EXHIBITING PERFORMANCE ART’S HISTORY

Harry Weil

100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), a group show at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York, November 1, 2009­–May 3, 2010 and Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions, a group show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, July 1–September 19, 2010.

he past decade has born witness 100 Years, curated by MoMA PS1 cura- to the proliferation of perfor- tor Klaus Biesenbach and art historian mance art in the broadest venues RoseLee Goldberg, structured a strictly yetT seen, with notable retrospectives of linear history of performance art. A Marina Abramović, Gina Pane, Allan five-inch thick straight blue line ran the Kaprow, and Tino Sehgal held in Europe length of the exhibition, intermittently and North America. Performance has pierced by dates written in large block garnered a space within the museum’s letters. The blue path mimics the simple hallowed halls, as these institutions have red and black lines of Alfred Barr’s chart hurriedly begun collecting performance’s on the development of modern art. Barr, artifacts and documentation. As such, former director of MoMA, created a museums play an integral role in chroni- simple scientific chart for the exhibition cling performance art’s little-detailed Cubism and Abstract Art (1935) that history. 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov streamlines the genealogy of modern 2009) at MoMA PS1 and Off the Wall: art with no explanatory text, reduc- Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions at ing it to a chronological succession of the Whitney Museum of American avant-garde movements. Similarly, the Art are two of the first major museum 100 Years exhibit considers the lineage exhibitions dedicated to constructing a of performance art without a pedagogic history of performance art. Both exhibi- structure. The blue line never winds or tions stray from placing performance in diverts off track. As a result, the only a socio-political context in favor of pre- relationship between the art works in senting a streamlined, palatable approach a given room was temporal proximity. to interpreting and assessing the lineage Themes that have continually surfaced of performance art. in performance art’s history, including feminism, political strife, and body

© 2011 Harry Weil PAJ 98 (2011), pp. 65–71.  65

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 politics, are sidelined in favor of a tidily- Despite this lack of historical and con- told history. ceptual context, the curatorial choices for 100 Years were finely edited to include The first room greeted viewers with a luminaries in dance, theatre, and music call to arms to “sing the love of danger, integral to the conversation on perfor- the habit of energy and rashness,” a mance art, including John Cage, Martha quote from Filippo Marinetti’s Futur- Graham, Merce Cunningham, and Mer- ist Manifesto, which, coincidentally, edith Monk. Televisions looping various enjoyed its hundredth anniversary in performances were mounted on a plat- 2009. The exhibition coincided with the form running through the exhibition, third installment of Goldberg’s Performa providing the opportunity for viewers biennial, which celebrated the founding to capture the scope of performance as of Futurism. In this entry room, the it came to rely on film technologies in origins of performance art are imagined the 1960s. Headphones offered visitors as spawning from the socio-political private listening and an intimacy with discontent of a small avant-garde group the scenes transpiring on the screens. The within the established order, and reads two-hundred-plus videos, photographs, as a condensed version of Goldberg’s and posters were modestly installed; the landmark tome Performance Art: From worth of the exhibition is in the included Futurism to the Present (first published objects, not on the value curators have in 1974). The book, like the exhibi- given them. tion, is an uncomplicated reading of performance art history that flows neatly Objects kept to the walls of the galleries, from one early twentieth century art so from the center of a room visitors movement to the next, from Cubism to were provided an unfolding panorama the Bauhaus to Dada to Constructivism of performance art’s lineage. Static black and so on. and white photographic documentation lined the walls above the televisions However, despite MoMA’s vast hold- and depicted the fleeting moments of ings, the inclusion of artists’ activities performances. Compared to film docu- outside the production of performances mentation, photographic documentation was absent from the exhibition. The felt incomplete in evoking the moving curators failed to relate how these early bodies that constitute performances. avant-garde groups were integral to the And when compared to live reperfor- development of modern art in challeng- mances, photographs remain inadequate ing how audiences engaged with paint- in realizing the corporeal and tactile ing and sculpture while simultaneously nature of the original live performance. experimenting in performance practices. Nonetheless, I am reminded of Philip Work by Futurist Giacomo Balla would Auslander’s argument that documenta- have put Marinetti’s manifesto into better tion is not merely a stand-in but itself context of the group’s interest in captur- constitutes the work of performance, ing dynamic movement of the industrial thereby allowing the performances of age. Similarly, the work of Pablo Picasso the past to be as actively engaging as or Georges Braque would have put into they were in the present. He suggests context the repetitive forms of Fernand that performance documentation “brings Léger’s film Mechanical Ballet. the object to us and reactivates it for us

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 to experience in our time and place, our or promote me. I didn’t have a gallery. own particular situation.”1 It is not that I was out there alone.”3 Performance art we are transported back to the space of has come a long way from being a small the original performance when looking group of art world radicals to being the at the photograph—rather, as Aulander subject of highly acclaimed exhibitions elaborates: “[it is as if they] were per- across the globe. Because there is a forming the piece for me, in my study, gap in the collecting and exhibiting of as I imaginatively recreate the perfor- performance art, museums have made mance from its documentation. The it their prerogative to be integral in performance I thus experience unfolds creating a history that is still unfold- in my present (even as I remain aware ing. In discussing the reperformance of its historical status).”2 of Identical Lunch planned for January 2011, Knowles enthusiastically describes Documentation’s ability to transmit performance art’s newfound acceptance: the experience of a live performance is “It is very clear that museums have exemplified in Guido van der Werve’s caught up the artists. You would never video Nummer Acht (Everything is going see performances at MoMA ten years to be alright) (2007). The video transmits ago. Now, they have a good function- an unearthly dread as the artist walks ing library and performances there with just ahead of a gargantuan icebreak- three or four curators for performance. It ing ship as it plows through the frozen is huge. I need to have an electric blender waters of Finland’s Gulf of Bothnia. for Identical Lunch and I have a choice The towering ship threatens not only of who I can call to get one!”4 to destroy the landscape but the artist too. His harrowing feat is much more In considering how a new generation dangerous then anything attempted by figures into the shifting perceptions of Chris Burden, whose Shoot (1971) or performance art in museums, 100 Years Transfixed (1974) pales in comparison finely edited together a glimpse into to being crushed under the weight of what may be ahead. The exhibition ends a ship. While Burden performed for with Ryan Trecartin’s K-Corea INC.K small groups of friends and associates (section A). At the age of twenty-four he on the street or in alternative spaces, had his first museum exhibition and has van der Werve’s performances rely on quickly climbed the ladder to stardom. high-budgeted production teams, and His plotless video is a hypnotic and gra- they are consciously made for inclusion tuitous collection of sights and sounds in a museum or gallery. made in a YouTube-style aesthetic, a commentary on the amateurishness and Performance’s acceptance in the art exposure that have become markers of market comes at a price as a younger the digital age. His video echoes Nam generation of performers is interested in June Paik’s experiments using technology exceeding their predecessors and has the to transform how art objects are created funds to do so. Alison Knowles, in dis- and experienced. Trecartin’s work pales cussing her work with Fluxus, describes in comparison to his predecessor, as his how ostracizing the art world was for investment in digital technologies is performance in the 1960s: “I had no merely a footnote to Paik’s legacy. Yet, access to an art world that would fund in including Trecartin, it is obvious that

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 Top: 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009). Photo: Summer Kemick. Courtesy of MoMA PS1. Bottom: Off the Wall: Part 1—Thirty Performative Actions. Photo: Sheldan C. Collins. Courtesy of Whitney Museum of American Art.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 new works of performance art attempt to the unconscious as illustrated by her dis- return to a bygone era of the avant-garde regard for filmic narrative and sequence. by engaging both with their bodies and Her awareness of the camera and its technology the same way their prede- relationship to how audiences perceive cessors had. Biesnbach and Goldberg’s movement is akin to Vito ­Acconci’s Three blue line pushes forward to the future Frame Studies (1969–1970) with the yet seems to be always diverting back, videos Claim Excerpts (1971), 3-PUSH marking performance art’s history as (1970), and 1-SHADOW PLAY (1970). cylindrical, not linear. In 3-PUSH he attempts to push another man outside the frame of the video Off the Wall, organized by curator Chris- camera’s lens, displacing the artwork sie Iles, is more placid in its aims than from being centered on an object to 100 Years, piecing itself together mainly being centered on a performing body. from the museum’s permanent collec- In expanding and reacting to the frame tion. Yet, as the Whitney’s holdings in of the camera and the museum, Acconci performance are limited, so too is the leaves his mark on the art world by liter- exhibition in providing a comprehensive ally pushing himself into it. assessment of the history of American performance art. This limitation gave Reproductive technologies, namely pho- the museums an opportunity to take tography, film, and video, are essential inventory of works in their collection to performance art’s longevity and, as that Iles sees as possessing an “underlying such, are an integral part of its history. theatricality.” In contrast to 100 Years’s Three iconic feminist artists hint at this chronological investments, Off the Wall theme in one small, dimly-lit room with is thematically installed, focusing on videos: Hannah Wilke, Martha Rosler, trends that have surfaced in the short and Dara Birnbaum. Video art came life of performance art. As such, Off the to be seen as a liberating medium for Wall’s earliest work is Maya Deren’s 1948 feminist artists in the mid-1960s, as it surrealist film Meditation on Violence, a had no art-historical precedent. Such piece which makes clear early perfor- technologies leveled the playing field mance’s dependency on reproduction for artists regardless of gender since it technologies in considering how the allowed them to produce works with- body, viewed through mediation, can out complex technical training. Female be received within the white walls of artists were able to work alone in their the museum. studios free from the pressures of male influence. The medium was embodied The film was projected on a sidewall in with a freedom to create and produce. the central room of the exhibition. The While the connection between feminism camera remains relatively static as it and video art is not made explicit, the traces Chao-Li Chi’s demonstration of thematic layout made it possible to con- traditional Shaolin and Wu-Tang box- template works outside of a generational ing. The lyrical beauty of his body is divide and their implicit relationship to suddenly interrupted as his movements larger socio-political issues. are played in reverse, returning Chi to where the film began. Deren was influ- In the same room as the feminist video enced by Surrealism’s interest in time and works, perched on a shelf was a reprint of

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit (1964). Viewers largely succeeded in its claim to focus could browse through the book and carry on how action “displaces the site of the out the scores, many of which are poetic artwork from an object to the body, act- in tone and ask merely for contempla- ing in relation to, or directly onto, the tion. Off the Wall, unlike 100 Years, physical space of the gallery.” provided space for visitors to engage in performance, defying the “hands-off” Off the Wall also contemplated the way prohibition that has traditionally defined photography approaches the body with the relationship between viewers and art the inclusion of two portrait photo- work. Snow Piece (1963) instructs read- graphs. In Self-Portrait (1980) Robert ers: “Think that snow is falling. Think Mapplethorpe dressed himself in a fur that snow is falling everywhere all the coat, long wavy wig, and shimmering time. When you talk with a person, lipstick. Adjacent to it was Peter Hujar’s think that snow is falling between you photograph of the camp icon Candy and on the person. Stop conversing Darling on her Deathbed (1974). In full when you think the person is covered makeup and silk robe the transgender by snow.” Off the Wall highlighted the actress seems bored as she poses in her value of alternative dissemination that hospital bed surrounded by flowers. An was part and parcel of Fluxus’s work. In influential historical precedent to these another room, Ono’s score Painting to Be works is Marcel Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy Stepped On (1960) commanded: “Leave who was photographed numerous times a piece of canvas or finished painting on by Man Ray and even went on to cre- the floor or in the street.” Such a work, ate her own readymades, stressing that when placed in the museum, succeeds much of the work we see now has earlier in reaffirming that performance art is precedents that neither 100 Years nor grounded in engaging living bodies. It Off the Wallremarked on. These gender- incorporates experience in order to make bending performative photographs were experience a kind of medium, as a mode a curious inclusion in an exhibition of of artistic creativity, which became the objects that are meant to displace the central condition of creativity. “artwork from an object to the body.” The photographs are flat and, despite Similarly, the inclusion of Carl Andre’s their humorous nature, fail to deliver a forty-eight foot long row of square cop- clear relation to the body and its connec- per plates, Twenty-Ninth Copper Cardinal tion to the art object, as seen in Deren’s (1975), invited viewers to cross the film or Ono’s score. threshold separating the center room from the back room. The sculpture has The portrait I have painted is perhaps come off its pedestal and entered into a bit too rosy; art critics and academics the viewer’s physical space, the pristine alike are still apprehensive in welcoming geometry opposed to the organic bodies performance art into the art-historical that are meant to move across it. The canon. Howard Halle cited Abramović’s artist cedes the performative element performances as “a pure piece of theat- of the audience. Off the Wall assembled rical pandering disguised as art,”5 and works that center on the body and its Roberta Smith quipped that Yoko Ono’s relationship to movement, space, and scores are “juvenile, superficially avant- the history of art itself. The exhibition garde.”6 The history of performance

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/PAJJ_a_00040 by guest on 25 September 2021 art is still being written and remains in Lessons in the Art of Falling, ed. Jonas dependent on curatorial models that Ekeberg (Norway: Preus Museum, 2009). are fashionable at any given time, but 2. Ibid. still evolving. 100 Years and Off the Wall began a necessary discourse in how any 3. Alison Knowles in an interview with such history can and will be shaped by the author on December 11, 2010. museums that will be responsible for 4. Ibid. recounting performance art’s origins, 5. Howard Halle, “The best (and worst) assessing its endeavors and affirming its of 2010,” Time Out New York, December presence. 17, 2010, Art section. NOTES 6. Roberta Smith, “Hold That Obit; MoMA’s Not Dead,” New York Times, 1. Philip Auslander, “Toward a Herme- December 30, 2010, Arts section. neutics of Performance Art Documentation,”

HARRY WEIL is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art at Stony Brook University.

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