Social Sadism Made Explicit
Social Sadism Made explicit
Oscar Massota’s ‘happening’ To Induce the Spirit of the Image (1966):
-Aggressive attitude towards participants
-mediation / semiotics/guilt
-elderly people paid to stand in front of an audience and be subjected to fire-extinguishers, deafening sound, and blinding light after Massota had given a lecture about control. To participate in the event was much more expensive than to watch.
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Oscar Bony’s The Worker’s Family (1968):
-a working class family was paid twice their salary to sit on display for 8 hours a day in an exhibit
-made an ideal out of an everyday family
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The Group of Avant-Garde Artists’ Cycle of Experimental Art (1968):
-desire for autonomy (own space, own shows, and writing about own work)
-consisted of 10 actions (1 every 15 days)
-9th event: Rodolpho Elizalde and Emilio Ghilioni staged a street fight to get the public to directly interact and to take the art outside of the exhibit
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- media, press, informative
-counter propaganda in defense of exploited sugar workers
-wanted to expose viewer to injustice and generate press to exploit the situation
-the exhibit was covered with banners and newspapers covered with names and shocking statistics and phrased regarding the sugar workers’ situation. There was also a giant pile of donated food, coffee without sugar, and frequent blackouts to symbolize the deaths of the children affected by the issue.
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Augusto Boul’s Theater of the Opressed:
-broke identification as a key theatrical device
-changed audience/actor relationship
-invisible theatre: a type of public and participatory action that cannot be detected by the authorities
-you can see the show without seeing it as a show
-constructed situation in which a cast of actors attends a restaurant and play the patrons while the restaurant workers unknowingly participate. The restaurant eventually turns into a public forum.