THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA Performance Art After the 1990S
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THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA DOI number 10.2478/tco-2020-0005 Performance Art After The 1990s Liviu NEDELCU Abstract: Performance art has become over-represented in contemporary art museums, at art fairs, at major international exhibitions. In this context, I have proposed a brief overview of the history of performance in North America and Europe, to identify conceptual variations or continuities in post-1989 performing arts practices. What kind of queries caused the resort to the body? Which of the criticisms are still current and which new issues are formulated in the present geopolitical framework or in particular socio-political contexts? In order to answer these questions, I’ve selected a number of national and international male/ female artists whose practices illustrate the main directions in today's performance art. Key words: Performance, Fluxus group, Hosé Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Marina Albu Performance is a medium of expression used by artists from different generations who had a common purpose to provoke the cultural, political, social and economic status quo. Performance is a language present within avant-garde movements, an instrument for disturbing and activating the public, for expanding the art sphere. These avant-garde impulses, attenuated until the fifth decade, are taken over and extended into the artistic practice of John Cage and Merce Cunningham of Black Mountain College. Mundane Lecturer PhD, Faculty of Arts, Dunărea de Jos University of Galaţi 74 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA elements, gestures, actions of people are considered sources and tools for art. Mundane sounds, silence are used in the happenings of John Cage, while Cunningham gives up the narrative and dramatic dimension of dance, inserting ordinary movements - the sitting in the chair, the walking1. The artists feel the incompatibility of art with the real existence, its ideal dimension and aim to dissolve the barrier between art and life. "Art has become an "ideal world, departed from reality and capable of only indirect references to the existence that most people carry", wrote Allan Kaprow in "Assemblies, Environments and Happenings”2. The fluid maintenance of the line between art and existence (Allan Kaprow) is not the only aspect covered by the authors of happenings and, subsequently, of performances. The artist-public hierarchy, the process of passive contemplation, the monumental time, the accessibility of the work of art are refused and remodelled notions. In 1952 at Black Mountain College the happening "Untitled Event" took place; it included a variety of artistic practices (concert, dance, poetry recitation, a silent lecture, a series of white paintings by Rauschenberg) and eliminated the traditional division of theater-specific space - the sphere where art is produced and the area designed for a passive audience that 1 Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art from Futurism to Present, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1988, p. 81 2 Allan Kaprow, in „Assemblies, Environments and Happenings”, H. N. Abrams, 1966, p. 56, apud Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Art in Theory, Oxford, Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 704 75 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA receives the artistic product, conforming to a predetermined behavioural code. John Cage reconfigured the viewer's position, from a peripheral entity, he became an integral part, a part of the material for the event. "A theater in which we are at the center is much more relevant to our daily experience ... a theater in which action takes place around us3." Cage's avant-garde influences and happenings show an influence on the activity of the Fluxus movement, created in 1961 by George Maciunas. Fluxus denounced all forms of alienation, claiming that everything is art and that anyone can make art. The philosophy of the movement focuses on the denial of ability as an essential feature of the creation of the artwork, of the seriousness, of the careful planning, proposing to replace the old imperatives with the freedom to let chance act; the same holds true for playfulness and simplicity which are to define the new works. Art becomes similar to life, by celebrating the constituent element of human existence - chance. In parallel with the playful happenings of the American artists, in the conservative space of Austria, a group of artists gathered under the name of Viennese Actionism. The expressionist foundation of the actions taken was suggested by the dramatic intensity of the artists4. Social taboos (sacrifice, bodily fluids, fetishized female body) were transgressed for the purpose of liberating the individual. 3 John Cage, apud Lea Vergine, Art on the Cutting Edge, Milan, Skira Editore, 2013, pp. 43- 44 4 Roselee Goldberg, Performance Art from Futurism to Present, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1988, p. 164 76 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA Sacrifice and violence were considered inhibited elements by Western culture and mass culture. In the 1980s, performance became an expression medium for testing the physical and mental limits both in the West (Gina Pane, Chris Burden, Bary LE VA) and in the Eastern European space at the Belgrade Cultural Center in Hungary. The Rhythm series of artist Marina Abramović is based on the endurance of the body due to external factors. Gina Pane creates language through self-mutilation, in order to diminish the state of abolition of individuals incapable of empathizing with the victims of the Vietnam War or of experiencing a state of discomfort with the violence perpetuated during the conflict. The potential of the performance to become a crossroad for the two divided spheres in society, namely the personal and (public) political one determines its assimilation; this occurs at the end of decade seven and during decade eight, by the feminist artists who wish to convey a message with impact on the cultural and social experiences of women5. If in the 1960s - '70s performance was used to expand the art sphere, to produce a dematerialization of the artistic object, to draw art from the auspices of the market and institutions from the sphere of art that transformed it into goods, in the 1990s performance became for some artists an instrument to transform a society threatened by technological development; this was achieved by offering "ways of life and ways of 5 Peggy Phelan și Helena Reckitt, Art and Feminism, London, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 28, 29 77 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA sociability"6, and for a number of artists from Russia, a language of protest. The machines that replace human beings, the separation of communication channels affect human relations. Artists create user-friendly situations that promote values such as neighbourhood, consensus and where participants discuss different topics, creating authentic communication. Rirkrit Tiravanja engages viewers in the daily activity of cooking and eating Thai-specific products together in the 1992 "Untitled" performance, in order to create a conviviality, to propose a model of sociability as Bourriaud calls the artist's intention. A similar action of setting in an institutional framework of a routine, that of cooking, is performed by Alison Knowles, a member of the Fluxus group, in 1962, but intended for another purpose, to expand and produce the dissolution of art in life. The performances in Russia concern socio-political and economic issues. Alexander Brener creates a series of performances in the 90s that criticize the political power, the art market, the museum institution, the artistic object that is predisposed to end up transformed into a good. In 1995, in the middle of winter he went out to the Red Square, half naked, with boxing gloves to provoke Yeltsin, the president of Russia during that period, to a confrontation. Two years later, he entered Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art and spray-painted the dollar sign on the painting Suprematism by Malevich. During the Interpol exhibition, created with the aim of generating a dialogue between East and West, in the context of a period when there had been attempts to map the art from the East, separating it from the Western 6 Nicolas Bourriaud, Estetica relațională, Cluj, IDEA Design & Print, 2007, p. 27 78 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA one, Alexander Brener destroyed the installation of artist Wenda Gu. Aggression is sometimes manifested against his own body, as in one of the performances the artist staples his back. Oleg Kulik, during the same exhibition (Interpol), takes on the role of a dangerous dog, physically attacks the viewers, blocks the circulation. In I love Europe, Europe does not love me, Kulik replaced the political, economic center of Joseph Beuys’s performance, I love America and America loves me and transformed the affirmation of mutual love into a denial. Europe was personified by a group of dogs trained to respond when attacked, an action that Kulik undertook by taking over the role of a dog that could be tamed. Crazy Dog is a performance that brings together Alexander Brener and Oleg Kulik in an action similar to that of Valie Export and Peter Weibel on the streets of Vienna in an attempt to reveal the power play in gender relations (From the Underdog File). Brener walked Kulik who wore a collar to show his dangerous dog posture. Petr Pavlensky creates performances in which his own body is attacked (sewed, placed in a barbed wire cocoon) in protest against attempts to limit freedom of expression, to violate human rights, to institute censorship and intimidation. The first echo performance was held in 2012 when he appeared at the Kazen Cathedral with his lips sewn in protest for the arrest of the members of activist group Pussy Riot - after Punk Prayer. The following year he inserted his body into a barbed wire cocoon and stood in front of the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg, criticizing the new series 79 THEATRICAL COLLOQUIA of laws that affected the exercise of freedom of expression and a prominent activist movement through a performance called Carcass. A number of artists have been performing since the 2000s, and their intentions vary depending on the reality problems they take on and set up as subjects.