Laine Kristberga Doctoral Dissertation Intermedial
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ART ACADEMY OF LATVIA DOCTORAL PROGRAMME “ARTS” LAINE KRISTBERGA DOCTORAL DISSERTATION INTERMEDIAL APPROPRIATION AS A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF PERFORMANCE ART IN LATVIA IN THE PERIOD OF LATE SOCIALISM (1964-1989) Supervisor of the doctoral dissertation: Dr. Kārlis Vērpe Head of the doctoral programme: Prof. Dr. habil. Ojārs Spārītis Author of the doctoral dissertation: Mg. Philol., Mg. Art., Laine Kristberga Riga, 2019 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION The importance of the subject .................................................................................... 5 The aim and tasks of the dissertation ......................................................................... 8 The chronological boundaries and research challenges of the dissertation ............. 9 Research methods ..................................................................................................... 13 The structure of the dissertation ............................................................................... 20 TERMINOLOGY Terminology related to performance art ................................................................. 24 Key terms and definitions .................................................................................. 24 What performance art is not .............................................................................. 26 The plurality of terms referring to performance art ......................................... 28 The etymology of the term “happening” .......................................................... 29 The early examples of proto-performance art .................................................. 29 The art of the everyday and the concepts of ready-made and chance in Dadaist performance practice ........................................................................................ 31 The origins of performance art in the East European region .......................... 33 The differences between performance art in the West and in the East ............ 33 Performance in culture and social sciences: ................................................... 34 Terminology and theoretical frameworks to discuss the dichotomy of official and non-official art in Latvia in the period of late socialism ......................................... 37 PRIMARY SOURCES, PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY Primary sources ........................................................................................................ 40 Photographic materials ............................................................................................ 41 Historiography: local secondary sources ................................................................ 43 Historiography: foreign secondary sources ............................................................. 48 CHAPTER 1: The Development of Performance Art in Latvia 1. 1. Proto-Performance Art: Early Performative Manifestations in Photography 1.1.1. The performative manifestations in Latvian photography in the 1920s and 1930s ...................................................................................................... 56 1.1.2. The passive/active roles of the photographer and the photographic subject ............................................................................................................... 60 1.1.3. Kārlis Padegs: life as performance ........................................................ 62 1.2. The Conditions of Art Production Affecting Performance Art and its Development 1.2.1. Hierarchy of arts and the status of photography and performance art .. 65 1.2.2. The dissemination of information on performance art ........................... 69 1.2.3. Pantomime – the Soviet Esperanto and the ‘legal’ body art .................. 71 1.2.4. The cultural and geographical periphery ............................................... 73 1.2.5. The phenomenon of participatory and collaborative art ........................ 76 1.2.6. The second public sphere as the microenvironment for art production . 80 2 1.3. Andris Grinbergs – the Pioneer of Performance Art in Latvia in the 1970s 1.3.1. The early years (the 1960s) .................................................................... 82 1.3.2. The everyday performance ...................................................................... 84 1.3.3. Happenings and performances ................................................................ 86 1.3.4. Gender performance: Andris Grinbergs versus Andy Warhol ................ 93 1.3.5. Andris Grinbergs in comparison to other performance artists in Eastern and Central Europe in the period of late socialism ....................................... 102 CHAPTER 2: Documentation and Intermediality of Performance 2.1. The documentation of performance 2.1.1. The ephemeral and transient nature of performance versus the representational medium of photography ....................................................... 108 2.1.2. Reenactments ........................................................................................ 112 2.2. The intermediality of performance 2.2.1. The concept of intermediality as a useful interpretative framework ..... 116 2.2.2. The problematic status of media borders ............................................. 118 2.2.3. Early steps towards the integration of art forms and intermediality ... 120 2.2.4. Theoretization of intermediality in performance art studies ................ 124 2.2.5. Happening – the ultimate intermedium ................................................ 127 2.2.6. The challenges of intermediality and the difference between intermedia and multimedia ............................................................................................... 130 2.2.7. The typology of intermediality ............................................................... 133 2.3. Intermedial relations between performance, photography and painting 2.3.1. Intermedial migration: painting-photography-performance ............... 135 2.3.2 The case study of intermedial relations between photography and painting: Hyperrealism in Latvia in the period of late socialism ................... 139 CHAPTER 3: Performance Art in Latvia as Intermedial Appropriation 3.1. The notion of intermediality expressed as interest in synthesis in Latvian art discourse ......................................................................................................... 142 3.2. Appropriation in art 3.2.1. Appropriation in art in the West in the 1970s ....................................... 146 3.2.2. Appropriation in art in Latvia in the 1970s .......................................... 149 3.3. The examples of performance art as intermedial appropriation in Latvia 3.3.1. The Office Group ................................................................................... 151 3.3.2. The collaborative projects between Andris Grinbergs and Jānis Kreicbergs ....................................................................................................... 153 3.3.3. The collaborative projects between Andris Grinbergs and Atis Ieviņš 155 3.3.4. The carnivals organised by Imants Lancmanis at the Rundāle Palace 157 3.3.5. The theatre of Madame Tabaka ............................................................ 160 3.3.6. Miervaldis Polis – the illusionist ........................................................... 163 3.3.7. The NSRD .............................................................................................. 165 3.3.8. Ivars Mailītis and Inese Mailīte ............................................................ 169 CONCLUSIONS ........................................................................................................ 172 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................... 179 THE LIST OF FIGURES IN THE VISUAL SUPPLEMENT .............................. 197 3 ANNEX NO 1: The list of Andris Grinbergs’s performances .............................. 206 4 INTRODUCTION The importance of the subject The doctoral dissertation Intermedial Appropriation as a Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Performance Art in Latvia in the Period of Late Socialism (1964-1989) is focused on the exploration of the history and legacy of performance art in Latvia, taking into account the socio-political and cultural circumstances that determined the forms of documentation of event-based art. As a result of these circumstances, performance art was implemented in the second public sphere as a form of participatory art, where the participants were engaged in collaborative, hybrid projects leading to various new and autonomous works of art: paintings, photographs, serigraphs. These new works of art cannot be considered as mere forms of documentation, but rather as cases of intermedial appropriation, that is, examples of transformation processes, when the moving, temporal, ephemeral and transient performance was turned into a still, silent, permanent and two-dimensional image often by more than one authors. Not only artists appropriated different motifs and styles based on aesthetics, but performance art itself underwent a process of change and turned into a hybrid consisting of different overlapping media in order to emerge in the first public sphere although in a ‘camouflaged’ form such as exhibition catalogues, photographs, paintings or serigraphs. These are cases of intermedial appropriation when a new art form or medium was created due to the process of fusion of several media into a new medium