GUILLAUME DÉSANGES

To attempt a history of the body in art as a history of silence at the discourse on art. To take performance art out of the context of its historical setting. To show how history – the history of art – has given and, for some people, engendered gestures and put paid to objects. And particularly to discourses. “This is not the time to speak, it’s the time act.” As if the silence of John Cage’s “four minutes thirty-three seconds” were not absolute music. But instead something like: I will not copy, I will show.

The summum of art is to have no more objects. The great subversion is not to leave any trace, not to show anything. That’s finished. The culture of performance art is that nothing remains, even when everything is remembered: has that ever happened? Seen in this totally formal way, the history of performance art, or of body art, is a history not of the representation of the body but only of its gestures. All merely sketched, already dead. At all events, we are attempting a history of performance in ten gestures and thirty figures.



1. Appearing
First opening gesture: appearing. Simply being here: Bob Morris, I box (1962). I’m not going to hide behind my work any more. So I am me. Chin slightly up. A gentle smile. I’m here. I’m fine. I assert a positive subjectivity.
Or else.
Once again, appearing: Bruce Nauman, Slow Angle Walk Beckett Walk (1968). That’s enough chat. Enough comments. Now I’ll show you. First, the space. I don’t want to waste time. Starting again from scratch. Re-learning the fundamental gestures. Here are the limits of my universe. As an artist. I pace around my studio. It’s a voluntary enclosure. But I put up with it. I walk, therefore I exist. Appearing, simply being.

2. Receiving
But careful now. Appearing means also and simultaneously becoming a potential target. So we have to move, otherwise we’ll be shot at.
Consequently, second gesture: receiving.
On 19 November 1971, Chris Burden is standing in a gallery in Santa Ana, California, in front of a shotgun, a video camera and a photographic camera. Shoot (1971). I shoot. The bullet goes through his arm, ouch! The radicalism of performance. Suicide gesture.
Burden stands there immobile. Determined. The result is inevitable. Burden is the anti-suspense. We think: maybe he won’t do it. But, yes. He’s capable of it. In the end it’s an exercise in virility: I fight the pain; I’m strong; strong-willed; superman. They shoot at me, but I’m still alive. Nietzschean. Chris Burden is health. Nuisance is illness. The most horrifying of all is not Burden but Vito Acconci. What’s amazing are not the bullets but the tennis balls that Vito Acconci receives blindfolded, trying to either catch them or avoid them: Blindfolded (1970). Burden’s performance was an execution squad, whereas Acconci’s is torture. Mental and physical torture. The worst aspect of humiliation is the futile gesture. The real danger is invisible. The real enemy is invisible. Paradoxically, Acconci blindfolded is the most visionary of the two.

3. Retaining
Third gesture: retaining.
Another strategy: resisting. A history of performance as an illustration of the relationship of submission to outside forces. But this resistance has its limits: those of the body. This body that retains is stretched, rigid, combative. But it will never win in the end. Its resistance will be heroic or grotesque.
Heroic photograph of a body stretched over the void. The body of Denis Oppenheim making a human bridge between two brick walls: Parallel stress (1970). Bent, twisted, forming an angle with his body. Immediacy and temptation through the void. Drawn to the earth, but resisting. In the instant before falling, before collapsing: the moment of maximum tension. He is fixed in loss, but also in combat. Stretching out into the abyss like a gargoyle.
But retaining means also, and in particular, retaining the word. An emblematic aspect of our history. Silence on the stage. Weak version:  Catalaysis 4 (1970-71). Adrian Piper walking along the street with a cloth over his mouth. A gag. Basic: but maybe not so weak. I teach the violence of imposed silence. Or retaining, once again. Gore version. Radical version by Paul McCarthy. Hot Dog (1974): stuffing his mouth with sausages. Until he’s sick. Something that won’t go in. And won’t come out. A voluntarily abject gesture: he retains the sausages with a band round his head. Obviously mute perforce. Hatefully mute. Is he swallowing or vomiting? It’s the same thing. The sausage won’t go down. He: untameable. Impossible to swallow, or even vomit. The stunned spectators are retained like hostages. If I vomit in front of them, they’ll do the same thing. And they’ll choke. The supreme irony: McCarthy reconciles the detractors with the spectators of the trash performance. In the same way as a France Dimanche journalist in February 1975 was exasperated about body art: “They call that art; I just felt sick.” Exactly.

4. Escaping
Fourth gesture: escaping.
Escaping. Running. Fleeing. Sliding. Turning one’s back on history. The best defence. Always mute. Escaping so as not to have to explain. Not to have to speak. Running without stopping. Bip, bip: the road-runner and the coyote in the desert. Bip, bip version? Optimist. Setting myself free. Breath of life, leaving the canvas so as to breath in oxygen. Emblematic founding gesture by Saburo Murakami in 1956: Breaking through many paper screens. I run through the extended paper frames. I smash everything I find; nothing is left whole. I am… bip, bip. I keep going. Through the mountains. Escaping. At the end of the tunnel: life. A simplified race: 200 metres inside the tanks. Puffing and blowing bubbles.

On 19 November 1971, Chris Burden is standing in a gallery in Santa Ana, California, in front of a shotgun, a video camera and a photographic camera. Shoot (1971). I shoot. The bullet goes through his arm, ouch!

Yves Klein jumps. Into space. From the outside of a middle-class house in a Paris suburb. But I don’t fall. I rise up. A trick, it’s true. But the result is: flight.

Just the opposite: fleeing coyote version, fourteen years later. Asthmatic and suicidal. Absurd. Desperate, and to be honest, Californian, by Barry La Va: Velocity piece (1970). I throw myself against the wall until I’m exhausted. Precisely, I don’t throw myself onto the wall. I want to escape. But it’s impossible to escape. Splendid, glaring disappointment. Like a swallow shut in one of Madame Duthée’s stables. Or perhaps a fly. I come up against the glass.
But all this is conscious. And sublime, to the limits of my body. Back and forth he goes, trapped. Sisyphus demonstrating the impossibility of perpetual movement. Because man tires. Gets hurt. Injures himself. Traces of blood. No way out.

5. Aiming
Or else. A way out. Through a fifth gesture: aiming. Taking aim with a weapon. There’s no other possible means. Rather as if since the 1960s art has moved to the level of intimidation. Diplomatic channels have failed.
Time to shoot.
The bang! of the sixties: it’s Niki de Saint Phalle. I shoot at bags of paint. Concentrating on hitting the target. Aiming, shooting. Calamity Jane. The stance is firm. Virile. Precise. Much more than the pseudo-subversive action of the pictorial homicide. What matters is the form of the gesture: portrait of the artist as a murderer. Reversing the situation, vengeance: the artist repeats the attitude of the Napoleonic soldier in Goya’s painting. Ready. Aim. Fire! But just a few years later, Chris Burden against revived the scene in an unexpected version. Imprecise. Ridiculous. Firing into the air over a Boeing 747. Nothing happens of course. It’s not dangerous. That would be more romantic. But, seriously, it’s a whole aeroplane that’s being fired at. Nobody really believes it, but why not?  Subversion as in disobeying parents’ rules: “Never point a gun, even as a joke.” An assault? More likely: flying prohibited. Forced to land. Burden brings everything down to earth. He breaks aeroplanes’ wings. Literally: dropping down dead. Come on, let’s go! Everybody down, heads down, hand over your heads.

6. Falling
Speaking of going down. Sixth gesture: falling.
The opening gesture: Yves Klein, Leap into the void (1960).
Yves jumps. Into space. From the outside of a middle-class house in a Paris suburb. But I don’t fall. I rise up. A trick, it’s true. But the result is: flight. Erection. Icarus. Head in the clouds. Drawn towards the ether. Negation of the heavy body in the sky. It’s the leap of the announcing angel. Or better still: ascension itself. On the way to eternity.
Pathetic variation: that grotesque work by Jan Van Ader, the king of falling, Fall two (1970). I cycle along the edge of a canal in Amsterdam and fall into the water. Splash! It’s scarcely voluntary. Nor is it demonstrative. Or reactive. More like a casting error. It’s nobody’s fault, not even Ader’s. In the water, upside down, it’s the bicycle’s fault. Sana Sanita, culito de rana, si no sana hoy, sanará mañana... But in fact he’s not even hurt. Simply: not in tune with the world. Social suicide. Emotional, like a bottle thrown into the sea. In fact, it’s a premonition. Ader was to do a tragic repeat a few years later, disappearing in the sea. It cost him his life. Maybe. But here, this unfortunate fall with the bicycle is still a farce. Discreetly burlesque. Silently sad. Does he fall? Shhh. Be quiet….

7. Screaming
But don’t worry, it’s not all quiet. Ninth gesture: screaming. Vociferating. Another mute gesture. Paradoxical? Not really. A scream is not a discourse. A scream is expression. Noise isn’t language. After centuries of visual discourse in art, and then textual discourse, a scream is the confirmation of the end of blah blah blah. We’ve passed on to something else. Or we’re returning to something else. The simple scream. With nothing else. On its own. Primeval. A return to the essence of art. First the scream and then language. The end of childhood.
So, in the medium of conceptual mutterings, various vociferations will reply to the echo:

1. 1. Soprano Jochen Gerz, Calling to the point of exhaustion (1972). I’m standing on a site screaming “Hallo!” until my voice fails. Prayer. Shamanism. Howling at the moon.
   
2. Upside-down version: Marina Abramovic, Freeing the voice (1975). Screaming is resisting. How to become in transit. Experimenting with the limits of the body. The result is an almost animal bel canto. A kind of roaring.
   
3. Bill Viola, The space between the teeth (1976). A dental type of scream. Organic. Travelling towards a vociferating open mouth. The camera enters the mouth. Like the lion tamer who puts his head between the animal’s jaws. End of scream. Cut.
   

8. Biting
Biting. Cutting. Shearing. Another possible script for a history of performance art. Cannibal version. It’s not for eating, or for swallowing but rather for leaving marks. For contrasting silence with discourse, but this time directly. For rediscovering a basic form of writing. Because the etymology of the word is graphein: engraving. Since its beginnings, writing has been not a construction but a penetration.
Therefore, in the same way as screaming is primeval language, biting is initial writing. So, after the mute expression of a scream, here we have an illegible impression of a bite.
Vito Acconci, Trademarks (1970): methodical bites on the body reaching every possible part. Ambitious and even incisive writing.
Once again, impression. But this time in hand-stitched binding version: Gina Pane, Sentimental Action (1972). Sitting cross-legged on the ground, I stick thorns from a rose into my outstretched arm. I am a sculpture. I am the tree trunk of the popular kermesses. For each nail hammered in, I ask for a wish. Not totally masochist: a supportive game. Rather welcoming. The body as fertile ground. The transplant zone. Possible organic fusion. And a desirable one. Most obstinate bite: Nam June

Gina Pane, Sentimental Action (1972). Sitting cross-legged on the ground, I stick thorns from a rose into my outstretched arm.

Bruce Nauman, Self-portrait as a fountain (1966-67). The artist spits out water like a fountain, generous, giving, nutritional, source of life.

9. Emptying Ninth gesture: emptying. Emptying. Free distribution. Two formulae to choose from: the generous or the pathetic. Loss or gift. Nutritional gift or the pure oblivion of oneself. It’s sometimes hard to distinguish. My body is a source of life or of problems. I surrender or let myself go. At any rate: I’m doing the inviting, a round for everyone. Emptying, tending to happiness: Bruce Nauman, Self-portrait as a fountain (1966-67). The artist spits out water like a fountain, generous, giving, nutritional, source of life. Silence: it’s impossible to speak with one’s mouth full. Simple gesture, both distant and voluntary. Maximum effect with minimum effects. It reminds me of Kurt Schwitters’ formula: “Everything an artist spits out is art.” Afterwards, emptying, tending to scatology: Otto Muhl, Pissaction (1968). Emptying oneself into somebody else’s mouth. Sadomasochist versions of donation. A “golden rain” in Munich. Welcome to the theatre of cruelty: no need for restraint. Let it flow. Overflow. Water sport. From then on, in fact, the tap is open. It can all flow happily. One could write a history of performance art as an outline of fluid mechanics. Some random examples:

Guillaume Désanges, presentation of An history of the performance in twenty minutes (© Philippe Durand)

• Street version: Francis Alÿs walking along the streets of São Paolo carrying a perforated pot of paint (1995). A thin blue line on the grey pavement. Maximum traceability.
• Anything else? Hannah Wilke, His Farced Epistol (1978). Peeing in the nude. Standing up. In the lavatory. Maybe not so vulnerable because she’s holding a pistol. Less of a naturalist provocation than a – visual – affirmation of an equality of sexes. With violence.
• Or maybe Carolee Schneeman, Interior Scroll (1975). I empty my body through my vagina. Unfolding a parchment to read. One could say, “biblical-Gustave-Courbetian” fusion: in the beginning of the world was the word.
• Final version: Mike Kelley, Manipulating mass-produced, idealized objects (1990). Mission: defecating on to teddy bears. Maximum subversion. We literally forget ourselves. Return of rejection. Assisted ready-merde. Maximum regression, stained teddy version. Los Lunnis, killing game version. Good night. See you tomorrow.

10. Disappearing
Tenth and last gesture in this history of the body in art. The reverse of the first gesture. The opposite of appearing. Not being. Using the body to signify absence. Disappearing. Phutt…
Chris Burden, Disappearing (1971): I disappear for three days, without leaving any trace. Impossible to locate.
Radical. The scandal of the absent gaze. No more nosey-parkers, so no more art. It is neither the absence of trace nor the trace of absence. It’s the impossible trace. Anticognitive revolution. You won’t know anything. Burden has already experimented with this formula by hiding himself in the gallery during an exhibition. Come one, let’s go, there’s nothing to see. But here it’s the ultimate radical dematerialisation. I disappear.
As if performance had maybe only tended towards that. Finally. Simply outside. Outside the area of art. A clean slate. Dematerialisation completed. Fading out.
Or maybe returning. But in that case without the body. And the gesture. The end of performance. In this case. Return. To the initial box. Fishcli and Weiss set fire to the gunpowder: Der Lauf der Dinge (The way things go, 1987). Twenty-eight minutes to say that art is real dynamite. A chain of disasters, each caused by the previous one, like dominoes falling over.

A version of this text was published for the first time in French in Trouble, no. 4.

Guillaume Désanges, presentation of An history of the performance in twenty minutes (© Philippe Durand)