For Real

“This isn’t some kind of metaphor. Goddam this is real!”
Shellac “The Squirrel song”

The Closure of Critique

I artikkelen “The closure of Critique: embedding the new regime,” beskriver Jane Kelsey de dramatiske samfunnsendringene som har skjedd i New Zealand fra midten av 80-tallet og opp til i dag. I løpet av denne perioden gjennomgikk New Zealand endringer, som av politiske forvaltere, blir definert som såkalte ’structural adjustments’ eller strukturelle endringer men som iflg. Kelsey er snakk om en brutal nedbryting av et demokrati og en velferdsstat “- causing,” som hun skriver, economic decline and a dramatic increase in inequality. “
Videre i denne kritikken forsøker hun å vise hvordan “the artisans of neo-liberal governance, whether politicians, officials, academics or advisers,” benytter et pseudo-vitenskapelige språk som skjuler de egentlige motivene bak de ulike samfunnsreformene og de reelle sosiale og offentlige konsekvensene av dette.
Det pseudo-vitenskapelig aspektet av neo-liberalismen viser seg blant annet i en omfattende bruk av språk og metoder som pretenderer å være tuftet på et rent rasjonelt, objektivt og verdinøytralt grunnlag. På denne måten hevder hun at den også unndrar seg en plassering i en bestemt historisk og kontekstuell sammenheng.
Ord som ’strukturelle endringer’, ‘reformer’, ‘effektivisering’, ‘økonomisering’ og ikke minst ‘rasjonalisering’ gir alle et skinn av å være rent instrumentelle, teknisk begreper. De kolossalt nedbrytende endringene i sosial trygghet og velferd, indvidets demokratiske rettigheter og de økende sosiale klasseskillene, blir slik forklart som et resultat av å ha gjennomgått en ren teknisk, administrativ og økonomisk rasjonaliseringsreform. For som Kelsey også understreker, “The critical shift from state regulation to classical liberal contract law is again perceived as a matter of technique. (…) Yet techniques of law are a stratetgy for control. The law clothes with legitimacy the formal shift in power from citizens of the state to private actors who wield differential power in the commercial market-place. “
Det er på tale om en gjennomgående privatisering og kommersialisering av samtlige samfunnsområder av sosial og offentlig betydning inkludert den kulturelle sektor.
Det er slik på tale om en ny samfunnsorden som har redusert samfunnsborgeren til konsument i en privatisert og kommersiell markedsplass rolle i samfunnet og hvor statlige anliggender hele tiden blir målt opp mot finansielle effektiviseringsprinsipper.
“The (liberal contract) law provides the excuse for state or private agencies not doing more because of statutory, commercial and contractual constraints, and for monitoring and suppressing those who do not conform. “
Konklusivt fungerer det statlige økonomiske og administrative feltet som en mur mot enhver form for samsfunnskritikk hvor “The discourses of economic science, managerialism and contract law have erected an intellectual barrier which seeks to insulate them from critique and constrain any debate on alternatives to variations within the theme. “

An short english summary:

In the article, “The closure of Critique: embedding the new regime”, Jane Kelsey describes the dramatic changes that has occured in New Zealand since the mid-80’s.
These changes, that by politicians are being defined as so-called ’structural adjustments’  are in reality representing a brutal corrosion of democracy and the welfare state” causing,” as she writes,  economic decline and a dramatic increase in inequality. “
She furthermore describes how “the artisans of neo-liberal governance, whether politicians, officials, academics or advisers,” are using a pseudo-scientific language that hides its original motives and in intentions behind some of the real motives behind the different reforms in society as well as the real social and public consequences of this.
This represents according to Kelsey, a crucial element of neo-liberal methods, language and practice in that it conceals itself in a pseudo-scientific language that gives the impression of being rational, objective, and neutral.

The Long Weekend, Tate Modern, Maya Deren/Ikue Mori

The Art field and its narratives.

What often exhausts me about the art field, are the same narratives being played, recited and repeated again and again. As they keep being repeated, they have already become cliches. But still, the art world cannot do without them. There’s the narrative of modernism, the impure ideas of postmodernism following the great paradigm shift in art, the Duchampian revolution (though postmodernism is not the result of Marcel Duchamp’s readymade but must be seen in a bigger picture). And don’t say that modernism is dead because it’s not. Postmodernist theories cannot exist without its contrasting comparison to modernism.

The independent curator

One of my interest deals with the relationship between the artist and the curator. I am not so much thinking about the more traditional Curator who works for an established Museum or Gallery even though one undoubtedly can notice big changes within the established art sphere as well.
I am mainly thinking about a particular type of independent curator who entered the art scene in the beginning of the 1990’s. During this decade, one started to experiment with the social dimension in a similar way that one had seen during the Fluxus movement in the 60’s and the Performance art scene from the 60’s to the 80’s. However, in the 1990’s, one started to emphasis the construction and the obstruction of social events with what one may describe as another form of sophistication, characterized by being more jaded, ironic, more detached, where the awareness of how the art world is defined by certain values, certain markets and ideologies are being implemented as an important part of the work. Consequently, the social and the very change of roles, became an important part in its own right, that is, it became an art form in itself. There was a sense of anarchy here, resulting from the knowledge, that no art object contains any meaning or value in itself. The fact that something is being defined as art in the first place, is acquired meaning and is not an essential feature with a particular object.
Art is nothing without its discourse and not at least, the ongoing discussions and interpretations that one relate to it. And likewise, the artist’s creative ability is not an autonomos agent, something that exist solely within the artist, a potential genius core, a creativity of a mystical muse-like offspring. An artist belongs to a certain era, a certain historical time, living and working withing certain social contexts. He socialise with other likeminded artists, and others working within the arts sphere. What influence the artist is also very much connected to what he relates to in the external world. The artist like the rest of the population also dependent on a massive range of different societal and natural factors. The idea of the isolated, suffering artist who is blessed with a certain creative force that all comes from within wither whilst seeing it within a bigger perspective. The same goes for whether the artist will succeed or not, Who you are, who you knows, the way you are able to network, how many invitations you get and from whom, what scholarships and funding you receive, all this and more constitutes the bigger mapping of the art scene and how it works.
Most art today deals with appropriation and an understanding of how its social network and market works less than about crafting an object.

Appropriation, simulation and dystopia. Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”

In her book, “Oryx and Crake”, Margaret Atwood writes about a utopic world that tells the story of Snowman or Jimmy, as he used to be called, and the way he witness his best friend Crake’s biotechnological master plan of altering all life and how it became a reality. The first part tells about Jimmy’s upbringing, his education, his family and his changing relationship to Crake. I really enjoyed reading it and can highly recommend it. The reason why I mention it here, has to do with a short chapter that describes Jimmy’s studies at the Martha Graham Academy that is a good utopic take on the arts:
“The Martha Graham Academy was named after some gory old dance goddess of the twentieth century who’d apparently mowed quite a swath in her day. (…) The Academy had been set up by a clutch of now-dead rich liberal bleeding hears from Old New York as an Arts-and-Humanities college at some time in the last third of the twentieth century, with special emphasis on the Performing Arts- (-). To that had been been added Film-making in the 1980’s, and the Video Arts after that.(..) The students of song and dance continued to sing and dance, though the energy had gone out of these activities and the classes were small. (…) Theatrical events had dwindled into versions of the singalong or the tomato bombardment or the wet T-shirt contest. And though various older forms had dragged on -the TV sitcom, the rock video- their audiences was ancient ad their appeal mostly nostalgic.
So a lot of what went on at the Martha Graham was like studying Latin, or book-binding:pleasant to contemplate in its way, but no longer central to anything,..” (..) “As for Film-making and Video Arts, who needed them? Anyone with a computer could splice together whatever they wanted, or digitally alter old material, or create new animation. You could download one of the standard core plots and add whatever faces you chose, and whatever bodies too. Jimmy himself had put together, a naked “Pride and Prejudice” and a naked “To the lighthouse”, just for laughs, and in sophomore VizArts at the HeltWyzer he’d done “The Maltese Falcon”, with costumes by Kate Greenaway and depth-and-shadow styling by Rembrandt.(..)
“With this kind of attrition going in -this erosion of its former intellectual territory -Martha Graham had found itself without a very convincing package to offer. As the initial funders had died off and the enthusiasm of the dedicated artsy money had waned and endowment had been sought in more down-to-earth quarters, the curricular emphasis had switched to other arenas. Contemporary arenas, they were called. Webgame Dynamics for instance.(…) Or Image Presentation, listed in the calendar as a sub-branch of Pictorial and Plastic Arts. With a degree in PicPlarts, as the students called it, you could go into advertising, no sweat.” (Atwood, 2004, page 219 – 220)

Mandag hele året/Monday all year, Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen, 2004

Picture above shows the first Monday happening called “the t-shroom project”, the 26th of April 2004, which represented a collaboration with the art group Rakett, the Latvian art group called PRIMITIVE and art bureau OPEN. The photo is taken by Henrik O. Jenssen for Studvest. Published article on both paper and web 27/04-2004, issue (nummer) 13.

Monday all Year was a two day happening that I curated in Collaboration with Hordaland Art Centre, Bergen in 2004. As the title indicates, this exhibition dealt with art’s response to the various issues dealing with the trivial and repetitive issues of everyday life. There has always been a tension in art since modernity between everyday life and the attempt to escape its mundanity in favour of the more extravagant and the more subversively glamorous. This is for instance very well exemplified in Gustave Flaubert’s novel “Madame Bovary” which tells the story about Emma and her choice of leading a double life as a doctor’s wife and a mistress and how the harsh reality of financial burden from an extravagant lifestyle finally caught up with her in the end. Flaubert famously stated after he finished this novel, that “Madame Bovary, c’est moi. “(Madame Bovary, That’s me)
It is exactly this tension that the participants in Monday All year were invited to explore.
Art since modern time, has also been concerned with the attempt to emphasis the surreal and also the absurd and even ‘fantastic’ sides of everyday life, things we may take for granted by looking at the so-called normal everyday doings in a new perspective, attempting to break up our automatic perceptions of Monday all year consisted of a two-day happening, each occurring on different Mondays. The first Monday-happening took place the 26th of April 2004 and represented a collaboration with the curator group Rakett on something called the Tshroom project (See picture above). The Tshroom-project is again a project developed over years by a Latvian art group called PRIMITIVE and art bureau OPEN that wants to make sure the famous eastern european tea-mushroom is not going out of fashion after the defeat of communism. During Communist time, the tea-mushroom was found in one out of three soviet kitchens and were highly praised for its apparent health benefits. The mushroom was either passed from one generation to the next as a family heritage or it was acquired as a gift from friends.
The popularity of the mushroom has nevertheless faded after the fall of communism, where global soft-drink brands like Coca Cola has more or less taken over the market.

The picture shows part of Arne Magnar Rygg’s project, “Nothing to laugh at” for the Monday happening the 31st of May, 2004. The text on the toilet wall says “This way out to the real world.” Photo: Courtesy of the artist.

The next Monday happening took place the 31st of May at Hordaland Art Centre and was curated by Christian Bøen and myself. The King of Fusa or Morten Holmefjord. had for this occasion accepted to become this Monday’s patron and he sent a speech on DVD that was played during the opening. This exhibition consisted of both performances, a video-film programme, installations by Jorann Abusland and Arne Magnar Rygg, concerts with Snowjoggs, Termodress and Anders G, just to mention a few.
There are plans repeating the concept for other and different occasions in the future.

Kunsten og den avantgarde romantikk

“At gaae ud fra en Grundsætning og paastaae at erfarne Folk skal være forstandigt, jeg føier dem og gaaer ud fra den Grundsætning at alle Mennesker ere kjedsommelige. Ellers skulde der være Nogen, der vilde være kjedsommelige nok til at sige mig imod heri?”
“Søren Kierkegaard”. Fra Enten-Eller utgitt av Victor Eremita.

“Everything in her immediate surroundings, the boring countryside, the imbecile bourgeois, the general mediocrity of life, seemed to be a kind of anomaly, a unique accident that had befallen her alone, while beyond, as far as the eye could see, there unfurled the immense kingdom of pleasure and passion.”

Gustave Flaubert “Madame Bovary.”

Det var spesielt to litterære verk jeg festet meg ved i forbindelse med planleggingen av utstillingen “Mandag hele året”. Disse var “Enten-Eller” utgitt pseudonymt av Søren Kierkegaard, og “Madame Bovary” av Gustave Flaubert. Hos begge disse 1800-talls forfattere, finner vi en klar problematisering av de estetiske og mer romantiserende idealer sett i forbindelse men mest av alt i konflikt med en ‘hverdagslig’ og mer borgerlig oppkonstruert verden. Hos Kierkegaard skjer dette med en klar ironisering for øyet men også med en lengsel etter å være istand til å velge hverdagens repetisjoner framfor de mer kortvarige, ekstraordinære øyeblikkene. Valget av å gi seg hen til hverdagens gjentagelser, skulle iflg. forfatteren skille seg vesentlig fra borgerskapets verden og ikke minst det han oppfattet som det ureflekterte, programmerte livet som spissborgeren lever.
“Madame Bovary” omhandler en borgerlig ung kvinne ved navn Emma som er flasket opp på datidens romantiske masselitteratur og som lengter seg vekk fra hverdagen i provinsen som hustru til en trofast men forsagt landsbylege. Av den grunn innleder hun affærer med andre menn, blant annet til libertineren Rudolph. Romanen er satt til den provinsielle hverdag i 1800-tallets Normandie, men mesteparten av bokens innhold utheves på et annet plan; i Emmas sans for de estetiske settinger, møbler og draperinger kjøpt på kreditt og i erotiske eskapader. Men dette kostbare tidsfordriv setter Emma tilbake til den nådeløse realitet i slutten av boken når hun blir presset til å tilbakebetale sin gjeld. Når drømmen slår sprekker og hun heller ikke finner noen hjelp eller løsning på en uunngåelig økonomisk ruin, velger hun tilsist å ta sitt eget liv.

Spillet og konflikten mellom det til enhver tid konforme liv og de mer ekstraordinære øyeblikkene, har alltid spilt en avgjørende rolle i kunsten. 1800-tallets salongkunst var i stor grad ment å representere en sfære til estetisk forherligelse, noe som for en stakket stund fjernet deg fra livets mer banale realiteter. Denne arven ble videreført i formalismen som tilstrebet en estetisk autonomi eller en rendyrking av kunstens egenart.

F.o.m begynnelsen av 1900-tallet, utviklet der seg imidlertid avantgarde retninger som Dadaismen og senere Fluxus og Pop Art som hadde til hensikt å profanere kunstens forfinede sfære ved bl.a å lage kunst av hverdagsgjenstander slik en ser det i f.eks Marcel Duchamps readymade eller Andy Warhols brillobokser.
Fortolkningen av det uoversiktlige erfaringsfeltet, har også spilt en vesentlig rolle i det utvidede samtidskunstfeltet. På samme måte som den tidlige avantgarde tradisjonen opponerte mot det etablerte borgerskapets dobbeltmoral, forsøker deler av dagens kunst på en subversiv måte å relatere seg og gi sine versjoner av dagens teknokratiske, kapitalistiske og massemediale hverdag.
Men denne opposisjonen er imidlertid avhengig av det feltet den opponerer imot. I Norsk Kulturråds rapport “Risikosoner”, skriver Stian Grøgaard at kunst som identifikasjon må være sterk nok til å tåle inntak av hva som helst samtidig som den er avhengig av at utsiden respekterer grensene. (Ibid. side 27) Den avant garde tradisjonen var f.eks opptatt av å profanere bestående verdier men det skjedde både med det borgerlige apparat i bakgrunnen og innenfor kunstrommets fire vegger. For at kunstbegrepets kunstmagi skal kunne opprettholdes, trenger det altså en klar institusjonell beskyttelse for at ikke begrepet skal bli fullstendig tillintetgjort.

Vi har alltid vært romantiske

På samme måte som Emma i “Madame Bovary skaper den romantiske spenningen på en besteborgerlig bakgrunn, skaper kunstneren sine samtidsmytiske romantiske rom på bakgrunn av den samtiden han eller hun lever i. Abu Rasuls roman “The Coca Hola Company” romantiserer f.eks med sin hyperbolske og misantropiske stil. Slacker art estetiserer og derved også romantiserer det slacker-aktige. Bjarne Melgaard fremstår som en typisk kunstner dandy i måten han stiliserer seg selv på i relasjon til sin homo-erotiske kunst.

En må således ikke bare la seg forhekse av et opprørsk innhold men se uttrykket i dets stil og helhetlige kontekst.

Veien fra kunstens subkulturelle strømninger til kapitalens etablerte krefter, er heller ikke så lang. Stian Grøgaard skriver at avant-garden er blitt normalisert ettersom risikoen er blitt til samfunnets selvforståelse: “Selvsagt vet vi at ingen reservater i et kapitalistisk samfunn får være i fred, heller ikke kunst, raseringen av gyldighetsfærer er nærmest kapitalens bevegelseslov. (ibid. side 28)
I Abo Rasuls andre roman “Macht und rebel”, utgjør denne polemikken (Eller kanskje mangelen på sådan) bokens viktigste stilistiske element. Bokens hovedkarakterer, macht und rebel, befinner seg tilsynelatende i hver sin ytterkant av samfunnet. Rebel er en arbeidsledig nihilist mens Macht er en vellykket, glatt mann med god jobb i reklamebransjen. Macht er vellykket ettersom han har innsett at det er de subversive uttrykkene som selger. Av den grunn oppsøker han de subkulturelle miljøene for å fange opp uttrykk. Når han inngår en allianse med Rebel, går motsetningsparet opp i en form for nøytraliserende, nivellistisk syntese hvor det blir tydelig at alle tegn kan tømmes for meningsinnhold og brukes på nye subversive måter i fashion og reklame, inkludert pedofili og gamle nazi-symboler.

Utstillingen “Mandag hele året” føyde seg slik fint inn i retningen av post avantgarde uttrykk med sitt kunstekskluderende, happeningorienterte og ikke minst ved sin bruk av hverdagslige uttrykk som også utgjorde et viktig kuratorisk grep ved denne utstillingen.

Først ute var mandagen den 26. April med Rakett som presenterte kunstprosjektet T-shroom. Den estiske kunstnergruppen Primitive & Art Bureau OPEN har med prosjektet T-shroom spesialisert seg på distribusjon av den påstått helsebringende soppen kampucha som har vært et velkjent innslag i den tidligere sovjetiske hverdag. Studier viser at for 20 år siden var denne te-soppen å finne i ett av tre daværende sovjetiske kjøkken. Soppen var enten arvet som et klenodie fra en generasjon til neste, eller gitt som en gave venner imellom og kunne produsere årsforbruk av drikkevarer til hele familier. Sovjets fall og den økte vestliggjøring av Russland, har imidlertid gått hardt utover tesoppens popularitet som har måttet vike for drikker som Coca-Cola, Pepsi og diverse annet mineralvann. Primitive & Art Bureau OPEN har ønsket å belyse noe av dette og har blant annet begynt å distribuere soppen via sitt eget kunstnernettverk.
På Hordaland Kunstsenter var soppen blitt anbragt på tre-liters glass som igjen stod plassert på metallhyller. En viktig performativ del av utstillingen bestod i å tilby publikum en liten prøvesmak av soppen og å fortelle om alt den påståelig nok skal hjelpe mot.
På slutten av kvelden ble alle soppene loddet ut og de heldige vinnerne fikk også med seg en liten veiledning om hvordan de best skulle holde den i live og hvordan de kan ta avleggere av soppen som de kan gi videre til sine venner.
På veggen bak denne performative installasjonen, ble det projisert en video som bestod av intervjuer av en eldre generasjon russere som ennå sverget til å drikke tesopp. En eldre dame i videoen kunne imidlertid advare mot å spise av selve soppen. En hun kjente hadde gjort nettopp dette med meget uheldige resultater. Ifølge skrekkhistorien hadde soppen overlevd i magen på den uheldige kvinnen slik at hun måtte opereres for kilovis med sopp. Intervjuobjektene hadde tydelig både (over)tro og tillit til tesoppen.

Den 31. Mai, som jeg kuraterte sammen med Christian Bøen, hadde både et tidsbasert og et mer “permanent” program som stod hele kvelden. Det tidsbaserte programmet ble innledet med en velkomsvideo fra Visekongen av Fusa, utstillingens høyeste beskytter og gikk deretter over til å flette inn både videoer, lyd-prosjekter og
Videre bestod det tidsbaserte programmet av både videoer, lyd-prosjekter og konserter.
I programmet ble det blant annet vist en video av Lisbeth Nordli kalt “Travelling home” som er blitt filmet i Fjærlandstunnelen, nord-Europas lengste, som likevel representerer et temmelig ordinært innslag i norsk veilandskap. I det hele tatt er det
hvordan kunsten også kan fremheve det hverdagslige gjennom å bruke repetisjon som et stilistisk grep.

Av lyd-prosjekter kan nevnes Pine Splitter av Terje Øverås som gikk ut på å maltraktere Dum Dum Boys sang Splitter Pine ved hjelp av et bestemt lydprogram lastet ned fra internett. og Isaac Simas Hip Hop.

teknomusikkens varierte men likevel repetitive struktur som til tider gir inntrykk av å nå klimaks. (Her termodress, Snowjoggs og Club Vevendel) Dette er imidlertid bare tilsynelatende da oppbyggingen på denne musikken i regelen kan fortsette i det uendelige.

Jorann Abusland og hennes installasjon som blant annet tar utgangspunkt i et forsøk på å rekonstruere en drøm hun har hatt. David Lynch-aktig. i tillegg planteinstallasjonen hennes “Stolon” bestående av

Society of Nothing, kunne du banke på døren til virkeligheten,

Bilde viser detailj av Arne Magnar Ryggs prosjekt for Mandag hele året “Nothing to Laugh at”. Foto: Arne Rygg

Kunstig Liv/Artificial Life, Tou Brewery, Stavanger, 2003

Kunstig liv – or Artificial Life – was an exhibition that explored ways of understanding life in a technocratic time. Three artists were commissioned to do specific projects related to this subject matter. They were Morten Kvamme in cooperation with Ruben Patel (Norway), Dan Mihaltianu (Romania) and Jane Prophet (UK).

Kunstig Liv was held in Stavanger in 2003 with an opening on August 15th in Gallery ioLAB and at Tou old brewery. The exhibition lasts until September 13th. A symposium in cognition to the exhibition took place on Saturday August 16th in a former power station at Flørli in Lysefjorden, close to Stavanger. Participators here were Veronica Diesen, Ruben Patel, and Mike King.

Pictures above show from top down Decoy by Jane Prophet. Photo: Courtesy of the artist. Dan Mihaltianu’s video installation “An iodissey.” Photo: Courtesy of the artist. Morten Kvamme and Ruben Patel’s heat installation 37 Degrees. Photo: Arne Rygg.

“Performing the text – a critical approach to performance art.”

In the autumn of 2000, I assisted Robert Sot with the curation of the performance festival “End of Millenium.” at the Theatergarage in Bergen.
The participants were Alistair MacLennan, Richard Martel, Artur Tajber, Robert Sot, Paul Panhuysen Y-space, a performance duo from Hong Kong, and Andre Stitt. In cognition to this festival, I was also planning as well as chairing one section of a symposium called “Processes in Theatre, Art and Literature” in collaboration with INST, Vienna and Knut Ove Arntzen at the section for Theatre Studies, University of Bergen.The festival represented a collaboration between Bergen 2000 Krakow, Fortress of Art Foundation (Krakow) and the European Cultural City of Bergen.

In relation to this festival, I wrote an article for TRANS which is the web-periodical related to INST in Vienna. I have chosen to publish the text here because it many ways represents my ‘farewell’ working with and researching traditional performance art. The text can also be found on the TRANS web-page.

“Performing the text- a critical approach to performance art.

“Concepts lead us to investigation; our expression of interest, and direct our interest.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosophical investigations

Prologue

To display the fictitious, stylistic and rhetorical function of philosophical language, I have chosen to name my approach to performance art as a form of performing in itself. Since philosophical theory lacks a transcendental superiority, where one supposes that analysis will derive something essential from its object of research, one cannot regard its communication as completely separate from visual communication. One may rather say that their communication depends on each other and mutually influences each other.

My method is inspired by the non-method and immanent view upon the production of meaning as one can see it in Wittgenstein’s late philosophy, Philosophical investigations. Consequently, my paper is characterised by being an investigation or a discussion of concepts related to visual communication seen in relation to the performance art field.

My investigation does not however represent an aesthetic research of the refinement developed within performance art styles. I am not concerned with all the complexities that this scene has fostered during the last decades.

I am rather more concerned with a critical discussion of concepts, which has both explicitly and implicitly become correlative parts of what I prefer to define as the “classical” performance art scene.

I will begin with the concept of the avant-garde where performance art first emerged. Then I will discuss the importance of the paradigm shift in art with the commencement of conceptual art, and mention some of its most important contributors.

Finally, I will provide a description of performance artist’s derivation of the development of a discourse relative to the building of aesthetic styles. Terms correlative to this discourse (which I intend to investigate), are the concepts of the authentic, cognisant to real-time action and the primitive.

About the emergence of performance art – “the avant-garde”

Traditional philosophy has tended to consider ideas from a mere semantic analytical point of angle, where one only considers the significance of concepts within the construction of rational systems.

However, according to Wittgenstein’s late philosophy, concepts not related to any pragmatic context, easily end up at “an idle speed”. More specifically, one has to relate a word meaning to the specific practices in which it is used. So to understand the meaning of a certain action, one also has to consider the whole context in which it took place. This should not however be understood in a mere explicit way, where the words in a language are regarded as something corresponding directly to particular, empirical situations. Rather, one may say that language is only able to communicate indirectly or through its interpretation.

Within Wittgenstein’s view, it is for example impossible to think of a language without “a person’s body” and its diverse relations that produce, reproduce, read, and most importantly, communicate different meanings together with others. This is because language always functions through a diverse range of communication, which also includes codes of visual convention, like gestures and clothes.

Furthermore, one may define language as being intersubjective in that it doesn’t belong to anyone particularly, but is always shared through communication. Conclusively, there is no such thing as a private language. For instance, if someone feels a peculiar, inner sensation, and wants to understand what he feels, or explain how he feels to someone else, he has to use the publicity of language. Language has thus its borders, which cause difficulty when for instance, describing a past experience to someone who didn’t share it.

All things considered, I will begin with the derivation of the avant-garde from the beginning of the 20th. century, and look into how performance art developed from its outskirts.

L’ avant-garde was first a military term, even found in medieval French. According to Weightman(1), the term was first used metaphorically from about 1845 by French political movements. But it was only during the last years of the 19th century that the metaphor was transferred from politics to artistic activity. Weightman further claims that the avant-garde is connected to the scientific movement, and the transition from the static or cyclical view of human existence to the evolutionary view, a view that alongside the new understanding of the heliocentric universe, was going to break with the old understanding of the human as a static being derived from God. The new paradigms within science, economy, politics and growing industrialisation surely had to influence the art paradigm too.

However, the aesthetics were increasingly becoming the new exile of a hidden, spiritual dimension that served the bad consciousness of a bourgeoisie in charge. Art had thus become a commodity that functioned as justification of everything Good, Beautiful and True, as something peaceful hidden somewhere away from society’s changes, wars and corruption. Or as Peter Bürger writes in Theory of the avant-garde:

All those needs that cannot be satisfied in everyday life, because the principle of competition pervades all spheres, can find a home in art, because art is removed from the praxis of life. Values such as humanity, joy, truth, solidarity are extruded from life as it were, and preserved in art.(2)

According to Peter Bürger, in practice this was to trigger a new self-criticism within the art sphere, which in turn led to the production of subsystems. Consequently, subsystems like expressionism, Dadaism, Russian Constructivism, Futurism and Surrealism wanted polemically to be more associated with other contemporary life practice.

Although I would argue that all these movements have inspired performance art, I will concentrate on the Dadaist movement and its anti-art program.

The Dadaists wanted to take everything to a radical peak so as “to expose the bankruptcy of pseudo-rational systems that had led Europe to the brink of insanity and war.”(3) Hugo Ball and Jan Ephraim founded the movement in Zürich in 1916 with the opening of Cabaret Voltaire. Hugo Ball had an idea of making something he defined as “total art” where everything could be included. This led to a bizarre mixture of multiple art exhibitions, where both unaccomplished and well-known artists were collected in events. Their shows often ran nightly, and were led by performances that could include the audience. The performances were characterised by an often-improvised experimentation, with simultaneous readings, songs, dances and orchestral compositions often made by bells and percussion instruments. The main goal was to make people react by shaking-off any pre-conceptions. Dadaism’s basic goal was thus that of an anti-goal, or an anti-movement, where it should be impossible to fancy their events in accordance to old, traditional aesthetic standards. This made them invent noise-music or bruitism, a disharmonic, “hören mit schmerzen”,(4) non-music, a shock making where everything was allowed as long as it broke with harmony.

Dada emerged on different scenes in Berlin, Paris and New York. The New York dada was already opened in 1905 in Alfred Stiegletz secession gallery on 291 Fifth Avenue. The three artists most associated with the New York Dada are Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. I will concentrate on Marcel Duchamp in relation to the emergence of conceptual art, and relative to the development of performance art.

Conceptual art and performance

According to Bürger, the avant-garde movement’s intention was to eliminate art as an institution in three areas; purpose or function, production and reception. For the Dadaists all these three elements were meant to turn in the opposite direction, characterised by a radical negation. However, the avant-gardiste did not destroy the category of art since their “radical negation”(5) happened within the art sphere. What happened was rather a widening and a secularisation of art practice as a whole.This is also the case of the most radical Dadaist “negation”, Marcel Duchamp’s “anti-art object”, the ready-made. The exhibition of the mass-produced ready-made was to activate a revolution within the art world, where the old aesthetic paradigm lost its hegemony. Since the ready-made lacks visual uniqueness, it negates the individual production by turning the spectators’ consciousness to questions of definition and acceptance within the art sphere. Thus Duchamp was able to unmask the art market and showed how the whole art world is based upon a construction of values. If one sees this in relation to Wittgenstein’s philosophy, it shows how concept and practice mutually depend on one another. Novel art practices emerged that were often characterised by questioning and stretching the very borders of art, as in the case of Duchamp’s conceptualism. Again, the emergence of conceptual art was to play a crucial part in the development of performance, where the artist’s own body became included in the very definition of art. One aspect important to remember is thus the “performer’s body’s” relation to the conceptual, where I will state that without concepts, there would never have been anything like “body art”, nor “performance”, not even “actions”. Within performance art, the body signifies a certain body and its action, certain distinctive actions. I will return to this theoretical problem later on in the article, but first I will write about three artists who alongside Marcel Duchamp became crucial for questioning the very foundations of art. These are Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, and John Cage.

During the late 1950’s and the early 60’s, Yves Klein worked with something he explained as the spiritual quality of “immaterial sensitivity”. In 1962 for example, he threw gold leaves into the river Seine while he simultaneously requested the purchaser to burn the written proof of the art transaction. In his exhibition Le Vide (the Void) at the Iris Clert Gallery, Paris, Klein created a “void” or “zone” of invisible pictorial sensibility by removing all the furniture and painting the walls white. In the book Conceptual Art, Tony Godfrey writes how Klein then went on to provide the visitors with a blue cocktail made from gin, cointreau, and methylene blue, “as a result of which they would urinate blue for some days afterwards.”(6) By dematerialising the art object with a sort of fake spirituality, he re-mystified the artwork. Thus Klein forced his spectators to become conscious about mystification at work.

Perhaps one of Klein’s most famous contributions was his use of “living brushes”, a form of performance he started working with in 1958 together with Tinguely. Klein defined them as paint actions, where human bodies were covered with paint and pressed against sheets of paper pinned to the wall or floor. According to Günther Berghaus In Happening and other acts, the methods differed, ranging from “careful impressions of individual parts of the bodies, to full imprints created through dancing and rolling on the canvases, to several models fighting with each other on a canvas.”(7)

In October 1960, the photographer Harry Shunk made a series of fictionalised photographic documents with a myth-making image of a “heroic” Yves Klein leaping out of a second-story window, fifteen feet above the street. This manipulated photograph was to have a deep impact on the “self-endangering” “heroic” trend that was to serve as an individual category within performance.

The Italian Piero Manzoni approached the same issues as Yves Klein but his work is even more blasphemous and mocking. He could for instance sell balloons containing his own breath with the title Artist’s breath. And on 21 July 1960 Manzoni presented the Consumption of Dynamic Art by the Public Devouring Art in the Azimut Gallery. Here he boiled a number of eggs and gave them to the audience after having signed them with his thumbprint. Then he invited the audience to eat all the eggs, so that the entire exhibition could be consumed. His perhaps most famous and certainly most notorious project was Artists shit, where he filled ninety boxes with his own faeces. They were to be sold, literally for their weight in gold. The complete mockery revealed itself when the artist informed the purchaser, that the work was ruined as a piece of art if he or she tried to open the seal. Again, the spectator had to make an “act of faith”, where the most important thing was how the artist defined the art spectator.

John Cage adopted the Dadaist views about the anti-standard to the understanding of music. John Cage’s importance for the growing understanding of the performative, started in the 1950´s at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina. As a composer, Cage refused to accept any limits for music. As a consequence of this denial, Cage started to create his own instruments, like the prepared piano in which various materials were placed inside on the strings to change the quality of the sounds. And as Michael Kirby remarks in his article The New Theatre, not only did he equate sound and silence so that long passages of silence were integral parts of his compositions, but he pointed out that absolute silence does not exist.(8) For Cage, “music” could not be isolated from other senses like sight, touch or smell. Nor could it be isolated from noise or any everyday sound. And since sounds happen here and now and are ever present to our senses, Cage laid emphasis on the very performative aspect. Much more than being a part of the excluding definition of “music”, his compositions formed performance-acts where everything and anything could be included.

As such, Klein, Manzoni’s and Cages’ work can be said to have had one important thing in common, the detestation of the fixed role of artistic definition and expression. Consequently, all of them believed that it was possible to free the artist from fixation by turning the main focus on the artist as a performer.

The performance art establishment, a few aspects from the 1960s to the 1980s

Accordingly, performance art started as a protest and a wish to liberate art from the art object. By releasing art expression and emphasising the binding relationship between experience, body, space and time, where the artist was the centre of focus. Consequently, the artist’s body became the key for exploration of ideas and experience as a whole.

Most of the members of the performance movement Fluxus were strongly influenced by John Cages’ lectures in experimental composition at the New School for Social Research. The Fluxus movement’s intention was in many ways similar to the desire of the whole avant-garde movement before them, to display a strong disregard of traditional taste and the art market. It encompassed a diverse range of artists and composers, like George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Al Hansen, Yoko Ono, George Maciunas and Ben Vautier (to mention a few), who began to emerge in the early 1960s. George Maciunas coined the term in 1961, he “used the actual dictionary definition of flux as part of the definition Fluxus: a continuous moving on or passing by, as of a flowing stream; a continuous succession of chances.”(9) George Brecht for instance, made events which consisted of instructions written as musical scores that could be performed by anyone, as well as involving the manipulation of objects.

Ben Vautier’s fluxus work had obvious parallels to both Klein and Manzoni. From 1960 to 1961 he created certificates with which, as Schimmel observes; “he purchased the soul of willing participants; In Announcement of My Funeral he created certificates on which he signed both his own and Klein’s death”.(10)

One artist who attended to the fluxus movement briefly was Joseph Beuys. It is almost impossible to mention Joseph Beuys without saying anything about his dramatic background. In the winter of 1944, while serving as a pilot for the Luftwaffe, Beuys was shot down over Crimea but was rescued by native Tartar tribesmen. They took care of him by wrapping him in their traditional felt blankets, warming him with animal fat and nourishing him with honey. This crucial experience, as Schimmel writes, was to provide “him with the elements of an artistic vocabulary that he would mine throughout his career.”(11)

Joseph Beuys did several fluxus performances between 1963 and 1965 before he separated from the movement in ‘65. Beuys perfected his performance art by using specific “ingredients”, which came to characterise his acts. He very often used the same “costume” and he often used felt, fat and honey, which, biographically, symbolised natural survival tools for him. Occasionally he used animals in his actions.

In Wie man dem toten Hasen die Bilder erklärt(12) at the Schmela gallery in Düsseldorf, 26th of November 1965, Beuys spent three hours walking through an exhibition of his work. His head was covered with honey and gold leaf, and he held a dead hare in his arms. After showing the hare his pictures, he “explained” them to the dead animal by moving his mouth without making a sound.

In another performance called I like America and America likes me, Beuys installed himself for several days in a New York gallery this time with a living creature, a coyote. In Out of actions, Paul Schimmel describes how Beuys had arranged fifty copies of the Wall Street Journal to be delivered to the gallery each day, which served as a “toilet space” for the coyote.(13) Here Beuys wanted to demonstrate the tensions between urban life and the natural postcolonial state. This particular Beuys performance, as was often the case with his actions, represented an explicit protest against capitalist society and consumerism.

Performance art and its myths

The problem with authenticity, the search for a real-time loss, primitivity, naturality and introspection.

One of the basic ideas concerning performance art is its origin in the avant-garde; where the performance artist has a notion of himself as being, what Luis Bunuel defined as, a permanent experimental outsider. Although there are many different notions of being an outsider, one that specifically relates to the classical performer deals with the question of authenticity in relation to the non-fixed provocation. This indicates, amongst other things, a strong underpinning and emphasis of concepts like “live-art” and “action”. The impression or feeling of authenticity for a classical performance artist, is thus related to a belief in real-time as a state of constant flux in a certain, particular space. Furthermore, a classical performance artist regards his “actions” as authentic provocation against traditional values in society.

The performance art scene has certainly created some notorious characters, many of who almost put their lives on the line to stretch the borders of personal tolerance and test the reaction of an audience. The notorious performance artist Chris Burden for instance, locked him self in a locker two feet high by two feet wide and three feet deep for five consecutive days. A bottle of water was placed in a locker above him, and an empty bottle in a locker below. Schimmel explains that “Burden would investigate in depth the implications of creating a situation in which the artist simultaneously endangered himself and involved the viewer as a witness to the seemingly life-threatening situation, thus implicating him or her as complicate.”(14) And further, during a period of five years, Schimmels writes how Burden had himself shot, electrocuted, impaled, cut, drowned, etc.

Another performance artist working with self-inflicted and risky acts is Marina Abramovic. Inspired by the emotional piece Cut Dress by Yoko Ono in Rythm 0 (1974),(15) Abramovic placed various instruments for pain and pleasure on a table and welcomed the audience to use whatever instrument they preferred directly on her. Over the six-hour duration of the seance, Abramovic’s clothes were cut off, she had several cuts on her skin, and someone was just prevented from thrusting a gun in her hand and placing one of her fingers on the trigger.

The exploration of physical as well as psychological limits in both the artist, and occasionally the audience, is a typical feature of body art. In creating unexpected and extreme situations the public may show reactions, or act in a way they would never have expected of themselves.

The action and the problem with reconstruction – the search of a real-time loss

Probably one of the most admired “extreme” performance art groups were the Vienna Actionists with artists like Hermann Nitsch, Otto Mühl and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. Throughout the 1960s, the group made “actions” with “quasi-religious rituals of self-castration, rape, and slaughter using excrement, food, blood and dead animals, which they staged in old, secluded coal-cellars and castle ruins.”(16) According to Philip Ursprung, the Viennese Actionists were inspired by everything from surrealism, ancient Dionysian mythology, Catholicism, iconoclasm, catharsis and trauma of Austro-fascism.

Philip Ursprung asks himself however if it is legitimate to neglect the (hostile) reception by the mass media, in search of “the authentic Viennese Actionism”, as Peter Gorsen, the closest observer and theoretician of Actionism since the mid-1960s suggests. Or does the “meaning” of Actionism itself reside precisely in the process of fragmentation, distortion, and (mis)understanding of an ephemeral event in the spectator´s and historian´s memories?

I think this is a crucial question in relation to the concept of authentic real-time. What did actually happen? And furthermore; when we know that photographs represent an interpretation even as much as witnesses of the action, what is then left of the “authentic” and real-time situation?

A traditional myth about the Viennese Actionist for example is they slaughtered live animals or endangered the participants. According to Ursprung their actions were however not “real” since that they bought pre-slaughtered animals, and “Nitsch admitted using red paint for his actions because ‘it looked more blood-like than blood.’”(17) And further, “The majority of the actions were performed without an audience present and were staged exclusively for the camera. Even the seemingly dangerous actions of Brus were at no time life-threatening.”.(18) As such, the Vienna actionism does not transcend any authentic primal level as many “observers” wish to believe, and certainly does not transcend any catharsis. Like Artaud, their acts are more characterised of being highly spectacular and dramatic, which according to Ursprung, contradicted “their own life and work in Austria.”(19)

There has however been a good portion of myth making joined to some of the characters within the Vienna Actionist group. In for instance the case of Rudolf Schwarzkogler, the youngest member of the Actionists. His occasionally destructive behaviour fostered rumours about both castration, and a suicide supposedly to have taken place during a body action. However according to Kristine Stiles this is not the truth.(20) His untimely death did not occur in such a spectacular fashion, nor did he ever castrate himself, despite the indication of photographic documentation. Kristin Stiles writes that, by the end of 1968 Schwarzkogler began to withdraw, and in 1969 he began to experiment with various physical health regimes for the sake of body purification. During his self-imposed regime, which consisted of only milk and bread, Schwarzkogler began to hallucinate. Kristine Stiles writes further on how he also became increasingly obsessed with Yves Kleins photomontage Leap into the Void. She writes:

On the day of his death, he had been experiencing a period of severe hallucinations and was sitting in the window of their apartment, while Adam worked in another room. She conjectures that he either fell (owing to his altered mental state) jumped (a suicide resulting from depression) or actually attempted to fly (like Klein) from their second story apartment window.(21)

After having read a few books about performance art, there is one thing in particular I have noticed; the descriptions about certain known actions, as for instance Joseph Beuys, very often seem to tell a similar and therefore simplified version or narration. Another aspect relating to artists as well as their theoreticians, the intention to create certain sentimental myths about the artist’s person and practice. As such, a performance artist’s practice may easily “suffer” the fate of romantic destructivism, which has become a traditional myth within the pictorial art sphere.

I will now provide additional examples. According to Schimmel, “Beuys insisted that the gallery remained closed to the public throughout the performance, and for disseminating his work to a larger public, Beuys relied on the mass media, particularly on the publication of photographs by Ute Klophaus, whose camera became the vehicle by which Beuys created and perpetuated the myths enveloping his actions.” And further Schimmel writes that in his action “I like America America likes me”, unlike the traditional belief that Beuys was in constant interrogation with a wild animal during the 4 days it endured, this was in fact not the truth”. According to Schimmel, “the coyote was for most of the time sleeping in one of the corners of the gallery and

Beuys allowed himself the privilege of joining friends such as Paik and Block upstairs for dinner when the gallery closed: “yet, photographic documentation of the event reinforced the myth that the artist and coyote had interacted only with one other in the context of a caged performative event.”(22)

In this case, the idea of performance as a continuous “endurance in time” is thus broken.

Another problem with documentation is the fake “eye-witnesses”. Here Schimmel has made a report of the frauds of a once experienced real-time action:

The sheer descriptive simplicity of Chris Burden’s events led many individuals to claim they had witnessed them, For example, several swear they remember seeing the artist crucified to the back of the Volkswagen Bug driven around Venice, California in Trans-Fixed (1974). However, as Burden himself attests, in actuality only a handful of witnesses saw him for two minutes as the car was pushed and rolled, not driven, back into the garage.(23)

To summarise; by focusing on moments of reconstructive confusion, I am simultaneously demonstrating the difference developed through an over concentrated focus on the authentic movements of real-time or the action, when the only thing left from these moments are some sheets of “documentation”. Documentation does not function as a mirror for the action it attempts to re-construct. As I see it, the consequence of a too strong focus on the action once made, by necessity ends in essensialist thinking in that the so-called real-time event becomes the new essence one helplessly tries to grasp.

The authentic and its objects – naturality and primitivity

Another problematic aspect related to classical performance art’s search for something essential and pure, is the extended use of natural materials often seen in relation to the artist’s body. Joseph Beuys has probably been one of the strongest inspirations in this matter. The use of blood, honey, fat, excrements, animals etc. have all supported an archaic ingredient, as if the artist, by use of these tools is able to reach a primitive, non-intellectual dimension, hidden underneath civilisation’s levels of criss-crossing surfaces. Truly, our civilisation has an unrealistic belief in rational segmentation and technology, and if one then reads nakedness and the use of natural materials as a symbolic reaction against this, the explicit nature can, although added with a distinct flavour of naivety, be illustrating enough. But again, there is always the danger of attempting to locate, or decipher, a hidden meaning beneath this so-called natural state. It is very easy to feel almost obliged, or even emotionally trapped, in a performance situation where the primary focus may be an artist’s naked body in relation to a selection of “natural materials”.

In Norway, the performance artist Kurt Johannessen has extensively utilised “natural materials” within his performances. I regard Kurt Johannessen as a classical example of the perfected, stylised performance artist. Through observation of his documented work, mostly taken by his wife the photographer Torill Nøst, these pictures serve as fine art in themselves. This is probably better exemplified by Johannessen’s minimalism, his black costume, his bare feet, and his meditative style. Johannessen once told me that he wanted his performances to be anti-intellectual, an emptying of meaning, where, as Jon Ove Steihaug writes, almost “nothing” happens.(24) As tools for the illustration of this simplicity, Johannessen has used everything from toys, earth, insects, animals, fire, water, fish, ice, corn oil and sticks.

Last year, in 2000, I attended a discussion between art critic Øystein Hauge and Kurt Johannessen. Here Hauge confronted the artist about his use of material by asking him if these “natural” materials could be said to function as some kind of “tricks” on the artist’s side. Here Hauge paid special attention to the dramatic or theatrical expression of his performances. I consider Hauge’s question very significant since I understood it as an expression of uneasiness when it comes to how one shall read, or interpret the symbolic meaning of “performative objects”, objects that might not echo the artist’s personal intention. In the classical, performance art tradition, there has been a tendency to forget that it is possible to analyse visual media. As such, there has been a tendency to forget that the visual communicates.

As an implication of this there has been a tendency to forget that no medium is neutral. When I for instance watch a nude, male body artist, from a middle-class New Yorker background, this will certainly colour my experience of the performance. His white, possibly heterosexual western body is not neutral, and can therefore not reach any “natural state” despite his nakedness. If he then wants to demonstrate his “real, primal, inner perversity” by urinating, masturbating, screaming or self-destructively self-inflicting pain, I am then very conscious about the art context in which he is doing it. He may have good reason to provoke in the manner he chooses, a protest perhaps against an alienated technocratic society. But considering the art context he is operating within, there is wide scope for other motives and psychological intentions beneath the riotous surface. (Who has not seen artists rebel their way up the ladder of art hierarchy?) Take for instance the fluxus movement, who once claimed that their interest lay strictly in their art’s fragile moments. During the last decades, many of them have been eager to see their name in art historical print and their “anti-art objects” exhibited in museums. Again, I only wish to illustrate that art societies do not represent neutral backgrounds without a social dimension dominated by hierarchical power structures.

Therefore I will argue that performance art does not belong to any archaic pre-colonists or any primitive traditions, certainly no more than do pierced and tattooed juveniles. Performance art rather belongs to a highly sophisticated art tradition, where even if it occurs in public spaces, is appreciated only by a handful of “soul mates” and insiders who each serve their part on its platform.

When there is no consciousness about the significance of visual communication, art can easily end up as some kind of mystical and incomprehensible introspection, a kind of mute refuge away from any critical discussion concerning its values and standards. As in the case of modern painting, performance art cannot claim a place in the avant-garde forever but will become a part of the establishment itself. Joseph Beuys’ work is for instance able to build up the same mystical trimmings as pictorial art through the “documentation” of its “essential action”. I have seen exhibitions of Beuys’ work where spectators expect to sense the blessing of the reliquaries of his shaman-art. As such, Beuys’ art can easily end up as a new escapism, or a new refuge for an audience with a need to attain some sense of art’s idealism away from society’s corruption, in a similar way to those who seek refuge in the pure, harmonious aestheticism of decorative art.

According to Hubert Klocker, the artist is himself quite conscious about how he wants to communicate his person to an audience. By assuming an extremely subjective position, the artist can provide the spectator with the impression that he inhabits an almost godly character. Or as he writes:

Within the framework of the anthropocentric artwork, the artist assumes an extremely subjective position. Beuys, Nitsch, and Schwartzkogler employ the magical gestures by assuming of the shaman or the priest. [...] They, as well as Monastyrkij’s Collective Action Group, claim that art has a cathartic and healing function and that the artist is antithetical, indeed, a tragic subject in the center of the art work itself.(25)

Neo – post – retro

No painting has an active life of more than thirty or forty years. I don’t care if it’s true, it helps me to make that distinction between living art and art history. After thirty or forty years the painting dies, loses its aura, its emanation, whatever you want to call it. And then it is either forgotten or enters into the purgatory of art history. But that’s all just luck, a game between artist and onlooker, or a drug. I´m afraid I’m an agnostic in art. I just don’t believe in it with all the mystical trimmings. As a drug it’s probably very useful for a number of people, very sedative, but as religion it’s not even as good as God.(26)

Marcel Duchamp

My conclusion is that parts of performance have become a new convention in art, a convention that has developed its own discourse alongside a whole range of recognisable art styles. Consequently, a performance artist today is mainly concerned with the act of perfecting, or the making of an emblem for their art as performers within a certain paradigm, just as a painter searches for a particular pictorial style he can be known for. This is of course quite understandable both for respect of their art practice and for the need of making an art that is more recognisable to an audience. Furthermore, it has created a history of performance with exquisite performers like Laurie Anderson, Marina Abramovic and Paul McCarthy, just to mention a few.

Its ability to shake has thus a minor significance today, where most of its vitality has become more sacral and more loaded with mythical pathos. After its conceptual emergence, where one questioned the very foundation of the value of art, and when its freshness made one believe in its political and provoking potential, it has become closer to a certain form of either expressive or minimalist theatre.

Regarding Duchamp’s saying about a painting, that it dies after a certain time, when it stops being alive, this is also certainly true for any piece or work of art, just as it is for performance. However concerning hermeneutics, most meaning can be actualised or recycled to a contemporary understanding. In this way, it is not only possible but impossible not to use or actualise aspects from past art in new work. This is also the case for performance. During the nineties, when the heaviness of the 70’s and 80’s performance had reached a certain level of fatigue, the 90’s headed towards an ironical style inspired by the intimate, the social and techno-clubbing, a style that occasionally was so easygoing that it almost reached decadence. Furthermore, during the 1990’s one saw an increased disbelief in anything authentic. The emergence of home computers, the digitalisation and manipulation of images, the development of gene-technology, the mapping of the human-DNA, the impact of the AIDS-virus, all this has made the idea of anything authentic and natural even more utopic. The 90’s therefore have been far more interested in the performative in relation to photo, video, installation, and especially the manipulation of these media. However, this does not make 90’s art more avant-garde than art from the 60’s or the 70’s. The concept of the avant-garde has become an anachronism in itself, or one may say that it died alongside entropic pursuit of novelty.(27)

Whatever we define as retro-garde, neo this, neo that, post this, post that, one of the most important issues deals with the question of intercourse. What role is art meant to play today, how does it influence or better inflict our contemporary society? Without a high degree of self-criticism related to a deep concern for crucial changes in society, art will be lead into an escapism that once spurred Dadaism into action. Or, one could say in short: no rest for the wicked.

(1) Weightmann, John: The Concept of the Avant-Garde – Explorations in Modernism, Alcove Press, London, 1973, p. 17-21.

(2) Bürger, Peter:, Theory of the Avant-Garde – Theory and History of Literature Volume 4, Manchester University Press, Minneapolis, 1984, p. 24.

(3) Ibid.

(4) In English: Listen with pain. I have taken this expression from a song made by the German based industrial rock group called Einstürzende Neubauten. (Cf.: Einstürzende Neubauten: Kollaps. LP 1981 Zick Zack records (ZZ65), CD 1988 Zick Zack records (ZZ65/CD02517.)

(5) Bürger, Peter: ibid., p. 36.

(6) Godfrey, Tony: Conceptual art, Phaidon Press, Art&Ideas Series, London, England, 1998, p. 81.

(7) Berghaus, Günther: Happenings in Europe – Trends, Events, and leading Figures. In: Marielle R. Sandford (ed.), Happening and other acts, from the series Worlds of Performance, Routledge, London, 1995, p. 315.

(8) Kirby, Michael: The New Theatre. In: Happening and other acts, p. 30.

(9) Schimmel, Paul (ed.): Out of Actions – Between performance and the object 1949-1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA. Here: Paul Schimmel, Leap into the Void: Performance and the object, (page 33-119), p. 71.

(10) Ibid., p. 72

(11) Ibid., p.80.

(12) In English: How to explain pictures to a dead hare.

(13) Ibid., p. 83.

(14) Ibid., p. 94.

(15) Ibid., p. 101

(16) Ursprung, Philip: Catholic tastes: Hurting and healing the body in Viennese actionism in the 1960s. In: Amelia Jones and Andrew Stephenson, Performing the body/performing the text, Routledge, London and New York, 1999. (P. 138-152), p. 138.

(17) Ibid., p. 138.

(18) Ibid., p. 143.

(19) Ibid., p. 143.

(20) Stiles, Kristine: Uncorrupted Joy – International Art Actions. In: Paul Schimmel (ed.), Out of Actions – Between performance and the object, 1949-1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA. (p. 227-329), p. 293.

(21) Ibid. p. 293.

(22) Schimmel, Paul (ed.): Out of Actions – Between performance and the object, 1949 – 1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA. Here: Paul Schimmel: Leap into the void: Performance and the object. p. 83 and 84.

(23) I am in great debt to the critical observation of Paul Schimmel. This is from page 98 in Out of Actions.

(24) Steihaug, Jon-Ove: When “Nothing” “Happens” – concentration and stillness in the performance art of Kurt Johannessen. Taken from the nordic art periodical Siksi – 4/94 Nordic art review, p. 71.

(25) Schimmel, Paul (ed.):. Out of Actions – Between performance and the object, 1949-1979, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA Here; Hubert Klocker, Gesture and the object – liberation as action: A European component of performative art, p.191.

(26) This Duchamp quotation is taken from the Donald Kuspit book Idiosyncratic identities – Artists at the end of the the Avant-Garde, Cambridge University press NY, 1996, p. 48.

(27) I have taken this expression from Donald Kuspit, again taken from his book Idiosyncratic identities – Artists at the end of the Avant-Garde, p. 52.

Lovesick essay

Picture shows detail of screen shot from Monika Ross work for Lovesick “Acts of Love” at Landmark, Bergen Kunsthall.

lovesick was an exhibition addressing the theme of love in contemporary art. Love was here not only understood as something elating to emotions between men and women. In this exhibition the topic were dealt with in a much more complex way addressing minor and more complex narratives. In other words, it was not the great displays of love that played the principal role in lovesick, but the many small attempts to approach a subject that seems
Lovesick invited artists and theoreticians to work with questions relating to the subject of love in our times. Within this relation I am not thinking of love as one dimensional, pertaining to a spiritual emotion which springs up between two people. I am thinking more of a complex understanding of the concept which can imply everything from desire, eroticism, sex, attraction, intimacy, love at first sight, narcissism, devoted love, etc. Furthermore, this can be set in a likewise complex relation such as the mass media’s treatment of the issue, the development of new technologies such as the continuing effectiveness of the global communications network, science’s role in love, capitalism’s relation to it, politician’s role, the different cultures, AIDS’ influence, women’s lib, homo and bisexual lib, etc. I do not wish for this theme to be limited in any given direction, but will point out that the project should focus on the extensive treatment of this theme found in our present.

It is therefore not only this but a comprehensive secularised treatment of the concept of love can sometimes be set up against a more sensitive and sensible approach to it. Within this perspective is encompassed a love that can be abused, silenced to death or overly interpreted in order to undermine the individual’s need to cherish his or her own intimate love experiences. Or like Eva Illov proclaims in her article The lost innocence: “The idea that media shape our private dreams and acts of love has become a cliche, eagerly commented on by therapists and movies.”

Furthermore there has been pointed out endlessly how the earlier great stories from classical literature together with the objective truth have been lost. This is however not entirely negative, as it later opens up for marginalized stories and groups that earlier were repressed by these great historical volumes. Maybe it’s due time that we took Foucalt literally and wrote the history of love. This will not be one unique story, but rather the multiple stories, not the limiting and simplifying but the compounding and flexible, those without a fixed program, an ism, and a clear rational model. According to Roland Barthes, love’s own speech must create its own discourse and pictures that together can stand against the extreme trivializing and democratisation and therefore belittling, of the mass media’s treatment of love. There must be according to Barthes something helpless with this language, differentiating it from the assumed success that specially color advertisement’s seductive language. As Barthes further stresses: “There is something utterly lonely in love’s present discourse. No one supports it (..) it is separated from power and also separated from the mechanisms of power (science, knowledge, art) .”

In a more problematic light this theme could encompass the growth of feelings related to differences in power between the sexes, the diverse cultures and various social relations. As Victor Seidler points out, “Love and morality do not simply concern a realm of personal relationships in which we are supposedly free to act towards others as equals.” (ibid).

The concept of equality is strong in modern understanding of love, but it is especially unrealistic in how things work in a hierarchical society.

In classical art it is romantic love that is most commonly portrayed. In today’s art we see a far more complex picture of this theme where lovesickness, absence, longing, pain, eroticism, body, intimacy, etc. are also treated. Just as often we see in today’s art a wish to satirize the heaviness and pathos that art sometimes ends up in its treatment of big concepts. Today’s art is at times an example of the modest and more imperfect art which through installations, video, the Internet and performances, that jests both with the artist’s own references and society’s.
©Veronica Diesen