Tag: performance art

halogenic:

Chris Burden – Prelude to 220, or 110 (1971)

Burden lay bolted with copper bands to a concrete floor, near two buckets of water in which live 110-volt lines had been submerged. Had anyone visiting the gallery chosen to spill the water, Burden would have been electrocuted. Such performances created a context in which it was possible (though not probable) that the artist would die. Fear or pain, Burden said, “energize the situation,” and that energy was his subject.

(Source: C. Carr, «On Edge. Let’s Make an Ordeal—Young Artists Recover the Conceptual ‘70s in the Material ’90s,» 1998, http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/9849/carr.php)

Source: halogenic

stuart brisley

And for today… nothing, 1972

Performance

Gallery House Goethe Institute, London

Performance duration: App 2 hours each day for 2 weeks.

I lay in a bath of black water in the bathroom of Gallery House for approximately 2 hours each day for two weeks.

In the wash basin and on a ledge next to the bath I laid out some offal. During the two weeks the offal decayed, flies laying eggs and maggots hatching out to feed.

There was a low light in the bathroom so it was difficult to see exactly what was in there. The door was left ajar. The only sign of movement was that of a body rising and falling in the water when breathing in and out. The stench of offal was overpowering.

I made a film based on this work entitled Arbeit Macht Frei (16mm 20 mins). The film is in black and white and colour. It reflects the total rejection of what lay behind the title – the words enshrined on every Nazi concentration camp, translates as Work Makes Free. It is a deliberation on death.

lessonsoftoday:

clavicola:

In 1996, Tracey Emin lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days, with nothing but a lot of empty canvases and art materials, in an attempt to reconcile herself with paintings. Viewed through a series of wide-angle lenses embedded in the walls, Emin could be watched, stark naked, shaking off her painting demons. Starting by making images like the artists she really admired (i.e. Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Yves Klein), Emin’s two-week art-therapy session resulted in a massive outpouring of autobiographical images, and the discovery of a style all her own. The room was extracted in its entirety, and now exists as an installation work.

Say you want about Tracey Emin, but she has indisputably dedicated her entire life to her art. When 2013 rolls around, and she has her show at the Brooklyn Museum… I don’t know how I’m going to control my happiness.