Body in Performance - Lecture 1b
Notes on Amelia Jones “Body Art: Performing the Subject”
Initial thoughts… well she makes some points but might be a bit alienating in her delivery.
Phenomonolgy/phemonialogical - Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object.
(seriously how many times did I have to look up that definition while reading this)
Cartesean - I think therefore I am. Ego defining our sense of self. This is how we know we exist. Making ourselves the subject. The personal is political.
I like her specificity in defining body art. I particularly like her comparison to self portraiture and her example of Jackson Pollock. Jackson pollock being the hinge between formalism and post-formalism.
Formalism: art that has a form. painting/sculpture as opposed to performance, which is without definite form.
Interesting to contextualise Carolee Schneeman as a pre-feminist artist. While I have always seen Schneeman is a seminal feminist performance art figure, I had never given so much thought to the fact that she was creating these works many years before a cohesive women’s liberation movement.
Also Interesting to give more context to Kusama and her work in the 60s and 70s. I find that now she and her work are so highly revered it is hard to imagine her work being controversial, but of course it was.
Photo of Kusama’s peep-show
Self-Portrait in The Lusty Lady Peep Show
Kusama’s Peep Show makes me think of the toilets in the MONA (Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania, Australia) where you can watch yourself shit through a series of mirrors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh-RfF3cIDc
And once again, this all relates to online identities, and online performances. We are in a perpetual performance, and now forever documenting it. Creating a durational self-portrait. Constantly reiterating our personal brand. Creating a cohesive story in which we are the subject.
DEFINE POSTSTRUCTURALISM. Is it related to formalism? And post-formalist? Body art being post-formalist?
Perhaps the best way I can relate Post-structuralism to my own experience is that it is the same feeling I get when I have to send mood boards to clients. I become frustrated before the process even begins because I will send a set of images, but I know they will never perceive these images as I do. They will never pick out the same things that I pick out, which, especially when striving for an overall feeling or mood can become extremely distorted. And even when using language to explain the things I see in the pictures, there is still a huge gap in communication. I am then left with our the tools to accurately communicate my ideas, which is problematic when trying to collaborate.
This relation to the body and body art and feminism, it all strikes me as rather dualist/binary. We get away from the modern artist ideal detached male. Male being associated with rationality, culture and intellect, and we create body art instead…. This still holds all of the trapping of patriarchal dualism. Women being associated with the natural body, the emotive etc etc. She discuss the ‘hinge’ the body being the hinge between culture and nature, but I feel like I want an entirely different option that smacks these binaries into 5 million pieces.