Case Study: Transformation of the body Essay

“Perfomance has been a manner of appealing straight to a big public, every bit good as flooring audiences into reevaluating their ain impressions of art and its relation to culture” . ( Goldberg, 2002, p. 213 )

Contemporary public presentation art and organic structure art patterns emerged in the seventiess. The organic structure and its bounds were being investigated to the fullest. The power of organic structure in interlingual rendition and transduction of cultural significances and possible constructs about the organic structure within civilization were of involvement. The topic, the object and the inter-subjectivities, when the organic structure is the medium of the art, was the venue of many of these Body ‘experiments’ . It was “the jubilation of signifier and procedure over content and product” ( Carlson, 1996, p. 100 ) , where the organic structure has the ability to convey about alteration, both in the manner in which established art is interpreted and in the manner the organic structure is interpreted within discourses in general. The undermentioned essay will debate the impression of the organic structure as a stuff ( associating to artistic pattern ) , the topic and ‘object’ , utilizing Marina Abramovic’sRhythm 0as a instance survey.

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Body Art public presentations are non that of theatrical public presentation, but alternatively “the performing artist is the creative person, rarely a character like an actor” ( Goldberg, 2002, p. 213 ) . As Marvin Carlson stated, public presentation came “out of new attacks to the ocular art” ( Carlson, 1996 ) . It did non take to stand for a character or any traditional narrative, like theater, even though it is interdisciplinary and portions many dealingss with theater ( the audience ) . In Body Art, the organic structure is utilised as a medium. “In its first manifestations, public presentation art was mostly and frequently really specifically concerned with the operations of the body.” ( Carlson, 1996, p. 102 ) . The organic structure becomes the existent stuff. The organic structure becomes the topic and the object of the art. The ‘doing’ facet and the topic fuses and therefore “feeling is automatically the same for doing”” ( Carlson, 1996, p. 103 ) . It is of import to observe that:

“ [ T ] he work of individual creative person, frequently utilizing stuffs from mundane life and seldom playing a conventional “character” , stressing the activities of the organic structure in infinite and time” ( Carlson, 1996 ) .

Rhythm 0was body art performed by Serbian creative person Marina Abramovic at an art gallery in Naples ( Demeria, 2004 ) . The creative person placed a aggregation of points on a tabular array. These points ranged from harmless ( possibly even pleasure bring oning ) to perchance life stoping ( or at least hurting inflecting ) . Marina would be inactive for the continuance of the exhibition, finally rendering herself ( her organic structure ) to the clemency of the audience. The artist’s organic structure would go, as in her ain words, “a thing” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 297 ) for the audience to interact with. They were permitted do anything to her and she would take full duty for six hours. The purpose of this, for Marina ( Demeria, 2004 ) , was to see how vulnerable the organic structure can be to the audience. There is no uncertainty that this public presentation plays on gender functions and stereotype of the female organic structure, as the female organic structure is problematized in context to the male norm.

The organic structure as merely material can be an uneven manner to see a homo. I interpret stuff as some substance from which, when refined, an object is made, taken from one signifier and morphed ( translated or transduced ) to function a intent. On a material degree this is the flesh. Flesh is of great importance when covering with possible lettering the organic structure can incorporate. Flesh is the machinery of the action. We experience the universe through the flesh. As Abramovic provinces in an interview:

“ [ T ] he body as stuff through which you can convey something. In sculpture it is the rock or clay or whatever, and here it is the organic structure – make a drawing with the organic structure, cut the organic structure, unfastened it, see what hurting is, what the organic structure is. Just researching all the possibilities – the mental, physical bounds, everything together.” ( Micheal & A ; Noel, 2002, p. 13 )

The ‘material of body’ itself is more than merely researching the organic structure as a stuff ( even though this is a critical facet ) , it is besides the significance of organic structure. Material is nil without the construct of the stuff. A sculpture made from rock with no significance is merely a rock. It is the geographic expedition of the organic structure in civilization that is of import, as this is where the topic ( and intersubjectivities ) of the object is located. “ [ T ] he organic structure has been foregrounded as a potentially insurgent site of cultural intercession in extremist performance” ( Campbell, 2000, p. 7 ) . As Amelia Joness noted:

“… [ A ] rtist’s passage of her or his organic structure in all of its sexual, racial, and other specialnesss and overtly solicit spectatorial desires unhinge the really deep constructions and premises embedded in the formalist theoretical account of art evaluation” ( Jones, pg3 ) .

When a organic structure involved in executing is non-normative, or when a organic structure is presented in a non-normative mode it is ever problematized due to the political relations environing the organic structure. “In other words, the manner in which power defines sex and gender constitutes one of the cultural norms which govern materialisation of the organic structure, and hence regulation any other procedure of identification” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 301 ) . This consequence, nevertheless, extends past the manner in which art is evaluated into facets of human discourse.

The organic structure art ofRhythm 0causes an inversion or functions: The audience becomes the active and the creative person the passive. Marina is both the topic and the object. She is subjected to the audience’s desires and their political orientations, which both reflects and depends on the discourse with related stereotypes of the organic structure. As discourses “are the looks of political orientation but besides the topographic point where usage can alter it, open it, where expressive freedom of an person is either limited or gained” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 300 ) . This means that the organic structure in public presentation bends public presentation into a linguistic communication by the manner in which it is used to “utter discourse” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 300 ) .

“Body art proposes the art “object” as a site where response and production come together: a site of intersubjectivities” ( Jones, 1998 ) . What is of involvement, is the manner in which Marina uses and established her materiality through the usage of hurting as an lettering technique. Pain is non easy represented as it stands for nil. The purpose of hurting can be both destructive and originative in its “impossibility of representation” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 302 ) . In this peculiar illustration Marina’s organic structure suffered many misdemeanors: “her apparels are cut, as is her pharynx ; her tummy is pierced by rose-thorns, her blood is licked ; a member of the audience gets to the point of indicating the gun at her temple” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 297 ) . What is obtain from these Acts of the Apostless is that:

“By come uping the desires informing reading, it encourages a “performance of theory” that aims “to replot the relation between the percipient of the object [ Marina ] , between ego and other, ” exemplifying what is at interest in such claims by promoting Acts of the Apostless of reading that themselves are performative. And opens out intersubjectivity as performative, contingent, and ever particularized instead than cosmopolitan, implicating the interpreter” ( Jones, 1998 ) .

It appears that the object is ne’er related to, but instead projected on it by the subjectiveness of the spectator. InRhythm 0, this is the stereotypes of the Madonna, the female parent and the prostitute. The power in this public presentation, as Cristina notes, lies in “what is enacted is a translation-transduction of stuff and cognitive significances that consequences in redefinition of a subjectiveness and, at the same time, corporate experience of identity” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 295 ) .

In decision, the organic structure can function as a manner to navigated subjectivenesss of discourses by set uping the organic structure as an object – rendering it in stuff signifier – it allows the audience a place frequently denied in other signifiers of art. In kernel “ [ T ] he possible rethinking of subjectiveness inherent in the challenge of making a visibleness for that which is unseeable is the ( rhenium ) authorship of the organic structure through the rite of a performance” ( Demeria, 2004, p. 296 ) .

Reference List:

Campbell, P. ( 2000 ) . Minding the Matter of Representation: Staging the Body. InThe Body Perfomance( pp. 5 – 22 ) . Routledge.

Carlson, M. ( 1996 ) . Performance Art. InPerformance: a critical debut( pp. 100 – 120 ) . New York: Routledge.

Demeria, C. ( 2004 ) . The Performative Body of Marina Abramovic Rerelating ( in ) Time and Space.European Journal of Women Studies, 295 – 307.

Eco, U. ( 2004 ) . The Avant-Garde, or the Beauty of Provocation. InHistory of Beauty.New York: Rizzoli International Publications.

Goldberg, R. ( 2002 ) . Performance Art From Futurism To The Present. In M. Huxley, & A ; N. Witts ( Eds. ) ,The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader( pp. 212 – 214 ) . Routledge.

Jones, A. ( 1998 ) .Body Art/Performing the Subject.University of Minnesota Press.

Micheal, H. , & A ; Noel, W. ( 2002 ) . Marina Abramovic Interview. InTwentieth Century Performance Reader( pp. 11 – 19 ) . Routledge.

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