Blood Orgies: Blood Nitsch in America Hermann Aaron Levy, Ed
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Ed. Levy, Aaron Hermann Nitsch in America Blood Orgies: US/CAN $30.00 Performance Art / Art History / Cultural Theory A critical examination of pioneering work by Viennese Actionist Hermann Nitsch, with photo and video documentation of his ritualistic performances since 1962 Contributions by Adrian Daub, Lorand Hegyi, Susan Jarosi, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Michèle H. Richman, Osvaldo Romberg, and Dieter Ronte Edited and introduced by Aaron Levy Blood Orgies Produced with the 2007-2008 RBSL Bergman Curatorial Seminar, University of Pennsylvania Hermann Nitsch in America Includes a complimentary DVD featuring Hermann Nitsch’s Die Aktionen, 1962-2003 (PAL, 13 min) Slought Foundation Slought Front image: Hermann Nitsch, Das Orgien Mysterien Theater: Die Aktionen 1962-2003 (DVD) Back: Installation at Slought Foundation, 2005 nitsch-book-ver3.qxp:Nitsch Book 3/5/08 10:48 PM Page ii Blood Orgies Hermann Nitsch in America Contributions by Adrian Daub, Lorand Hegyi, Susan Jarosi, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Michèle Richman, Osvaldo Romberg, and Dieter Ronte; work by Hermann Nitsch Edited and introduced by Aaron Levy Philadelphia: Slought Books Produced with the 2007-2008 RBSL Bergman Curatorial Seminar, University of Pennsylvania Contemporary Artist Series, No. 4 nitsch-book-ver3.qxp:Nitsch Book 3/5/08 10:48 PM Page iv © 2008 Aaron Levy, Hermann Nitsch, Slought Foundation, Contributors All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, without written permission from either the author or Slought Books, a division of Slought Foundation. No part may be stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. Images and artworks reproduced in this book courtesy of the studio of artist Hermann Nitsch and Galerie Heike Curtze, Vienna, unless noted otherwise. This publication was made possible in part through the generous financial support of the RBSL Bergman Seminar in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Society of Friends of the Slought Foundation. Printed in Canada on acid-free paper by Coach House Books, Ltd. Set in 9pt Arial Narrow. Design by Sinder Studio, Philadelphia For further information, http://slought.org/books/ SLOUGHT FOUNDATION 4017 Walnut Street Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Blood orgies : Hermann Nitsch in America / edited and introduced by Aaron Levy ; contributions by Lorand Hegyi ... [et al.]. p. cm. -- (Contemporary artist series ; no. 4) "Produced with the 2007-2008 RBSL Bergman Curatorial Seminar, University of Pennsylvania." Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-9815409-0-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Nitsch, Hermann, 1938---Criticism and interpretation. 2. Performance art--Austria. I. Levy, Aaron. II. Lorand, Hegyi. NX548.Z9N5833 2008 700.92--dc22 2008005069 nitsch-book-ver3.qxp:Nitsch Book 3/5/08 10:48 PM Page vi S Towards an Extreme Art: Introducing Blood Orgies 1 T N Aaron Levy E T Nitsch’s Experiential Aesthetic 9 N O Lorand Hegyi C | On the Aesthetics of the Photography of Actionism 15 A Dieter Ronte C I R E Redemption through Blood 29 M Osvaldo Romberg A N I “The Abyss of the Scream” - The Music of Hermann Nitsch 35 H Adrian Daub C S Extraversions: An Archaeology of Blood and Guts 73 T I Michèle Richman N N N “The Grünewald of Happenings” - On Traumatic Subjectivity 95 A Susan Jarosi M R E Nitsch’s Chiasmus 117 H Jean-Michel Rabaté Das Orgien Mysterien Theater Hermann Nitsch Photographs 130 Writings (Excerpts) 162 The First Abreaction-Play (1961) Plan for the Six Day Play (1963) Total Conception of the 6 Day O.M. Theatre Play (1963) On the Symbolism of the Side-Wound (1964) The Lamb Manifesto (1964) O.M. Theatre (1968) The Fall of Jerusalem (1971) Companion DVD nitsch-book-ver3.qxp:Nitsch Book 3/5/08 10:48 PM Page viii y s Nearly fifty years after his first actions it seems that Hermann Nitsch’s work, far v e i e g L from disappearing or reaching its conclusion, continues unabated, aspiring after r n O o nothing so much as its own reiteration; the pleasure of the work is that it aspires r d a o only after its renewal. It should therefore not be surprising that Nitsch makes A o l no effort to formulate any positive content to these perversions save that of B g repeatedly emphasizing their intensity, immediacy, and frequency—the third n i c attribute calling to mind Pierre Klossowski’s definition of transgression as that u 1 d which “principally reiterates itself only through the same act.” o r t n I In Nitsch’s Munich action of 1970, for instance, we watch as a naked woman is : t r tied to a wooden cross and her legs spread open with rope while she is enticed A (forced?) to drink animal blood.2 Blood and entrails are sacrificially poured over e m and in her genitalia, and finally the artist appears to penetrate the woman with e r t a dildo as the camera films from behind him. Nitsch’s early actions, which not x E only suggest but also mobilize metaphors of master/slave role-playing, n a pornography, and rape, represent for me a sort of intense blood orgy that has s d somehow defied temporal logic by continuing unabated to the present day r a through more than one hundred such actions. If not for the abrupt end of the w o film documentation, it is as if the event might continue on indefinitely—the T actors (notably the artist himself) immune to fatigue. Works such as these immediately call to mind the manifestos and work of Nitsch’s frequent collaborator, Otto Müehl, who in 1963, against the backdrop of a European cultural and urban landscape literally reduced to rubble by the 1 nitsch-book-ver3.qxp:Nitsch Book 3/5/08 10:48 PM Page 2 Second World War, invoked rhetoric of sacrifice and ruin when he wrote that “I can marks a kind of removal or extraction of the body from language or from imagine nothing significant where nothing is sacrificed, destroyed, dismembered, contemporaneity.”6 “The body,” Doherty reiterates, “is literally stripped of those burnt, pierced, tormented, harassed, tortured, massacred.... stabbed, destroyed, or things and garments that indicate, that signify, our belonging to a particular time, our annihilated.”3 belonging to the present. It’s a kind of initiation rite, an insertion of the body into the ritual space of Nitsch’s performance.” Undressing the body can be thus understood In his review of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s exhibition Out of Actions, as a cleansing ritual whereby problematic forms of sociality and the totalitarian Michael Rush highlights the role of the artist as agent of destruction, as suggested impulse that marks the historical period in which these works were first produced is by Otto Müehl above, arguing that “the voluminous documentation of Viennese thoroughly avoided. Actionists performing ritualized animal slaughters [suggest] an artworld willing to sacrifice anything to make connection with the world beyond the canvas.”4 In Another reason that Nitsch’s work is compelling, yet confusing, is that the performers Nitsch’s work, he continues, one has the sense that the human body has been often appear to have contractually conceded the rights to their own bodies by placing forced to register an annihilating impulse and “destruction” has become the primary, them in a position beyond their control. There are infrequent but important moments perhaps exclusive, pathway to artistic practice and social freedom. But what are the in these highly choreographed performances when participants, imitating models underlying characteristics of this art of destruction? How can we understand this art whose naïve confidence or enjoyment they can never get quite right, seem to of destruction as a form of resistance to the “totalitarian impulse” and its aesthetic challenge the ritual processions by offering the viewer some acknowledgement that aftermath? their subjection is for real. Although this sense of entrapment appears occasionally, it should be understood as offering up the only possibility that the next actions will The Viennese Actionists’ mimetic turn, in which they thought of art as a series of always differ in kind or in metaphor from the preceding actions. sacrificial metaphors, is for Rush not an attempt to draw inspiration from the “totaliarian impulse” of World War II, but rather a utopic refutation and an Accordingly, the performers in Hermann Nitsch’s actions come across as doomed to expressionist response to a decimated cultural and political landscape. “Repulsed by a suspended existence between art and life: they must artfully imitate a state of war,” Rush writes, “resenting the societal repressions and totalitarian impulse of existence that they now suddenly inhabit, that has irreducibly been made their own National Socialism (Nazism), and rejecting museumized Modernism, these artists reality. But the ritualistic frenzy, celebration, and dramatizations cannot eradicate the sought a direct art that reflected the releasing of unconscious impulses…”5 How, in occasional anguish. What measure of self-consciousness do the characters particular, does this direct art resist the totalitarian temptation yet embody the themselves possess? With what degree of naturalness or ill-ease might they release of unconscious impulses? And how can we avoid hallucinating fascism when mobilize this self-consciousness after the performance has come to a close? The encountering works such as Nitsch’s Munich action of 1970? obsessive theatricality of Nitsch’s performances is further compounded by the viewer’s awareness of the lack of speech among the participants.