The Art of Performance a Critical Anthology
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THE ART OF PERFORMANCE A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY edited by GREGORY BATTCOCK AND ROBERT NICKAS /ubu editions 2010 The Art of Performance A Critical Anthology 1984 Edited By: Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas /ubueditions ubu.com/ubu This UbuWeb Edition edited by Lucia della Paolera 2010 2 The original edition was published by E.P. DUTTON, INC. NEW YORK For G. B. Copyright @ 1984 by the Estate of Gregory Battcock and Robert Nickas All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. Published in the United States by E. P. Dutton, Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 79-53323 ISBN: 0-525-48039-0 Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition Vito Acconci: "Notebook: On Activity and Performance." Reprinted from Art and Artists 6, no. 2 (May l97l), pp. 68-69, by permission of Art and Artists and the author. Russell Baker: "Observer: Seated One Day At the Cello." Reprinted from The New York Times, May 14, 1967, p. lOE, by permission of The New York Times. Copyright @ 1967 by The New York Times Company. David Bourdon: "An Eccentric Body of Art." Reprinted from Saturday Review of the Arts 1, no. 2 (February 3, 1973), pp. 30-32, by permission of Saturday Review of the Arts and the author. Cee S. Brown: "Performance Art: A New Form of Theatre, Not a New Concept in Art." Copyright @ 1983 by Cee S. Brown. Printed by permission of the author. Chris Burden and Jan Butterfield: “Through the Night Softly." Reprinted from Arts 49, no. 7 (March 1975), pp. 68-72, by permission of Arts and the authors. For their help in the preparation of this anthology, I wish to thank David Shapiro, Barbara Goldner, and Cyril Nelson. I am also grateful to the Sonnabend Gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Inc., the Byrd Hoffman Foundation, and Holly Solomon Gallery for kindly providing access to their photographic files. 3 CONTENTS Introduction Part 1: Historical Introduction Attanasio Di Felice: Renaissance Performance: Notes on Prototypical Artistic Actions in the Age of the Platonic Princes RoseLee Goldberg: Performance: A Hidden History Annabelle Henkin Melzer: The Dada Actor and Performance Theory Ken Friedman: Fluxus Performance RoseLee Goldberg: Performance: The Golden Years Part 2: Theory and Criticism Michael Kirby: On Acting and Not-Acting Cee S. Brown: Performance Art: A New Form of Theatre, Not a New Concept in Art François Pluchart: Risk as the Practice of Thought Peter Gorsen: The Return of Existentialism in Performance Art Wayne Enstice: Performance Art’s Coming of Age David Shapiro: Poetry and Action: Performance in a Dark Time Herbert Molderings: Life Is No Performance: Performance by Jochen Gerz Part 3: The Artists David Bourdon: An Eccentric Body of Art Vito Acconci: Notebook: On Activity and Performance Robin White: An Interview with Terry Fox Chris Burden and Jan Butterfield: Through the Night Softly Les Levine: Artistic Rob La Frenais: An Interview with Laurie Anderson David Shapiro: Notes on Einstein on the Beach From Jail to Jungle: The Work of Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik 4 INTRODUCTION Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space. It applies itself to space like a hand to an instrument; and when we wish to move about we do not move the body as we move an object. We transport it without instruments as if by magic, since it is ours and because through it we have direct access to space. For us the body is much more than an instrument or a means; it is our expression in the world, the visible form of our intentions. Even our most secret affective movements, those most deeply tied to the humoral infrastructure, help to shape our perception of things. —MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY¹ [Performance] really is an attempt at synthesizing communication. It's an attempt at a new communication. But the only people this art exists for are the people who are there. And it's the only time the art exists. —TERRY FOX² I dream of the day when I shall create sculptures that breathe, perspire, cough, laugh, yawn, smirk, wink, pant, dance, walk, crawl… and move among people as shadows move along people. —DAVID MEDALLA³ Before man was aware of art he was aware of himself. Awareness of the person is, then, the first art. In performance art the figure of the artist is the tool for the art. It is the art. —GREGORY BATTCOCK4 The final epigraph comes from The Art of Performance, the catalogue to an exhibition of performances held in Venice in the summer of 1979, from which the title of this book was chosen. The exhibition was only one of many international festivals and symposia presented between 1977 and 1980 in New York, Montreal, and primarily, in Europe. In addition to providing an official acknowledgment of the form, these events clearly identified performance as the art form most characteristic of the 1970s. What was most startling about these events and what set them apart from most traditional exhibitions up to that time, as the Battcock quote suggests, was their emphasis on the selection of artists over, or rather than, artworks. This was certainly the rule rather than the exception. In many cases the organizers of these events saw the artworks at the same time as the public, not in advance of them. So, in presenting artists whose work was live, in real time, they were taking a risk (along with the artists), one to which they were historically unaccustomed. Yet, take it they did, as the substantial number of festivals staged during the late 1970s, as well as the staggering amount of performances presented at them, would indicate. And although these events generated an equally substantial amount of theories, questions, and lively dialogue, the term performance, in use since the early years of the decade, was always loosely defined. It remains so; then, as now, encompassing a broad area of activity by a wide variety of artists with diverse styles, methods, and concerns. This lack of a strict definition, however, was not necessarily bad. For a number of reasons it proved advantageous to the artists and to the development of the form. performance was suited to experimentation in ways that traditional forms such as painting and sculpture, with their restrictions and physical limitations, were not, neither could they expect to be. Undefined, there were no rules to break. Artists were able to employ the widest range of subject matter, using virtually any medium or material; they could present their work at any time, for any duration of time, at the location of their choosing, in direct contact with their audience. Artists who came to performance were able to investigate their relationship with their audience, from whom they had previously been far removed. It can be said that prior to performance, art's audience saw the work 5 of artists, the art product, with greater regularity than it saw the artist or the production of art. With performance it was simultaneously witness to both. As such, artists had new access to the reception of their work—no longer relying solely on critics and dealers, with their own interests at stake—and they achieved a degree of control over the presentation and destination of their work. In addition, performance artists were liberated from the art object and all it entailed. This liberation offered the possibility of moving toward an art in which the idea would dominate. Performance, like Conceptual art, would enable the artist to shun mere pictorial values in favor of true visual communication: art as a vehicle for ideas and action. All of this meant that art no longer had to conform to established formats, and it would never be quite the same again. Undefined, performance was independent of current trends and traditional forms, and this independence guaranteed, for a time, that performance art would remain controlled and guided by the artists who originated the form. So, the lack of a strict definition was indeed an advantage, for without clear and determined boundaries, performance was an open territory from its very beginnings. In the early 1970s, then, this was what attracted artists to performance. As Michel Benamou has written, "One might ask what causes this pervading need to act out art which used to suffice itself on the page or the museum wall? What is this new presence, and how has it replaced the presence which poems and pictures silently proffered before? Has everything from politics to poetics become theatrical?"5 For performance artists such as Vito Acconci and Stuart Brisley, it would seem that at some point the art was no longer wholly sufficient on the page or the museum wall. Brisley, one of the pioneers of performance in England, had produced objects up to 1966, by which time he had "reached a crisis point. I couldn't go on working with material," he claimed, "it had arrived at its own conclusion and I had to go a stage further." That stage further was to be a turning point for Brisley, whose new material became process, a "material" he could use "without actually making an object, and that was a great release."6 Before coming to performance, to "streetworks" such as Following Piece (1969) and to "performance situations" such as Claim (1971), for which he was to become well known, Vito Acconci was a poet.