To be an action artist means to improve the Self-knowledge by investigating the cutting-edge existing between “what I want to do and what someone want to do of/about me. Therefore an action artist must primarily recognized him/herself as a ‘tool’ of his/her own work.
Often performance artists have mostly to deal with investigation of the Human Body throughout its own reading, to focus on their own Body (and its own signs) as peculiar/predominant mean of communication: the Human Body and its own ways of expression; Real Body – Virtual Body – Hybrid Body as pars construens of art action; the Human Body and its own interactions with the others and within reality; the Human Body interacting with auxiliary tools/media (video/sound technology and devices).
STATEMENT ELEMENTS
Performance Art is a culture bound. It is always related to the specificity of a particular context, situations and circumstances. It is a discipline that moves along the interface that exists between an action that just refers to itself, and a live art work intended not just as a mere ‘corpus of actions’, but mainly as possible instrument of expression and communication, aimed to create or decipher a particular experience.
This could be possible only by producing meanings. Only meanings give actions a sense: lacking in meaning, any performance actions would lose its impact, and be scattered, poorly becoming a mere end, an empty joke.
The performer is outside of any usual or pre-ordered language; the performer sees things from many different perspectives, through a magnifying glass. Paradoxically, it’s as though the performer doesn’t belong to the human condition and, moving towards man’s essence, first of all the performer sees the action itself (and the need to act) as a barrier. Instead of seeking first to know i.e. the man’s name, it’s as though the performer establishes immediately a silent contact with the essence within (him/herself) and then, turning towards that other species of things that for him/her are actions (touching them, feeling them), the performer discovers that there is a specific tenuous light, a particular affinity with the earth, the sky, water and all those things that are. Not knowing how to use them as a sign of some aspect of the world, the performer sees in the body, which acts, the image itself of one of those aspects.
A performance, live or recorded, is life itself: it is primarily real. It stimulates memory activation, sentiments, instinctual feelings and the most intimate beliefs of who is participating. However, to achieve an inner ‘shifting’, a transfer of the Being to another dimension (real but not ordinary) in his appearance, it is necessary to communicate differently – but thoroughly – through gestures or primary actions, establishing a relation between performer and spectator with no obligations or forced intentions. Actually, performer and spectator are interdependent to each other, and, in different measure, reciprocally impressionable. Thus, while body and soul, movement and perception are evident proofs of reality, at the same time they are a laboratory of memory and representation. For that, a performance is really valuable when it arrives to investigate territories where ethic and aesthetic find their common ground.
Impermanence, identity, transfer, emotions, denial, introspection, idealization, division of the inner Self, its intimate essence in relation to the others, the objects and the surroundings: to perform within these topics means to move on that edge separating the realm of reality from the Utopia’s one.
During a performance the many different sensorial perceptions shape an itinerary that evokes non ordinary stimulations, at the same time offering a whole range of information to awake the inner sight, and to realize what it may be the ineffable that everyone carries inside himself. The (human) Being exists essentially for the interaction of three fundamental factors: the biological sphere, the social-ecological one, and the inter-psychic one. In the reality, when one or more of these areas get in conflict with another one, the human being, to protect itself from the loss of inner balance and the crisis that follows, tries to find remedy by using defensive devices. Everyone does. Nevertheless, there is something inside each one of us that seems to be still impossible to define in precise words, but it exists and acts: someone calls it mystery, some others psychic-spiritual experience.
The term action, comes from the Latin word actionem (nom. actio), from the pp. stem of the verb agere, and from the pp. stem of the later activare. It means the state or process of doing; to set in motion; to operate and organize activity to accomplish an objective; the causation of change by the exertion of power or a natural process; a movement, a manner of movement or a series of movement; a behaviour, a conduct (also habitual). In some other cases the term action can indicate to urge, to drive, to chase, to stir up.
Hence, with particular reference to performative action, it is necessary to consider a priori the performer as primary element – action-maker – of the action itself with performer’s performing body. However, whether the presence of the performer’s body has to operate and act within the action itself, and in which measure it must be visible, perceptible, and tangible to be said performative action, it is not precisely defined yet.
To analyze the idea of the body as essential element of any performative action, and investigate the possibility of action and representation on the surface of the so-called visible body, it is maybe useful to revisit some specific cultural prodromes about the word ‘body’.
For instance the Arab culture states three different expressions to define the word ‘body’: Gesem, Gesed and Beden. These three terms are clearly specified in what they refer to and in how, consequently, they indicate the three single, distinct elements (or bodies) by which the body is subdivided:
Gesem- is the body-body, the concrete biological, mechanical substance, the tangible, anatomical structure, which consists of flesh, bones, muscles, blood.
Gesed- is the mind-body; the brain; for the Latins- intelligenzia: the mental structure, which supports and controls the Gesem (body-body).
Beden- is the psyche-body, the psychosomatic element of soul movements and true, transparent and subtle emotions, which equally can express themselves through the Gesem (body-body), and also influence Gesed (body-mind).
The ‘three bodies’ reciprocally influence each other.
It is consequential that a specific question arises when someone try to analyze a particular, performative action, in order to understand which of these three bodies is more helpful and suitable to try and give the action a precise definition.
Of course the action pertinent to the Gesem (body-body) is easily perceptible and clearly definable; but what happens if the action is due to the use of Gesed (mind-body) and/or Beden (psyche-body)? Can these two bodies be in action without having an obvious, visible output (expression) on the Gesem (body-body) surface? How can we perceive them?
The task for any artist, which works with/through the artist’s own body, as material for representation/action, would have always be to achieve a natural equilibrium and balanced strength between those ‘three bodies’. Hence, during an actual performance, it may happen that the spectators do not visually perceive any action of the Gesem (body-body), but it will be always important to remind that in those moments the Gesed (mind-body) and Beden (psyche-body) of the performer are somehow set in motion, and that they are actually working and making action.
If these three subtle bodies are elements that belong to the performer’s body once it is activated to operate during any performative action, they consequently interfere with all the following categories, which should be properly analyzed as aspects of the ‘three bodies’ of the performer, not just as an artist, but more, as human being.
When our senses allow us to go beyond the materialistic schemes of ordinary things, we activate a different scale of inter-connective messages and impulses, which – interacting between one each other – lead to achieve a more pure and non hyper-structured way of communication aim to evoke associations and to generate concrete modifications that refer to something ‘different’. For example a ritual dynamic can activate and indicate different processes of social relation, provided that it is not invasive or constrictive: it is simply used like invisible instrument of recognition.
Inside someone’s own Self, intimately, privately, everyone realizes how much humble, harmonious, non-a-critic, passive someone can be, and mostly is.
Similarly, remembrances, ideas, actions and interventions: when they find a common ground to flow together, they can give birth to an experience both individual and collective at the same time. An experience that is civil, social, primarily poetical as part of a creative process, that is finally the result of an aesthetic course, a process of making which carries within clearness and significance.
An art action interferes with the limits of human abilities, objective or subjective. A prolonged effort can efficiently test these limits, once it is guided by consciousness, patience and decisional ability of the performer. In this way it is possible to create a flux of lasting energies throughout physical and real images that the body – being inside a given space – implements in a fixed period of time. The ‘becoming’ itself turns to be a practice focused on exploring and finding new codes of expression and relation, so that possible truths and reality can interfere to transform into something unusual but strongly perceivable.
Images produced by the mind, dreams or visions, change throughout clear physical actions, and – as mediators of the ineffable – become pure impressionable sensuality. More than the five human senses, the heart is the foremost sensor that allows an individual to look inwardly and profoundly, so far to get a more pure and concentrated perception of the many possible configurations in the scheme and in the configured system of the things.
To understand and comprehend is a question of profound feeling and flow of energies: it represents the extreme limit of any artistic process; as well as, in the same way, it happens when an intuition occurs for the activation of the memory, may it be genetic, collective or individual. For this, it is required an effort of whole empathy, between being and surroundings, as well as a deep comprehension of what does mean entropy throughout physical, mental and spiritual perception at the same time.
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| From the Siluetas series, Ana Mendieta, 1973-1981 |
From the Siluetas series, Ana Mendieta, 1973-1981
Ana Mendieta
‘I thought about it as having nature take over the body, in the same way that it had taken over the symbols of past civilizations. Nature is really the most powerful thing there is.’
How she relays this is bravely using her body, her physical nature to work with the earth – with blood, wood, grass, flowers, leaves, algae, mushrooms, pebbles, ice, fire, wax and gunpowder. It is direct, coarse yet poetic, beautiful yet harsh and sometimes absurd. Her motivation obsessional, an urge to reference how we relate to place and environments. They are:
‘a search to find my place, my context in nature.’
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| Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints) 1972 |
Untitled (Glass on Body Imprints) 1972
by Ana Mendieta
The exhibition opens with a collection of photographs, films, and personal artifacts from Mendieta’s years as a graduate student at the University of Iowa. Works like 1972 Glass on Body Imprints, reveal her budding interest in the newly developing intermedia program implemented into the university curriculum by Hans Breder. Glass on Body Imprints, document, in photographs, a series where Mendieta presses a square piece of plexiglass directly onto her face and body, radically distorting her features. This type of body art, in which the body is a sculptural material, was introduced to Mendieta through the Multimedia Program and the Center for New Performing Art. Body art had such a profound impact on the way Mendieta began to interpret the body as sculpture that by 1973 Mendieta was posing for Breder’s unique photographs of the body as sculpture which were also displayed, courtesy of Breder, alongside Mendieta’s work. This supplemental material accompanying Mendieta’s art, included within the same space, reinforces her own interest in the connection between art and life. These unique additions help to facilitate the intimacy already present in the space while giving those who are less familiar with Mendieta’s work the opportunity to see the artistic traditions and influences she was working from at the time.
Mendieta, like many artists of her era, took her work out of the studio, with the majority of works produced in the landscape - shaping the earth, digging her hands into it, and manipulating it. Although, such ephemeral works intended to defy the art-market system in a particular kind of way, they were conserved and re-articulated through photographs and video, which subsequently formed a significant part of Mendieta’s art. This exhibition is not organized as a typical hanging canvas show but rather enhances Mendieta’s own interest in a variety of media. There is an eclectic mix of works on paper side by side with sculptural works, video and photographs
Untitled (Chicken Piece) 1972
by Ana Mendieta
This is one of Mendieta's most visceral body-based works; it introduces the recurrent motifs of blood and feathers. Standing naked against a white background, Mendieta watches as a white hen is decapitated. She then holds the still writhing body as its blood covers her stomach and legs. The sacrifice of the chicken relates to cult rituals of the artist's native Cuba.
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