Rearticulating Disability in the Works of Lisa Bufano, Ron
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Virtuosic Performance: Rearticulating Disability in the Works of Lisa Bufano, Ron Athey, and Martin O'Brien A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Amanda J. Kurtz December 2012 © 2012 Amanda J. Kurtz. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled Virtuosic Performance: Rearticulating Disability in the Works of Lisa Bufano, Ron Athey, and Martin O'Brien by AMANDA J. KURTZ has been approved for the School of Art and the College of Fine Arts by Jennie Klein Associate Professor of Art History Madeleine Scott Interim Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT KURTZ, AMANDA J., M.A., December 2012, Art History Virtuosic Performance: Rearticulating Disability in the Works of Lisa Bufano, Ron Athey, and Martin O'Brien Director of Thesis: Jennie Klein The performance art practices of Lisa Bufano, Martin O’Brien, and Ron Athey articulate a virtuosic disability that operates in the spaces between representation, embodied experience, and material traces of the diseased or disabled body. Using Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s model of affective, relational bodies, this thesis analyzes Ron Athey’s Deliverance and Self-Obliteration cycle, Lisa Bufano’s performance work One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart, and Martin O’Brien’s durational performance of Mucus Factory, arguing that when virtuosity and disability are at play with one another in performance, all assumptions about the essential dysfunction of the disabled body become groundless. The disabled body becomes an affirmation of embodiment and possibility, performing a body that can be painful, erotic, sensual, sublime, knowable and unknowable at each turn, opening up the potential for a multiplicity of body knowledges and experiences. 4 For my families, blood-related and otherwise 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Jennie Klein, for her tremendous patience, support, and encouragement of this thesis project. I would also like to thank my committee members, Tresa Randall and Jody Lamb, for their time and contributions. I also extend my gratitude to Danielle Wyckoff and Louis-Georges Schwartz for their feedback and input. I am especially thankful for the support of my peers, especially Jessica Law, Yi Liu, and Haylee Ebersole, who provided much inspiration and moral support. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... 5 List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 8 The Relational Body ..................................................................................................... 13 Recovering the Virtuosic .............................................................................................. 17 Chapter 1: Lisa Bufano ..................................................................................................... 24 One Breath… ................................................................................................................ 28 Becoming .................................................................................................................. 32 Chapter 2: Ron Athey ....................................................................................................... 37 Deliverance ................................................................................................................... 41 Self-Obliterations .......................................................................................................... 51 Ron Athey is Not Dead ................................................................................................. 56 Chapter 3: Martin O'Brien ................................................................................................ 58 Legacies ........................................................................................................................ 61 Mucus Factory .............................................................................................................. 64 Temporalities and Intensities ........................................................................................ 70 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 73 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 80 Figures............................................................................................................................... 84 7 LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Lisa Bufano .....................................................................................................84 Figure 2: Lisa Bufano, Meticulous Abstract Part 1 and 2 video still .............................85 Figure 3: Lisa Bufano, One Breath is an Ocean… performance still .............................85 Figure 4: Lisa Bufano, One Breath is an Ocean… performance still .............................86 Figure 5: Ron Athey, Deliverance performance still ......................................................87 Figure 6: Ron Athey, Self Obliterations I and II performance still ................................87 Figure 7: Ron Athey, Self Obliterations I and II performance still ................................88 Figure 8: Ron Athey, Self Obliterations I and II performance still ................................89 Figure 9: Bob Flanagan, Visiting Hours .........................................................................90 Figure 10: Sheree Rose and Martin O’Brien, Action performance still ..........................91 Figure 11: Martin O’Brien, Mucus Factory performance still .......................................91 Figure 12: Martin O’Brien, Mucus Factory performance still .......................................92 Figure 13: Jennifer Bricker and Nathan Crawford, GIMP performance still .................93 Figure 14: GIMP performance still .................................................................................93 8 INTRODUCTION The performance art practices of Lisa Bufano, Martin O’Brien, and Ron Athey articulate a virtuosic disability that operates in the spaces between representation, embodied experience, and material traces of the diseased or disabled body. These performers directly engage their status as living with disease and disability to question traditional notions of what constitutes the virtuosic able body in performance. Athey, Bufano, and O’Brien relocate and rework dominant representations of the disabled body that place emphasis on weakness, dysfunction, and marginalization, offering complex and multilayered revisions of virtuosity and what constitutes “technique” in performance. Through careful investigation and description of each of the artists’ creative processes and performances, this thesis attempts to illuminate the ways in which these artists practice and perform their disabilities virtuosically, paradoxically revealing disability to be a performable relationship with and against a set of physical and social conditions while de-skilling the able-bodied notion of the virtuoso performer. Through an analysis of Ron Athey’s Deliverance and Self-Obliteration cycle, Lisa Bufano’s performance work One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart, and Martin O’Brien’s durational performance of Mucus Factory, I argue that when virtuosity and disability are at play with one another in performance, all assumptions about the essential dysfunction of the disabled body become groundless. The disabled body becomes an affirmation of embodiment and possibility, performing a body that can be painful, erotic, sensual, sublime, knowable and unknowable at each turn, opening up the potential for a multiplicity of body knowledges and experiences. 9 I use the terms “disability” and “disabled” to refer to a broad spectrum of physical, mental, and emotional conditions including bodies with diseases, physical impairments, and emotional disorders. This broad definition is in line with recent scholarship on disability but is not without its problems; experiences of disability differ drastically depending on the type of impairment and factors such as age, sex, race, and location. The disabled body is defined as such via the societal structures that separate “normal” (“able”) bodies from those that differ in either appearance or function due to any temporary or permanent impairment. The term “ableist” as used in this thesis refers to the societal discriminatory practices that systematically disenfranchise people with disabilities, creating a bias in favor of those considered “normal.” 1 This project seeks to highlight the instability of the concepts of virtuosity and disability as they have been utilized thus far in analyses of performance works in order to open up a discourse of the performing body that is not reliant upon able-bodied structures. The basis for this discussion will be the theoretical framework set forth by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, whose constructivist understanding of the body is useful in re-thinking the conditions of the terms