Performance Art; Theory and Studio
In this theory lecture we looked at the idea of performance art and the way in which this art form can challenge the way in which we perceive or appreciate the art form. We are always told to cross-link modules in order to broaden our horizon when developing work within studio projects so therefore, when thinking about imminent self, I am going to try and bring in this theory.
In the lecture we were shown performance art to try and enhance our visual analysis module by which we are required to think outside the box and more ambiguously. We were introduced to Nicholas Bourriaud, who came up with the theory of Relational Aestetics. The French curator Nicholas Bourriaud published a book called Relational Aesthetics in 1998 in which he defined the term as:
A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space
He saw artists as facilitators rather than makers and regarded art as information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. The artist, in this sense, gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world.
This inspired me to go away and research into performance art. Marina Abramović is a very confrontational artists who works with very prominent social issues. In four decades as a performance artist, Marina Abramović has had a stranger point a loaded gun at her head, sat in silence for 700 hours and set herself on fire. Earlier this year, just before she began her 700-hour-long performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Marina Abramović was asked by an art critic to define the difference between performance art and theatre:
"To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre," she replied. "Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real."
In her 40-odd years as a performance artist, Abramović has dealt in what she calls "true reality", often at great physical and psychological cost. She has stabbed her hand with knives and sliced her skin with razor blades. She has lain naked on a cross of ice for hours. She has allowed the public to prod, probe and abuse her prone body. Once she almost died when a performance, in which she lay inside a huge flaming star made of petrol-soaked sawdust, went horribly wrong. (The fire sucked the oxygen from around her, causing her to pass out).
"I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself," she says, "but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it. It goes back to them in a different way. This is why people in the audience often cry or become angry or whatever. A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room."
This has ultimately influenced me to look at perfomance art. When creating an imminent self project based around the idea of self and the most personal self you can be, this could then influence ideas surrounding using the person to actually design the editorial or zine campaign; thus challenging the idea of who the artist is and whether I am the artist because I came up with the concept or whether the user is the artist because they are calling all the shots. This perfomance will be documented and recorded within the final outcome.
