ART HISTORY

SETTING: A podium on stage right. A table and chair stage left.

AT RISE: Stage left is dark. Stage right is lit. NEA RESEARCHER is standing behind podium.


NEA RESEARCHER
(reading from notecards. Although still no great orator, NEA RESEARCHER’s public speaking skills have improved markedly since her previous appearance.)
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Committee, as you know, I was charged with the investigation of so-called “Community Standards”. I say “so called”, because despite hundreds of hours of research, my colleagues and I have come to doubt whether the term “Community Standards” has any tangible meaning at all. How can “Community Standards” be applied to any work of art, when the artists themselves are free to define communities in any way that they choose?

(Stage right fades to black. Lights come up stage left, revealing ZHA’ING sitting at table.)

ZHA’ING
My fellow Trafalmadoreans, I bring you our latest footage of that phenomenon which the natives of Earth call “Art”. I do not pretend to understand what you will see here, so I will allow the video to run without comment.

(DIRECTOR appears on stage left video projection.)

DIRECTOR (on video)
I think the public has gotten bored with the whole tortured artist schtick. Modernism was all about the artists’ existential anguish, and as an artist it was one’s professional duty to become tormented, get addicted to absinthe, and die of the cough.

(Stage left lights and video to black. Lights come up stage right. A self-portrait of Van Gogh is projected on the screen above NEA RESEARCHER.)

NEA RESEARCHER
Late Sunday evening December 23, 1888, Vincent Van Gogh, then 35 years old, cut off the lower half of his left ear and took it to a brothel, where he asked for a prostitute named Rachel and handed the ear to her, asking her to "keep this object carefully."
(Meanwhile, the “infographic” shows Van Gogh’s ear being removed.)

(Stage right lights and projection go black. Lights come up stage left, and the video of the DIRECTOR resums on the stage left projection screen.)

DIRECTOR (on video)
Although I respect artists like Gina Pane and Chris Burden, I think that in some ways they didn’t go far enough. Sure, they did some pretty shocking things on stage, but just because their acts were so shocking, the theatrical event itself became increasingly distanced from the audience. In a Survival Research Labs performance, the fourth wall isn’t just an aesthetic convention: it’s an utterly indispensible emotional safety device.

(Stage left fade to black. Lights come up stage right. The following narratives are accompanied by a slide show that begins with still images of Gina Pane’s and Chris Burden’s performances, then goes on to images by Jackson Pollock, then Mondrian and Miro, then Klee, Rauchenberg, Magritte, Serra, Dali, Andy Warhol, H.R. Geiger, Heironymous Bosch, Robert Mapplethorpe’s nudes, Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers, and finally erotic Indian religious art.)

NEA RESEARCHER
The artist Gina Page cuts herself with razorblades during her performances. In Chris Burden’s 1971 performance piece, “Shoot”, the artist had himself shot in the arm with a 22 long rifle. “Coum Transmissions” are, or were, a performance art group that featured two of the founding members of Throbbing Gristle: Genesis P Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. Here is an excerpt of an interview with Genesis P Orridge.

GENESIS P ORRIDGE (noisy audio recording)
I used to do things like stick severed chicken's heads over my penis, and then try to masturbate them, whilst pouring maggots all over it
(recording cuts abruptly to a different section)
In Los Angeles, in 1976, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, Cosey and I did a performance where I was naked, I drank a bottle of whiskey and stood on a lot of tacks. And then i gave myself enemas with blood, milk and urine, and then broke wind so a jet of blood milk and urine combined shot across the floor in front of Chris Burden and assorted visual artists. I then licked it off the floor, which was a not-clean concrete floor. Then I got a 10-inch nail and tried to swallow it, which made me vomit. Then I licked the vomit off the floor and Cosey helped me lick the vomit off the floor. And she was naked and trying to sever her vagina to her navel with a razor blade-- well, she cut it from her vagina to her navel with a razor blade, and she injected blood into her vagina which then trickled out, and we sucked the blood from her vagina into a syringe and injected it into eggs painted black, which we then tried to eat. And we vomited again, which we then used for enemas. Then I needed to urinate, so I urinated into a large glass bottle and drank it all while it was still warm. This was all improvised. And then we gradually crawled to each other, licking the floor clean. 'Cause we don't like to leave a mess, y'know; after all, it's not fair to insult an art gallery. Chris Burden, who's known for being outrageous, walked out with his girlfriend, saying, "This is not art, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, and these people are sick." In Amsterdam we did a performance in the red-light district. The people in the theater asked, "What kind of lighting do you want?" and we said, "Oh, just put on all the red lights." Then we played tapes of Charles Manson's LP, Lie, cut-up with soundtracks of trains going through thunderstorms, and we went through all all different kinds of fetishes. Sleazy cut his throat and had to kind of do a tourniquet on his throat, and Cosey and i did this thing of spitting at each other and then licking all the spit off, and then licking each other's genitals, and then having sexual intercourse while her hair was set on fire with candles. There was an audience of around 2,000 people. And each day it got heavier, so that on Easter Sunday I was crucufied on a wooden cross, whipped with 2 bullwhips, covered in human vomit and chicken wings and chicken legs, while I had to hold burning torches - people in the audience could hear the skin burning on my hands. And then i urinated down Cosey's legs while she stuck a lighted candle up her vagina, so there were flames coming out of her vagina. Just ordinary everyday ways of avoiding the commercials on the television
(recording cuts off abruptly.)

(Stage right lights and projection to black. Lights come up stage left, and the video of the DIRECTOR resumes on the stage left projection screen.)

DIRECTOR (on video)
Paradoxically, in bringing theatre that close to real life, they were pushing the audience further away.

ZHA’ING (on video, from out-of-frame)
So how would you bring the audience closer?

DIRECTOR (on video)
Don’t reveal so much about how you’re doing what you’re doing. If I know that the bullet is real, then I’ll react one way. If I know that it’s fake, I’ll react another way. But what happens when you lead the audience to believe that the gun contains blanks, when in fact it contains live ammo?

ZHA’ING (on video, from out-of-frame)
What difference could it make?

DIRECTOR (on video)
Because there’s a difference between an actor screaming in pain and an actor screaming because they are pretending to be in pain. You hear the difference. Even if you don’t know that you do, you do. No matter how certain you are that it’s just acting, a true cry of pain will create that tiny moment of doubt. Could it be? Could it be? And it’s that moment of doubt where the magic is. That’s theatre. That’s the bottom line. That’s the money shot right there, baby.

(Stage left lights and video cut to black. Lights come up stage right.)

NEA RESEARCHER
...and has become only a forum in which to parade one’s own mental illnesses. This sort of art is nothing but a gateway leading young people into lives of drug-addiction and madness.

(Stage right fades to black. Stage left video shows a rehearsal scene in which BALLET STUDENT is standing, wearing a white robe and a crown of thorns, and holding a box with a large ugly knife-blade sticking out of the top.)

DIRECTOR (on video, from out-of-frame)
So this is where the ballet student comes in and does that Messiah-complex piece, the one he/she threatened us with in act three.

BALLET STUDENT (on video)
This is where I walk in with this ugly-as-sin gag knife and pretend to stigmata myself.
(BALLET STUDENT demonstrates the gag nature of the knife.)
There will be a bag of stage blood held here.

ZHA’ING (on video, from out-of-frame)
And this simulated self-mutilation will communicate what?

DIRECTOR (on video, from out-of-frame)
It’s sort of an expression of

BALLET STUDENT (on video)
(overlapping previous line)
I think it’s really a symbolic gesture

DIRECTOR (on video, from out-of-frame)
(overlapping previous line)
You’ll see.

BALLET STUDENT (on video)
(overlapping previous line)
or really an expression of

DIRECTOR (on video, from out-of-frame)
(overlapping previous line)
You’ll see. You’ll see.

(Stage left lights and video cut to black. A special comes up illuminating the centerline. Enter BALLET STUDENT up stage center. HE/SHE is wearing a white robe and a crown of thorns, and carrying the gag-blade box.)

BALLET STUDENT
(walking down center)
I got so frustrated, I smashed the bottle on the ground.
(puts box down, blade-up, down stage center)
Maybe my feet needed just a little toughening up.
(raises one foot over blade)
Maybe some blood on my soul would give me that extra spin I needed. No pain, no
(stamps foot on blade and screams in pain, collapses to floor, then drags HIM/HERSELF up center, leaving a trail of blood from the gag-blad box which remains lodged in his/her foot. fade to black.)

END OF “ART HISTORY”


******



In some cases, the will to violence requires great care and collaboration, most famously exemplified perhaps in Chris Burden’s 1971 piece Shoot, in which the artist had himself shot. Burden’s description: "At 7:45 P.M. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket 22 long rifle. My friend was standing about fifteen feet from me." While not exactly self-inflicted, Burden’s wound was conceived of and determined by Burden himself. The bullet, originally meant to only "graze" his skin, actually pierced his flesh. The photograph taken of him after the event shows him with a look of both fear and triumph. The action was sacrificial as well as empirical: to feel the pain of the bullet, to put the body at risk. Burden specifically manufactured the violence, in the context of the gallery space, to isolate the act of being shot within the context of the gallery space.
[http://nyartsmagazine.com/62/urges.htm]

Chris Burden, Shoot, F Space, 1971


No less infamous is Chris Burden's work, Shoot. Ironically, its quite fresh in my mind as I saw documentary footage of it for the first time around a month ago . Of course, having a reputation that proceeds itself, I was certainly well familiar with the basics of the piece. In fact, despite my acute allergy to grand masculine gestures, I've always found it a bit fascinating. The script is simple and the action, minimal. Taking place at F Space on November 19, 1971, Burden recounts: 'At 7:45 p.m. I was shot in the left arm by a friend. The bullet was a copper jacket 22 long rifle. My friend was standing about 15 feet from me." Although astoundingly brief, the resonance of the piece was far reaching. The impact was immediate; documentation circulated, gossip propagated and the action received notoriety, thus securing its place in the annals of art history

Although hyped as the ultimate feat of endurance, after seeing the footage, that's not what came to mind. In fact ,quite the opposite, I was struck by the speed of the action. To put it another way, in less time than it takes to read the first word of this sentence, the bullet has traveled down the barrel of the rifle across 15 feet and penetrated Burden's arm. Quite literally, if you blink, you miss it. Burden himself was amazed at how quick the seminal piece was done saying: 'It was produced in a fraction of a second. To me that's interesting. It is not how long you work or how hard you work, {its} that I could make such and important work, and I could do it so quickly.' There's nothing grand or heroic about the piece. Its actually nonchalant if not verging on slacker, and that's precisely its virtue.

Where the classic black and white photographs of Burden holding his wounded arm towards the camera have a San Sebastion-like quality, the film is utterly unromantic. There is an unexpected 'reality TV' atmosphere to the footage; Burden builds anticipation by narrating over the sequence, telling us what to look for. Then the gun is cocked and 'bang' its over. There's no lingering in shock, recoiling in pain or displays of a gory injury; Burden just walks off screen. Through a singular minimal gesture, he instantaneously transformed his body into the ultimate object and produced a media spectacle par excellence.
[http://www.fudgethefacts.com/November01.html]

Chris Burden’s “Shot” was a small public performance in which he submitted to being shot in the arm. Gina Pane cut herself with razorblades and posed with roses to represent the anguish of love. Lucas Samaras, in a series of “Autopolaroids,” photographed himself dressed as famous nudes (like Degas’ “Bather”) and performing a mock self-castration with kitchen cutlery.

The concept of body image is central to Body art, and many female artists have seen the medium as the perfect vehicle for feminism. Female artists such as Carolee Schneemann, Eleanor Antin, and Yoko Ono focused on politics of the gendered body and female self-representation. Schneemann insisted that the impetus of the feminist performances was the act of “giving our bodies back to ourselves.”

Oddly, these self-affirming performances were often violent and disgusting, not celebratory. Schneemann performed while paint-smeared, snake-covered, and defiantly ugly. Her aggressive “Interior Scroll” piece involved a ranting oratory delivered as she pulled the scrolling text from her vagina. In Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece,” she sat still while members of her audience cut away pieces of her clothing. The performance questioned the distinctions between subject and object, victim and aggressor.

Precedents for Body art include Marcel Duchamp’s star-shaped haircut, and Joseph Beuys’ Actions. In “Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me,” Beuys videotaped a week-long performance in which he shacked up with a coyote.

Unfortunately, many performances reduce themselves to violence, as artists equate the tolerance of pain with artistic integrity. Sometimes, these performances are the artists’ final acts. Rudolph Schwarzkogler, a member of the gore-obsessed Viennese Actionists, died after a series of “artistic” shock therapy treatments. [last is a myth]
[http://www.artandculture.com/arts/movement?movementId=1541]

[http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0502/blood.htm
good source, long


COUM TRANSMISSIONS
... are, or were, a performance art group that featured two of the founding members of Throbbing Gristle: Genesis P Orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti. unlike certain performance artists - or at least, what most people consider performance artists to be like (i.e. Laurie Anderson), COUM were slightly different.

AXIS ARCHIVE of COUM TRANSMISSIONS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Genesis recalls: I used to do things like stick severed chicken's heads over my penis, and then try to masturbate them, whilst pouring maggots all over it...

In Los Angeles, in 1976, at the Isntitute of Contemporary Arts (LAICA), Cosey and I did a performance where I was naked, I drank a bottle of whiskey and stood on a lot of tacks. And then i gave myself enemas with blood, milk and urine, and then broke wind so a jet of blood milk and urine combined shot across the floor in front of Chris Burden and assorted visual artists. I then licked it off the floor, which was a not-clean concrete floor.

Then I got a 10-inch nail and tried to swallow it, which made me vomit. Then I licked the vomit off the floor and Cosey helped me lick the vomit off the floor. And she was naked and trying to sever her vagina to her navel with a razor blade-- well, she cut it from her vagina to her navel with a razor blade, and she injected blood into her vagina which then trickled out, and we sucked the blood from her vagina into a syringe and injected it into eggs painted black, which we then tried to eat. And we vomited again, which we then used for enemas.

Then I needed to urinate, so I urinated into a large glass bottle and drank it all while it was still warm. This was all improvised. And then we gradually crawled to each other, licking the floor clean. 'cause we don't like to leave a mess, y'know; after all, it's not fair to insult an art gallery. Chris Burden, who's known for being outrageous, walked out with his girlfriend, saying, "This is not art, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, and these people are sick." In Amsterdam we did a performance in the red-light district. The people in the theater asked, "What kind of lighting do you want?" and we said, "Oh, just put on all the red lights." Then we played tapes of Charles Manson's LP, Lie, cut-up with soundtracks of trains going through thunderstorms, and we went through all all different kinds of fetishes. Sleazy cut his throat and had to kind of do a tourniquet on his throat, and Cosey and i did this thing of spitting at each other and then licking all the spit off, and then licking each other's genitals, and then having sexual intercourse while her hair was set on fire with candles. There was an audience of around 2,000 people. And each day it got heavier, so that on Easter Sunday I was crucufied on a wooden cross, whipped with 2 bullwhips, covered in human vomit and chicken wings and chicken legs, while I had to hold burning torches - people in the audience could hear the skin burning on my hands. And then i urinated down Cosey's legs while she stuck a lighted candle up her vagina, so there were flames coming out of her vagina. Just ordinary everyday ways of avoiding the commercials on the television....
[http://www.brainwashed.com/tg/coum.html]