highmore), accepting the pure “success of existence” (Bachelard), “marking” (Brekhus) everyday events in durational, relational and sequential performances, are some of the methodological approaches of the artists, while autobiographical practices form one of the ways in which they will continue to preoccupy themselves with the everyday in the decades to come.

References Bachelard, G. (2000 [1950 in French]). The Dialectic of Duration (M. McAllester Jones, Trans.). Manchester: Cinamen Press. Blanchot, M. (2008). Everyday speech. In S. Johnstone (Επιμ.), The Everyday (34–42). London: Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press. Brekhus, W. (2000) A mundane manifesto. Journal of Mundane Behavior, vol. 1, (1). Retrieved 23 February, 2002, from http://www.mundanebehaviour.org/v1n1/ brekhus.htm De Certeau, M. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Featherstone, M. (1995). Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity. London: Sage Publications. Heathfeld, Adrian (ed.). (2000). Small Acts: Performance, the Millennium and the Marking of Time. London: Black Dog Publishing. Highmore, B. (2008). Everyday life and cultural theory. In S. Johnstone (Ed.), The Everyday (79–87). London: Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press. Johnstone, S. (2008). Introduction/recent art and the everyday. In S. Johnstone (Ed.), The Everyday (12–23). London: Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press. Konomis, M. (2021). Performance choros kai i feministiki optiki tou fylou: Treis syghrones periptoseis meletis [Performance, space and the feminist optics of gender: Three contemporary case studies]. In A. Avgitidou (Ed.) Dimosia Techni, Dimosia Sfaira [Public Art, Public Sphere] (pp. 201–27).Thessaloniki: University Studio Press.

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Lefebvre, H. (2008). Clearing the ground. In S. Johnstone (Ed.), The Everyday (26–34). London: Whitechapel Gallery & MIT Press. McMurry, J. (2007). 365 Performances [DVD]. UK: Liveartwork editions. Sofaer, J. (2008). Perform Every Day. Brussels: what> publications. Steinhauer, J. (2917, February 10). How Mierle Laderman Ukeles Turned Maintenance Work into Art. Hyperallergic. Retrieved from https://bit.ly/3tXyPcC

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Performing in public space

Public space and the public sphere In Chapter 6, ‘Body and Space’, we explored space as a signifcant component of site-specifc performance and performance art in general. While the correlations made between performance, space and audience in that chapter remain useful in our understanding of performing in public space, the distinctive condition of the (uninformed) audience caught in their everyday activity, the direct connection of the public sphere with public space and the latter’s overall unpredictability, call for a separate chapter. The complexity and unpredictability of performing in public space are also the reason for its late appearance in this book as some experience of performing is deemed benefcial before we delve into it! What do we talk about when we talk about public space? Public space is historically defned and consequently it does not have a single or permanent defnition. Could we identify it as the remainder of private space? According to Kostas Vasileiou, in the modern era our perception of public and private has changed due to the formation of our idea of individuality (2021). For Vasileiou individuality is nowadays scattered due to the diffusion of electronic media in everyday life, something which has complicated the defnitions of public and private space. It is generally expected though that public space is freely accessible to anyone, serves the public’s needs and is the result of the public’s decisions. The word public1 itself, according to Richard Sennett, has ended up meaning life beyond the safety of our circle of family and friends (private) and within the multiplicity of the public sphere (1976). Consecutively, public space is inherently connected to the public sphere, its constitution and representation in space. The appreciation of both concepts is essential in order to discuss performance in public space. Jürgen Habermas (1989) has defned the bourgeois public sphere in early modern Europe as the body of individuals who came together to debate questions that pertained to public interest. According to Habermas, private matters were set aside in these discussions and everyone participated on an equal basis. Public opinion was formed through this process as a consensus for the common good; the public contributed to democratic debate and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-9

Performing in public space 147 rational analysis (Chatzisavva, 2010). The places where public opinion was expressed were the cafes, newspapers and publishing houses; therefore, public space and the public sphere coincided. Feminist critics of Habermas’ defnition of public sphere have deemed it idealistic and based on a series of exclusions. Nancy Fraser argued that “the bourgeois conception of the public sphere is inadequate insofar as it supposes that social equality is not a necessary condition for participatory parity in public spheres” (1990, 65). Fraser presents us a series of critical approaches by Geoff Eley, Jane Mansbridge and Joan Landes who point to the fact that other non-bourgeois spheres were ignored in Habermas’s account and that issues of class, race and gender were concealed in the presentation of bourgeois men as a “universal class”. In conclusion, issues of access, exclusion and eligibility render the aforementioned view of the bourgeois public sphere too restrictive for the notion of the public and its place in democracy. According to Oliver Marchart (2004–5), the public nature of public space and the public sphere is not a given. Marchart examines issues of accessibility, either in physical space, due to increased privatisation, restrictions and control of places like shopping malls2, or in the public sphere due to the absence of possibilities to infuence the media. Rem Koolhaas has pointed out the shift in the experience of public space created by the advancement of networked communications and infrastructure that have transformed public space and its publicness. In Generic City (1995, 1251) he had proclaimed the “evacuation of the public realm” with roads used predominantly for movement by car rather than by pedestrians. The city is currently being conceptualized as a patchwork of procedures, functions and relationships between places, people and institutions, which are inherently in confict with each other. The space of the city as a place of confict and disruption that includes networks, material form and social fabric (Angelil & Burkhard, 2003) fall within greater concerns on the complexity and vagueness of relationships developed in public space instigated by architect-theorists such as Manuel de Sola Morales and Rem Koolhaas. Lastly, Scott McQuire’s (2008) view of the city as dominated by media devices which transmute social activity and relationships contributes to an idea of a public space beyond its material formation that challenges concepts of public and private as linked to specifc spaces.

From the fâneur to the Situationists Baudelaire’s fâneur is a frequent reference in discussions about performance in public space. The fâneur, the stroller of the city, originally appears in Baudelaire’s account of Monsieur G., a reference to an actual person who lived in 19th-century Paris. The Painter of Modern Life was published in instalments in the French newspaper Le Figaro in 1863. According to

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Baudelaire, Monsieur G. is a painter who wanders the streets of Paris, drawing inspirations from the crowds, the storefront windows, the colours and fashion, an avid but equally distant observer of the city (1972 [1863]). Later on, during the 1930s, Walter Benjamin identifed the fâneur as a product of modernism and the industrial revolution.3 Characteristics of the modern city such as the crowd, alienation and the spectacle of the commerce in department stores, a predecessor of today’s malls, were identifed as part of the fâneur experience. In the Paris of 1940s and the 1950s, a sequential forming of radical groups with a loose or direct connection to art, ended up in the founding of the Situationist International. These groups were CO.BR.A., the Lettrists (later Lettrist International) and the International Movement for an Imaginary Bauhaus, set out to revolutionize life and art. They denied the conventional way of life, which included the way art was produced, and sought to live free and full of experiences lives. They often caused scandals, made absolute and provocative statements and survived in the margins of society. The Situationist International was formed in 1957 and consisted of people with primarily political than artistic associations. Guy Debord, a prominent fgure in the Situationists, later wrote The Society of the Spectacle (1994 [1967]), an acute critique of life in capitalism and of consumer society, which remains relevant to this day. The Situationists’ ideas on public space were expressed in unitary urbanism and psychogeography, terms which they devised. Unitary urbanism was defned as the “theory of the use of the whole of arts and techniques combined in the integral construction of an environment in dynamic connection with behavioural experiments” (McDonough, 2009, 14). Psychogeography encapsulated their idea that spatial characteristics had a reciprocal relationship with the feelings and behaviour of people. They would explore this relationship in the creation of psychogeographic maps developed though dérive. Dérive was the aimless drifting in the city, in search of otherness and difference and guided by desire. The experience of these derives would be recorded in the psychogeographic maps, which were collages with aerial views of the city’s blocks with pointing arrows signifying possible routes between them. These areas were not necessarily depicted in scale as they were not an indication of size but of the space’s atmosphere. Debord discusses how people appreciate the changes in ambiance (atmosphere) in their city strolls as more or lesser appealing, something that can be the result of a combination of a variety of factors that may not be attributed solely to architecture (Debord in McDonough, 61). By submitting themselves to derive and setting aside their usual purposes for walking, people would be able to discover the qualities of space and be guided to their own ideal spatial reality. The ultimate goal was to be able to create these atmospheres with intentions to enhance and ultimately transform life through situations. Situations were “defned in 1958 as moments in life ‘concretely and deliberately

Performing in public space 149 constructed by the collective organization of unitary ambiance and a play of events’” (McDonough, ibid., 1). These would not be events created for the people, as the goal was ultimately political, in that the aim was to transform people from passive consumers to livers, actors in their own lives. Play and chance feature prominently in the above. Debord is aware of the exploration of play in Huizinga’s book Home Ludens (McDonough, ibid.) discussed previously here in Chapter 2. He is also in tune with Henri Lefebvre’s ideas, with whom he shared leftist politics and both critiqued the modernist city. Lefebvre envisioned in Everyday Life in the Modern World (originally published in French in 1968) a cultural revolution that would not be an institution but a transformation: everyone’s self-conscious creativity would transform everyday life into art. Steps towards this end would involve: “The Festival rediscovered and magnifed by overcoming the confict between everyday life and festivity and enabling these terms to harmonize in and through urban society” (1971 [1968], 203). From the avid but distant explorer of the city that was Baudelaire’s fâneur to the Situationists’ view of the city as a feld for dérive with the potential for transformation into an ideal spatial reality and Lefebvre’s festival of selfconscious creativity, public space has been projected as a place of awe, anxiety, spectacle, play, emancipatory possibilities and the merging of life and art. Focusing our discussion on performing in public space, we will observe how these themes and ideas reemerge and are recontextualized within the case studies presented.

Performing in public space Because of a series of characteristics that adhere to the nature of performance, such as the preoccupation of performance art with the everyday as theme and material, and the site-specifc character of at least part of the performances since the 1970s, public space emerges as an exemplary feld and context of performance art. These take place in the midst of conceptual art’s questioning of the essence and the materiality of the work of art, simultaneously declaring the paramount importance of the idea and validating art’s ephemeral character. Within the context of conceptual art, artists discover alternative spaces for exhibiting their work in industrial zones and abandoned buildings, promoting the urban landscape as the new place for the communication and reception of art. For performers, streets and squares, as well as markets and shopping malls become an ideal backdrop for their art. Public and collective spaces become spaces where the artists negotiate their identity, subvert normality, create bizarre situations and solicit interaction and audience participation. The presence of bystanders and passers-by at predominately unannounced performances, transforms the public into unsuspecting viewers in an atypical context of viewing art. Performance

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artists in public spaces are devoid of any authority that they may hold within a gallery and are open to any kind of disruptions; at the same time, they exist in antagonism with the bustle and spectacle of the city. But this may also be the point! The rifts in the everyday caused by performances, create the direct confrontations with the everyday and the semantic connections necessary for the production of meaning. The demand for the abolition of the dividing line between art and life, as proposed by Alan Kaprow in the 1950s, is taking its ultimate place in public space performances. In Chapter 6 we discussed the importance of site-specifcity and how specifcity may refer to elements beyond physical space.As we may observe in the case studies to follow, this is also true for public space, a space which may also be politically charged as a feld of confict and antagonism. Artists such as Regina Jose Galindo and Dread Scott reveal these political associations. Similar approaches will be further explored in the next chapter. The complexity of space’s invisible networked activity and mediated communication also becomes an element in art performances embracing locative media, such as those of Gordan Savicˇic´, referred to in Chapter 5 (case study 14).

Crossing the city From the late 1960s onwards artists perform mostly unannounced performances in the space of the city, realized as routes in the urban landscape, which mark visible and invisible lines and borders. Some of these performances go unnoticed and may only be observed in retrospect though their documentation while others create unexpected images in the city that demand attention. The body at work, in casual strolls, in pursuit or in arduous movement, may provoke bewilderment or resentment but in any case, creates a temporary rift in the everyday life of the city.

Case study 1 Sophie Calle, The Shadow, 1981 In 1981, Sophie Calle had her mother hire a detective to follow her around for a day and take photographs and notes of her movements. She would not know which day of the week this would be. At the same time, the artist was writing down her own experience of being followed, activity to which the detective was oblivious. She later combined the detective’s photographs and notes with her own account in her piece The Shadow (1981). Calle has produced a number of works that have a performative element and which have on a number of occasions been characterized as conceptual art (Hand, 2005). Private life and transgressing the boundaries of privacy feature prominently in these works. In Suite Venitienne (19794) she followed ́ a stranger to Venice and shadowed him around the city, taking notes of his meetings and photographing the same spots that he did. In Address Book

Performing in public space 151 (1979) she found an address book by accident and contacted everyone in the book to fnd out things about the owner and later published her account in a daily newspaper. Being followed and following others were part of her investigation way before the 1990s explosion of the discussion on surveillance in public space as a controversial issue, debated also within the arts.

Refective questions • •

•

Is Calle a modern fâneuse? Calle has been described as a “stalker-provocateur” (Stoor in Grossman, 2018, 30) while ethical considerations have arisen in connection with her relationship with the other (Grossman, 2018, 30). Do you think that artists are allowed the privilege of transgression? In what ways have issues of privacy and surveillance in public space changed since?

Case study 2 Vito Acconci, The Following Piece, 1969 An earlier work in which it was the artist who had the role of the follower is The Following Piece by Vito Acconci (1969). Acconci followed random people in the streets of New York for three weeks, until they would go into a private building or drive away in a car and he could not catch a taxi fast enough. Most of these followings lasted a few minutes, unless the people he followed went to the movies or into a restaurant. This work was commissioned for the Street Works IV exhibition in New York. Acconci noted down some rules for himself in which he acknowledged giving up control.5 Except for the sparse black and white photos of his actions, his notes, map and diagrams document this performance.

Refective questions •

•

Acconci and Calle both invent rules and also let random factors determine their actions. What part do rules play in our conduct in public space? What is the meaning of relinquishing control in the performances of Calle and Acconci?

Activity 1 Invent a rule by which you will spend a day in public space and follow it to the end. You are invited to choose something simple that involves chance, like “change direction when you spot someone wearing orange”. Write a record of your experience at the end of the day.

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Case study 3 Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis: Sometimes doing Something Leads to Nothing, 1997 In Paradox of Praxis, the artist pushes a big block of ice in the streets of Mexico City, until this melts away entirely. In the video documentation of this piece we see extracts of the stages of this performance which lasted more than nine hours (you may watch this at: https://bit.ly/3JZbdMB). In the backdrop of this activity we observe the streets and shops of the city, the passers-by and traffic. The artist changes postures as the ice gets smaller, he pushes it down the stairs carefully and even kicks it when it gets considerably smaller. Children gather around to see the last moments of this long process. The title of the work provides a gateway to its intended meaning.

Refective questions • • •

How do you interpret this work? Do you fnd any connections to your experience? What role does duration play in this performance?

Case study 4 Alicia Framis, Lost Astronaut, 2009 Alicia Framis performed Lost Astronaut in New York City dressed in a Russian astronaut’s costume from the 1970s. The performance took place in two parts, one of them in her Base Camp in Art Production Fund as part of Performa 09 and the other one in the streets of New York. Framis walks the streets of the city during a period of two weeks and enters various shops, the public library, stations and karaoke bars, and immerses herself in the everyday life of the city. According to her, passers-by realized that the suit was real, approached her and asked her what her action was about (Blanquez, 2009). In the Public Library she was asked to leave because her presence was distracting (Prattle & Throwell, 2009). Two policemen asked her to open her visor because one cannot walk the streets and not be identifable. Framis’s condition resembles that of a person in limbo, in her own constant timeless present. It is the present of dreams where surreal encounters like those in Magritte’s paintings seem utterly normal. She is inquiring: “I want to go to the moon. How can I go?”. The reactions of the people around her range from curiosity, tolerance and acceptance, to resentment, rejection and aggression. Although the artist declares that her performance comments on the fact that no woman has been to the moon, the notorious “glass ceiling”

Performing in public space 153 (Blánquez, 2009), you don’t have to be a female to identify with the subject matter of cancelled plans, pursuits and dreams.

Refective questions Compare this performance to Adrian Piper’s Catalysis series described in Chapter 2 (Case Study 8). • •

Can you recognize any affinity in the artists’ tactics? What is the role of context in their respective performances?

Case study 5 Evangelia Basdekis, TAMA ART, 2005 In 2005, as part of the event “7 performances and a discussion”, Basdekis presented the performance Tama art (Locus Athens, 2006). She moved on all fours from Michalakopoulou Street in the center of Athens to the entrance of the National Museum of Modern Art, at the time housed at the Concert Hall of Athens. Along the way people asked what was happening and some chose to follow her. At the museum she asked permission to enter and was fnally allowed to enter the museum alone (Antoniadou, 2014). She descended the staircase on her hands and knees and on entering the museum she stood still for twenty minutes on her knees, her hands united in prayer. According to the interview given to Antoniadou, people around her stood silently as in a church and were enthusiastic afterwards. The association apparent to viewers aware of the Greek-orthodox tradition is that with the procession of the faithful to the Church of the Virgin Mary in Tinos island, as a tama, an “offer” in hope of a miracle. According to Antoniadou the performer discussed the social status and the role of the artist in society and longed for acceptance from the Museum as an institution of art. Basdekis recounts in her lectures how the same performance realized in Bristol had an entirely different reception. The image of a woman in all fours was received as sexual and derogatory and not as devotional. In her route in the city towards the Arnolfni gallery, she received insults and even physically aggressive behavior on coming up against a stag night crowd.

Refective questions • •

Review the “crawls” of William Pope.L and discuss how questions of identity, confict and belonging are represented in each work. How signifcant is site-specifcity in the works of both artists?

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Figure 8.1 Evangelia Basdekis, TAMA ART, 2005. Photograph: Spyros Tsakiris. Courtesy of the artist.

Case study 6 Georgia Sagri, The Other Kind, 2006 Georgia Sagri, also within the framework of “7 performances and a discussion”, crawled with tied-up hands and legs from the Meat Market in the center of Athens to Omonia square. Zenakos refers to the reactions of people, changing their course in order to avoid her and the man who was asking her

Performing in public space 155 intensely “Would you like me to untie you? Would you?”, “not with conscious solidarity or philanthropy, but with a distinctive apprehension brought on by the unexpected”. (Zenakos, 2006, 52). The distress and intensity of Sagri’s performance, her inexplicable constraint, the imminent risk and her vulnerable presence at the level of our feet, acquire meaning in the space of the bustling market and the precarious Athenian center. Passers-by view her as spectacle with repugnance and aversion. According to the artist, the everchanging scenery of the centre of Athens is not something that people can assimilate; this “new kind” is one which cannot be integrated (Adamopoulou in Konomis, 2021, 211).

Refective questions •

Why do you think reactions to the performances of Basdekis and Sagri differ?

Juxtapositions in situ The revelation of contrasting and contesting identities, the intersection of the spaces of the self and other and confrontations with bizarre or out of place behavior, acquires meaning in a politically charged and socially challenged public space. The in situ aspect of these performances comprises of the spatial and temporal elements of public space and the public sphere. In the seemingly uneventful public space, artists bring to the surface conficts, demands, memories and symbols of power, suppressed histories and unspoken truths.

Case study 7 Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece, 1966 In 1966, Yayoi Kusama walked the streets of New York, dressed up in the traditional dress of her native Japan, for Walking Piece. Her kimono, a traditional dress but also a part of the stereotypical image of the Japanese female, together with her foral umbrella were in direct opposition with the urban landscape of grey skyscrapers, billboards and rough industrial materials. The piece is available through the slides that were taken by a photographer friend of hers during the performance. According to Whitney Museum’s audio guide, although Kusama would always dress in a modern way in Japan, she would sometimes use a traditional dress in New York in order to declare her status as an outsider (https:// bit.ly/3eEHGtf). The visual declaration of identity, in this specifc case made through the exaggeration of its stereotypical reproduction as Other, is realized in the public space where the right to exist and co-exist is constantly contested.

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Refective questions •

Revisit the “alter ego” project (Practice Prompt 4 in Chapter 4). What if your alter ego is the Other in public space?

Activity 2 “Wear” your alter ego in public space. Where would you (not) go?

Case study 8 David Sherry, Running for the Bus, 1999 / Running for the Tram, 2010. For these similar performances, David Sherry ran after public transport vehicles when there was no likelihood of catching up to them. For Running for the Tram he ran after trams going through his stop for a whole day. After failing to catch them, he would return to the stop until the next tram came along. He recounts how after a while his activity got noticed and a crowd gathered to watch, while shop owners came out from their shops (https://bit.ly/3sHaKZ5). In the same account he mentions a time when a bus driver stopped (Running for the Bus) and the artist remained still until the driver decided to carry on. According to him “Ordinariness” is very important in his work (https://bit.ly/3FChnzy). In the Beck’s Futures 2003 leafet, he describes his work as “making small changes to everyday life”. For his participation in Beck’s Futures, Sherry tried to avoid touching anyone for a month. His performances included running around with a bucket full of water

Figure 8.2 David Sherry, Running for the Bus, 2010. Performed at De Appel Amsterdam for I’m not here. Photograph: Cassander Eeftinck Schattenkerk. Courtesy of the artist.

Performing in public space 157 for a week, avoiding looking people in the eye and dressing as a woman and smiling manically at passers-by.

Refective questions • •

How do these performances acquire meaning beyond the repetition of the ordinary? What distinguishes performance from “ordinary” acts?

Practice prompt 1 Devise a performance to be carried out on public transport.

Case study 9 Kim Kimsooja, A Needle Woman, 1999–2001 Korean-born artist Kim Kimsooja has performed A Needle Woman in busy streets and markets at different parts of the world such as Cairo, Lagos and Mumbai and presents these performances as a looped multi-channel video projection with no audio (6:33 min). In the videos we watch the artist standing completely still while the crowds pass her by in different streets and markets of the world. We can only see her back throughout the videos. She wears a simple monochromatic dress and a long black ponytail that accentuates her needle-like fgure. The crowd’s reactions to her standing idle range from curiosity to indifference. Her frm presence seems almost untouchable, as if she were in a protective bubble, and is in direct contrast with her slender fgure. The discipline of stillness exists in both performance training and meditation. But what are the conceptual ramifcations of this work? The female presence in public space is usually delimited and scrutinized by the male gaze. But Kimsooja accepts the interpretation of her work as feminist as just one of many (Hyunsun, 2000). Kimsooja turns her back to us as if to deter us from focusing on her identity, something that would be more evidently inscribed in her face. What we can see are the faces of the multitude of people in these busy places, passing her by. The fact that this discipline of stillness is exercised in public though, does not produce an image of precarity and fragility as one might imagine but one of strength and resilience. Kimsooja remains frm amidst the moving crowd, performatively affirming her existence.

Refective questions • •

Do you consider this performance as being associated with identity politics and racial issues? Discuss other events where stillness is practiced as an affirmation of existence and defant presence.

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Case study 10 Dread Scott, Money to Burn, 2010 Money to Burn was performed in Wall Street a year prior to the Occupy movement. The artist describes the action as follows: “Starting with $250, I burned money—singles, fves, tens and twenties, one bill at a time, while encouraging traders and others on the Street to join me with their own money. Referencing street ‘peddlers’ of bygone days, I repeatedly sang the words ‘money to burn’” (https://bit.ly/3szcvHK). Scott’s apparent and stated reference is to the stock market exchange and the income inequality existing in the world. Scott is not only making visible the “disappearance” of money in the stock market but creates a spectacle of it, one which cannot be ignored, not even by the policemen who intervene and cut it short in under 45 minutes.

Refective questions • • •

Scott makes a reference to street “peddlers”. Do you observe a connection? Are there any other professions whose modes the artists are “copying” in the chapter’s performances? Can we think of this performance as the creation of a “situation” and why?

Figure 8.3 Dread Scott, Money to Burn, 2010. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

Performing in public space 159 Case study 11 Tomislav Gotovac, Streaking, 1971 In Streaking, performed in Belgrade and later (1981) in Zagreb as Zagreb I Love You (Piotrowski, 2009), the artist runs naked in the streets of the city until he is, very soon, stopped by the police. According to Piotrowski “He (Gotovac) interpreted this action as an expression of an intimate, almost loving, relationship with the city.” (ibid., 374). Ana Janevski remarks how In his (Gotovac’s) radical performances and provocative artistic expressions he tested the boundaries of public space within the socialist state. Many of his actions consisted of simple but charged activities, such as begging, cleaning city spaces, cutting people’s hair in public, and shaving—all of which confronted the urban environment and the socialist-petit-bourgeois moral system with his corporeal fgure. (2010, 612)

Gotovac’s performances do not only subvert artistic convention by performing everyday activities and by bringing them into public space but acquire an added political meaning, even “perceived as a threat to the order of the state” (Piskur, 2009, 93) within the socialist state of former Yugoslavia.

Refective questions •

Discuss the issue of lawfulness in contemporary performances.

Case study 12 Sharon Hayes, Love Address, 2007 Hayes’s Love Address, presented later as a sound installation in Everything else has failed! Don’t you think it’s time for love? was performed during fve days in a busy New York street. Hayes stands with microphone in hand and addresses an unseen and unknown lover, mixing the expression of personal emotions with issues of politics and war. Personal desire is thus not only exposed in a public setting but is also revealed as a messy amalgamation of private feelings, public life and power decisions. According to the artist this work “… provokes questions about the territory of the space of the ‘political’ and the ‘unspeakable’ as it relates to love, enforced normativity and the mythic notion of ‘free speech.’” (https://bit.ly/3mVcDh8).

Refective questions •

Discuss the feminist motto “the personal is political” in the contemporary context of this work (watch an extract of the performance here: https://

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Performing in public space bit.ly/34m0Cef). How do you think the meaning of this quote has changed in contemporary society? Discuss connections with the public sphere in this performance? Martin Patrick introduces this work by commenting on “how some artworks are calling attention to their potential to fail simultaneously as artworks and in terms of political agency.” (2011, 74). How can “failure” contribute to the creation of meaning (success of the work)?

Case study 13 Gillian Wearing, Dancing in Peckham, 1994 The video of this 25-minute performance in a south London shopping mall shows the artist dancing passionately, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. In the audio of the video there is no music but the indifferent noises of the mall. Wearing is dancing to actual tracks, but these are only played in her head. Her hair, hands and limps move from side to side according to the rhythm of the songs. Shoppers keep their distance, walk by indifferently, smirk or are amused. The camera is in a steady, central position throughout the performance.

Refective questions • •

The mall is according to Sola-Morales a collective space [see endnote 2]. Do you know of other performances that take place in collective spaces? Can you think of a collective space that you would like to perform in? How would you take advantage of the characteristics of this space?

Case study 14 Sanja Ivekovic´, Triangle (Trokut), 1979 In this performance the artist sits in her balcony and pretends to masturbate during a military motorcade in honor of Tito’s visit to Zagreb and as Tito’s limousine goes by. She’s wearing a T-shirt with “America” printed on it, has a glass of whisky and reads from the book Elites and Society by Thomas Bottomore. She is soon spotted by someone from a rooftop across from her apartment and within minutes, as recounted by her, a policeman comes to the door and says that “persons and objects are to be removed from the balcony”. The triangle of the title is the one created between her position, the motorcade and the person (secret police?) observing her. Bojana Kunst (2015) reminds us that a lot of the performances coming from the former Eastern bloc are usually discussed in relation to the political condition of the state and invites us instead to take into account the temporal potential of performance understood in a micropolitical scope. In this sense it is not that Triangle responds to the situation put forward by the politics of the state but it is the artist’s action which creates the situation.

Performing in public space 161 Case study 15 Regina José Galindo, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?), 2003 During this performance Galindo walks from the National Palace of Culture to the Constitutional Court, in Guatemala City, barefoot and holding a basin of real blood in her hands. From time to time, she puts the basin down and dips her foot in blood, leaving a trace of bloody footprints behind, until, very shortly, these start to fade and she repeats the action.

Figure 8.4 Regina Jose Galindo, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?), 2003. Photograph: courtesy of the artist.

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Despite the vulnerable position of her walking barefoot, she appears powerful and determined. The juxtaposition of her presence in front of the soldiers guarding the Constitutional Court has a potent performative effect. According to the artist, the performance is conceived “… in memory of the victims of armed confict, in opposition to the presidential candidacy of ex-military officer, genocidal and coup leader Efraín Ríos Montt.” (https:// www.reginajosegalindo.com). Jose Galindo refers to the recent past of her native Guatemala, 36 years of civil war ending in 1996, which included Ríos Montt’s dictatorial bloody regime.

Refective questions • •

Is it necessary to know the history in order to understand the meaning of this performance? In this case study and in Case Study 9, we discuss the position of the performer, at the same time vulnerable and powerful. How does that resonate with you?

Methodologies and pedagogies It appears strange that methodology and pedagogy are referenced in connection with performance art as they both connect to canons, either of research or conduct. The case studies to follow differ from other performances in that they explicitly state and document their art practice as one which may be replicated by others with the intention of providing a diverse and emancipatory experiences of public space. Some of these artists additionally work systematically with analytical and research tools which affiliate them with sociological or ethnographic research. Consequently, for this section, we will be referring to groups and artists that work relationally within the city and seek to re-examine the performativity of moving and acting in public space.

Case study 16 Wrights & Sites, A Mis-Guide to Anywhere, 2006 The British group Wrights & Sites comprises four members: Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner. They propose guidelines for seeing the city anew, for experiencing everyday activities and tasks in a playful way by utilising spaces of recreation and consumption alternatively and by exploring personal and collective histories. Walking is viewed as a way to make the familiar city strange again and as a way to explore its “mythogeography”.6 They defne themselves as “active spectators, as researchers of the city” (http://mis-guide.com). In 2006 they published A Mis-Guide to Anywhere, a follow up to their Exeter Mis-Guide (2003). In it, they introduce us to a number of their methods such as making strange, invent, copy,

Performing in public space 163 deviate from patterns, re-read, disrupt, assume a different position, forget time or copy the children. They propose to consider everyday activities and situations in the city in a different way: for example, shopping as fânerie and public works as a revelation of historical and archaeological layers. “The city is our playground and playmate”, they state in their Misguide to Everywhere (2006, 61). For this purpose, they invite the everyday walker to become a spy, an undercover agent, a conspirator, an animator, a puppeteer, an archaeologist, a muse or a loiterer.

Refective questions •

Discuss the methods of Wrights and Sites in connection with the ideas of the Situationists. Which are their common points? What are the differences?

Activity 3 In a research published in1960, Kevin Lynch explored the different ways in which we perceive our own environment and how our familiarity with a place determines the detail of our knowledge through mental maps, maps drawn by heart from the residents of a place (1990 [1960]). Lynch found out that there are key elements which are broadly recognized by users of space. He defned these as paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks. You are invited to draw a mental map of the city area you live in bearing these categories in mind.

Practice prompts 2–4 2.

3.

4.

Stop people in the street and ask for directions to a made-up place. Mix-up real and imaginative information to create confusion about the existence of the place and try to keep the conversation going. Improvise if in trouble! Go to a shop and ask directions to a place nearby. Try to get people to draw you a map or draw one yourself. Go to a different neighborhood and try to get people to help you fnd the place on the map. Gather all your maps and create a new map out of them. Use them in order to navigate the city. See also: Yoko Ono, Map Piece, 1962.

Practice prompt 5 Create your own tour of your city (neighborhood, park, etc.). It may be a tour of emotionally charged spots, a tour that concentrates on the physical aspects of the city, a tour of places you would avoid, a tour of the city of your dreams, etc. Take us on this tour!

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Case study 17 Andrea Haenggi, Embodied Somatic Practice Andrea Haenggi combines her research with her performance practice: she performs next to the clusters of spontaneous plants, allowing herself to become part of their environment. She is interested in experiencing the city through vegetal life, specifcally through the lens of spontaneous urban plants, native or migrant ones that grow in the cracks of the asphalt, in the empty lots or in the overgrown gardens. She believes these plants offer a new way to understand urban ecology.7 For the purposes of her practice, she uses Field-walking and the Embodied Field Notebooks, not just in her own research but also in the workshops she organizes. Field-walking fnds its way back into the studio in her written refections and as an experience that moves the “walk” in the form of an improvisation. In turn, the refections produced from this improvisation inform the next feldwork walk/experience/ situation. Embodied Field Notebooks are notebooks that are activated during the time of the workshops when one stops to connect with whatever is around them. She refers to this activity as Embodied Somatic Movement Fieldwork. Haenggi focuses on the humble, marginal and parasitical plants of the city and proposes to cohabit this world with them: “What happens if we give agency to vegetal life?” she asks. “I am the unwanted plant, and the unwanted plant is me. What if we both have rights?” (endnote 7).

Refective questions • •

Do you think that art and methodology are contradictory processes? Do you recognize repeated modes and behaviors in your own practice that could be described as methods? Which are they?

Case study 18 Han Bing, Walking the Cabbage, 2000–2009 Han Bing started this series of performances in 2000 following a theft in his apartment, which left him with a cabbage (liu baicai), a rusty knife and the prospect of a harsh winter (Kóvskaya, 2010, n.p.). Kóvskaya informs us that, in the past, having cabbages stocked for the winter, was considered an indication of prosperity in Chinese households.This quite humble vegetable no longer holds any special place in a commodity-driven Chinese culture. Bing attaches the cabbage to a cord and walks it around Beijing, its streets, markets and neighbourhoods, the Great Wall of China and his own village. This bizarre image is juxtaposed against modern China, a landscape full of contrasts, between an orthodox communist past and harsh capitalism, where up and coming young professionals walk by workers sleeping on the building site. According to the artist, his performance emerged from trying to fnd a connection with people

Performing in public space 165 and its meaning has changed over time (https://bit.ly/338wF0R). When Bing was to perform this action in the UK for the 2008 Asia Triennial Manchester, a call was published soliciting participants for a collective walk: On Han Bing’s behalf, we are looking for at least 100 people to join us by walking a cabbage on a lead through the streets of Manchester. Han Bing hopes that at the walk people of diverse backgrounds, lifestyles and all ages will be able to express their uniqueness and bring something of themselves to it. Wear or bring something on the walk that shows who you or your fantasy self are in order to celebrate freedom of expression. (https://bit.ly/3JWLjZE)

Han Bing’s rationale was published on the same page: I want people to question the defnition of ‘normal practice,’ and to refect on how much of our daily lives are routines we’ve blindly absorbed. We have choices about how to live. Performance art can cause us to stop and think about what we do, to ask ourselves how we should live. I don’t believe that the mission of performance art is to supply answers to life’s big questions, but it can certainly raise questions in public, provoking people to think. (ibid.)

Since these performances a lot of interpretations of Walking the Cabbage have been realized, as per the artist’s own desire.

Refective questions • •

•

What is the role of the artist’s life history in devising and understanding a performance? In a 2016 article, we fnd a more political appropriation of this performance: anonymous Kashmiri artists walked cabbages, introducing an absurd action into their ultra-violent everyday, in the contested territories of the highly militarized Kashmir region (Noël, 2016). What does it mean to appropriate a performance (ethically, artistically, politically)? Do the artist’s wishes on the subject matter? What is the role of performance art that Han Bing supports? Is there a role that performance art fulfls in contemporary society?

Concluding notes In this chapter we have focused on public space as the space and context for art performances. In understanding the notion of public space, we have taken into account that it is neither timeless or universal, nor is it mutually exclusive with private space. We explored correlations to the public sphere

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starting off with Habermas’s conception of the bourgeois public sphere as the place where opinions are disputed and consensus for the common good is reached, a concept which has received criticism. Changes in the public character of contemporary public space such as privatization, imposed restrictions and control (Marchart), the evacuation of public space caused by the omnipotence of networked communications (Koolhaas), the disruption and confict inherent in it (Angelil & Burkhard) and the diffusion of social activity by the transformations caused by media (McQuire) were mentioned. We next visited two common references in discussing performance in public space: Baudelaire’s fâneur and the Situationists. Although pertaining to different historical moments, political and social contexts, they both drew attention to the space of the city, the former as the focus of solitary observation and interest and the latter as a feld for playful exploration with the aim of creating situations for the transformation of everyday life. Performing in public space was connected with conceptual art’s exit from the gallery in search of alternative spaces and in exploring the ephemeral in art. Public space is an atypical context for viewing art for the unsuspected passer-by; performances are open to disruptions and are in an antagonistic relationship with the bustle and spectacle of the city. In the case of politically charged performances the connections with the public sphere become more apparent. In the case studies discussed, artists performed in trajectories through the streets of the city, imposing rules on themselves, creating bizarre juxtapositions and inciting poetic associations with the everyday. Contrasting identities and the relation to the Other were contested in vulnerable but potent subject positions. Out of place behavior, unspoken truths and personal desire expressed in public revealed the micropolitical potential of art performances. Lastly, performances were discussed as replicable practices resulting in emancipatory experiences, viewing space anew, considering it inclusively and exposing their possible pedagogical potential. Performing in public space is a challenging and multifaceted activity which may be unpredictable as much as powerful. In the following chapter we will focus on the political potential of performance art interventions in public space that connect more directly to the public sphere and have social change aspirations.

Notes 1 Richard Sennett traces the use of the word “public” in the English language to the 15th century, identifying public with the common interest of society. 2 According to Manuel de Solà Morales collective spaces are private spaces, which nevertheless house public activity, ex. shopping malls, metros and covered markets (Chatzisavva, 2011). Such spaces have specifc purposes, and are open to the prospective (buying) public, they have private security and stated or silent rules of proper conduct. Shopping malls may also copy the architecture of (historical) public spaces but this is mostly taken advantage of in privately own public spaces (POPs) such as Paternoster Square in London. These spaces create the illusion of public space but are heavily monitored, have security

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3 4 5 6

7

personnel and their own rules of conduct while they retain the right to refuse access. Feminist critique starting with Janet Wolff (1985) will draw attention to the absence of the fâneuse from literature of the public space in modernity and comment on the ways that women were excluded from the urban experience. Tate Gallery explains how this work appears under different dates in https://bit. ly/3pFGCvo More on https://bit.ly/3qFisjW This term was coined by Phil Smith, a member of the group: “The meeting of myth and geography is applied to the city where we live and work, not as a defnition of practice but as a lever to unbalance the municipal interpretations of the city” (Wrights and Sites, 2014, n.p.). The information for this case study is mainly from a Skype interview with the artist on September 10, 2018.

References Angelil M. & Burkhard, M. (2003). Urban entropy: The city as a rhizomorphic assemblage. In Μ. Angelil, Inchoate:An Experiment in Architectural Education (pp. 350–61). Zürich: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Antoniadou, A. (2014). Performance art as intervention in everyday life: Participation, the public sphere and the production of meaning. In A. Cope (Ed.), Seenography: Essays on the Meaning of Visuality in Performance Events (pp. 159–76). Oxfordshire: Inter-Disciplinary Press. Baudelaire, C. (1972 [1863]). The Painter of Modern Life. London: Penguin Books. Blánquez, J. (2009, 5 November). Una astronauta perdida en la Gran Manzana. El Mundo. Retrieved from: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/11/05/barcelona/1257409445.html Chatzisavva, D. (2011). Dimosios choros – Dimosia sfaira: Diafores, oria kai chorikos shediasmos [Public space – Public sphere: Differences limits and spatial design]. In G. Adilenidou et. al. (Eds.), Public space … Wanted (pp. 23–6). Thessaloniki: TEE/TKM. Debord, G. (1994 [1967]). The society of the spectacle. New York: Zone Books. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, (25/26), pp. 56–80. Grossman, A. (2018). Stealing Sophie Calle.  Suomen Antropologi: Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society, 43 (1), 28–35. doi:10.30676/jfas.v43i1.74069 Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (trans. T. Burger, F. Lawrence). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Hand, J. (2005). Sophie Calle’s art of following and seduction. Cultural Geographies, 12(4), 463–484. doi:10.1191/1474474005eu344oa Hyunsun, T. (2000). Kim Sooja: A Needle Woman. http://www.kimsooja.com/texts/tae. html#ednref4 Janevski, A. (2010). Art and its constitutional framework in Croatia after ’68. In M. Dziewańska, & C. Bishop (Eds.) 1968–1989: Political Upheaval and Artistic Change (pp. 50–63). Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art. Konomis, M. (2021). Performance choros kai i feministiki optiki tou fylou:Treis syghrones periptoseis meletis [Performance, space and the feminist optics of gender: Three contemporary case studies]. In A. Avgitidou (Ed.) Dimosia Techni, Dimosia Sfaira [Public Art, Public Sphere] (pp. 201–27). Thessaloniki: University Studio Press.

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Koolhaas, R. (1995). Generic city. In OMA, R. Koolhaas & B. Mau (Eds.) S, M, L, XL (pp. 1247–64). New York: The Monacelli Pess. Kóvskaya, M. (2010, winter). Public action art and performative interventions in the Chinese public sphere. Mayday, (2), n.p. https://maydaymagazine.com/ public-action-art-and-performative-interventions-in-the-chinese-public-sphere-anarticle-by-maya-kovskaya/ Kunst, B. (Fall, 2015). The troubles with temporality: Micropolitics of performance, n.p. Stedelijk Studies, 3. https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/the-troubles-with-temporality/ Lefebvre, H. (1971 [1968]). Everyday Life in the Modern World, S. Rabinovitch, (Trans.). New York: Harper Torchbooks. Lynch, K. (1990 [1960]). The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Marchart, O. (2004–5, winter). Politics and aesthetic practice: On the aesthetics of the public sphere. Frakcija, (33/34), pp. 14–19. McDonough, T. (Ed.) (2009). The Situationists and the City. London and New York: Verso Books. McQuire, S. (2008). The Media City: Media,Architecture and Urban Space. London: Sage Publications. Noël, Br. (2016, April 13). The performance artist protesting a decades-long war by walking a cabbage. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/ar ticle/7bd5wy/ we-spoke-to-the-kashmiri-artist-who-walks-vegetables Patrick, M. (2011). Performative tactics and the choreographic reinvention of public space. Art and the Public Sphere, 1 (1), 65–84. doi:10.1386/aps.1.1.65_1 Piotrowski, P. (2009). In the Shadow of Yalta: The Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945–1989, A. Brzyski (Trans.). London: Reaktion Books. Piskur, B. (2009). An exercise in affects. In C. Höller (Ed.). L’International: Post-War Avant-gardes Between 1957 and 1986 (pp. 85–94). Zurich: JRP Ringier. Prattle, F. & Throwell, Z. (2009, November 14). Alicia Framis’s interview. [Audio archive]. https://frankprattle.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/alicia-framis-november14-2009/ Sennett, R. (1976). The Fall of Public Man. London: Penguin Book. Vasileiou K. (2021). O dimosios horos kai to provlima tis exatomikevsis [Public space and the problem of individualization]. In A. Avgitidou (Ed.) Dimosia Techni, Dimosia Sfaira [Public Art, Public Sphere], 19–30. Thessaloniki: University Studio Press. Whitney Museum of American Art (Anonymous presenter). Audio guide stop for Yayoi Kusama, Walking Piece, 1966. [Audio guide]. Retrieved from: http://whitney.org/ WatchAndListen/AudioGuide?play_id=692 Wildner, K. (2014). On research with global prayers. In J. Becker, K. Klingan, S. Lanz & K. Wildner (Eds.) Global Prayers: Contemporary Manifestations of the Religious in the City, 65–79. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers. Wolff, J. (1985). The invisible fâneuse. Women and the literature of modernity. Theory Culture Society, 2 (37), 37–46. doi:10.1177/0263276485002003005 Wrights & Sites (2014). Mis-guiding the city walker, http://mis-guide.com/ws/documents/citywalker.html Zenakos, A. (2006). Performance, Caroline and hysteria. In locus athens (Eds.), 7 Performances and a Conversation (M. Eleftheriou, Trans), 52–4. Athens: locus athens & Futura.

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Political, activist, interventionist, … art In engaging in the discussion on public space interventions from radical groups and performance artists it is appropriate to introduce a number of terms which have been generally associated with art and politics. These terms fall into the wider discussion of art and the public sphere, connect to philosophical and economic debates and deliberate changes in the role of the public (audience) in the work of art. The aim is to provide a framework for the discussion which has taken place in the last decades in connection with this chapter’s case studies and not to provide an overview of these extended and contested issues. Starting off with Lucy Lippard’s distinction of political from activist art we see how art and politics were initially correlated in a macropolitical scale of social upheaval in the western world during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Lippard attested that “‘political’ art tends to be socially concerned and ‘activist’ art tends to be socially involved” (Lippard, 1984, as cited in Fotiadi, 2012, n.p.). Nina Felshin went on to connect activist art with the history of art as something that sprung “from a union of political activism with the democratizing aesthetic tendencies originating in Conceptual art of the late 1960s and early 1970s” (Felshin, 1995, 10). Political, activist or protest art are thus viewed as attempts to provoke reactions and engagement for a series of political issues that emerged in the aftermath of May 1968. Issues such as the limits of democracy and the effects of globalization but also the margin for intervention from the part of the artists will form part of the discussion to come. Two developments in the artworld will partly shape this discussion. One is the shift in the focus of art from object to process and the second one is the shift in the role of public from viewer to participant and/or co-author of the work of art. A number of terms, such as participatory art, socially engaged art and community-based art and their variants will attempt to describe the changes in the roles of artist and audience as well as the changes in the conditions of the production of art. In fact, the materiality of the art produced in these cases is not a given, but art is instead viewed

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-10

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as a process of involvement, communication and development of relations. The term relational aesthetics1 coined by Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) attempts to defne exactly these new conditions of art production. Bourriaud talks of art that has distanced itself from the object, or even materiality altogether and is built around human relations and interactions of artists and participants creating and participating of a social context. The “democratization” of art in these processes is criticized by Claire Bishop (2012), who claims that participatory art is uncritically viewed as positive while aesthetical criteria are overlooked and Miwon Kwon (2002), who discusses how artists “construct” the supposed homogenisation of communities in community-based art while simultaneously obscuring difference. Within the wider discussion of publics and politics Rosalyn Deutsche, following Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, discusses public art as producing a public sphere that takes into account the naturalized exclusions and challenges them (Karaba, 2021). Mouffe defnes public space as a feld of confrontation of hegemonic plans with no prospect of reconciliation in contrast to the defnition of the public sphere by Habermas.2 Within this context art remains always political and critical art contributes to challenging dominant hegemonies, although its power to overturn them should not be overestimated. In many of these performative projects, installations, interventions etc. the participation of the artists with their own bodies in the action is not a given, an “anachronistic” expectation nonetheless according to Bishop (2008, 211). Martin Patrick refers to the “‘choreographic turn’ as artists are staging, confguring, and orchestrating gestural and participatory activities.” (2011, 66). These activities will directly involve participating ‘real’ people and issues. On some occasions, these people will perform themselves as “a metonymic shorthand for a politicised identity” (Bishop, 2008, 114): the unwaged, the exhibition guards, the middle-class family, etc. Involvement of artists with people’s “real” lives, on an individual, group or community level, will take forms the artistic character of which will frequently be disputed. One of the things they have in common is the distance that is created in this, many times discussed as performative, work from the body of the artist as the privileged locus of performance. Artists work as facilitators/ labourers in non-artistic projects with an ambition to create real change in peoples’ lives. These projects comprise of activities such as constructing, restoring, protesting and engaging in activism. See for example the works A la ca(s)za del Rosa (2003), Patio de Nin (2005–6) and Agua Benita (2008) de Rene Francisco. For these works, realized in poor parts of Havana, the artist used his own money as well as bursaries to restore deprecated houses of elderly women that lack basic amenities, such as running water. In a leaflet that accompanied one exhibition of Agua Benita the artist speaks of “the complex interpersonal situations in which the participants become involved” (leafet inlet, n.p.), his respecting of Benita Rivero’s, the inhabitant’s,

Performing radical interventions 171 wishes and her tolerating his presence as “a gift from one to the other” (ibid.). Besides this particular one-to-one example of the artist’s intervention, there are political/social/pedagogical interventions with communities from artists and groups intending to ameliorate specifc circumstances. One example is the group Superfex and their project Guaraná Power (2003), for which they aided a Brazilian farmers cooperative in creating their own guaraná drink in response to exploitative manipulations of produce prices from multinational corporations (https://bit.ly/3rwQWXv). As Fotiadi notes, analogous projects by NGO’s are derogatorily called NGO art, but art projects attract bigger attention (2021). We can observe the artists’ attempt to get involved in the political and the social going from a macro-political to a micro-political scale and assuming new roles in issues that have emerged as result of capitalism, antagonism and globalization. The artist as social worker, constructor or pedagogue will at times offer replicable modes of intervening in one’s own reality. At the same time activists are resorting to artistic methods in search of the attention that aesthetics may attract but because they “are also moved by their purely creative and utopian urges” (Ramírez Blanco, 2013, n.p.).

Nomadic and temporary From temporary playful occupations of space to activities that engage with the social, performers create alternative realities and propose ways of surviving and communicating and expressing yourself in a hostile, or at least challenging, urban environment. The Temporary Autonomous Zone (T.A.Z.) of anarchist Hakim Bey (in his book of the same title frst published in 1985) may form a theoretical basis for some of these interventions. Bey defnes T.A.Z. as a transient location beyond the control of the state. He explains how he envisaged it as “a third way” in the post-Cold War era, a utopia in practice and not a plan for life in the future.

Case study 1 Willi Dorner, Bodies in Urban Spaces, 2007 onwards Willi Dorner initially performed these temporary interactions with the city’s architecture and urban furniture alone and since 2007 he has directed groups of people in similar performative interventions. Performers dress in colourful sport outfts and create temporary human sculptures in the city. Taking advantage of the city architecture, its gaps, niches, plants, etc. they insert themselves in unlikely places and create an instant, site-specifc and playful composition. Although there is no conceptual or other framework behind these interventions, they propose the city as a stage and a playground and challenge art viewership. See also http://www.ciewdorner.at.

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Figure 9.1 Willi Dorner, Bodies in Urban Spaces, 2010, New York Stock Exchange. Photograph: Lisa Rasti. © Willi Dorner. Courtesy of the artists.

Case study 2 Krzysztof Wodiczko, nomadic instruments Since the 1970s Wodiczko has invented and constructed a number of vehicles he calls nomadic instruments, which are intended to serve for the survival, communication and expression of people in a precarious state, while in public space. Initially constructed in Poland as the Homeless Vehicle, it was intended to have an interventionist effect in that it made visible and provoked discussion on ethical and ideological unresolved issues: a critical vehicle (xv–xvi). Wodiczko’s proposal for a “new equipment for strangers” (1999, 12–14), the homeless, immigrants and the displaced, is designed as a mediator that will bring people together in playful communication, allow for isolation and have healing properties for users. For the Homeless Vehicle (1988–9) he was advised by actual homeless people and modifed his design accordingly (https://bit. ly/3go7gmQ). Subsequent projects such as Dis-Armor (2000), a prosthetic augmented device, are a comment on alienation from self and other.According to Thompson and Sholette his works “both address social issues as well as

Performing radical interventions 173 provide a band-aid to them” and “[L]ike a band-aid, the works both temporarily help a wound as well as bring attention to it” (2004, 17).

Case study 3 Lucy Orta, Refugee Wear, 1992–8 and Nexus Architecture, ongoing During the 1990s, Lucy Orta produced designs in support of life on the streets to be used by refugees and the homeless. As designs they are built on the principles of functionality, versatility and transformability: they can be transformed from clothing to shelters. Intended as a poetic response to humanitarian crises around the globe (https://bit.ly/3LaLiC8) they were heavily criticized, along with similar designs by other artists such as Winfried Baumann. During the 1990s, she also developed the concept of Nexus Architecture the creation of a collective human sculpture with designed interconnected suits who performed interventions in public spaces, at times with an ecological agenda.The suits are intended as a symbolic mark of a linked interdependent community but have also a totalitarian appearance in their uniformity and order.

Case study 4 Reclaim the Streets Reclaim the Streets was a British group active in the 1990s that performed radicalized parties against car culture, halting traffic and creating chaotic events. In 1995 they staged a car collision and subsequent road rage in central London, which turned into a rave party on the street. Their banner “Reclaim the streets” was held over the purposely destroyed cars. Occupying public space and creating impromptu celebrations became their modus operandi. One of the co-founders, artist John Jordan describes their aspiration: “a vision in which the streets of the city could be a system that prioritized people above proft and ecology above the economy” (Ramírez Blanco, 2013, n.p.). During the party on the M41 motorway in London, in 1994, thousands of people danced for hours while two stilt walkers with sack gowns concealed men who drilled holes in the asphalt and planted trees. According to Ramírez Blanco “Reclaim the Streets” merged with the then recently formed “People’s Global Action” in 1998 and went on to organize global anti-capitalist days of action.

Refective questions • • •

Discuss the previous case studies as interventions. How do you measure their success? What do you think is the margin for intervention in performances? In discussing Reclaim the Streets Julia Ramírez Blanco explains how such events “… occupy the ambiguous meeting space between aesthetic creativity, social imagination and political action” (2013, n.p.). Where do you think the affinity of the previous interventions lay?

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Personas and impersonators In this part we will discuss performers who create personas and employ overidentifcation in their public appearances. Overidentifcation is a strategy where artists “… over-identify with the ruling, post-historical order and take the latter’s immanent laws to their most extreme, dystopian consequences” (BAVO, 2007, 4). A representative case study is NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst/New Slovenian Art) founded by the music group Laibach: the group employed Nazi iconography to expose the similarities between totalitarian regimes of the left and right and even created their own state and issued passports. A lot of the following public interventions take advantage of protest modes with the connection between performance and protest frequently referenced. Some may have an affinity to non-violent actions,3 that is forms of political protest, which may at times challenge lawfulness but choose not to use violence and respond passively to it.

Case study 5 Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Performer William (Billy) Talen started using the persona of Reverend Billy in solo appearances in Times square, New York and since the 2000s has been joined by the Church of Stop Shopping choir. Reverend Billy is dressed as a catholic preacher and wears a bleached hair pompadour, at times holding a white megaphone to assist his message in getting across; it is a message of anti-consumerism and anti-globalisation (in his support of small local retail shopping). His invasion of shops and mega-malls such as the Mall of America is a performance consisting of him preaching of the Shopocalypse, the end of times that will follow frantic shopping, and the Church of Stop Shopping ensemble engaging in singing hymns of similar content. According to Carmen McClish, Reverend Billy’s self-proclaimed “inspired foolishness” (2009, 2) is based on compassion for the consumers and in this way results in solidarity among its public. McClish declares that his ethics are actually close to Christian ones being them “forgiveness, humility, compassion, generosity, and service to his community”. Talen’s persona, based mostly in the African American Baptist church, is problematic according to Jill Lane (Lane in McClish, 2009, 10). Talen confirms though that he uses his white male privilege for the cause, for gaining access and attracting attention to his performance.

Case study 6 The Yes Men, Management Leisure Suit, 2001 The Yes Men have been described as “a genderless, world-wide, loose-knit association of impostors whose Internet enabled actions combine a wide

Performing radical interventions 175 range of tactics which all ultimately point to the enormity of the potential to manipulate the media” (Dzuverovic-Russell, 2003, 153). The duo has famously impersonated members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and made a number of tactical media, interventionist actions as well as embarked on educational activities with an activist agenda on political, ecological and economic issues. However ludicrous some of these activities may be (including this one), they are successful in being perceived as real, at least for a period of time. During a presentation as representatives of WTO at the Fabrics of the future conference held at Tampere Technical University in Finland, they demonstrated the ‘Management Leisure Suit’, a suit for employee surveillance. It was a golden lycra jumpsuit with a giant phallic infatable shape with a monitor on the end of it. A number of other interventionist actions involve “identity correction”, what they describe as assuming the identity of institutions in order to rectify their wrongdoing (Owen, 2011).

Refective questions • •

Discuss the effectiveness of these impersonations. How do these actions balance between ridicule and art?

Case study 7 Radical Cheerleaders The group(s) Radical Cheerleading defne themselves as “a feminist performance and protest - a kind of intervention in political demonstration (‘serious’) and a subversion of cheerleading (‘anti-feminist’)” (Vacaro, 2004, 1). The frst Radical Cheerleading squad was formed in Florida, in 1996, by three sisters who “… infused junior high cheerleading skills with anarchist politics.” (Vacaro, 2004, 1). Radical Cheerleading groups dress up in costumes that parody cheerleading ones, appear in demonstrations as a squad and chant their own songs in a cheerleading fashion, or appropriate the melody of popular songs for which they have replaced the lyrics. They wear attire mostly in pink, red and black colours, miniskirts and suspenders, and carry self-made pom-poms or use garbage cans for producing sound.Their actions are characterized as “nonviolent confrontation” (Atkinson, 2010, 127) and they have been interpreted as “a response to patriarchal constrains on girlhood” with an affinity to the “‘not grrl’ subculture of the late 1980s and 1990s” (Foust, 2010, 206). Their squads are not exclusively female, while gender-related issues come up frequently in their interviews and writings (Roe, 2001, Vaccaro, 2004). As stated in a kind of a manifesto that was published as an independent zine, in 1997, Radical Cheerleading is “activism with pom-poms and middle fngers extended. It’s screaming fuck capitalism while doing a split” (Vaccaro, 2004, n.p.). Jeanne Vaccaro struggles in defning Radical Cheerleading as either performance art or protest and reports: “I’m so glad, because I believe Radical Cheerleading is more than performance art and protest; as a practice it refects a queer sensibility and feminist ethics”.

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Case study 8 Eva and Franco Mattes, Nike Ground: Rethinking Space, 2003 Eva and Franco Mattes, aka 0100101110101101.org, have used hacking to spread a virus at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and to copy the Vatican site (vaticano.org) and insert minor changes to it (1998). For Nike Ground they orchestrated a supposed renaming of the historical Viennese square Karlsplatz to Nikeplatz and proposed to install there the “Nike” trademark as a sculptural monument. They even created an InfoBox where a team would provide information to the city’s residents and launched a massive media campaign and a website. The mixed reactions of the public for this supposed privatisation of the square revolved around issues of cultural identity, commercialization and commodity culture (Goutziouli, 2013). In the lawsuit that follows the artists’ refusal to comply with the company’s ultimatum their lawyer argues that theirs is a culture project and thus not competitive with the company in their appropriation of Nike’s symbol (Nitewalkz, n.d.). Janez Jansa (2015) argues that there is an inherent schizophrenia in the concept of the autonomy of art and art that engages with real life, which is also at work in this project (2015, 43). The artists had to admit that their work as artistic project posed no threat to the company, separating in this way art from “real life”.

Refective questions •

Janez Jansa (2015) refers to the relationship of art and real life as “schizophrenic”. Discuss this in connection with the previous case study.

Orchestrating participation As mentioned in the introduction, a number of interventions in public space rely on participation of viewers/groups or communities for the completion of the project. The level of participation, the manipulation of roles and identities in such projects has been widely contested and questioned. The case studies we will discuss below orchestrate or provoke participation in more direct or open ways and are representative examples of different approaches to the matter.

Case study 9 Suzanne Lacy, The Roof is on Fire, 1994 Suzanne Lacy organized this event in collaboration with Annice Jacoby, Chris Johnson and 220 inner city teenagers. This project, which took six months to organize, had as its culmination a performance carried out on

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Figure 9.2 Suzanne Lacy, Annice Jacoby and Chris Johnson, The Roof is on Fire, 1993–4, from the Oakland Projects, 1991–2001; performance, 4 June 1994, City Centre West Garage, Oakland, San Francisco. Photograph: Nathan Bennett. Courtesy of Suzanne Lacy.

a rooftop federal parking. The performers were teenagers, mostly African American and Latino whom during the performance stayed in cars with open windows and talked about issues which concerned them. A list of topics such as sex, violence, family and school were provided by the organizers but the conversation was not scripted or censored. Visitors could walk around the parked cars and “eavesdrop” on the conversation.The project, according to the organizers, was a reaction to one-sided media coverage of youth as delinquent and over-sexed, a self-revelation from the part of the performers and the act of listening as a revolutionary act (https://vimeo.com/39865636).This project may be classifed as participatory art, socially engaged art or community-based art.

Case study 10 Teatro de Vertigem and Nuno Ramos, Reverse Gear (Marcha à ré), 2020 120 vehicles took part in this performance and flm organized by Teatro de Vertigem in collaboration with Nuno Ramos, carried out on the Paulista Avenue in São Paulo, Brazil. The cars moved slowly in reverse gear for the seven kilometers: the distance to the cemetery. The sound coming from the megaphones on the trunk of one car is the repetitive beeping sound of a vehicle reversing, same as the sound of a hospital machine in the ICU.

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The performance was a protest against the “necropolitics” of the Brazilian government and the fatal handling of the pandemic of COVID-19 from its key fgure president Bolsonaro. One of the dramaturges, Antonio Duran, views it as creating solidarity “within an increasingly anesthetized society”. (https:// bit.ly/3gHXFaA).

Refective questions •

Discuss the role of art in periods of crisis. Do you know of any other performances which directly responded to such recent crises?

Case study 11 Thomas Hirschhorn Thomas Hirschhorn is interested in connecting with the community and creating work with people he doesn’t know. He is clear though that while his interests may coincide with those of social workers, his work is different and his focus is art. His DIY style includes hand-written cardboards and brown-taped couches. He is fond of non-programming as he believes he is not there to organize people, but to create a space for things to happen and leave it open. As a result of the uncertainty that these public spaces inherently possess, his events are open to disruption and indifference, but also in what he calls “moments of grace” (https://bit.ly/3L4Fbyx) created in unpredictable encounters.

Interventions of protest Various performances and impromptu solo and group actions have emerged in connection with movements such as Occupy Wall Street (2011). These are usually discussed in the context of protest aesthetics or are criticized as being part of exposing the limits of the possibility of transforming economic and social realities (Isaacson, 2016). Some of the interventions referred to in this chapter are included in Isaacson’s account of “DIY anarchism”: DIY includes activities such as permaculture and guerrilla gardening (planting gardens in vacant lots), Reclaim the Streets (impromptu festivals in which streets are shut down and turned into party spaces), punk subculture (including punk music, punk venues, punk squats, punk record distributors, punk zines, punk shops, riot grrrl and queercore), infoshops (all-volunteer Anarchist bookstores and lending libraries), and black bloc activism (masked protest cells attending economic summits and other capitalist events with the aim of shutting them down through obstruction and sometimes property destruction).

Groups with a feminist or anti-systemic agenda such as Guerrilla Girls, Pussy Riot and FEMEN have engaged in performative public space

Performing radical interventions 179 interventions that bear some affinity to street protests. At the same time protest movements have taken advantage of the “visual attractiveness” of performative activity. Public space and the public sphere collide in these performances and activist protests exposing their political intentions and implications.

Case study 12 The Umbrella Movement and other protests in Hong Kong (2014) Following the Hong Kong extradition bill of 1997, a number of protests took place in the city of Hong Kong for democracy and against the authoritarian Chinese government. Mainly young people and students who communicated anonymously via social media participated in these protests. Protestors employed visual practices and impromptu performances took place during demonstrations. The protestors’ uniformed black clothes and yellow protective hats as well as the sea of colourful umbrellas used against tear gas became iconic. In discussing the Hong Kong protests, sociologist Daniel Garrett (2015) frequently refers to the “image event” as a powerful weapon for visibility in a media-oriented world. Image events4 bear similarities to performance interventions in that they are staged, they use visual exhibits and are intended as protest (Delicath and DeLuca 2003, in Garrett, 2015). Within the Hong Kong protests we observe artist activists in performances, in a re-enactment of the “Tank Man” in Beijing in 1989, people in effigies of dissidents or officials, etc. By 2019–20, protests in Hong Kong were taking advantage of the potential of media-circulated images, disseminating images of protest though a large-scale anonymous “Publicity Group” (Corlin Frederiksen, 2022).

Refective questions •

Have you observed any performative practices in political demonstrations? What are they?

Case study 13 Pussy Riot Pussy Riot, an all-female punk collective formed in 2012, became notorious after fve of its members staged a performance in the orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in Moscow, in 2012. In this under-a-minute performance that led to their prompt arrest, the group was dressed in short plain blockcoloured dresses and wore signature bright-coloured knitted balaclavas, while signing in a punk fashion. Their lyrics were directed against the orthodox church’s support of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Their performances and public interventions highlight the authoritative state in Russia

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where women’s and LGBTQ+ rights are suppressed and freedom of speech is absent. According to two of its members In our performance we dared, without the Patriarch’s blessing, to unite the visual imagery of Orthodox culture and that of protest culture, thus suggesting to smart people that Orthodox culture belongs not only to the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch and Putin, that it could also ally itself with civic rebellion and the spirit of protest in Russia. (Filippova, 2015, n.p.)

According to Filippova their act falls within the tradition of “religious reform”, a kind of “institutional critique” for orthodoxy. Anne-Marie Korte argues that their work, along with similar interventions, lies within “the fault line of religion and secularity” and this positioning is what renders these works controversial (2014, 229). Their work is usually discussed in connection to other all-female groups such as FEMEN (see below) who make public controversial appearances. Maggie B. Gale (2015) however goes as far back as the suffragettes to trace common methodologies in women protesting for their rights and reclaiming visibility in public space, a female experience with distinctive characteristics. These methodologies include disguise, theatrical framing, anonymity, militant response, using the female body as disruption, using female bodies as a collective body and creating attention and discomfort.

Refective questions • •

Examine the methodologies listed by Maggie B. Gale. Do you know of any groups or individual performers employing them? How do these methodologies connect to protests?

Case study 14 FEMEN Born in Ukraine as a group in 2008 as a response to discriminations against women and perceptions of Ukraine as a prostitution state, FEMEN members moved to France following their persecution and, from there, branched out to about 11 countries in the decade to follow. One of their actions in Ukraine was a chainsaw destruction of the crucifx in support of Pussy Riot. They habitually perform with fowered heads and naked upper bodies that carry slogans in black, in fash appearances that last briefy as they are shortly arrested or removed by force. Their slogans speak against patriarchy or are aimed at specifc male fgures of power. “My Boobs My Bombs”, “Naked Revolution”, “Soldier of Freedom”, “War to Patriarchy” and slogans against Putin or the Pope are some of them. Members are physically trained for strength and combat and are educated for response to aggressive reactions. Their actions are discussed as part of “creative protest practices” and “affective

Performing radical interventions 181 female feminism” (Betlemidze & DeLuca, 2021, 1531). Their intention for universal feminism expressed through their manifestos (in 2015 and 2017), has been questioned by activists and scholars alike, who have accused them of being Islamophobic, colonialist and imperialistic (Schaal, 2020, 336). Their all-white and (hetero)normative young members (although not so since their membership expanded) has also received criticism (Chevrette and Hess, 2019). As Chevrette and Hess explain though, their movement is also viewed as claiming the right to public space, engaging in “powerful vulnerability” and “embodied solidarity” (2019, 2).

Case study 15 Women on Waves Women on Waves NGO started in 1999 when doctor Rebecca Gomperts bought a shipping container in order to convert it to a gynaecological clinic. For this she might have used her experience as a doctor aboard a Greenpeace ship. Since 2001, Women on Waves have sailed to countries that deem abortion illegal and dock at international waters so that women may visit them and have abortions performed by the doctors on board.Along with their campaigns at sea they also “develop art projects, engage in legal actions, give sexual education and medical knowledge workshops, and help women with the course of their abortions via the internet.” (https://bit.ly/3twbC1F). Since 2018 they have provided telematic abortion services with drones to women who do not have access to abortions because of costs, domestic violence, distance, etc. Their work is controversial; they are attacked from conservative politicians for obvious reasons, but there is a less-known controversy in place, that of their project being art. Lambert-Beatty (2008) frames this project’s connection with art by conceptualizing it as an “act of radical imagination”. She points out that “it literalizes the metaphor of waves that we use to describe generations of feminism and links to old images that associate dangerous female power and the sea – from sirens and mermaids to the female pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Read” (2008, 313). Indeed, this work has been institutionally recognized as art, not only because it was funded by the Mondrian Foundation, a Dutch funding agency dedicated to the visual arts and design, but as it was exhibited in galleries and museums, culminating in representing the Netherlands at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Refective questions • •

What is the line between activism and art? Why do you (not) consider this work as art?

Radical performance education In this last section we will look into artists who engage in radical pedagogy, invent their own institutions, at times in adverse political circumstances, and

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propose an emancipatory education of performance and replicable performance methodologies. We make reference to individual artists Augusto Boal and Tania Bruguera as well as the groups La Pocha Nostra and Non-Grata.

Case study 16 Augusto Boal, Theater of the Oppressed Although Augusto Boal was a theater practitioner, we include his approach in this book as a radical approach to theater that included performances in public places which provoked viewers to engage and which were intended as a transformative experience for the viewers-participants’ daily lives. Boal’s ideas were infuenced by Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, frst published in 1970 (2005). A lot of Boal’s exercises are currently used in performance art education by many professionals. The Theater of the Oppressed was developed by Augusto Boal in Brazil during the 1970s, although after his self-exile his activities were extended and further developed in Europe and around the rest of the world. For the purposes of this chapter we will refer to one of the many forms of this theater, the Invisible Theater. In the Invisible Theater the scene is performed in non-theatrical spaces (e.g. the metro, a square, etc.) for an audience that does not realize that they are watching a theatrical event (Boal, 2002 [1992]). There are actors5 who are assigned roles and there is a written text which allows for some improvisation. The scene is set in the street, in public transport or elsewhere and has as its subject an issue that troubles society, e.g. racism or sexual harassment. The scene, created by the actors, is intended to provoke reactions from the viewers, even their direct involvement in the scene. There are also actors among the public who instigate discussions and remain after the playing actors have left, in order to prolong the event’s duration and effect. The general idea behind the Theater of the Oppressed is that spectators will be converted to actors in the theatrical act and, in effect, protagonists in their own lives.

Refective questions •

Discuss the affinities of the intentions behind the Theater of the Oppressed with the ideas of the Situationists.

Case study 17 Tania Bruguera, Behavior Art Department (Cátedra Arte de Conducta), 2002–9 Tania Bruguera is a performance artist6 and activist, who describes herself as an artivist. She uses this term, a combination of the words art and activism, to connote a social responsibly of the artist-citizen, engaging with art in

Performing radical interventions 183 order to generate change (Mitchell, 2016). Within this framework lies her idea of Useful Art (Arte Útil), art which “aims to transform some aspects of society through the implementation of art, transcending symbolic representation or metaphor and proposing with their activity some solutions for defcits in reality” (https://bit.ly/33I1idM). Bruguera has also come up with the term arte de conducta indenting to describe “a practice that aims to transform the audience into active citizens” (Mitchell, 2016, 58). In 2002 she established the Behavior Art Department (Cátedra Arte de Conducta) in her native Havana, an alternative institution of art in a country where all institutions are statecontrolled. This art school, operating until 2009, was open to anyone interested and was free. International professionals and scholars were invited and provided weekly workshops, while thematic exhibitions would be held every six months. Following a participatory event Bruguera initiated, where people read from Hannah Arendt’s book The Origins of Totalitarianism for one hundred hours (2015), she founded the “Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt” for the support of social justice and human rights. Bruguera has been frequently prosecuted and detained by the Cuban state for her art and ideas and continues to polemically advocate them today.

Case study 18 La Pocha Nostra troupe and educational activities La Pocha Nostra (see also Case Study 12 in Chapter 4) is a group of artists with initial members Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Roberto Sifuentes and Nola Mariano, presented since in various confguration with Gómez-Peña as a core member. La Pocha Nosta have created radical performances and attempted to invent ways of collaboration and surviving modes for artists that operate outside the art market (Kalle, 2018, 170). Within these concerns lie their educational activity of workshops and summer schools, many of which culminate in public interventions. Gómez-Peña describes his performance pedagogy as follows: “In my vision, the classroom/workshop would become a temporary space of utopian possibilities, highly politicised, antiauthoritarian, interdisciplinary, (preferably) multi-racial, poly-gendered and cross-generational and ultimately safe for participants to really experiment” (2011, 3). In their workshops they use exercises that promote experimentation with identities through the construction of hybrid roles and use invented practices such as “poetic ethnography” (Kalle, 2018, 182). They intend to create a non-hierarchical space, participating themselves in the exercises and negating their authority as teachers. A line at the end of one of their books on performance pedagogy is a whimsical demonstration of this: “Now, go kill your instructor!! You are on your own” (Gómez & Sifuentes, 2011, 230). The public interventions, occurring usually near the end of these educational activities, are intended as an interaction with various neighbourhoods of the city at times chosen due to the anticipated confrontations.

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These interventions are considered as a feld for testing the various personas and actions developed during the workshops and are intended as a way of intensifying the artists’ sense of social responsibility and sharpening of their social consciousness (Gómez-Peña 2004 in Kalle, ibid. 182).

Case study 19 Non-Grata and Non-Grata Academy Non-Grata formed in the 1990s, in the at the time newly established state of Estonia. Non-Grata viewed critically their contemporary society, which oscillated between the demystifcation of the Soviet past and a positivist attitude towards anything novel and western (Kalle, 2018). The group engaged in numerous performances around the Globe, in streets and warehouses, e.g. organizing processions (such as the funeral procession declaring the death of Street Art) and since 2005 in their self-organized Diverse Universe festival. Their intention for this festival was to “… trouble, disorganize the town and its daily routines, its citizens habits and its social relations” (Viirelaid, 2012, 36). Their anonymity, the fact that any idea of a member group will be followed by everyone, and the use of low-tech and on-site materials are some of their characteristics. Use of fre, smoke, makeshift costumes and an overall gothic aesthetic will connect them with traditional fairs rather than performance (which they anyway criticize) and provoke

Figure 9.3 Non Grata performance Force Majeure, Tallinn, 2016. Photograph: Caroline Sada. Courtesy of Non Grata.

Performing radical interventions 185 characterizations such as “primitivist” (Luhta, 2007, 27) or “politico-erotic underground” (Pirtola, 2007, 31). In 1998 they formed the Academia Non Grata, a non-hierarchical performance art academy where the teachers had to take the same exams and classes as the students. More of a school on life conduct and survival than a traditional art school, during the frst years of its operation everyone involved will also be living together. Rector Siram makes animal analogies when describing her experience: students were “thrown into water like kittens” and some don’t make it, some get hurt “but the majority survive” (Siram, 2007, 309–10). Indeed, the structure of the Academia is described as “a pact” with surviving, feeding and breathing being at least as important as creating, communicating and socializing (Kalle, 2018, 190). Non Grata describe it as “an alternative art high school, a conceptual institution” with features such as “synthesis of different cultural felds” and “non-standard educational methods” (http://nongrata.ee/academia.html). In 2002 they will hand over their methods to Pärnu College of the Estonian Art Academy and since 2004 they will combine their educational activities with their Diverse Universe festival.

Concluding notes In this chapter we have expanded on our discussion of performing in public space to performance interventions with a radical, political, activist or social context. Starting off with commenting on the development of defnitions such as political, activist, participatory, socially engaged and community-based art, we considered the contested notion of community and art’s involvement in “real lives”. We observed the artists’ engagement with the political and the social within the conditions put forward by capitalism, antagonism and globalisation. The artist as social worker, constructor or pedagogue will at times offer replicable modes of intervening in one’s own reality. Artists construct capsule realities or perform in temporary occupations of public space, offering a view of the city as stage and playground, bringing forward ethical and ideological concerns and creating space for civic intervention. Assuming personas and practicing overidentifcation, they engage in non-violent actions in collective spaces, street demonstrations and the public sphere, touching upon issues of consumerism, globalization, war, women’s exploitation and cultural imperialism. In collaboration with social groups and orchestrating the participation of the public they further engage with social issues, exposing the immediacy of pressing realities. Groups of artists with an anti-systemic agenda, moving between performance and activism, engaging in performative practices of protest, provoke power hierarchies and bring forward current demands for social justice. Lastly, artists invent their own institutions and propose an emancipatory education of performance and replicable performance methodologies.

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Public space and the public sphere have provided the context for our exploration in the last two chapters. In the next chapter we will move on outside the urban landscape to explore performing in the natural environment, together with notions of nature and the natural as they evolved from the twentieth century, as well as the defnition of the landscape and the juxtapositions with the body in performance.

Notes 1 We initially referenced it in connection with Rikrit Tiravanija’s Untitled (Free), in Chapter 2 (Case Study 10). 2 See more in the previous chapter. 3 Xavier Renou identifed and described these as die in, clown action, name and shame, symbolic presence, symbolic disruptions, self-endangerment, blockages, re-appropriation, etc. (2012). 4 For example, the Umbrella Movement (2014) in Hong Kong was an image event. 5 It may help you to know that Boal based his actor training on the Stanislavsky method. 6 One of her most well-known performances was Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (El susurro de Tatlin #5), which took place in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in 2008, where actual mounted police performed crowd control techniques on an uninformed audience.

References Atkinson, D. J. (2010). Alternative Media and Politics of Resistance: A Communication Perspective. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. BAVO (Gideon, B. & Pauwels, M.) (Eds.) (2007), Cultural Activism Today. The Art of Over-Identifcation. Rotterdam: Episode Publishers. Betlemidze, M. & DeLuca, K. M. (2021). I provoke therefore I am: Cross-border mediatizations of Femen’s “sextremist” Protest. International Journal of Communication, 15, 1531–50. https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/14158 Bey, H. (2003 [1985]). T. A. Z.The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. New York: Autonomedia. Bishop, C. (2012). Artifcial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London and New York: Verso. Bishop, C. (2008). Outsourcing authenticity? Delegated performance in contemporary art. Double Agent [exhibition catalogue], pp. 110–25. London: ICA. Boal, A. (2002 [1992]). Games for Actor and Non-Actors, A. Jackson (Trans.). London & New York: Routledge. Bourriaud, N. (1998). Relational Aesthetics. Dijon: Les Presse Du Reel. Chevrette, R. & Hess, A. (2019). “The FEMEN body can do everything”: Generating the agentic bodies of social movement through internal and external rhetorics, Communication Monographs, 1-22. doi:10.1080/03637751.2019.1595078 Corlin Frederiksen, M. (Winter, 2022). Images of protest: Hong Kong 2019–2020. Field, n. 20, n.p. Dzuverovic-Russell, L. (2003). The artist and the Internet: a breeding ground for deception. Digital Creativity, 14 (3), 152–8. doi:10.1076/digc.14.3.152.2786 Felshin, N. (1995). Introduction. In N. Felshin (Ed.), But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism (pp. 8– 29). Seattle: Bay Press.

Performing radical interventions 187 Filippova, D. (March, 2015). Lineages of blasphemy and revelation: The holy fool tradition in post-Soviet political performance art. In Central European University VCS Conference “Dissonance”, n.p. https://bit.ly/3NwDvz1 Fotiadi, E. (2012). Doing Language: Narratives from an Activists’ World in the Austrian Art World of the 1990’s. RIHA Journal, 0062. Retrieved from http://www.riha-journal. org/articles/2012/2012-oct-dec/fotiadi-doing-language.   doi:10.11588/ riha.2012.0.69765 Foust, R. C. (2010). Transgression as a Mode of Resistance: Rethinking Social Movement in an Era of Corporate Globalisation. Maryland: Lexington Books. Freire, P. (2005 [1970]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed, M. Bergman Ramos (Trans.). New York & London: Continuum. Gale, M. B. (2015) Resolute presence, fugitive moments, and the body in women’s protest performance. Contemporary Theatre Review, 25 (3), 313–26. doi:10.1080/ 10486801.2015.1049819 Gómez-Peña, G. (2011). Introduction. In G. Gómez-Peña & R. Sifuentes, Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy, pp. 1–9. New York: Routledge. Gómez-Peña, G. & Sifuentes, R. (2011). Exercises for Rebel Artists: Radical Performance Pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Isaacson, J. (2016). The Ballerina and the Bull: Anarchist Utopias in the Age of Finance. London: Repeater Books. Jansa, J. (March, 2015). The art of lawfulness, Georgelou, K. (Ed.). Magazine for Live Arts Research, pp. 41–4. Kalle, F. (2018). I “Zontani Techni” kai i politico-istoriki tis taftotita: Paidagogi evrimata kai proseggiseis me anaphora sta paradeigmata ton omadon La Pocha Nostra kai Non Grata [Live Art and its political-historical identity: Pedagogical fndings in the groups La Pocha Nostra and Non Grata] (Unpublished PhD thesis). Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. https://bit.ly/3ckoOij Karaba, E. (2021). Dimosia Techni (Anatheorimeni). Oi Dialekseis Ipias Eksousias kai oi Aisthitikes Praktikes tou Kentrou Neon Meson kai Feministikon Praktikon os Periptoseis mias “Topothetimenis” Dimosias Technis. [(New Genre) Public Art. The Soft Power Lectures and the Aesthetic Practices of the Centre of New Media and Feminist Public Practices as Cases of Situated Public Art]. In A. Avgitidou (Ed.) Dimosia Techni, Dimosia Sfaira [Public Art, Public Sphere] (pp. 139–58). Thessaloniki: University Studio Press. Korte, A.-M. (2014). Blasphemous feminist art: Incarnate politics of identity in postsecular perspective. In R. Braidotti, B. Blaagaard, T. de Graauw & E. Midden (Eds), Transformations of Religion and the Public Sphere: Postsecular Publics, 228–48. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kwon, M. (2002). One Place After Another: Site-Specifc Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT. Lambert-Beatty, C. (2008). Twelve miles. Boundaries of the new art/activism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 33 (2), 309–27. Luhta, P. (2007). Anonymity, nudity and time. In Non Grata (Eds.), Non Grata, Art of the Invisibles: Performances 1998-2007, pp. 24–7. Estonia: Non Grata. McClish, C. L. (2009). Activism based in embarrassment: The anti-consumption spirituality of the Reverend Billy. Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, 5 (3), 1–20. Mitchell, W.J.T. (Autumn–Winter 2016). How to make art with a jackhammer: A conversation with Tania Bruguera. Afterall, 42, pp. 48–69.

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Nitewalkz. (n.d.). An interview with Franco and Eva Mattes aka 01.org. https://bit. ly/34h2Zzi Patrick, M. (2011). Performative tactics and the choreographic reinvention of public space. Art and the Public Sphere, 1 (1), 65–84. doi:10.1386/aps.1.1.65_1 Owen, L. (2011). ‘Identity Correction’ The Yes Men and acts of discursive ‘leverage’. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 16 (2), 28–36. doi:10.10 80/13528165.2011.578726 Pirtola, E. (2007). Not Wanted Personality. In Non Grata (Eds.), Non Grata,Art of the Invisibles: Performances 1998–2007, pp. 30–1. Estonia: Non Grata. Ramírez Blanco, J. (2013, July). Reclaim The Streets! From Local to Global Party Protest. Third Text [online] http://thirdtext.org/reclaim-the-streets Renou, X. (2012). Désobéir: Le petit manuel. Le Passager Clandestin. Roe, A. (2001, August 2). Gimme an A!: Anarchists in Lake Worth have spread their subversive good cheer from Seattle to Quebec City and beyond. New Times. Retrieved from http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2001-08-02/news/gimme-an-a/ Schaal, M. (2020). From actions to words: FEMEN’s fourth-wave manifestos. French Cultural Studies, 31(4), 329–41. doi:10.1177/0957155820961650 Siram (2007). Principal Siram about her Own Experience. In Non Grata (Eds.), Non Grata, Art of the Invisibles: Performances 1998–2007, pp. 308-310. Estonia: Non Grata. Thompson, N. & Sholette, G. (Eds) (2014). The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. MA: MIT and MASS MoCA. Vaccaro, J. (2004). Give me an F: Radical cheerleading and feminist performance. E-misferica, 1(1). Retrieved from http://hemisphericinstitute.org/journal/1_1/cheerleaders.html Viirelaid, V. (2012). Diverse universe performance explosion 2010. In Non Grata (Eds.), Non Grata,Art of the Invisibles: Performances 2008–2011, pp. 28–38. Estonia: Non Grata. Vol. 5, No. 2, July 2009. Wodiczko, K. (1999). Critical Vehicles: Writings, Projects, Interviews. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 

10 Nature, bodies, environment

In this chapter we shift our focus from predominately urban areas discussed in the previous chapter to natural landscapes and the environment in general. As we may realize soon though, distinctions between urban and natural are not so obvious or well-defned, as they are both interrelated and affect one another in more ways than one. We may also observe resemblances with the previous chapter, however, in that many of the performances and performative projects that follow have a clear interventionist scope. We will begin our exploration with ideas which have been associated with nature in the imaginary of western art and literature. The paradise, purity, harmony, magnificence, the ideal, mystery, excess and utopia are some of them. These ideas will guide us into art and activities that will hopefully broaden and enrich our performative explorations. The realization of the impact of humanity on nature in the Anthropocene, the attempt to understand the domains of human and nature as interconnected, rejection of the view that places humans on the top of species hierarchy and discussions on multispecies, will inform performative interventions and collaborative projects as we cross from the 20th to the 21st century.

The idea of nature From landscape painting to land art and further on to art performances, we can observe the continuity of the artists’ interest in the materials, the representation and fnally the idea of nature. When we speak of the idea of nature, we refer to nature as the recipient of our own projections, in different moments in time and in different cultural, economic and political contexts. We may refer to nature as “pure”, “magnifcent”, “threatening”, “peaceful”, etc. But how did these characterizations come about? Our brief review of ideas of nature as expressed through art, in this chapter will begin with the representation of nature in landscapes in Baroque art and extend to the present. This is not a historical narrative of art and styles but an eclectic presentation which focuses on ideas of nature, with the view of discussing them later for performance art. Contemporary observations on what constitutes the

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“natural” and the relationship between nature and the body will be explored additionally in the case studies discussed.

Natural landscapes as paradise Paradise has of course a religious connotation, although not an origin, but in the collective imagination, it has also come to signify a blissful place where humans exist in harmony with nature and perhaps closer to their own “pure”, “innocent” or “real” nature. Often, this idea of a harmonious relationship with nature is placed in an indeterminate past, a time we now know never existed. Humanity’s involvement with nature in the past has had episodes of overexploitation and irrational management of resources, at times leading to the disappearance of species. Technological evolution and population growth have expectedly augmented the scale of these consequences. When we talk about paintings that represent nature, we are essentially talking about landscapes. The distinction between nature and the landscape is explained by many as a gaze at nature: there is no landscape if no-one is looking at it; in other words, the landscape is in fact a cultural construction (Burckhardt, 1987). Nature as paradise will inhabit the imagination of painters after the Renaissance. Kythira, the birthplace of ancient goddess Aphrodite, will incite the imagination of baroque and rococo painter JeanAntoine Watteau, in two of his paintings from 1717–19.1 In these paintings, the wild but not at all threatening nature, is combined with the carefree life of the aristocracy and erotic escapade. Nature is a place of hedonism and superfcial love affairs where nothing unpleasant takes place, a life excluded from the harsh realities of life in absolute affinity with the experience of the aristocracy of the time. Another example of the approach to nature as a paradise is Arcadia, another actual place in Greece. Arcadia embodies nature as an ideal place, in idyllic representations that connect with the pastoral landscape under classicist standards. Nicolas Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego (1637–8), is characteristic of this correlation of the classical with the pastoral in the representation of nature. The idealized shepherd fgures stand around what appears to be a tombstone that bears the homonymous Latin inscription which states: I exist even in Arcadia. It refers to death itself and thus relates the earthly paradise depicted with a reminder of the ephemerality of life.

Magnifcent, sublime, savage landscape The wild beauty of nature that we view in the paintings of the baroque painter Salvator Rosa in the seventeenth century, a signifcant contrast to the order of the designed baroque gardens of the same era, will subsequently be appreciated by the romantic artists. Romanticism, a movement that embraces all the arts, will emerge as a reaction to the rationalization of the enlightenment.

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In enlightenment, nature is approached through scientifc knowledge: man, considered superior to nature, dominates it, uses or modifes it for his beneft (Botetzagias, 2010). In contrast to the enlightenment, romantic artists will turn to nature with their senses instead of their intellect, exploring and expressing their subjective experience. Romantic landscapes are desolate, majestic, mysterious, melancholic and enigmatic landscapes. Human presence is rare. The magnifcent / transcendental / sublime landscape is the characteristic landscape of romanticism. The sublime is, according to Edmund Burke, a mixture of pleasure and terror: “relative’ pleasure combined with the terror of a threatening nature” (Botetzagias, 2010, 138). It can be witnessed in Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Over a Sea of Fog (Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, 1818). In this famous painting the observer is perhaps refecting on his own fnite existence and the eternity of nature. In literary narratives of the 18th and 19th century, nature will be identifed with distant mysterious places, “exotic” in western eyes, bearing excessive, complex and at times gigantic fora and unfamiliar threatening species. These narratives should be read within the context of Western colonialism spreading throughout the world. Works such as Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719) will present this view of the wild “unconquered” nature, while Jules Verne in works such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers, 1869) and The Mysterious Island (L'Île mystérieuse, 1874) will present the threatening but at the same time fascinating side of unknown nature. In the 20th century, in corresponding literary works and flms, the threatening side of nature will be linked to the over-exploitation of the planet and ecological disaster, discussed later in this chapter. In the above-mentioned Friedrich’s painting, we can see the observer on top of the mountain he has just climbed, but, actually, the activity of climbing the mountains has not always been commonplace in Europe. Botetzagias (2010) informs us, in his reference to Petrarch’s visit to the Alps in 1336, that for centuries the mountains had been something that people avoided unless it was essential to climb them. It is in the context of romanticism that Albrecht von Haller and Jean Jacques Rousseau, around the middle of the eighteenth century, will refer to the pure way of life and the moral superiority of the inhabitants of the Alps, leading visitors there. In 18th-century England, William Giplin will defne the picturesque in his depictions of non-existent landscapes, where nature is represented against romantic gothic and classical ruins. His travel books will incite British travelers to appreciate the landscape as a systematic, coherent whole (Bermingham, 1994).

Lost harmony and paradise reclaimed Nature also forms part of the utopian imaginary from the frst appearance of utopia in literature. Commenting on this frst literary utopia, that of Thomas

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More, Lewis Mumford will identify as its feature “life in harmony with Nature”, in pursuit of pleasure within a society (1998 [1922], 58). During the nineteenth century, industrial revolution and its adverse effects on urban life, mainly on health, work and human relationships, will push intellectuals and artists towards nature. William Morris,2 in News from Nowhere (1890), presents a future in which the environmentally burdened London was converted into small settlements of farmhouses with autonomy, craftsmanship and self-reliance (Bernieri, 1999 [1950]). Characteristic of Morris’s aversion to bourgeois central governing, is the fact that in his narration, the English Parliament has been turned into a dung dump. In Romanticism, Jean Jacques Rousseau discussed nature and culture as opposing elements and argued that living in harmony with nature will be what promotes men. This is a primitivism that despises culture and advocates a return to the past, when harmony with nature existed, a condition that, as we have already mentioned, never applied. Nearly a century later than Rousseau, David Henry Thoreau retired to a forest hut on Lake Walden3 in order to live a Spartan life, later claiming in his book4 that on returning to nature, man acquires the opportunity to get in contact with his inner self and achieve completion. In many futuristic utopian city plans, a relationship with nature was promoted as a component of an ideal life. These were visions of cities such as the suburb of Riverside in Olmsted (1986), based on the picturesque design of cemeteries (Frampton, 1981), Rurisville, the garden city of Ebenezer Howard (1898) and to a lesser extent the Prairie style of architect Frank Lloyd Wright at the turn of the 20th century. Characteristics of the garden city were regulated expansion, fnancial self-sufficiency, production merely to adequately cover own needs and a basis of reciprocity (Frampton, 1981). The design of the majority of English garden cities of the early 20th century was based on this rationale. Nature as lost paradise, a path to a harmonious life and personal self-realization inhabited the imagination of the west in the 20th century, in the various counterculture groups and movements such as the hippies.

Nature in the Anthropocene The 1970s witnessed the realization of what would be called an “environmental/ecological disaster”. In 1972, the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, a report that brought attention to the fnitude of earth’s resources in conjunction with the growing population and economy. Ten years ago, biologist Rachel Carson, in her book Silent Spring (2002 [1962]), had already explained the effects of the reckless use of chemicals and insecticides on nature and, as a consequence, on human life. The interconnectedness of man’s life and the environment was also an infuential idea in James Lovelock’s “Gaia Theory” (2000 [1979]), suggesting that life on earth is a

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complex system where living organisms and the environment co-evolve, react to one-another and self-regulate. The environmental movement that has developed since the 1970s has informed, acted, and suggested ways out of the environmental crisis, but at the same time has contributed to the revival of the western fantasy of a past life in harmony with nature. Social anthropologist Mary Douglas, in a book co-authored by Aaron Wildavsky (1982), took environmental groups as a case study and pinpointed their idealism in e.g. their perception of the purity of nature or the absolute nature of their convictions (nature=good, industry=bad). Environmental pollution, overexploitation and various human interventions in nature created another fantasy, that of vengeful nature, threatening to human existence. Catastrophe flms narrate similar scenarios where the human species is threatened by the effects of its interventions in nature. The Anthropocene, as a geological epoch, conceptualized by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer (2000) as the era in which the impact of humans on earth has been (and continues to be) tremendous, has entered the scientifc discourse on the environment but also the realm of cultural theory. Crutzen and Stoermer situate its beginning in the late 18th century, the invention of the steam engine and the phenomenon of the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Donna Haraway (Haraway & Kenney, 2015) herself argued for the Capitalocene, an era beginning with the rise of capitalism in 15th- century Europe, colonization, the separation of nature and society and the concurrent exclusion of indigenous people and women from the latter. In their introduction to Art in the Anthropocene (2015), editors Davis and Turpin refer to the various defnitions used in the volume (Chthulucene, Technosphere, Plantationcene, etc.) and caution about the asymmetry created by the power attributed to capitalism over the condition of the world and the presumed universality of human agency in the Anthropocene, universality which obscures white colonial accountability. Anna Tsing (2022) points to the fact that stories of humans and of nature are recounted separately and that we have to fnd a way to bring these together in discussing, understanding and lastly noticing the nonhuman response to human activity. Artists have responded to such challenges either individually in performances or collaboratively in projects involving the community. In 1982, Agnes Denes created Wheatfeld — A Confrontation, for which she planted wheat on a landfll in Battery Park in New York, later harvesting crops unft for consumption. That same year, Joseph Beuys planted the frst tree of his 7,000 oak trees in Kassel during the Eighth Documenta, aiming to raise ecological consciousness (Kastner & Wallis, 1998, 164). Art projects that respond to ecological disasters and are akin to environmental activism emerged across the globe in the 21st century in connection with local issues with global impact. More recently, Andrea Haenggi, whom we met in Chapter 8 (Case Study 17), has created performances with plants as co-creators, looking for ways to coexist and creatively relate to them. The discourse on

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multispecies is one such attempt to negate the primacy of humans and look for ways to cohabit this planet.

Practice prompt 1 My Utopia Nature has featured in many literary utopias as the ideal place of a harmonious life. How does your personal utopia connect to nature? Refect on your vision of a personal utopia and explore this in a performance for camera.

Nature, earth, body In Kazuo Shiraga’s  Challenging Mud  (Doro ni idomu,1955), an arduous performance with the materials of the earth takes place, in a simple but very physical antagonism with nature to no end. This is an early incorporation of the materials of earth into performance, from a member of the Gutai Group. The following performances intend to connect to nature and its materials in an environmentally responsive, symbolic or ritualistic manner. The sitespecifcity of these performances not only relates to specifc environmental issues but also to traditions and histories of the place. The performances acknowledge and interpret these histories in their own way. 

Case study 1 Ana Mendieta, Siluetas and Fetish series, 1970s–early 1980s Ana Mendieta is a Cuban-born artist who emigrated as a child to the US in the 1970s, a biographical fact that is often brought up in the interpretation of her work. In Siluetas, a work which was realized mainly in Mexico and Iowa in the 1970s, Mendieta would cover her body with earth, rocks, and green, while in others she would shape her fgure with gunpowder in the sand or the ground and set it on fre. In Untitled (Tree of Life series), from 1977, she is fully covered with mud and grass, standing against a big tree trunk, appearing almost an extension of the tree itself. In Image of Yagul (Imágen de Yágul), 1973, she is lying within the excavated foundations of the archaeological site of Yagul, in Mexico, her body covered with daisies. Mendieta performs a union with nature through “wearing” elements and partially disappearing into the land(scape). In the Fetish series, the outline of the female fgure is replaced by a dummy made of mud, wood or stone. Although an actual body is absent, we observe once more a process of disintegration or regrowth, which blends the limits of fgure and ground, disappearing into the landscape. These works were performed without an audience and are known to us through photographs. Her work has often been interpreted in relation to her expatriation, although this is an approach that has received

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criticism. Blocker explains how personal history and the accusation of narcissism are brought together in such accounts: “(T)he charge of narcissism has legitimized the assumption that her (Mendieta’s) work has only personal signifcance as a therapeutic response to traumatic expatriation” (1999, 12). The female fgure and its relationship with the earth has been interpreted as a reference to primitive female fgures, symbols of fertility in pre-Columbian art and elsewhere. In relation to Fetish, Blocker also notes “the elements of ritual and nature-centered theology” (1999, 18) referring also to Mendieta’s knowledge of Santería, a religion of African origin practiced in Cuba.

Refective questions •

•

Keeping in mind what we discussed the beginning of this chapter, what are the ideas about nature that you detect in the interpretations of Mendieta’s work? Have you observed that there are any particular projections of nature connected to the female body?

Activity 1 This activity is realized in a natural setting, in pairs that take on the interchangeable roles of performer and photographer. Use the modalities of integration and difference, one after the other, by placing yourself in the landscape in different settings. Another useful reference is the work of photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen.

Case study 2 Marilyn Arsem, performances Marilyn Arsem makes performances which are “durational in nature, minimal in actions and materials” (http://marilynarsem.net/bio/). Her actions touch directly or indirectly upon environmental issues and incorporate raw materials from nature. She invites us to look into the minuscule and the unnoticed and to examine our own world and behaviour. Her usually site-specifc performances take advantage of interior sites and natural locations, some of them in remote parts of the world. Klein explains Arsem’s holistic approach to site, quoting furthermore the artist’s call to participants in one of her workshops to pay attention to the experience of the location (2020, 20). In her introduction to Arsem’s monograph, Klein notes particularly the artist’s “anti-hegemonic engagement with site” (2020, 21) in post-1996 works. In Lives We Rarely Notice (2019) Arsem invited viewers in the park to closely examine the ground with the help of a magnifying glass and take notice of the other forms of life around us. When the participating public would notice something, a streamer would be inserted in the ground, leaving, after a few hours, a park full of markers for others to explore. Clear Water (1999) was, according to the artist, “created in response to the environmental concerns

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of Taiwan’s coastal city of Tainan, which has always relied economically on the fshing industry” (https://bit.ly/38wbyYI). Arsem cleaned the bay water for six hours, in a fltering system designed by Kar Viksnins. In Don’t Look (2017), she spent hours in a clear windowed room, searching the internet for information on environmental deterioration in the light of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) powers being curtailed under Trump administration, and putting up information for viewers to read, while at the same time assessing her own carbon footprint. Arsem has also made performances to be experienced by few or just one person. For example, Red in the Woods (1991) was a setting installed in a private site in the woods, prepared for the experience of just one visitor with no other viewers (https://bit.ly/3O3TjtQ).

Refective questions • •

What is the difference between an environmental activist and an artist? Discuss this in connection with Clear Water (1999). Have you ever made a performance to be experienced by one person at a time? Refect on your experience. What do you reckon changes in this kind of setting?

Activity 2 Following Marilyn Arsem’s work, Lives We Rarely Notice (2019), visit a park near your place and pay attention to other-than-human life around you. Allow your senses (vision, hearing, smell) to tune into other movements, sounds, smells than the ones you’re used to follow. Create a record of this experience.

Case study 3 Jill Orr, Antipodean Epic, 2015–16 Jill Orr’s interest in environmentally concerned work was evident in works as early as 1979 as we may observe in Bleeding Trees, a performance for camera photographic work in which her body is “placed in empathy with the natural and unnatural life cycles of trees” (https://bit.ly/3jNH7zw). Her work references the histories of the land which include the history of colonialism in Australia, the past and future of life, and the impact of human intervention on nature and its resources. She creates images of high synthetic value that invoke open ended narratives and often create a mystic atmosphere. She chooses distinctive landscapes such as the salt fats of Mitre Lake in Faith in a Faithless Land (2009), to create site-specifc works that take advantage of the characteristics of these, often vast, landscapes. Antipodean Epic (2015–16) is a complex work which consists of two performance-for-camera videos that are incorporated in the fnal live event, performed in a disused railway building. The characters of the Bird and the Strawman shot in an expansive wheat farm and the gypsum mines

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Figure 10.1 Jill Orr, Antipodean Epic – Night Dust, 2015–16. Photograph: Christina Simons for Jill Orr ©. Courtesy of the artist and This is No Fantasy Gallery, Fitzroy, Melbourne.

respectively, were created for these performances for camera. Issues of food shortage, GM food and seed as “contested ground” are quoted by the artist as the theme of this work (https://bit.ly/3rWDs7l). The unidentified characters’ appearances lead us to images of traditional costumes, animals, magicians and mystics. According to Anne Marsh (1999), characters that appear in Orr’s works may assume the role of witchdoctor or shaman and have a cathartic effect on audiences.

Reflective questions •

•

Discuss the use of projections in tandem with live action in this work. How do projections and live work operate together? What do you think are the benefits or mishaps of this setting? Anne Marsh argues that “Jill Orr’s performances have often bridged a conceptual gap between would-be ‘essentialist’ and constructivist positions on the subject” (1999, 8). Discuss your views bearing in mind what we have already discussed in Chapter 3.

Case study 4 Dominique Mazeaud, Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande, 1987–94 Dominique Mazeaud performed a “literal and symbolic cleansing” (https:// bit.ly/3ziRXVy) of the Rio Grande river,5 once a month for seven years

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(1987–94). At times accompanied by friends, she would collect garbage from the river in big plastic bags. This was a mostly unrecorded action in the media, explained in her diaries as a conscious decision (Gablik, 1991). In these diaries, called the “riveries”, she refers to her activity of cleansing as “prayer”. In them she recounts changes in her perception of what she does and the meaning of her activity. For example, she describes how she has stopped collecting things from the river (earlier referred to as “treasures”), something she associates with object-oriented art. Later on, she even stops the collection of garbage, a prompt from her meditation, and realizes how her relationship with the river is a symbiotic one; the river becomes “teacher” and even “artist”.

Refective questions • • •

Discuss the activity of artists in this section as ritual. Discuss the changes recorded in the artist’s diary. What is the difference in doing something for and with the environment? In Maintenance Work (Case Study 11 in Chapter 7) Ukeles also performed a few projects that included cleaning. Discuss how cleaning becomes “ritual” and “teaching”.

Risk society – planet at risk Beck (1992) and Giddens agree that contemporary society is a risk society. For both, risk society is a product of modernity and industrialisation. Giddens notes the fact that we have transitioned from worrying about natural disasters to worrying about disasters caused by human interventions on nature, a “manufactured risk” (1999, 4). He calls this “a society which lives ‘after nature’” (1999, 3), a world where there is hardly any nature untouched by humans. As we mentioned before, this is one of the assessments supporting the thesis of the Anthropocene. Artists have engaged with environmental issues in the late second half of the twentieth century with our earliest reference for the purposes of this chapter being that of Joseph Beuys. Although land artists worked with nature and its elements, it was only Robert Smithson who directly commented on environmental issues in his writings. In this section we will examine the work of Agnes Denes, at a point connected with land art, an artist who consistently and directly refers to environmental issues in her work. In the late 20th and the 21st century, artists became directly involved with environmental issues, engaging with communities, raising awareness and even assuming an activist role while attempting to have a direct impact on matters concerning the environment. This has at times led to long-term projects, lasting years and involving locals and non-art practitioners across fields, such as in Shai Zakai’s, Ellah Valley

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in Israel or Wu Mali’s A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek in Taiwan, discussed in this section.

Case study 5 Joseph Beuys, 7000 Oaks (7000 Eichen), 1982 Joseph Beuys proposed planting 7000 oak trees in Kassel, each one accompanied by a basalt stone, for his work in the seventh Documenta. The basalt stones were arranged in a mound in front of Museum Fridericianum. The mass of stones in front of the neoclassical museum building was a source of criticism for this project (Stout, n.d., https://bit.ly/3OJa5yP). Seen from above, it created a pine tree shape or, according to Stout, an arrow pointing towards the frst spot that planting took place. At eye-level it was a chaotic rubble, one that asserted with its mass the urgency of its message. The only way to remove it was to plant the trees. Beuys supported that it was a “symbolic communication with nature” with a view “to raise ecological consciousness” (Kastner & Wallis, 1998, 164). Planting took fve years and was fnalized after his death, the action being repeated in other cities. Tree and stone were together conceived as a monument, one that would change over time, because of the growing of the tree. Beuys’s idea of social sculpture was that art actions would have an effect on human consciousness and ultimately transform lives and life itself. Earlier collaborative protest activities such as Save the Woods (1973) as well as educational activities and symposia are appreciated as part of his idea of social sculpture and his belief in the transformative power of art (Goldberg, 1998).

Refective questions •

Have we discussed Beuys’s work before? Do his other works comment on the ideas discussed in this chapter?

Case study 6 Agnes Denes, Wheatfeld – A Confrontation, 1982 Agnes Denes describes the process of creating this work in the following paragraph from her website written in 1982 (https://bit.ly/39gBtnR): After months of preparations, in May 1982, a 2-acre wheat feld was planted on a landfll in lower Manhattan, two blocks from Wall Street and the World Trade Center, facing the Statue of Liberty. Two hundred truckload of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by hand and cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were sown by hand adn (sic) the furrows covered with soil. the feld was maintained for four months, cleared of wheat smut, weeded, fertilized and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an irrigation

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Planting a wheat feld on prime real estate (the land is now Battery Park City) and two blocks from the fnancial center of New York, raised questions about our perception of value and our priorities as society. In a 2018 interview the artist refected back on this work calling it “a confrontation of human greed, mismanagement and complaisance that have since remained the same or worsened” (Agnes and Kwong, 2018). The harvested grain travelled throughout the world in exhibitions and was also planted by people who had visited the exhibitions.

Refective questions •

In Interview magazine (https://bit.ly/3l3ifoj) Denes talks about the commitment, the physical effort and the multitasking that making Wheatfeld – A Confrontation demanded (Agnes & Pollack, 2015). Have you ever carried out a large-scale work? How many people were involved? What special skills did you develop as an artist from these interactions?

Case study 7 Mark Dion, A Meter of Jungle, 1992 In 1992, the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Contemporary Art invited Mark Dion to participate in the Artes Amazones project, scheduled to coincide with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held there. Dion isolated a square meter of land in the mouth of the rainforest park in Belem and moved it to an exhibition space in Rio. In the exhibition space, Dion examined the soil and classifed the organic fndings (bugs and worms) on which he stuck labels, subsequently exhibiting them in the same space, exposing the “microcosms in the soil” (Kastner & Wallis, 1998, 189). Dion explains how it is important for him that the process is built into the work of art (Kwon & Dion, 1997, 25). He fnds that there is a performative element in it; the artist is present, examining and separating, and the public can view this process. Dion frequently inhabits the methods of scientists, engaging in feldwork, exposing the unseen and disregarded worlds around us but also the ways knowledge, history and authority is produced.

Refective questions •

Arsem and Dion both invite us to look into the unnoticed and disregarded worlds around us. What do you think are the differences in their approaches?

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Figure 10.2 Liberate Tate, Human Cost, 2011. Photograph: Amy Scaife. Courtesy of the photographer.

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Case study 8 Liberate Tate, performances, 2010–16 Liberate Tate is an art collective that commenced in a workshop on art and activism at the Tate in 2010 (https://bit.ly/3rPVW9j) and grew in numbers through an open call. The collective’s interventions aimed at lifting BP’s sponsorship from one of the most prominent of British art institutions and in this effort to expose the company’s “greenwashing” through the arts. In their publication Not If but When: Culture Beyond Oil, they state that sponsorship enables companies with “social license to operate” (Marriott, 2011, 10). Since 2010 they have organized a number of performances and interventions in both Tate Britain and Tate Modern, at times coinciding with major gallery events such as openings or the Summer Party. In 2010, they released dozens of black helium balloons with dead animals attached at the end of their strings and poured oil and feathers outside the entrance of Tate Britain (see more at https://bit.ly/3OAY6Dk). In 2011, they performed Human Cost at Tate Britain. A female artist lay naked on the foor of the gallery, while two others dressed in black and bearing a black cloth over their heads poured oil over her.The performance lasted 87 minutes to mark the 87 days of BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in 2010. The collective’s actions ended with BP’s announcement of ending Tate’s sponsorship in March 2016.

Refective questions •

Do you know of any other art activism intervention, maybe locally?

Case study 9 Wu Mali, Art as Environment – A Cultural Action at Plum Tree Creek, 2011–12 Wu Mali developed this project in collaboration with Bamboo Curtain Studio (who continued to run it), the local community and various other art practitioners, professors and scientists in the Zhuwei area of the New Taipei City (Danshui district).The city experienced a major increase in population and expansion in the previous 20 years, as a result of industrialization and a move towards a modern way of life.6 The river that crossed the city had been polluted, cemented and built over in various parts. Mali collaborated with the locals in three sub-projects in an attempt to bring attention to environmental issues around this river, inform and bring the community together.These sub-projects were Breakfast at Plum Tree Creek, conducted once a month and offering local produce, where locals gathered for discussions, got to know the place and had meetings with environmental groups;School of the Future, which invited teachers and school children who also produced environmental art; and Mobile Museum Projects, where university students researched the different layers of the place and organized knowledge exchanges amongst residents, e.g. ways of living outside the capitalist system. According to the artist, the project catalyzed local grassroot initiatives, had a pedagogical effect, invited engagement and got people to slow down and pay attention. In her own words it was about art being, not a noun, but a verb (https://bit.ly/3d2INVQ).

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Refective questions • •

What do you think was the role of the artist in this project? What do you think art as a “verb” means? Discuss the afterlife of art projects, when the artist is no longer involved in them.

Case study 10 Amanda Piña, Climatic Dances (Danzas Climáticas) Amanda Piña combines in her wok her activities of dance, performance, visual arts and her research on the political and social power of movement. Piña has researched endangered human movements in “danzas”, dances that derive from communal knowledge of frst nations peoples, in order, as she pronounces, not to replicate but to “quote” them, use them as references (artist’s interview https://bit.ly/3KcoccG). She uses these ancestral dance forms as “readymades”, movements that stay away from the modern idea of authorship and the artist-genius but are emergent in relation to the land and the human and non-human communities that constitute the place. In her work she makes reference to Amerindian ontologies, where humans do not view themselves as separate from the environment but they exist in relation, extending social relations to nonhumans, the “I-you”; in this way a mountain is not just a mountain nor only a mountain-god but the sum of beings that make up the mountain. Climatic Dances is part of her continuous research Endangered Human Movements, which started in 2014. In Endangered Human Movements, Piña explores human movement practices beyond the canon of modern aesthetics and human body subjectivity as understood in coloniality in order to de-colonize the body. Climatic Dances emerged from the fact that the artist’s native land is being exploited by a mining company. The mountain in this central Andres region is the reference point of this work along with the anthropological research of Alessandro Questa. In Climatic Dances, the reactions and emotions caused by this destruction of the land are expressed. According to the artists, it “is an embodied visual effort to practice new ancestral ways of relating with the living world” (https://bit. ly/3vbAQED). In order to enhance the appreciation of this work, the artist hosts a four-day workshop in each location the performance is presented, sharing a series of practices which she has developed. These practices, which she calls Practicas Ecosomáticas, propose a critical pedagogy of embodied decolonial ecologies. The workshop participants join the performers on stage at the end of the performance.

Refective questions •

What does it mean for you when Piña talks about “quoting” danzas? How do you compare it with your experience of creating performances?

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Figure 10.3 Amanda Piña, Climatic Dances (Danzas Climáticas). Photograph: ©MichelJimenez_nadaproductions. Courtesy of the artist.

Walking the land – crossing territories ‘Walking artists’, who started operating in the late 1960s, introduced solitary ephemeral actions in nature, also raising issues of the (im)materiality of their performative activity. These almost quixotic performative walks seem to operate outside the art market but artists Long and Fulton subsequently connect with the exhibition spaces, albeit each one in their own way. Christian Philipp Müller brings into focus issues of the politicization of the land and how these connect with control and ownership but also with national identities. Lastly, Kalisolate ’Uhila, connects “walking the land” with ancestral territories, presents a different concept of time and exposes the absurdity of owning the environment.

Case study 11 Richard Long Richard Long refers to himself as a walking artist. Long conducts lengthy walks in the landscape, with no specifc destinations or special purpose in mind. These are “empty” landscapes, as he notes (Pitman, 2007, n.p.), where time seems to have stopped. They are the landscapes he supports have not changed much: Sahara, large parts of Japan and parts of his homeland, Great Britain. During these walks he makes and photographs formations that he creates with materials he fnds on the spot: stones, wood, mud. They are arrangements made in a minimalist aesthetic: a line; two intersecting lines; a circle; sculptures “not subject to possession and ownership” (Long, 1998, 241). Long is not depicted in any of these photographs. The photographs, however, are not simply a documentation of the work (Lailach, 2007) but

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they indicate his presence. As Joyce (1989) observes about Richard Long’s installations, his work is not about nature but about man’s relationship with it. Long states that the photographs make these sculptures accessible to more people and explains his rationale: My outdoor sculptures are places. The material and the idea are of the place; sculpture and place are one and the same. The place is as far as the eye can see from the sculpture. (Long, 1998, 241–2)

Case study 12 Hamish Fulton Hamish Fulton is, similarly to Richard Long, a walking artist. Like Long, he points to the fact that his art is not conceptual and distinguishes walking art from land art (https://bit.ly/3OF9yhi). In his accounts, he draws attention to the difference between the experience of a walk and the framed artwork, what he calls “walk text”. He explains: The fow of infuences should be from nature to me, not from me to nature. I do not directly rearrange, remove, sell and not return, dig into, wrap or cut up with loud machinery any elements of the natural environment. … I do not use found-natural-objects like animal bones and river stones. However, the difference between these two ways is symbolic, not ecological. (Lailach, 2007, 44)

The various combinations of image and text we view in his framed artwork reveal no insight into his state of mind, emotions or memories but are synthetically systematic and contain objective information about the walk. In this way he stays loyal to his statement that “(T)he artwork cannot represent the experience of a walk” (Lailach, 2007, 44).

Refective questions Refect on the works of Long and Fulton and the “traces” of their walks. • •

What are the differences in their approaches? What do they each convey in these manipulated traces?

Case study 13 Christian Philipp Müller, Green Border, 1993 During this project the artist illegally crossed the state borders between Austria and eight other countries, dressed as a hiker and with a photographer

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accompanying him. Müller took notes of his trajectory and of the dangerous spots but also noted down the attires most suitable to cross each state. These “costumes” are based on preconceptions of national identity e.g.: “… to pass into Diepoldsau, Switzerland, which entailed navigating through a stream, the artist proposed thigh-high waders and an angling kit; to enter Liechtenstein, a horse and riding gear; and to step over into Alsoszölnök, Hungary, a dog on a leash” (Alberro, 2002, 9). Müller’s work shows how nature is converted into land that is owned and controlled, is identifed with national identity and excludes others. Albeit perilous, these border crossings were made under the privilege of a white European man; the consequences were that the artist was arrested in the borders of Czechia and forbidden to re-enter the country for three years (Kastner and Wallis, 1998, 133). In 2002, Heath Bunting crossed European borders with no papers for BorderXing, in order to create a map which showed ways to cross borders undetected and to expose what will be called “fortress Europe”.

Refective questions •

Do you know of any performative projects that comment on the geopolitical situation and immigration because of war and economic factors? Discuss the timeliness of such projects.

Case study 14 Kalisolate ’Uhila, Tangai ’one’one, 2015 During this three-day performance, part of the 2015 Oceanic Biennial, ’Uhila walks the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, counter clockwise, dressed in black woven cloth wrap (tupenu ta’ovala) and sandals. Chin Davidson considers this a paying of respects as it is a ceremonial local dress (2019). ’Uhila is carrying a sack of 10 kg sand with a hole in it, leaving a trail of sand behind him as he walks. When his sack is emptied out, he asks people at the spot whether he can refll it. They react with apprehension as the sand does not belong to anyone. According to Dorita Hannah (2017), “(H)is performance of seemingly futile labour recognises how hard islanders work to survive ‘in a time of dwindling local resources and environmental challenges’” (n.p.). In symbolically walking counter-clockwise, he also moves in contradiction to the idea of time as a measuring of labor. Time is then used to efface whatever could be described as labor or a product in capitalism. Chin Davidson also points to the idea that ’Uhila’s performances explore “indigenous ontologies that are experienced in the actual place of nature and locations that are important to their embodied expressions of a cultural self of nature” (2010, 8).

Refective questions •

What do you think asking permission signifes in this performance?

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Beyond the Anthropocene – being together Established criticism of nature’s overexploitation by man and questions of how we are to relate to nature have been broadened by the discussion on interspecies. A “move away from foundational distinctions in European thought between nature and culture, humans and nonhumans” has been the context in which the “ontological turn” in anthropological thought has occurred according to Matei Candea (Candea in Kirksey et. al., 2014, 4). The key question is “What is the human becoming?” (Placas and Hamilton in Kirksey et. al., 2014, 4). Haraway explains how interspecies non-linguistic relationships and communication can be based on respect and openness to looking back reciprocally: “The truth or honesty of nonlinguistic embodied communication depends on looking back and greeting signifcant others, again and again.” (2010, 8). Either in their understanding of interspecies relationships or in trying to engage with earth in a loving relationship, artists acknowledge the limitations of the ways we have connected to the natural world so far and try to navigate this relationship by not relying exclusively on human’s terms.

Case study 15 Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, Ecosex movement Annie Sprinkle (see also Case Study 7 in Chapter 4) and Beth Stephens, trace the beginning of the Ecosex movement to their writing of the frst Ecosex Manifesto in 2011 (now on their third). They declare Earth is their lover and perform ceremonies and marriages to earth and its elements. In 2008, they both married the earth and since then, they have married various natural elements in performance ceremonies they call Love Art Laboratory, sometimes officiated by other performers, in color coded costumes and themes. For example, the 2008 wedding was the Green wedding with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña as the “High Aztec Priest”. The Love Art Laboratory ended in 2011 and they both continued with the E.A.R.T.H. Lab in the University of California, while nowadays other people have taken up such marriages. As Beth Stephens declared in an interview, they try to make people appreciate earth not as a resource but “as a source of pleasure in life and health” (Palumbo, 2021). Sprinkle and Stephens have also become involved in environmental activism, as in the protest against the Appalachian Mountains top mining. They also performed a wedding to the Appalachian Mountains with the help of 150 volunteers. These are some of the vows they affirmed: “Do you promise to help defend and conserve mountain water and mountain air? … Do you promise to lower your electricity consumption in order to use less coal and help save the Appalachian Mountains? … Do you promise to speak out, act up and raise hell about mountain top removal?” (Stephens and Sprinkle, 2012, 63).

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Case study 16 Kira O’Reilly, Falling Asleep with a Pig, 2009 In Falling Asleep with a Pig, part of the Arts Catalyst Interspecies exhibition, the artist co-inhabits with a pig for a period of 72 hours in a white colored construction placed outside the gallery. The construction/living space is minimal in aesthetic with clean lines and incorporates a ramp with a landing and space underneath it. According to the artist the “dwelling” … …tries to appropriate and deploy the obvious construction and conceit of this ‘neutrality’, impartiality and objectivity and to play with it as a mechanism and structuring device in which to arrange and to think about these two bodies in situ together. (O’Reilly and Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson, 2010, 39)

Hay covers the space. The artist and the pig, named Deliah, go about their own routines and fnally fall asleep together. The piece touches upon issues of species exploitation, ethical treatment of animals, bodies in relation, differences and similarities of being, bodies in display, bodies as hazardous, etc. The performance was repeated for 36 hours in a room in Cornerhouse. According to the artist, these different settings evoked different atmospheres which affected differently the behaviors of artist and animal alike, as well as those of the viewers. O’Reilly describes her experience of sleeping with a pig: Soft, sleepy, warm, cosy, two bodies at their most basic. Dreams and touch, cold and warmth. The falling, watching as an eye feels the pull of sleep gravity and is unable to resist that tumble into sleep state, as my eye also makes that tumble. The pig eye of Deliah becomes altogether familiar from the strange and the other. There is continually a fickering between known and recognised, identifying with and non-recognition.

In another performance, Inthewrongplaceness (2009), O’Reilly carries, holds, embraces or lays under a 48 kg cadaver of a pig that has had its intestines removed. This is a performance for an audience of one, in tenminute slots, the audience member being allowed to touch both performer and pig with provided gloves.

Practice prompt 2 You are invited to do this practice prompt with your pet. Observe your pet and follow it around, copy their movements and behaviour. What have you found out about them? What have you found out about yourself? See also the work of artists Krõõt Juurak and Alex Bailey, who perform for pets http://www. performancesforpets.net and Rachel Mayeri’s workshop https://bit.ly/38tMDFE.

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Figure 10.4 Catherine Bell, This little piggy...fades to pink, 2003. Photograph: courtesy of the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne.

Case study 17 Catherine Bell, This little piggy...fades to pink, 2003 This three-channel projection (5min 7sec) is a performative work documented on video, of the artist and a young pig. In the frst screen the artist lays on hay while caressing an agitated piglet to sleep. She wears a chain armor and a stainless-steel glove like the one butchers in slaughterhouses use. In the second screen, she shaves the piglet with a razorblade. In the last screen she gives the piglet a bath in a domestic laundry sink. The artist mentions her experience as a nanny in Britain as the starting point of this work and the emotions of “attachment and aloofness, trust and betrayal, protection and endangerment, domination and submission, control and freedom.” (https://bit.ly/372GEXy). Bell touches upon the contradictions of care and aggressiveness, co-existing in the mother-caretaker. The substitution of the human subject for a piglet gives way to further ramifcations which connect to nature, our perception of nature as resource and its overexploitation.

Refective questions Consider the human-animal interactions in the videos from this projection. • •

How do they relate to what we have already discussed about the idea of nature? How does the artist’s statement about the emotions that connect to her experience as a nanny relate to the ideas discussed in this chapter?

Concluding notes We have considered various notions associated with nature, initially by visiting representations of nature in western art, in landscape paintings and literature. Phantasies of nature as paradise, as the locus of harmonious or utopian living, careless reverie and self-exploration were connected to specifc moments of art history. Enlightenment’s view of nature as something to be dominated and exploited was refuted in Romanticism, which produced

210 Nature, bodies, environment desolate, majestic, mysterious, melancholic and enigmatic landscapes in search of the sublime. At the same time, perceptions of nature as strange, unconquered territory, exotic and threatening, should be viewed in connection with prevalent colonialism. The phantasy of our connection to nature as a condition for an ideal life, will reemerge after the realization of the disastrous consequences of man’s activity on the environment. A number of terms, such as Anthropocene and Capitalocene, defne this era, placing it historically in connection with colonialism, proposing ways of taking into account non-human response to human activity and co-inhabiting the planet responsibly. Performance artists have engaged with nature, earth’s materials and environmental issues in a variety of ways. Nature and its materials have been connected with indigenous histories, symbols and rituals in performances, whilst the perception of nature as real estate has raised questions about the possibility of ownership and colonized territories. In performances and collaborative projects, artists have proposed practices of noticing as a means of connecting with non-human agents and as an anti-hegemonic engagement with the site, while exposing microcosms. Ethical issues, local traditions and site-histories have emerged in the process. Artists attest to the pedagogical effects of slowing down and actually engaging with the environment, demonstrating how performance may act as a critical pedagogy of embodied decolonial ecologies, raise awareness and transform lives.

Notes 1 These are The Embarkation for Cythera, 1717 and Pilgrimage to Cythera, c. 1718–1719. 2 You probably know him as a leading member of the Arts and Crafts movement. 3 Thoreau is a one of the American transcendentalists. The land he built his cabin on was conceded by his like-minded friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. 4 Walden or Life in the Woods, published in 1854. 5 Actually, it is the Santa Fe river, a tributary of the Rio Grande. 6 Information for this project was retrieved from Wu Mali’s informative talk in the 2021 Sydney Asian Art Series, delivered on 25 October 2021, which you can fnd at https://bit.ly/3d2INVQ.

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Lovelock, J. (2000 [1979]). Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxforda University Press. Marriott, J. (2011). A social license to operate. In J. Clarke, M. Evans, H. Newman, K. Smith, & G. Tarman (Eds) Not if but when: Culture Beyond Oil, pp. 8–13. UK: Art Not Oil, Liberate Tate & Platform. Marsh, A. (1999). Performing histories and the myth of place: A female menace. n.paradoxa, vol.3, 7–14. Mumford, L. (1998 [1922]). The Story of Utopias (V. Tomanas, Trans.). Thessaloniki: Nisides. O’Reilly, K. & Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson. (2010, summer). Falling asleep with a pig. Antennae, 13, 38–48. Palumbo, J. (2021, August 17). The ‘ecosexuals’ hosting joyful weddings to the Earth. CNN. Retrieved 30 April 2022, from https://cnn.it/3F5zC0T Pitman, J. (2007, June 26). They call him the wanderer. The Times Online. Retrieved May 8, 2022 from https://bit.ly/3yok8Um Stephens, E. & Sprinkle, A. (2012). On becoming Appalachian moonshine. Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, 17(4), 61–6. doi:10.1080/135 28165.2012.712256 Tsing, A.L. & Bazzul, J. (2022).A feral atlas for the Anthropocene:An interview with Anna L. Tsing. In M. F. G. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert, S. (Eds) Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Studies in Education and the Environment. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79622-8_19

11 Beyond the live event

We have come a long way since the “heroism” of the 1970s performances. The “purity” of performance that included staying away from documentation or repetition for that matter, has since been frequently contested. The live element of performance, in the core of its defnition, is also under negotiation, not merely in screen-based performance or the several modes used in performances for camera. Nowadays, we read more references to performativity than performance. Performativity, as we have seen in Chapter 1, derives from the feld of the philosophy of language, was introduced by J. L. Austin in How to Do Things with Words (1962) and has been enthusiastically adopted by performance practitioners since the 1990s. It has also accommodated the expansion of art practices that employ performative modes which cannot be contained within what we have been calling performance since the 1970s. Collaborative and participatory works, where the artist does not necessarily hold central position and there is not one live event per se to reference, are some of the practices of this expanding feld of non-theatrical, site-specifc, community-based or interventionist activities. Hybrid practices in a creative exchange with the performing arts, e.g. theatre or dance, themselves transformed in their own right, have emerged. The response of performers to the Covid-19 pandemic, which included the embracing of digital communication platforms, produced some interesting results that also challenged our idea of liveliness. The discussion of the archive of performance art with non-traditional archiving methods as a way to stay true to its ephemeral character have additionally opened up possibilities for the creation of new performances. Artists look into the archive of performance, interpret and employ it in new productions. In this chapter we will touch upon some issues that connect to the (not so) live nature of performance, that comprise performance re-enactment, approaches to the archive of performance and performance without live presence.

To act and re-enact There is a kind of “preciousness” in the single live event that may still hold space in the viewers’ imaginations, besides its almost certain by now

DOI: 10.4324/9781003197904-12

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immediate reproduction/transmission from devices that have become our bodily extensions. But there are also performances which are repeated, either by the artists themselves, re-enacted by others or are interpreted from open scores. Scores were used by Fluxus artists in the 1950s and later, in an attempt to defect individual virtuosity and “democratize” art. As many of the Fluxus artists came from the feld of music, the use of scores was a familiar method which they used by way of specifc or more vague directions, open to interpretation from anyone who was interested in performing them.Yoko Ono even made a book of these, Grapefruit (1964), mentioned in Chapter 1. Alan Kaprow also used scores, which are read more as specifc directions to his happenings’ participants. Dance is a feld which has also used scores creatively; Deborah Hay,1 originating from the Judson Dance Theater, or more recently, Alice Chauchat, have both expanded the use of scores, in interpeteting them within their acting and re-enacting.

Case study 1 Marina Abramovic´, Seven Easy Pieces, 2005 In 2005, Marina Abramovic´ performed Seven Easy Pieces in Guggenheim, referencing fve works by seminal performance artists following permissions from the artists or the artists’ estates. Two of the re-enacted performances were her own. The performances were: Bruce Nauman’s Body Pressure (1974); Vito Acconci’s Seedbed (1972) Valie Export’s Action Pants: Genital Panic (1969); Gina Pane’s The Conditioning (1973); Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (1965); Marina Abramovic´’s Lips of Thomas (1975) and Marina Abramovic´’s Entering the Other Side (2005). In discussing this work Abramovic´ declared that she felt like an archaeologist, commenting on the lack and obscurity of the documentation of the performances at hand (Abramovic´ and Rosenberg, 2005). Observing some of the dates of these performances, this obscurity is easily explained. Valie Export’s performance Action Pants: Genital Panic, is debated over whether it took place or not, while in Joseph Beuys’s How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare, the audience was looking at the performance through the front window whilst standing outside the gallery and could not hear what he was saying. For Gina Pane, as explained by her photographer Françoise Masson, the scarcity of the documentation is connected with Pane’s very clear ideas of what this performance documentation would be (Maude-Roxby and

Beyond the live event 215 Masson, 2004). This scarcity of documentation creates almost a mythic aura for these performances; in this way every re-enactment is sacrilege. But in the case of Seven Easy Pieces it is more a case of re-enactment as homage, creating a connection with historical seminal performances.

Refective questions Have you ever repeated your own performances? • • •

Do you consider the frst time you performed them as an original not to deviate from? Did you respond to the conditions of the repetition? Did you change something? Do you consider the frst time it was performed as a test or a “dress rehearsal”?

Case study 2 Marina Abramovic´, The artist is present (re-enactment of Imponderabilia), 2010 Abramovic´ included re-performances of her own works performed by others in her 2010 retrospective at MOMA: The artist is present. Most of the performers who took part in these re-performances during this three-month exhibition were dancers who were not necessarily familiar with performance art trained in the repetition of performances, (Stern, 2013). The re-performances received much criticism either for the working conditions and pay of the hired artists or the election of predominantly white, young, slender people for these performances. For the purposes of this chapter, I will refer to the restaging of Imponderabilia (Case Study 9 in Chapter 6) Abramovic´’s 1977 performance with Ulay. During the 2010 performance, the performers stood in a doorway larger than in the original staging of the 1970s performance. This meant that visitors to the exhibition could pass comfortably between the artists without having to touch either one of them. In fact, they were discouraged from doing so and warned about “improper” behaviour (Gomoll, 2011). In the original performance the visitors had to enter the space sideways and decide who to face. In “exiting”, a sign that referred to “human contact” was facing them on the opposite wall. This “human contact”, raising also issues of gender, was now penalized, at the same time “depoliticizing” and “domesticating” the performance (Gomoll, 2011, 3). The factor of context is thus raised here in the re-enactment, a context that we have stressed previously in the book as signifcant in the creation of meaning for the performance and which may include time, space and the public sphere. Is context to be preserved for performances and for the archive of performance?

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Refective questions •

Discuss this performance in connection with the elements of sitespecifcity we examined in Chapter 6.

Case study 3 Lilibeth Cuenca-Rasmussen, How to Break the Great Chinese Wall, Part 2, 2009 Cuenca’s title is a reference to Abramovic´ and Ulay’s last performance together, The Lovers (1988) in which they walked from opposite sides of the Great Wall of China, for three months, to end up meeting in the middle. According to the artist, this is a reference to the pressure applied on artists to be always innovative and her negotiation of the use of history in her work (109, 2009). In Part 2 (Never Mind Pollock) she revisits the work of female artists Orlan, Carolee Schnemann, Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, Ana Mendieta, Helena Almeida, Janine Antoni, Shigeko Kubota, Lynda Benglis and Niki de Saint Phalle. Cuenca steps off a polka dot environment (a reference to Kusama) and recreates these seminal performances in short characteristic actions that amount to a total of about 50 minutes. In between the performances she sings a song of her own lyrics referencing the artists and their performances, stating her relationship with them and with a hint of irony about the art market: “Repeating, reinventing new frames, recycling and sampling remains; historical pieces might tire; new names, young fames help art respire.” More than a homage to these artists, the piece serves also as a reminder of feminist performance histories. This is not an attempt for historical accuracy though but a way to negotiate a relationship with seminal art which has marked art history and seeps into contemporary performance endeavors.

What remains? Documenting, archiving, revisiting Artists are nowadays very aware of the power of documentation and its resulting product as the one to be representing their work and remaining for posterity. Amelia Jones talks of performance’s “… dependence on documentation to attain symbolic status within the realm of culture” (1997, 13). In this 1997 article “Presence in Absentia ...”, she refers to the lack of adequate documentation of performances made in the 1970s as a problem that prevents her, as a researcher, from having a complete picture of these works. This insufficient documentation coexists with the very practical problem of the impossibility of her physical presence in a performance of her distant past. She nevertheless maintains that neither the archival record of performance nor its live witnessing have “... a privileged relationship with the historical

Beyond the live event 217 ‘truth’ of performance ...” (1997, 11). The meagre photographic or other media of capturing the performances of the 1970s is probably connected with its consideration as a means outside the economy of art and the art object as product, within the rupture with the materiality of art proclaimed at the same time by conceptual art. The live character of performance and its often singular execution, in combination with the small population of attendees, continue to be structural components of performance today, minimizing the chances of a live testimony for many and possibly complicating research and study. But what has radically changed since the time of writing of the aforementioned article, is how conscious artists and public alike are of the potential of documentation. Artists have recognized the function of documentation not only as a means of communication and promotion of their work, but also as a possibility to construct their identity, a kind of contemporary self-fashioning. After all, creating and communicating media personas in diverse platforms has never been more commonly available, widespread and easy to achieve. One might argue though that the cautionary voices against documentation stand for what occupies the core of the defnition of performance art, this view predominately expressed in the past by Peggy Phelan. Phelan (1993) penalizes performance documentation altogether when she states that, once performance is documented, “it becomes something other than performance”. She argues that To the degree that performance attempts to enter the economy of reproduction it betrays and lessens the promise of its own ontology. Performance's being, like the ontology of subjectivity proposed here, becomes itself through disappearance. (Phelan, 1993, 146)

There are more ramifcations which have already preoccupied artists and scholars alike: what is the connection of documentation to the original event? Is documentation an objective account of events rendered? As Philip Auslander has highlighted, the “idea that performance documentation can mislead implies there is a truth to the event” (2009, 93), something that, as we have seen, Jones (1997) also opposes. His view is that it is not possible to claim that documentation misrepresents performance as it is not possible to make this comparison to the “original”. In commencing the discussion of documentation and the archive we go back to post-structuralist Derrida’s (1995) archive fever (mal d’archive). In his book Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1995) Derrida traces the word archive to the Greek word “arkhe”. Arkhe is the Greek word for commencement and according to Derrida combines the meanings of both the origin “physical, historical, or ontological principle” and the order of the law “there where men and gods command, there where authority, social order

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are exercised, in this place from which order is given-nomological principle” (1995, 1). For Derrida the function of the archive is more about archiving and less about the content of the archive, in that the way the archive is structured also determines the event archived. Derrida connects our desire to preserve the past with the ever-existing threat of annihilation, the presence of the death drive that Freud detects in all attempts of recollection. He also echoes Foucault’s approach in The Archaeology of Power (1997 [1969]) in that he too understands the archive as a formation that determines (elects and excludes) what is said (recorded) or unsaid (disappear into oblivion) (Avgitidou, 2015). Rebecca Schneider (2011) argues that performance is memory which is kept alive in knowledge that is transmitted through the body, affect and enactment. She also follows Derrida in conceptualising the archive as a structuring of the past that acts against memory. Her view is useful in understanding contemporary re-enactments of performance as an archival practice. Matthew Reason detects “a moral ambition” in the language that calls for an archive of performance: “performance must be ‘saved’ or ‘rescued’, it is part of our ‘heritage’ or our ‘legacy’, and must not be ‘lost’” (2003, 84). We are once more confronted with Freud’s death drive. So how can an archive of performance stay true to this ephemerality? Diana Taylor, in The Archive and the Repertoire (2003) introduces the repertoire as a method of documenting that escapes the rigidity of the archive and which is based on the assumption that embodied and performed acts generate, record and transmit knowledge. She locates a “rift” between the archive as a repository of supposedly unmediated, unchanged, incorruptible enduring materials and the repertoire of embodied practices called ephemeral. Advocating for the latter, she explains that the repertoire “enacts embodied memory” (2003, 20), demands presence and allows agency in that it is not a permanent object that it withholds but through its embodied acts it reconstitutes and creates meaning.2 She also notes how these embodied practices and knowledge are rooted in the Americas and how knowledge based in writing is a western approach that even stands in for embodied knowledge. Hal Foster, in The Archival Impulse discusses the practices of artists that engage with the archive not in order to present us with a completed interpretation of the past, but with work that may offer new starting points. In his view the fragmentation and partiality inherent in these attempts does not only determine the representation of the past but is also proposed as a new way to affectively connect to it, acknowledging the difficulty to do so. Kathy O’Dell talks of performance photographs viewership as creating a bodily reaction for the viewer, not a documentary but a “narrative-in-reverse” (O’Dell in Maude-Roxby and Masson, 2004, 23–4).These approaches may have affinity to recent literature on the performance archive that calls for an archive open to interpretation, an archive that attempts to record the experience of the performance rather than the performance itself (Reason,

Beyond the live event 219 2003). Within such an archive, personal accounts, subjective experience or fragmented documents may hold legitimacy.

Refective questions What kind of documentation (e.g. images) do you choose to circulate post-performance? • • • •

•

Does the documentation contain audiences or not? Do you prefer to have a distant view including the element of place? Do you prefer close-ups of the action? Do you choose characteristics moments in the performance, “good” photographs (Instagram ready!) or descriptive/explanatory photographs? Do you convey diverse documentation to different audiences (press, curator, group-crit, mum)?

Practice prompt 1 Having refected on the questions above, organize the documentation of a performance by people whom you have given different instructions to. Refect retrospectively on what the pros and cons of every approach are. Is there something that you consider as crucial that is missing from any of them?

Case study 4 Exhibition “A History of Performance in 10 Acts”, 2012 In 2012, “A History of Performance in 10 Acts” took place over eight weeks at the ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art. The exhibition refers to historical performances during the period from the 1960s to the 1980s. The exhibition3 starts with an empty room and the installation is done by the exhibited artists themselves during the opening, while a group of students has been invited to follow and monitor the various events and the process. There are ten main stages, an open workshop in which the historical performances of the exhibition are reinterpreted (the lab) and presented at the end of the exhibition and a documentary that is produced during the exhibition and shown at the end. The exhibition experiments with new ways of dealing with the archive of performance art as not a fxed record, but one that is constantly interpreted in making and remaking it. Boris Charmatz, one of the curators of the exhibition, describes this as “confrontation versus reconstruction” (2012). Additionally, diverse ways of archiving are investigated, including making a documentation of the exploration itself. Lepecki, on the occasion of discussing works that re-enact the performances of others, amongst them

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the simultaneous performance of Ron Athey and Julie Tollentino’s “archiving”, talks of the “body as privileged archival site” (2010, 34). He explains how these re-enactments are not mere repetitions that intend to stay loyal to the author’s wishes but instead overcome these not only to reinvent the performances but to create something new in doing so. He views this as an act of giving, outside of the economy of art production.

Refective questions •

Discuss issues of credits and authorship in archiving as a creative method.

… and beyond Performances during the recent pandemic were halted but performers rapidly responded with exploring online platforms as sites for performance. Soon festivals responded with online content, something that opened up trans-local, at times live, viewership. This witnessing together, part of the liveness of performance, was now done online, from the comfort of our respective homes, synchronously or asynchronously. Philip Auslander (2008 [1999]) has scorned views that the live is outside of representation, arguing at the same time that there is no real opposition of live and mediatized performance. The experience of the pandemic has broadened the scope of what this mediatized performance may be; it even forced us to rethink existing formats. For example, Judit Borot examines the question of online/offline performance from a curatorial point of view and talks about how performance-for-camera “… enables the performance image as a portable object designed rather than undermined by its status as a portable object” (2022, 113). According to the editors of Performance in a Pandemic, performance is always “adapting, responding, and evolving” (Bissel and Weir, 2022, 147), so we may take for granted transformations in what we think performance is or does. But as they also attest the issues which have emerged during the pandemic are here to stay: “isolation, intimacy, precarity, proximity, and perhaps, most of all, connection” (2022, 147).

Case study 5 Forced Entertainment, End Meeting for All, 2020 One of the early examples that responded to pandemic restrictions was End Meeting for All by Forced Entertainment, released in April 2020. End Meeting for All was performed on the platform Zoom, live in three 25-minute episodes, each done in one take and subsequently viewable on YouTube. Forced Entertainment discuss how, in these early stages of lockdown, they began to perceive the Zoom grid as a stage (https://bit.ly/3N5EdDs).

Beyond the live event 221 Fragmented narrative, miscommunication, equipment dysfunctionality, the blurring of private and public life, were some of the characteristics of this time presented with humor and wit in this online stage. Forced Entertainment also made an “At home” edition of their Table Top Shakespeare (Case Study 6 in Chapter 2).

Concluding notes Throughout its short history, performance has undergone transformations and has expanded its associations with other media, so that we may not have one defnition for it. It has also moved to hybrid practices and beyond single-authored art and has engaged multiple non-artist participants. Not even the preference for the term performance art remains, as the term performativity is more frequently used now. How do we relate, refer to and preserve this short history? We have looked at re-enactment as a way of preserving, paying homage to and negotiating the relationship with performance history. Re-enactment by design was of course the way of diffusing authorship and proposing performance as interpretation through scores, initially employed by Fluxus. Discussing performance re-enactments, we referred to the lack of documentation in historical performances, a sign of those times. In the cautionary voices which argue that performance’s ontology is betrayed in its documentation, there are others that support that there is not one original event to be reproduced and detect a moralizing tone in the urgency to preserve the past. The archive as a structure that preserves but also determines what is excluded from it, is one of the debates currently under way for performance art as well. Embodied knowledge as memory preservation that allows agency is proposed as alternative to the archive, in approaches that include the repertoire. Lastly, the new modes of performing and witnessing together and the rethinking of existing modes of performance were the result of restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, which are yet to be appreciated from a distance. The restrictions on performing, the precarity of our artistic position, and the need for affective connection, as was pointed out before, will create performance futures that we may not now predict or even dream about.

Notes 1 See for example http://www.laboratoiredugeste.com/IMG/pdf/NTTF_bookletD.Hay.pdf. 2 See how works such as Amanda Piña’s (Case Study 10 in Chapter 10) are close to this approach. 3 Account based on Adrian Heathfeld’s talk at the 3rd Performance Festival, of the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, October, 17, 2013.

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References Abramovic, M. & Rosenberg, K. (2005, December 15). Provocateur: Marina Abramovic (interview). New York Magazine, n.p. https://bit.ly/3NKKx35 Auslander, P. (2008 [1999]). Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Auslander, P. (2009). Towards a hermeneutics of performance art documentation. In J. Ekeborg (Ed.), Kunsten A Falle: Lessons in the Art of Falling, pp. 92–5. Horten, Norway: Preus Museum. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to Do Things with Words:The William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Avgitidou, A. (2015). Einai periploko: Simeioseis pano sti sxesi arxeiou kai performance art [It’s complicated: Notes in the relationship of the archive and performance art]. Kritiki kai Techni, 1, 251–9. Bissel, L., Weir, L. (2022). Performance in a Pandemic. London and New York: Routledge. Borot, J. (2022). Presence at a distance – Alastair MacLennan and performing drawing in lockdown. In L. Bissel & L. Weir (Eds.), Performance in a Pandemic, pp. 111– 22. London and New York: Routledge. Charmatz, B. & Wood, C. (2012, March). 1000 Words (interview). Artforum, 50 (7), n.p. https://bit.ly/38Tykul Cuenca-Rasmussen, L. (2009). How to break the great Chinese wall; Part 1 and 2. In G., Salgado, B., Silva, & S. Tsiara (Eds.), Bienalle: 2.Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (pp. 106–9). Thessaloniki: State Museum of Contemporary Art. Derrida, J. (1995). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, E. Prenowitz (Trans.). Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Foster, H. (2004, Autumn). An archival impulse. October, 110, 3–22. Foucault, M. (1997 [1969]). The Archaeology of Knowledge. London and New York: Routledge. Gomoll, L. (2011). Posthuman performance: A feminist intervention. Total Art Journal, 1 (1), 2–15. http://www.totalartjournal.com Jones, A. (1997). Presence in absentia: Experiencing performance as documentation. Art Journal, 56 (4), 11–18. Lepecki, A. (2010, winter). The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances. Dance Research Journal, 42, (2), 28–48. Maude-Roxby, A., Masson, F. (2004). On Record: Advertising, Architecture and the Actions of Gina Pane. London: Artwords Press. Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge. Reason, M. (2003). Archive or memory? The detritus of live performance. New Theater Quarterly, 19 (1), 82–9. Taylor, D. (2003). The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press.

Index

Abramoviс´, M. 12, 37–8, 45, 66, 67, 71–2, 120, 125, 214–6 absence 17, 112, 119, 132, 137, 147, 167 abstract expressionism 26, 61, 123 absurd, absurdity 16, 20, 90, 132, 139, 144, 165, 204 Acconci, V. 124, 151 activist, activist art 5, 85, 169, 175, 179, 182, 185, 196, 198 agent, agency 4, 29, 30–1, 34, 40, 42, 53, 68, 75, 82, 95, 100, 160, 163, 100, 160, 164, 181, 193, 218, 221 AIDS 60, 69 Aktion 8, 9, 66 Alien 94, 103, 107 Almeida, H. 216 alter ego 87, 91, 156 Alÿs, F. 114, 152 Amato, S. 45, 46 androgynous 82 antagonism 71, 75, 150, 171, 185, 194 Anthropocene 189, 192, 193, 198, 207, 210 anti-systemic 178, 185 Antoni, J. 112, 123, 216 architecture 2, 10, 103, 109, 111, 121, 148, 171, 173 archive 3, 5, 71, 129, 136, 140, 213, 215, 217–9, 221 Arsem, M. 195–6, 200 Ashery, O. 87, 88–9 Ashford, R. 105 Athey, R. 68–9, 220 audience, audience participation, see also spectators 4, 8, 11–4, 16–7, 21, 25, 36–8, 46, 63–4, 67, 70–2, 85, 89, 104, 112, 121–22, 124–8, 130, 134, 144, 146, 149, 169, 182–3, 194, 208, 214 Augé, M. 126–7 Auslander P. 217, 220 Austin, J. L. 12, 59, 213 authority 48, 131, 142, 144, 150, 183, 200, 217

authorship 35, 43, 121, 203, 220–1 autobiographical pact 83 autobiography 4, 29, 49, 77, 82–3, 92 avant-garde 4, 8, 13–3, 16, 20, 25, 78, 130, 144 B, Franko 69–70 Bachelard, G. 109, 121, 137, 144 Bag, A. 84 Bailey, A. 208 Baker, B. 133 Basdekis, E. 153–5 Baudelaire, C. 14, 147–9, 166 Bauhaus 13, 16, 20–1, 148 Belém, L. 50, 52 Bell, C. 209 Benglis, L. 216 Bergson, H. 14, 110 Beuys, J. 23–4, 193, 198, 199, 214 Bey, H. 171 binary 58, 60 Bing, H. biogenetic capitalism 95 biography, see also personal history 23, 49, 67, 88 biotechnologies 94 Bishop, C. 43, 170, 178 Blanchot, M. 129 blood 19, 61, 66–7, 69–70, 161 Boal, A. 182 body art 8–9 borders, see also limits 43, 90, 112, 114, 120, 129, 113–4, 134–5, 150, 205–6 boredom 131, 137, 140 Borot, J. 220 Bourriaud, N. 30, 43, 170 Brecht, B. 124 Brecht, G. 24 Brekhus, W. 143–4 Bruguera, T. 182–3 Bufano, L. 98 Butler, J. 10, 12, 58, 75, 78

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Cage, J. 20–1, 23 Cahun, C.78–80 Calle, S. 18–9, 150–1 capitalism 56, 74, 95, 148, 164, 171, 175, 185, 193, 206 Capitalocene 193, 210 care 18, 42, 53, 56, 123, 141, 209 caricature 84, 91 Carlson, M. 9–10, 14, 15, 25 Carson, R. 192 Cassils 71 Certeau, M. de 5, 30, 129–30 Charmatz, B. 227 Chondros, T. 135–6 Church of Stop Shopping 174 CO.BR.A. 148 collections 29, 47, 49, 52–3, 79, 143, 198 collective space 3, 109, 128, 149, 160, 185 colonialism 48, 90, 191, 196, 210 community 84, 170, 173–4, 178, 185, 193, 202 community-based art 5, 169–70, 177, 185, 213 conceptual art 9, 26, 30, 36, 57, 110, 119, 31, 144, 149–50, 166, 169, 217 confessional art 82, 85, 91 costumes 16, 77, 90, 175, 184, 197, 206–7 crisis 11–2, 60, 178, 193 cross-dressing 4, 78, 80, 82 Crimp, D. 53 Crupi, J. 105 Crutzen, P. 193 Cuenca-Rasmussen, L. 216 Cupere, P. de 103 cyborg 4, 89, 91, 95, 107 Dada 13, 15, 16, 19, 20–1, 130, 132 dance 8, 11, 14, 18, 21, 46–7, 64, 85, 89, 103, 203, 213–4 Debord, G. 148–9 demonstrations 175, 179, 185 Denes, A. 193, 198–200. dérive 148–9 Derrida, J. 59, 217–8 desire 2, 58, 2–3, 94–5, 107, 148, 159, 165–6, 218 digital 3, 94, 104, 213 Dion, M. 52, 91, 200 disguise 78, 84, 87, 180 display 48, 50, 51, 52, 90, 208 Dobson, K. 39–40 documentation 5, 36, 40–1, 68, 91, 122, 127, 137, 146, 148, 150, 152, 204, 213–217, 219, 221

doppelgänger, see also doubling 91 Dorner, W. 171–2 doubling 80, 91 Douglas, M. 193 Duchamp, M. 29–30, 47, 78, 80–1 durational performance 45, 67, 90–1, 137–9 earth 33, 85, 126, 190, 192–5, 207, 210 Ekici, N.64, 65, 112 Eley, G. 147 Emin, T. 85 endurance 9, 38, 41, 45, 66, 67 environmental issues 194–5, 198, 202, 210 ephemerality 36, 45, 57, 131, 137, 144, 149, 166, 190, 204, 213, 218 ethnic 59, 90 ethnicity 56, 60, 80, 86, 90–1 ethno-cyborg 89, 91 event 5, 9, 23, 45, 49, 59, 111, 144, 153, 176, 179, 182–3, 186, 196, 213, 217–8, 221 everyday 2–5, 7–12, 21, 26, 29–32, 34, 36, 38, 41–3, 50, 53, 59, 74, 85, 106, 111, 125, 129–35, 137–8, 140, 143–4, 146, 149–50, 152, 156, 159, 162–3, 165–6 excess 94, 100, 189, 42, 50, 53 exhaustion 9, 38, 45 Export, V. 61, 62, 66 failure 33, 71, 109, 135, 144, 160 Featherstone, M. 129 FEMEN 178, 180 femininity 56, 80 feminist 4–5, 46, 55–8, 60–1, 74–5, 82, 95, 131, 144, 147, 157, 159, 175, 178, 216 Fischer-Lichte, E. 12, 64, 66 Fluxus 5, 13, 20, 21–5, 61, 66, 114, 130–3, 144, 214, 221 Fojtuch, A. 72, 73 food 4, 29, 42–3, 45–7, 53, 67, 132, 135, 142, 147 Forced Entertainment 3809, 220, 221 Foronda, J. 33 Foster, H. 218 Framis, A. 152 Fraser, N. 147 Freud, S. 14, 61, 100, 110, 218 Fulton, H. 204–5 furniture 34, 48, 52, 111, 125, 139, 143, 171 Fusco, C. 90

Index Futurism 13–6, 130 futuristic 15, 94, 103–4, 192 Galindo, R. J. 150, 161–2 gaze 57–8, 60–1, 79, 86, 112, 119, 157, 190 gender 2, 4, 12, 22, 55–6, 58–60, 74–5, 77–82, 90–1, 94–5, 99, 110, 131, 134, 137–8, 147, 175, 215 gender bending 81 Giplin, W. 191 Goffman, E. 10, 12 Goldberg, R.L. 1, 8–10, 14–6, 21, 23–4, 26, 57, 66, 69, 124, 199 Gómez Peña, G. 89–91, 183–4, 207 Gotovac, T. 159 Graham, D. 124 grotesque 4, 103 Grosz, E. 110, 127 Gutai Group 23, 61, 194 Habermas, J. 146–7, 170 Haenggi, A. 164, 193 happening 8, 9, 12, 43, 64, 124, 153 Haraway, D. 94–5, 193, 207 Harrison, P. 115–6 Hartley, P. 101, 102 Hayes, S. 159 He, C. 46 Heathfeld, A. 120, 137 Highmore, B. 5, 129, 135, 144 Hincapié, M. 136 Hirschhorn, T. 178 homage 215, 216, 221 Horn, R. 96–7 household 22, 40, 45, 52, 132, 164 Hsieh, T. 45, 137 Huizinga, J. 31–2, 149 hybrid practices 213, 221 hybridity 78, 100 identifcation 26, 58, 60, 78, 99, 132, 137–8 Iliakis, M. 117 immateriality 140 immersive 141, 103 immigration 89–90, 172, 206 improvisation 38, 118, 133, 164, 182 in situ 155, 208 installation 18, 33, 57, 65, 68, 90, 96, 115, 121, 125, 133–6, 140–1, 159, 170, 205, 219 institutional critique 50, 90, 91, 180 institutions 52, 90, 103, 147, 175, 181, 183, 185, 202

225

instructions 9, 22, 24–5, 32, 37, 62, 120, 124, 131, 142, 143, 219 interface 97, 100, 103 International Movement for an Imaginary Bauhaus 148 interspecies 207–8 intervention 5, 56, 67, 88, 112, 119, 122, 126, 130, 166, 169–71, 173–6, 178–80, 183–5, 189, 193, 196, 198, 202 Ivekoviс´, S. 160 Janša, J. 120, 176 Jud, A. 139 Juurak, K. 208 Kaprow, A. 9, 21–2, 26, 42, 43, 150, 214 Katayama, M. 99 Katsiani, A. 135–6 Kelly, M. 66, 82 Kimsooja K. 157 Kjartansson, R. 140, 141 Klein, Y. 9, 45, 69 Koolhaas, R. 147, 166 Kubota, S. 61, 216 Kusama, Y. 155, 216 Kusolwang, S. 49 Kwon, M. 170, 200 La Pocha Nostra 1, 89, 182–3 Lacan, J. 110 Laclau, E. 170 Lacy, S. 176–7 Laderman Ukeles, M. 131, 141 land art 189, 198, 205 Landes J. 147 landscape 5, 50, 109, 149–50, 155, 164, 186, 130, 189, 194–6, 204, 209–10 Lefebvre, H. 5, 129, 149 lesbian, lesbianism Lettrists 148 LGBTQ+ 180 Liberate Tate 201, 202 life histories, life stories 4, 55, 77, 82–3, 165, 49, 85–6 liminality 32, 53 limits 4, 8–10, 36, 38, 64, 67, 71, 75, 100, 112–3, 115, 127, 131, 138, 169, 178, 192, 194 lines 2, 17, 60, 63, 112, 150, 204, 208 live art 8, 10, 38 Long, R. 204, 205 loss 47, 84, 94, 96 Lovelock, J. 192 low-tech 184 Lynch, K. 163

226

Index

Majima, T. 44–5 Make-up 79–80, 82 manifesto 13–6, 19–20, 23, 130, 141, 143, 175, 181, 207 Mansbridge, J. 147 Marchart, O. 147, 166 Margolies, E. 31 Mariano, N. 183 Martin, P. 160 Martin, R. 83 masculinity 56, 87 masquerade 4, 78, 91 Massey, D. 109, 127 materiality 2, 52, 57, 137, 140, 149, 169, 170, 204, 217 Mattes E. & F. 176 Mayeri, R. 208 Mazeaud, D. 197 McLean, B. 115 McMurry, J. 139, 140 McQuire, S. 147, 166 McRae, L. 103 media 8, 14, 23, 30, 35, 38, 57, 60, 94, 99, 104, 132, 146–7, 150, 166, 175–7, 179, 198, 217, 221 meditation 157, 198 Mendieta, A. 67, 194–5, 216 Meskimmon, M. 84, 86 methodology 162, 164 Meyer Keller, E. 36, 37 Meyerhold, V. 105 micro-environment 115, 127 Minimalism 26, 45 mock documentary, see also pseudodocumentary 89 Moore, M. 79 More, T. 192–3 Morimura, Y. 80–1 Morris W. 192 Mouffe C. 170 Müller C. P. 204–6 Mulvey, L. 58, 79 Mumford, L. 192 music 8, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 77, 118, 135, 140–2, 160, 174, 178, 214 Mutu, W. 67, 68 narcissism 58, 80, 195 Narcissister 99 narrative 4, 16–7, 37, 47–8, 58, 79, 84–5, 90, 103, 111, 127, 129, 130, 131, 142–3, 189, 191, 196, 218, 221 Nauman, B. 112–3, 118 nomadic instruments 172 Non-Grata 182, 184

non-violent actions 174, 185 normality 4, 59, 99, 107, 131, 149 O’Dell, K. 218 O’Reilly, K. 121, 208 Occupy Wall Street 178 online 36, 39, 63, 220–1 Ono, Y. 23, 62–3, 163, 214, 216 “ontological turn” 207 Opie, C. 87 Oppenheim, D. 30, 118 Orlan 216, 104 Orr, J. 196–7 Orta, L. 173 otherness 56, 60, 74, 94, 99, 107, 148 overidentifcation 5, 174, 185 Paik, N. J. 22, 114 Pane, G. 68, 214 paradise 189, 190–1, 200, 209 parody 101, 175 participants 9, 12, 22, 30, 42, 46–7, 64, 72, 78 83, 89, 113, 120, 126, 127, 142, 144, 165, 170, 182–3, 195, 203, 214, 221 participatory art 35, 169–70, 177 participation 4, 14, 21, 22, 24, 25, 38, 43, 47, 63–4, 103, 130, 140, 144, 149–50, 170, 176, 185 patriarchy 56–7, 60, 134, 175, 180 pedagogy 1, 162, 181–3, 203, 210 performance for camera 10, 71, 78, 85, 89, 91, 104, 112, 132, 134, 194, 196, 220 performativity 4–5, 7, 12, 26, 52, 55, 58, 75, 162, 213, 221 performed photography 4, 77–9 performing arts 1–2, 7–8, 14, 213 persona 4, 78, 84, 88–9, 91, 99, 174 personal experience 18, 64, 77, 82, 85, 126, 131 personal history 4, 49, 67, 77, 195 phenomenology 109–10, 127 phototherapy 83, 91 Piña, A. 203, 204 Piper, A. 9, 40, 41 play 14–5, 31–2, 34, 39, 47–8, 53, 83, 103, 105, 110, 115, 118, 130, 134, 140, 144, 149, 151–2, 208 playfulness 4, 31, 32–3 ‘political’ art 169 politics 5, 56, 69, 74, 86, 91, 95, 110, 149, 157, 159–60, 169–70, 175 Pollock, J. 26, 61, 67, 123, 216 Pope, W. L. 153 post-colonial critique 56, 86

Index post-identity 95 post-structuralism 56 posthumanism 4, 94–5, 107 precarity 157, 220, 221 presence 31, 34, 57, 66, 89, 112–3, 119, 121–2, 127, 149, 152, 155, 157, 162, 171, 191, 205, 213, 216, 218 private 43, 50, 53, 56, 75, 83, 109–10, 132, 134, 137–8, 140, 144, 146–7, 150–1, 159, 165, 196, 221 process 10, 18, 26–7, 30, 35, 43, 8, 52, 72, 80, 83, 87, 91, 107, 112, 146, 152–3, 164, 169–70, 184, 194, 199, 200, 210, 219 procession 112, 153, 184 props 4, 31, 37, 95, 104 protest 68, 104, 169, 170, 174, 178–80, 185, 199, 206 protest art 169 pseudo-documentary 88 psychoanalytic approach 95, 56, 58 psychogeographic maps 148 Pussy Riot 178, 179–80 Questa, A. 203 Raban, T. 142 Radical Cheerleaders 175 radical feminism 56 Ramos, N. 177 randomness 21, 26, 130, 133, 144 Ray, C. 36 Ray, M. 78 re-enactment 5, 179, 213, 215, 218, 220, 221 ready-made 47, 53, 95, 130 Reason, M. 218 Reclaim the streets 173 reiteration, see also repetition 12, 75, 78, 121 relational aesthetics 43 religion 64, 66–7, 90, 180, 195 repertoire 3, 74, 126, 218, 221 repetition 5, 12, 18, 33, 37, 48, 59, 80, 91, 120, 131, 135, 137, 140, 157, 213, 215 reproduction 55, 74, 135, 155, 214 Reverend Billy 174 ritual 4, 11–2, 31–2, 47, 66–7, 69, 75, 84, 90, 131, 137, 140, 144, 195, 198, 210, roles 10, 17, 22, 24, 47, 50, 56, 64, 71, 79–80, 82–3, 86, 91, 131, 169, 171, 176, 182–3, 195 Rosler, M. 2, 50, 132 Rousseau, J. J. 191–2

227

Saadeh, R. 134–5 Sagri, G. 138, 139, 154–5 Saint Phalle, N. de 216 Savicˇiс´, G. 106, 150 scenography 7, 64, 77, 84, 104, 125 Schechner, R. 1, 10–12, 31, 45 Schlemmer, O. 16, 105 Schneemann, C. 9, 46, 47, 63 Schneider, R. 218 scores 22, 24, 214, 221 Scott, D. 150, 158 Scott, J. 56 screen-based performance, see also performance for camera 213 self-fashioning 91, 217 self-harm 4, 64, 75 self-healing 86 self-institutionalization 110 self-portrait 77, 79–81, 83–7, 91, 99 self-therapy 77 semiotics 2, 105, 132 Sennett, R. 146 sex industry 85, 90 sexuality 55–6, 60, 74–5 shaman 38, 197 Sherman, C. 79 Sherry, D. 156 Sifuentes, R. 183 site responsive performance, see also site-specifc performance 111 site-specifc performance 5, 110–1, 126–7, 146, 149–50, 153, 171, 195–6, 213 Situationists 5, 130, 144, 1489, 163, 166, 182 social drama 4, 11–2 social sculpture 24, 199 socially engaged art 169, 177 Sofaer, J. 1, 143 Sola Morales, M. de 147, 160 sound 8, 16–7, 21, 23, 33, 69, 71–2, 96–7, 101, 118, 122, 133, 159, 175, 177, 196 spectators 16, 21, 61–3, 66–7, 70–2, 109, 119, 121, 124, 143, 162, 182 Sprinkle, A. 85, 207 staging 37, 64, 113, 178, 215 Stelarc 100–2 Stephens, B. 85, 207 Stoermer, E. 193 strategies 118, 129, 135 subjectivity 4, 10, 31, 48, 52, 77, 132, 203, 217 sublime 130–1, 190–1, 210 Superfex 171

228

Index

Surrealism 13, 16, 132 symbols 67, 69, 155, 195, 210 tactics 129, 153, 175 Taylor, D. 218 Teatro de Vertigem 177 The Umbrella Movement 179 The Yes Men 174 theater 7–9, 11–2, 14–6, 26, 46–7, 61–2, 66, 80, 83, 104, 124, 182 Thoreau, D. H. 192 Tiravanija, R. 43, 44, 50 Tollentino, J. 220 transformation 3–4, 11–2, 66, 84, 91, 94–5, 98, 100, 131–2, 149, 166, 220–1 transhumanism 4, 94, 107 Tsing A. 193 Turner, V. 10–2, 32 ’Uhila, K. 204, 206 Ulay 38, 45, 71–2, 82, 119–20, 215–6 Uncanny 95, 99–100, 131 unitary urbanism 148 utopia 5, 21, 171, 183, 189, 191–2, 194, 209

Vasileiou, K. 146 Vergine, L. 97, 9 Viennese Actionists 9, 66 Viola, B. 125 violence 40, 53, 67–8, 71–2, 74–5, 132, 140, 144, 177, 181 visibility 77, 86, 179–80 visual arts 7–8, 82, 84, 120, 181, 203 walking artist 204–5 wearables 4, 94, 104, 105, 107 Wearing, G. 160 Weems, C. M. 86 whiteness 80, 86 wigs 79, 99 Wildavsky, A. 193 Willet, J. 121 Wodiczko, K. 172 Women on waves 181 Women with Kitchen Appliances (W.W.K.A.) 133 Wood, J. 115, 116 Wrights & Sites 162 Wu, M. 199, 202 Wurm, E. 34–5