Pained Body, Performed Madness A study of the bio-political philosophy in He Yunchang’s performance art A Master’s Thesis for the Degree of Master of Arts (120 credits) in Visual Culture Chenru Xue Division of Art History and Visual Studies Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences Lund University KOVM12, Master Thesis, 30 credits Supervisor: Prof. Max Liljefors Spring semester 2018 ABSTRACT This thesis explores the considerations of bare life in He Yunchang’s performance arts, based on two of his works, One-meter democracy (2010) and Golden Sunlight (1999). I make a deep analysis of the images and archives of the two performances, about the artist’s artistic method of using visual signs. Furthermore, I interpret how the artist used the bodily pain to create figures. I also investigate how the performance art as an imitation of madness became a potential threat to the sovereign and law in some circumstances, based on the comparison with another two performance artists, Hua Yong from China and Pyotr Pavlensky from Russia. The circumstance of these artists corresponded to the situation He Yunchang has presented in both his works. The theoretical aspects of the bio-political philosophy are mostly from Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer theory and his definition of the State of Exception. Foucault’s description of madness in Madness and Civilization is also used to interpret why the performance art is seen as madness, from a historical perspective. Finally, these analyses will lead to a discussion of the relationship between performance art and modern politics which, as I conclude, could be seen as the conflict between madness and rational society. KEY WORDS He Yunchang Performance art Homo Sacer State of Exception Madness ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. ii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. v LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................... vi INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................... 1 Aim and research question ..................................................................................................... 1 Background and relevance ..................................................................................................... 2 Empirical material and delimitation ...................................................................................... 5 Theory and Method ................................................................................................................ 7 Previous research ................................................................................................................... 7 Disposition of the thesis ......................................................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 1: ONE-METER DEMOCRACY ......................................................................... 9 1.1 A description of the performance ..................................................................................... 9 1.2 Decoding the visual signs ............................................................................................... 11 1.3 Suffered body under the State of Exception ................................................................... 17 CHAPTER 2: GOLDEN SUNLIGHT................................................................................... 21 2.1 The ineffective action ..................................................................................................... 21 2.2 The heroic body .............................................................................................................. 24 2.3 The care for bare life ...................................................................................................... 26 iii CHAPTER 3: SACRIFICIAL RITUAL AND PERFORMED MADNESS ..................... 30 3.1 performance as a political tool ...................................................................................... 30 3.2 ritualized performance ................................................................................................... 32 3.3 spectacle and madness ................................................................................................... 34 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 40 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................. 42 Books .................................................................................................................................... 42 Journal Articles .................................................................................................................... 43 Thesis ................................................................................................................................... 43 Online Sources ..................................................................................................................... 44 APPENDIX ............................................................................................................................. 46 Quotations in Languages Other Than English .................................................................... 46 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: He Yunchang is suffering from the operation. Film still of recording film ONE METER DEMOCRACY, 3’51”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaoHlFxA54. Access date: Feburary 1st 2018, p.10. Figure 2: He Yunchang with voters after the operation.[online photograph] Accessed from: http://www.gdmoa.org/zhanlan/threeyear/Thefourth/22/1/images/pic4f38b05n.jpg. Access date: Feburary 1st 2018, p.11. Figure 3: A wound on He Yunchang’s body. Film still of recording film ONE METER DEMOCRACY, 6’02”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyaoHlFxA54. Access date: Feburary 1st 2018, p.12. Figure 4: He Yunchang, Goden Sunlight, 1999. Photograph. Copyright: He Yunchang. https://www.inkstudio.com.cn/zh/artists/78-he-yunchang/works/1192/, Access date: March 1st 2018, p.22. Figure 5: From left to right: He Yunchang, Goden Sunlight, 2012. Oil on canvas. http://www.hihey.com/artwork- 3605.html, Access date: March 1st 2018. He Yunchang, Inverted River, 2000. Photograph. Copyright: He Yunchang. http://epaper.bjnews.com.cn/html/2016-07/15/content_644181.htm?div=0，Access date: March 1st 2018, p.22. Figure 6: From left to right: Heinrich Füger (1751 – 1818, German), Prometheus Brings Fire to Mankind, 1817. Oil on canvas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Heinrich_fueger_1817_prometheus_brings_fire_to _mankind.jpg, Access date: March 3rd 2018. Jan Cossiers (1600 – 1671, Spainish), Prometheus Carrying Fire, 1630s. Oil on canvas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jan_Cossiers_-_Prometheus_Carrying_Fire.jpg, Access date: March 3rd 2018, p.24. Figure 7: Compositional analysis, edited by the author via Photoshop, p.25. v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Roland Barthes’ second-order sign system, p.14. Table 2: Decoding the second-order sign system of Figure 3, p.14. Table 3: Decoding the second-order sign system of ‘Yu Hu Mou Pi’, p.16. Table 4: Decoding the second-order sign system of Figure 4, p.29. vi INTRODUCTION Performance art has a history of over fifty years. In the eastern world, especially in China, because of the particularity of the societal system and the social environment, performance art has developed some forms and themes diverse from the west. He Yunchang is a Chinese performance artist, and his performances are mostly poetic and somewhat idealistic. Many includes the philosophy of Buddhism. For example, there are elements of endurance and purposeless behaviors in some of his artworks. Before 2010, which is when the performance One-meter democracy took place in Beijing, seldom did critics interpret his performances from political perspectives. However, One-meter democracy reflects He Yunchang’s opinion of a bio-political voting system and his care for people’s living conditions. One of his articles, The Fairy Tale of Adults, also showed his interests and care of how the marginalized people, or the people in the bottom of society, keep struggling for life. Therefore, I turned back to his earlier work, Golden Sunlight, and found that similar considerations also appeared in it. As a performance artist, He Yunchang does not have a wealthy living condition. The society he lives in still treat performance art as a socially unstable factor and a product of irrationality or even madness. This also adds impact, consciously or unconsciously, on He Yunchang’s performance artworks. His representation of the spirits of people struggling for life is also a reflection of how He Yunchang struggles as a performance artist in the mainstream art field. Aim and research question In this thesis, the aim is to carry out an in-depth analysis of two performance artworks of He Yunchang, in order to investigate the bio-political thoughts of how Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer theory was presented through his works. Another aim is to make comparisons with two activist artists, Hua Yong from China, and Pyotr Pavlensky from Russia, to discuss the bio- political influences on the consequences of their performances, and how their performances