Ouch – Pain and Performance Curated by Live Art Development Agency
“I see pain as an inevitable byproduct of interesting performance.” Dominic Johnson
According to Wikipedia ‘pain’ is an “unpleasant feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli…(it) motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations and to avoid similar experiences in the future.” But for many artists and audiences the opposite is just as true, and pain within the context of performance is a challenging, exhilarating and profound experience.
Ouch is a collection of documentation and artists’ films looking at pain and performance – the pain artists might cause themselves within the course of their work, whether intentional or not, and the experiences of audiences as they are invited to inflict pain on artists or are subjected to pain and discomfort themselves.
The selected works feature eminent and ground breaking artists whose practices address provocative issues from the lived experiences of illness, to representations of the aging female body, cosmetic surgery, addiction and self harm, animalistic impulses, and treacherous fire stunts, and what can happen when you invite audiences to be complicit in challenging embodied actions.
Please note that this screening contains documentation of some historical performances for which the films are of variable quality. This screening also contains strong images, including blood and nudity.
With many thanks to all of the featured artists for permission to show their work, to Sheree Rose and Janez Janša, and to Martin O’Brien.
Running time 35’ approx. (on loop)
Bob Flanagan (USA) Cystic Fibrosis Song 1990’s 1’32”
A short film of Bob Flanagan parodying a famous Disney song to convey his experiences of living with Cystic Fibrosis. The performance took place at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in the early 1990's and is featured in the award winning 1997 film Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist.
Bob Flanagan (1952 – 1996) was an American performance artist, stand-up comic, writer poet and lifelong sufferer from cystic fibrosis, whose S&M experiences helped him manage the pain of his illness.
Cassils (Canada/USA) Inextinguishable Fire 2015 3’43”
A film of a performance in which the artist was subjected to a full body burn in a critique of media representations of violence.
Performed at SPILL Festival of Performance 2015, produced by Pacitti Company. Video by Ana Godinho de Matos for Chameleoneye Films for SPILL TV.
Cassils is an artist who uses the physical body as sculptural mass with which to rupture societal norms. Forging a series of powerfully trained bodies for different performative and formal purposes; it is with sweat, blood and sinew that they construct a visual critique and discourse around physical and gender ideologies and histories.
Wafaa Bilal (Iraq/USA) On Shoot An Iraqi 2007 2’21”
The artist discusses his provocative interactive performance in which, over the course of 30 days, members of the public were invited to fire a paintball gun at him over the internet. He was shot at 60,000 times.
The award-winning Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal is known internationally for his on- line performative and interactive works provoking dialogue about international politics and internal dynamics. Bilal’s work is constantly informed by the experience of fleeing his homeland and existing simultaneously in two worlds – his home in the “comfort zone” of the U.S. and his consciousness of the “conflict zone” in Iraq. http://wafaabilal.com
ORLAN (France/USA) Successful Operation 1990 9’.13”
A short film of the artist preparing for cosmetic surgery in which the operating theatre is turned into a different kind of theatrical space. ORLAN’s intention is not to suffer pain, or for her work to be viewed as “masochistic performance”, rather it is to provoke discourse about representations of beauty and understandings of individual agency.
ORLAN is an artist working between Paris, Los Angeles and New York. She creates sculptures, photographs, performances, videos, videogames, and augmented reality, using scientific and medical techniques like surgery and biogenetic. Always mixed with humor, often-on parody or even grotesque, her provocative artworks can shock because she shakes up the pre-established codes. http://www.orlan.eu
Oleg Kulik (Russia) Dog House 1996 4’09”
A short extract from documentation of the Interpol group exhibition in Stockholm in 1996, in which Oleg Kulik, in a continuation of his body of work on being a dog, performed in the gallery chained next to a sign labelled 'dangerous' and created an international scandal when he bit an art critic who ignored the sign.
Oleg Kulik is a Moscow based performance artist, photographer and curator, most renowned for his performances as a dog, including Mad Dog, Reservoir Dog and I Bite America and America Bites Me.
Marina Abramovic (Serbia/USA) On Rhythm O, 1974 3’07”
A short film in which the artist talks about one of her most famous works, a six-hour performance at Galleria Studio Morra in Naples during which Abramović allowed herself to be used by the public in any way they chose, using 72 objects of pleasure and pain placed on a table, including a rose, perfume, honey, wine, scissors, a scalpel, nails, a metal bar, and a gun loaded with one bullet.
RHYTHM 0 Documentary, 2013. Directed and Edited by Milica Zec. Video courtesy of Marina Abramovic Institute
RHYTHM 0, 1974. Studio Morra, Naples. Ph: Donatelli Sbarra. Courtesy Marina Abramovic and Sean Kelly Gallery New York
Marina Abramović is one of the seminal artists of our time. Since the early 1970s she has pioneered the use of performance art as a visual art form. Exploring the physical and mental limits of her being, she has withstood pain, exhaustion, and danger in the quest for emotional and spiritual transformation. http://www.mai-hudson.org
Ron Athey (USA) Ron’s Story 2001 4’44”
A short film of early performances by Ron Athey on his experiences of addiction and self harm, created by Janez Janša of Aksioma, Slovenia, with original music by BAST.
Ron Athey is an iconic figure in contemporary art and performance. In his frequently bloody portrayals of life, death, crisis, and fortitude in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. These limits enable Athey to explore key themes including gender, sexuality, radical sex, queer activism, postpunk and industrial culture, tattooing and body modification, ritual, and religion.
Rocio Boliver (Mexico) Times Go By and I Can’t Forget You: Between Menopause and Old Age 2013 4’18”
Extract from documentation of a performance at Grace Exhibition Space, New York in which the artist parodies a catwalk show and critiques representations and expectations of the (ageing) female body.
Rocío Boliver’s practice is a sharp and focused critique of the many repressive ideologies that burden the lives of women in Mexico. “In this pasteurized society, I prefer to cause disgust, hatred, rejection, confusion, weariness, anxiety, hostility, fear ... to further promote mental asepsis.”