Tag: performance art

CHRIS BURDEN
Relic from “Back to You”
1974
Stainless steel bowl and push pins
Case: 10 x 10 x 10 inches
25.4 x 25.4 x 25.4 cm

Back to You
112 Green St., New York
January 16, 1974

Dressed only in pants, I was lying on a table inside a freight elevator with the door closed. Next to me on the table was a small dish of 5/8" steel push pins. Liza Bear requested a volunteer from the audience, and he was escorted to the elevator. As the door opened, a camera framing me form the waist up was turned on, and the audience viewed this scene on several monitored placed near the elevator. As the elevator went to the basement and returned, Liza told the audience that a sign in the elevator instructed the volunteer to “Please push pins into my body.” The volunteer stuck 4 pins into my stomach and 1 pin into my foot during the elevator trip. When the elevator returned to the floor, the door opened, the volunteer stepped out, and the camera was turned off. The elevator returned to the basement.

Gina Pane, Action: Discours mou et mat, 1975, Courtesy of Frac Lorraine – Metz, © ADAGP Paris, © VEGAP, Leon, 2015-16

“In order to enter the performance space, visitors first had to sidestep a motorcycle, that blocked the entrance. In the room several objects had been placed as the scenery of the forthcoming performance: a safety helmet, boxing gloves, knuckledusters, a gold painted golf ball and razor blade, red and white roses plus a naked woman whose back had been decorated with blue stars.The first scene lasted 15 minutes. Pane entered the performance space, dressed in white pants, a white blouse and high heels of the same colour. She wore sunglasses and had drawn blue stars on her left arm and hand. On the floor had been placed two mirrors, with sheets of glass on top. On the right mirror (from Pane’s point of view) stars had been drawn and the word ‘aliénation’ had been written on the glass. The left mirror was blank, but on the sheet of glass on top the portrait of a person wearing shades had been drawn. The sunglasses reflected a mill and a field of tulips. Pane kneeled down behind the mirrors and played two cymbals of cardboard, with cotton wool on the insides. After this silent concert several slides were projected. During the second scene of five minutes Pane smashed the sheets of glass with her fists.The next ten minutes Pane sat down on a stool, playing tennis with a ball that hung from the ceiling. She hit the ball with a racket and stopped it with her forehead.During the fourth scene Pane crawled to the shattered sheets of glass to hit them once again, meanwhile gasping into a microphone.For scene five, that also took ten minutes, Pane cut a vertical incision in her upper and under lip with a razor blade.During the final scene, Pane laid down next to the naked woman and looked at the ceiling through binoculars. Meanwhile music by Brahms was played in slow-motion and some slides were shown.”

–De Appel