Representation of The Body

Besides arguments about what type of physical/psychological activities are spectators get involved in while seeing "bodies" in screen, the artists' way of communicating with their own bodies and with the phenomena of representing body in art added to the role of body in experiencing life are challenging issues to consider. So, I'll try to find a few examples to see how body is used in different art mediums.

The Cinematic Body

I came across with a seminar series that focused on "The Cinematic Body" issue. It divided the topic into its elements in terms of their contents and gave examples for each. This kind of separation makes it possible to consider the use of body for different purposes and in different contexts. In other words, it serves to have a colorful approach to "history of representation of body in film and video art" with its contrasting classification. Almost all videos are available on YouTube.

• Early Cinema and the birth of the modern body
• Physical Cinema: the DADA body
• Acrobatics in Time: Samuel Beckett’s clowns on film
• From Dance to Film: the Art of Yvonne Rainer
• Film as Skin: Expanded Cinema, video art and the apparatus
• Territories: the documentary as other body
• Electronic Flesh: the techno body
• Bulimic Bodies

Within these categories and various examples, I was fascinated with James Williamson's short video The Big Swallow (1901). This video is known for the extreme close-up scene, although it is not the first one ( Grandma's Reading Glass and Spiders on a Web -both 1900- are first examples) that use extreme close-up technique, it is the first one that took this concept to a one step further by connecting the camera’s eye, the audience’s eye and the characters eye in a one scene ¹ .

Body as a Material Object

Bruce Nauman Pinch Neck (1968)

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary artist who is well-known with his neon art works. He uses different materials to articulate his perspective such as; photography, light/neon, video, drawing and performance. Although they use it in a different manner, his way of using his face and the emphasis of a “speech” organ reminds me the Williamson’s video. About Nauman’s works, it can be stated that because the major and the only content of his artworks is his activities or experiences, they are not considered as a film or a video art, instead it is a document of an activity ². Regarding to his use of face/body Nauman said he is using his body as a piece of material and manipulating it through his artworks.

“The idea of making faces had to do with thinking about the body as something you can manipulate. I had done some performance pieces - rigorous works dealing with standing, leaning, bending - and as they were performed, some of them seemed to carry a large emotional impact. I was very interested in that: if you perform a bunch of arbitrary operations, some people will make very strong connections with them and others won't” ³

The quotation above simply illustrates the Nauman’s perspective in making sense out of his artworks. Especially the last sentence, which points out “arbitrariness”, recalls the opposition between sensory motor reaction and critical thought. In Nauman’s work there is neither a dissociation or nor an association, instead there is a thing, which may refer to anything. I communicate with the video both through my sensory motor abilities and thinking patterns. It evokes a certain physical response, which irritates me a bit and on the other hand, it makes me think on how a simple survival activity, as to swallow, or distortion of body places in art. Nauman had various examples in this context; Slow Angle Walk (Beckett Walk) (1968) can be a good example for how "Nauman was able to alienate himself in a Beckettian manner from his arms and legs, so they seemed to have lives of their own, detached and objectified." ² Collection of his works can be found in here

Body as an object of Rebellion

Ana Mendieta (1948 – 1985) was an avant-garde artist who experimented and used “body” as a main tool for creating her paintings, videos, installations, sculptures and performances. Despite her tragic and short life, she became a pioneer of environmental, feminist and autobiographical art. She criticized violence against the female body, sacrifice and crime and projected her ideas through connecting her body with nature. ⁴

Her famous Silueta series focused on the spiritual connection between her body (her presence, her silueta) and materials of earth, leaves, fire, blood and she performed them like they are religious or primitive rituals. Silueta is like her sign of presence and with these silhouettes, the message shifted from “Here I am or Ana was here” to “Someone has been by”, but still it is a record of a (somebody)woman’s presence. ⁵ In Body Tracks series (1979) she used blood as a medium of her video performance, however, it does not implies a certain sense of violence. Instead, her way of using blood refers to her words as “Through my earth/body sculptures I become one with the earth… I become an extension of nature and nature becomes an extension of my body…” 6. Her brutality is “visceral, not violent” ⁷ and Mendieta’s tone to convey her political, feminist or humanist ideas provides a new understanding on the abstruse side of women’s silhouette. Some of her video works can be found here.

Body as an object for Catharsis

Marina Abramovic had a problematic childhood; and in Freudian respect her early performances were considered as a form of rebellion against her strict upbringing as well as against the repressive culture of post-war in Yugoslavia, where she was born. Like all her body art performance, they were ritualistic purifications designed to free her of her own past ¹². She had too many dangerous performances like Rhythm 0 which she put herself with 72 different objects (including a gun) in a museum like a doll and let visitors do anything they want to do her with those objects, she was about to die in this performance. This is just one of the extreme examples from her works; the detailed information is here: She said she looks at her body as a machine and she still uses the mind - the will - to control what she does. ⁸ She believed that performance is real , the knife is real, the blood is real and the emotions are real ⁸ and so, she can use any material she wants to use, fire, water and the body. ⁹ Her talk about the body as a medium gives an idea of the difference between different mediums to create art, like painting and performance. She is obsessed with identifying and defining limits, limits of her body, limits of the performance, limits of the time, limits of the relationship between public and performer, limits of control, limits of physical and mental potential. By defining those limits through art, she aimed to discover a method again with art to make people more free. She has also accepted her obsession through performing her body even risking her life in one of her interviews:

The underlying question in all of this is, of course: why? Why put yourself though such suffering in the name of art? Abramovic has no easy answers to that question. "I am obsessive always, even as a child," she says, suddenly serious, and, for the first time, pausing for thought. "On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure." 8

Here is one of the psychic performances of her that again plays with the limits of her presence, her body and her thoughts. According to Abramovic, body art represents -un-limits of physical and mental existence and she boldy uses her body as a subject, an object and a medium to declare sources of conflict and suffering.¹⁰ She claimed that she is not that much into politics, but what she has done is political and her short-video is an indication for her relation with politics. Her perspective on function of art is highly concortant with what she performs, she said “I am looking for an art that really asks questions, an art which is disturbing, an art which really makes connections with our disconnected selves as well as making a connection with nature.” ¹¹ For me, her most admiring performance is “The Artist is Present” at MOMA. Marina Abramovic herself, becomes the performance itself, she sit at MOMA for 3 months for 7 hours a day, and people. MOMA’s description about the performance

“In addition, a new, original work performed by Abramović will mark the longest duration of time that she has performed a single solo piece. All performances, one of which involves viewer participation, will take place throughout the entire duration of the exhibition, starting before the Museum opens each day and continuing until after it closes, to allow visitors to experience the timelessness of the works.”¹³

This performance can be seen in different perspectives, for me it is a performance of Gestalt approach that values the principle of “here-and-now”. Unsurpsingly, Abramovic also mentioned about this aspect of her works;

“If I’m in the here-and-now of the piece, the public can get affected” 14

“If you had seen my opening performance at the Pompidou Center, which consisted of lying on the bed against the wall, it could confront you with this idea that we always forget: there and now. You could not see me moving, starting or stopping. The idea was that I’m lying there with my mind and with my body, and that is what we almost never do. Whatever you did or thought, you had this image of me, being there.” ¹⁵

Her performance reminds me what we’ve talked about “Mundane Story” because she is also, creating works that ritualize the simple actions of everyday life like lying, sitting, dreaming and thinking. ¹⁶ It seems that she is looking for simplicity and by looking her post-The Artist is Present works we can conclude that she had the power of simplicity. According to Gestalt approach, human existence is unique and everyone has a potential to reach their self-actualization level, which is placed at the top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In this respect, what Abramovic achieved through her art is a kind of therapy, which means to make people who sit in front of her, cry have them a catharsis. In other words, they experienced freedom of their existence; they valued their space of existence, or experienced themselves through Abramovic’s (her body’s) presence. What she thought about the therapeutic side of her performance is understood from her words as;

"-Was this art as therapy, or something much deeper? "Oh, it's plain to me that this is something incredible.

- I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally. I did almost nothing, but they take this religious experience from." ⁸

Another interesting thing about her performance is its duration, she has been in that chair for 3 months and for whole day and she was doing exactly the same thing for whole time; do simply nothing but gaze into the eye of her visitors. The reason for her choice to perform in this way can be her perspective on repetition. She said;

“All the objects used change meaning by repetition. In some cases, it is a long process. The artist and the public need time to enter a state of mind, which can be achieved through repetition and the long duration of the piece. Each element and material becomes something else. You open the door and close it. That’s just opening and closing a door. But over hours, it becomes something else. It can take on another meaning. Elements like blood, bones, knives, honey, milk, and wine all have spiritual meanings and not just in the performances.” ¹⁴

Here is the participants of ”The Artist is Present” and a random moment from the performance.

Extra Links:

Comparison for Nauman’s and Ana’s works

Criticism of Mendieta’s works in Deleuze’s and Butler’s terms

Marina Abramovic on her performances

Interview with Marina Abramovic after her “Artist is Present” performance

Film on Marina Abramovic:

Interview of Marina Abramovic in Tate Channel

References

1. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444628/

2. http://www.inputpattern.com/portfolio/text/nauman/paper.html

3. http://bit.ly/aEJTNk

4. http://www.jstor.org/pss/1358840

5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35164-2004Oct15.html

6. http://bit.ly/bBSkn1

7. http://www.brooklynrail.org/2004/09/art/ana-mendieta-earth-body-sculpture-and-pe

8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/oct/03/interview-marina-abramovic-performance-artist

9. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBTrVNxvfk&feature=channel

10. http://www.hotreview.org/articles/marinaabram.htm

11. http://thepandorian.com/2009/10/marina-abramovic/

12.http://www.lacan.com/abramovic.htm

13.http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/965

14. http://www.museomagazine.com/10/abramovic%20

15. http://www.jca-online.com/abramovic.html

16. http://www.seveneasypieces.com/marinaabramovic.html