Performance Art, Body Art, and Living la Vida Loca

Welcome back to school, and I apologize for the later post here, but time is scarce.

This week our readings covered a little too much territory, so we are going to have to spend a bit of our discussion sorting through when's and where's and who's, and did you notice that a bit of the stuff that was happening and being talked about was happening right here?

So what was important to remember from all this stuff? What is valid about it?

Hopefully our class so far has set stages for the development of most of these ideas to work through.

Remember our discussions of phenomenology, ontology...the idea of the viewer as a body in front of a work of art...what if the body itself was the work of art, and another body viewing it makes it a work of art. I know it sounds a little dark arts, and let's not kid ourselves, it probably is.

What I want you to know:

1) feminism (think about this word a whole lot, there isn't a 'feminist' style like there is a minimalist style...feminist art is an embodiment of theories and politics, not a way art is made, the variety is huge and feminist body art/performance can be hard to distinguish from the rather sexist performance work of the Vienna Actionists.)

2) internationalism and the 'global village': internationalism in the sense of the Fluxus artists, relate them to more nationally themed art movements (futurism, ab ex, minimalism) and look back to Marshall McLuhan, who we have talked about, and get to know his idea of the 'global village'.

3) theoretical work: start looking at how art will start incorporating theories and ideas into its 'process', compare this with the ideas of making 'conceptual' art. My best example here would be Freud, compare the way the Vienna Actionists used the thinking and theories of Freud to the way in which Mary Kelly uses Freud in here 'Post-Partum Document'

4) positivism, and the utopian gesture

5) collectives versus movements in art: the minimalists hung out together, but Fluxus and Gutai artists made work together

6) identity politics (think of its relationship to institutional critique as well) the body as object/ subject

Hopefully you are noticing the way these writers want to categorize everything. One, because it helps us talk about it better and two because it validates arguments and helps one 'prove things wrong'.

Ex.: is a work of art the object or the subject?

Take great notice at how the Fluxus artists are 'proven wrong' based on contradictions in their artistic practices or in their lives, in these texts. We have to be careful on this desire to 'prove people wrong'. Take it to heart that there is no right or wrong answer in art: whether it be an action, a task or a ritual.

Yours in magic,
Prof Nathan Shafier
WZMB New Jersey's Radio Zombie