City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 10-2014 Standard Deviations: Reality, Reproducibility, and Politics in Performance Art since 1989 Jonah Westerman Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/478 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Standard Deviations: Reality, Reproducibility, and Politics in Performance Art since 1989 by Jonah Westerman A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Art History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2014 i © 2014 Jonah Westerman All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Art History in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Claire Bishop_________________ _______________ ____________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Claire Bishop_________________ _______________ ____________________________ Date Executive Officer David Joselit____________________ Siona Wilson____________________ Boris Groys (New York University)__ Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Standard Deviations: Reality, Reproducibility, and Politics in Performance Art since 1989 by Jonah Westerman Adviser: Professor Claire Bishop Performance art is conventionally seen as having a privileged relation to reality because of the way it insists on the immediate experiences of specific human bodies, the full depth of which can never be adequately reproduced or captured. This understanding of performance as accessing authenticity through ephemerality has long made it a stage for artistic and political subversion. Since the early 1990s, however, a group of European artists responding to processes of globalization that have changed the nature of political economy—the demise of the Soviet Union, NAFTA, and new regulations concerning trade and travel in the E.U.—have developed performance strategies that unsettle the traditional understanding of performance that insists on the potency of an eruptive ephemerality. This dissertation discusses how the performance-based works of Santiago Sierra (b. 1966, Spain), Artur !mijewski (b. 1966, Poland), Christoph Schlingensief (1960-2010, Germany), and the artist collective, Neue Slowenische Kunst (formed 1984, Slovenia) use non-artist participants as a primary medium alongside photography, video, and web-based platforms to assert the reproducibility of both people and events. I argue that performance art since 1989 comprises a new mode of addressing audiences designed to illustrate how history persists and repeats in the present, especially when we imagine iv we can escape it. As such, each artist engages and describes a specific local horizon that defines a global totality in its own terms, at once acknowledging the newness of the post-1989 world and refuting it. The works I analyze present audiences with the “same” object of interpretation in order to elicit and describe the range of responses possible. I argue that every reproducible performance functions as a sonar ping, issuing from the work of art and mapping the surrounding human territory. From this notional zero-point, the work creates a political portrait, detailing a spectrum of opinions and speculating on their historical derivation. Because of how these works themselves deviate from traditional performance, they are able to chart a cognitive landscape that describes where each of us stands in relation to others—they picture us and our various pictures of the world as so many standard deviations. v Acknowledgments Working on this dissertation has been a pleasure and a privilege, not least of all because of the people and institutions integral to the process. I would like to thank The Graduate Center for the Dissertation Completion Fellowship that funded this final year’s writing, as well as a few key archivists and curators who furnished me with even more valuable material support in the forms of documents, texts, and conversations: Aleksandra Sa"a Nabergoj of the SCCA-Ljubljana Center for Contemporary Arts, #ukasz Ronduda of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, and Julia Glänzel of the Archiv Darstellende Kunst at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. I would also like to thank the artists of IRWIN for their intellectual generosity, which provided inestimable encouragement. A great many mentors similarly nurtured my enthusiasm while also pushing my thinking to levels of complexity and clarity I could never have reached on my own; I have tremendous gratitude for discussions with David Joselit, Siona Wilson, Boris Groys, Anna Chave, Geoffrey Batchen, Jennifer Ball, and John Brenkman. And to my adviser, Claire Bishop, I owe a profound debt. Her encyclopedic knowledge, razor intellect, careful discipline, and indefatigable pursuit of new things to be seen, thought, and said have lighted my path through this project and beyond. There is no greater compliment or spur than her having treated me as a colleague. And to my family and friends, my deepest appreciation of all. Wendy, Michael, and Ariel Westerman have supported me in ways too numerable to describe; their constant love and confidence have helped me through this dissertation and much else, besides. Very special thanks to J. Gabriel Boylan and Benjamin Tiven for being willing, incisive, and often hilarious interlocutors about all things theoretical and practical. Zachary Samalin has been my friend, family, and spiritual collaborator in fashioning precepts foundational to my sense of the world since long before this text started to take shape. Much of what’s best in this dissertation could not have existed without the influence of his intelligence and humor. And to my partner in all things, Lindsay Caplan, I owe more than I can ever possibly repay, though I will happily spend the rest of my life trying. Thank you, Lindsay, you’ve made my work, my life, and my relationship to art far richer than I could have ever dreamed. vi Table of Contents List of Illustrations vii Introduction Past Presence: Performance Art and the Politics of Rupture 1 Chapter One Abuse Value: People and Things in Santiago Sierra’s Post-Minimalism Significant Others 27 The Subject of Objecthood 37 The Object of Subjecthood 47 Spatial Relations 60 Chapter Two Gesamtkunstwurst: Christoph Schlingensief’s Multimedia Exorcisms Inclusion and Extrusion 74 The Reunification Follies, or Broadcasting 1989 81 Obscene Onscreen 88 The Geist in the Machine 92 Heavy History, Mass Media 100 From the Public Sphere to the Exorcist’s Séance 114 Chapter Three Repetition / Compulsion: Artur !mijewski, Autonomy, and Individuality Tabula Rasa 129 Analytic Subjectivism, or Fantastic Privacy 134 Repetitive Stress 141 Real Life and Anti-Realism, or Escape in Poland 147 Synthetic Subjectivism 155 Chapter Four Ambassadors of the Future Past: IRWIN and History as Readymade In Medias Res 173 Un/Official Art 176 Unoriginality and Modernist Myth 184 Tu m’, or IRWIN’s Readymade Reflections of The ‘Former East’ 191 Contesting Utopias, or The Importance of Place in the State in Time 203 Conclusion Standard Deviations: Performance Art and Spatial-Indexical Politics 224 Bibliography 239 Illustrations 245 vii List of Illustrations Chapter One 1.1. Santiago Sierra. Polyurethane Sprayed on the Backs of 10 Workers, 2004. 1.2. Santiago Sierra. The Wall of a Gallery Pulled Out, Inclined 60 degrees from the Ground and Sustained by 5 People, 2000. 1.3. Santiago Sierra. Object measuring 600 x 57 x 52cm Constructed to be Held Horizontally to a Wall, 2001 1.4. Santiago Sierra. 250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Paid People, 1999. 1.5. Santiago Sierra, 160 cm Line Tattooed on 4 People, 2000. 1.6. Santiago Sierra. Workers Who Cannot be Paid, Remunerated to Remain Inside Cardboard Boxes, 2000. 1.7. Marcel Duchamp. With My Tongue in My Cheek, 1959 1.8. Santiago Sierra. 4 Cubic Containers Measuring 250 x 250 x 250 cm, 1991. 1.9. Franz Erhard Walther (pictured with Sierra). work 46, 1968/2011. 1.10. Santiago Sierra. 50kg of Plaster in the Street, 1994. 1.11. Santiago Sierra. 50kg of Plaster in the Street, 1994. 1.12. Santiago Sierra, Polyurethane Sprayed on the Backs of 10 Workers, 2004. Chapter Two 2.1. Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), German television footage of The Day of German Unity, October 3rd, 1990. 2.2. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.3. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.4. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.5. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.6. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.7. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.8. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.9. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.10. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.11. Christoph Schlingensief, The German Chainsaw Massacre, 1990. (film still) 2.12. Christoph Schlingensief, Chance 2000, 1998. (campaign poster) 2.13. Christoph Schlingensief,