Acts of Resistance by Detained People Seeking Asylum, and in the Performance Art of Mike Parr

Wounded bodies as sites of dissensus: Acts of resistance by detained people seeking asylum, and in the performance art of Mike Parr A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Elizabeth Gay BA (Hons) Performance Studies, Victoria University School of Media and Communication College of Design and Social Context RMIT University December 2019 Declaration I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the thesis is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. I acknowledge the support I have received for my research through the provision of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. Elizabeth Gay 10 December 2019 ii Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which this thesis was written, the sacred and sovereign lands of the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations. I acknowledge that the sovereignty of these lands has never been ceded and I respectfully acknowledge their Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge the disrespect and brutality with which my ancestors illegally occupied these lands and that I benefit from this as an occupier. I acknowledge and apologise for the continuing acts of colonial power, racism and violence which disregard the transgenerational trauma and pain of dispossession for Aboriginal people. I also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of all the lands and waters across Australia which I travel. I would like to express my deep appreciation to my supervisors, Dr Rebecca Hill and Associate Professor Adrian Danks. I am grateful for the academic support and ongoing encouragement provided by my supervisory team. In particular, Rebecca’s close readings of my writing, her generous feedback and general belief in this work throughout my candidature have been greatly valued. Thank you to my children, Loxy and Pax, for their patience, support and inspiration. Their love, humour and perfectly timed eye rolling have allowed me to dedicate the time and energy necessary to complete this research. I also extend my gratitude to my dearest friends for their encouragement and genuine friendship. Thank you to Mary-Jo O’Rourke AE for professional copyediting and proofreading services, according to the university-endorsed national ‘Guidelines for editing research theses’. iii Table of Contents Declaration.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements...………………………………………………………………………………………………………….iii List of Figures.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………vi Abstract .………..……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………01 Chapter One Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………….…03 1.1 Background of Study………………………………………………………………………….08 1.2 Chapter Outline………………………………………………………………………………….14 1.3 Rationale……………………………………………………………………………………………21 1.4 Methodology.…………………………………………………………………….………………22 1.5 Research Contribution……………………………………………………….………………24 Chapter Two Art and Politics: Comparative Sites of Disruption……………………………………26 2.1 Rancière, the Political and Dissensus………………………………………………….26 2.2 Rancière’s Regimes of Art…………………………………………………………………..29 2.3 Art and Politics, Politics and Art………………………………………………………….34 Chapter Three Performance Art and Mike Parr………………..…………………………………………….42 3.1 Performance Art………………………..………………..…………………………………….43 3.2 Mike Parr and Australian Performance Art…………………………………………62 Chapter Four Biopolitics, Bare Life, Grievability and Dissensus…………………………………..82 4.1 The Governing of Life…………………………………………………………………………84 4.2 Butler and Grievable Life……………………………………………………………………89 4.3 Agamben: Inclusive Exclusion, State of Exception and Bare Life…………97 4.4 Politics, Contestation and Bare Life………………………………………………….104 4.5 Framing and Deeming………………………………………………………………………109 Chapter Five Nationalism, Censorship and Exclusion……….………………………………………..113 5.1 Imagining the Australian Nation……………………………………………………….114 5.2 Mike Parr and Representations of Everyday Nationalism…………………121 iv 5.3 People Seeking Asylum in Australia………………………………………………….123 Chapter Six Not the Hilton: Administrative Exclusion and Bare Life……..…………………135 6.1 Not the Hilton………………………………………………………………………………….136 6.2 Power, Biopolitics and Bare Life………………………………………………………143 Chapter Seven Activism and ‘the Camp’: Lip-sewing as Dissensus…….….……………………..156 7.1 Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre.……………….156 7.2 Refusal of Surplus Subjectivity.………………………………………………………..166 Chapter Eight Close the Concentration Camps: Art as Dissensus….…….………………..……..180 8.1 Politics and Parr’s Performance Art…….……………….…………………………..180 8.2 Nationalism, Geopolitics and Disruption….……….……………………………..184 8.3 Persistent Disturbance………………….……………….………………………………..190 Thesis Conclusion Solidarity and Complicity are Not Mutually Exclusive…..….…………..…205 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………….…….……………………...210 v List of Figures Fig. 1. Guerrilla Girls, Guerrilla Girls fight back (1985), poster, Tate Modern. Fig. 2 Marina Abramović, Rhythm 0 (1974), screenshot from video, Vimeo. Fig. 3 Günter Brus, Endurance test (1970), photograph of live performance, Tate Modern. Fig 4. Valie Export, Tapp und Tastkino (Tap and touch cinema) (1960), photograph of live performance, Museum of Modern Art. Fig. 5 Yoko Ono, Cut piece (1965), photograph of live performance, Museum of Modern Art. Fig. 6 Mike Parr, Cathartic action: social gestus no. 5 (the ‘armchop’) (1977), photograph of live performance, Art Gallery NSW. Fig. 7 Mike Parr, Language and chaos I (1989–1990), drypoint print, National Gallery of Victoria. Fig. 8 Mike Parr, Blood box (1998), photograph of live performance, Anna Schwartz Gallery. Fig. 9 Mike Parr, Water from mouth (2001), photograph of live performance, Anna Schwartz Gallery. Fig. 10 Russell Storer, Bleed, bled, said (2003), photograph of back cover of book (Storer 2003). Fig. 11 Mike Parr, Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi (UnAustralian) (2003), photograph of live performance, Art Gallery of NSW. Fig. 12 Mike Parr, slides from Close the concentration camp (2000), text excerpts from Not the Hilton used in installation. Fig. 13 ‘Detainees’ breakout bid’ (2002), photograph by Peter Mathews, The Age newspaper (Banham, Nicholson & Teutsch 2002). Fig. 14 ‘Ringleader may be forced to disarm: protest death fear’, photograph by Campbell Brodie, Herald-Sun newspaper (Mark 2002). Fig. 15 Abas Amini, Abas Amini (2003), photograph from BBC News. vi Fig. 16 Mike Parr, Close the concentration camps (2002), photograph of live performance image (Pitt & Butler 2016). Fig. 17 Mike Parr, Close the concentration camps (2002), photograph of live performance image (Genzmer & Marsh 2012). Fig. 18 Mike Parr, Close the concentration camps (2002), photograph of live performance image (Marsh 2011). Fig. 19 Mike Parr, Close the concentration camps (2002), photograph of live performance image (Parr 2008). Fig. 20 Australian Style (2002), photograph from magazine (Australian Style 2002). vii Abstract People seeking asylum in Australia are allotted little or no space in which to speak and to be heard within the polis. A limit point of this position is asylum seekers who have sought to arrive in Australia by boat and have been subject to policies of mandatory detention in Immigration Detention Centres since 1992. In recent history a number of artists who are not people seeking asylum within Australia have produced work in an effort to show support for asylum seekers and refugees held in mandatory detention. Many people seeking asylum have protested against their detention and one form of protest has been self-harm. This thesis reads these acts as an expression of agency which locates the body as a site of resistance. These acts of self-harm were (and are) carried out in Immigration Detention Centres, where the access of asylum seekers and refugees to the public sphere was (and is) tightly constrained by their incarceration, by government censorship and by the subsequent rendering of them as invisible within the Australian national imagination. Thus, their acts of resistance have consistently been shut down, framed as manipulative or labelled ‘criminal’ by government officials and the mainstream media. This thesis analyses a selection of actions of self-harm by asylum seekers and refugees in Australian immigration detention over 2001–2003 and locates them as acts of politics and agency. My thesis also reads several works made during this period by Australian performance artist Mike Parr which he has framed as acts of solidarity with people in immigration detention. Parr’s performance artwork Close the concentration camps (2002) is the focus of a close analysis. The critical framework of the thesis is interdisciplinary. I take up Jacques Rancière’s conceptualisation of dissensus as a rupture of the consensus in order to think the political. The status of the political or dissensus is deployed to conceptualise the actions of asylum seekers in detention, and of performance artists working with the body as a site of expression within and beyond the space of the gallery. I understand performance art 1 historically and distinctly

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