Embodying Ideas, But At What Cost?
“Artists choose to use people as a medium for many reasons: to challenge traditional artistic criteria by reconfiguring everyday actions as performance; to give visibility to certain social constituencies and render them more complex, immediate, and physically present; to introduce aesthetic effects of chance and risk; to problematize the binaries of live and mediated, spontaneous and staged, authentic and contrived, to examine the construction of collective identity and the extent to which people always exceed these categories.” (Bishop, C. 2012. p.112)
What does it mean to use our body for art? What does it mean to use other people’s bodies? And at what cost? With a brief look into the history of performance art, this essay will explore the ethics surrounding delegated performance in comparison to performances that are undertaken by the artists themselves. I will explore how far artists will go to create a work and how they use other people’s bodies to get there. The first half of the essay will focus on Marina Abramović and VALIE EXPORT, who are the subject and medium of their performances from the late 1960s and early 1970s. In stark contrast to this, the second half of the essay will focus on the work of Santiago Sierra and Artur Żmijewski, whose work mostly consists of delegated performance and outsourcing, which according to Claire Bishop can be defined as “The act of hiring non-professionals...to undertake the job of being present and performing...on behalf of the artist and following his or her instructions.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.91)
Performance art began breaking down barriers, by creating something authentic between the artist and the viewer. The transparency and unplanned nature of live performance often brought an element of risk to this kind of work. It became a way of ‘engaging with social issues, either by changing the nature of the museum space or bringing political issues into the public space.’ (Klein, J. 2018)
Performance disrupted what museums had gotten used to the collecting and showing of objects, and artwork having a monetary value in exchange for something physical and tangible. Jacky Klein discusses the shift from the use of one’s body in the creation of an artwork to the physical artwork not needing to be part of it at all:
‘In the 1950s, work started being created by artists like Jackson Pollock, creating art by moving around the canvas on the floor, Kazuo Shiraga, painting with his feet while suspended by a rope, or by painting with a paintball gun like French artist artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Through interaction and physical movement artists stopped feeling the need to produce something as a result of this movement and suddenly the movement itself became the work.’ (Klein, J. 2018)
Performance being live and ephemeral, therefore renders it intangible. Some artists try to fight this through the means of documentation, which is a personal choice on behalf of the artist. For example, Berlin-based artist Tino Seghal, creates no physical documentation of the work. For him, it is ephemeral and only wants his work to be spread by word of mouth. In comparison to this, for American photographer Spencer Tunik, who is known for his nude outdoor shots, the reason for the gathering of people is for the photograph. In this case, the visual documentation is the artwork, in the form of a physical and commercial product.
“Whereas once performance art sought to break the art market by dematerializing the work of art into ephemeral events, today dematerialization and rumour have become two of the most effective forms of hype.” (Bishop, 2012, p.102)
Marina Abramović and VALIE EXPORT are among the many artists who have both tested the limits of their own mind and body, with their works often having an element of serious risk. Abramović’s work often consists of participation on behalf of the viewer, trying to build a relationship between audience and performer. Many of her works involve putting herself in extremely vulnerable positions, testing her levels of endurance. I will focus on one of her earlier works with her partner Ulay, ‘Rest Energy’, (1980), which was a performance for just over 4 minutes, where the two artists held one arrow between them, equally distributing the weight of their bodies, with the arrow pointing towards Marina’s heart. (Fig. 1)
What does it mean to use our body for art? What does it mean to use other people’s bodies? And at what cost? With a brief look into the history of performance art, this essay will explore the ethics surrounding delegated performance in comparison to performances that are undertaken by the artists themselves. I will explore how far artists will go to create a work and how they use other people’s bodies to get there. The first half of the essay will focus on Marina Abramović and VALIE EXPORT, who are the subject and medium of their performances from the late 1960s and early 1970s. In stark contrast to this, the second half of the essay will focus on the work of Santiago Sierra and Artur Żmijewski, whose work mostly consists of delegated performance and outsourcing, which according to Claire Bishop can be defined as “The act of hiring non-professionals...to undertake the job of being present and performing...on behalf of the artist and following his or her instructions.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.91)
Performance art began breaking down barriers, by creating something authentic between the artist and the viewer. The transparency and unplanned nature of live performance often brought an element of risk to this kind of work. It became a way of ‘engaging with social issues, either by changing the nature of the museum space or bringing political issues into the public space.’ (Klein, J. 2018)
Performance disrupted what museums had gotten used to the collecting and showing of objects, and artwork having a monetary value in exchange for something physical and tangible. Jacky Klein discusses the shift from the use of one’s body in the creation of an artwork to the physical artwork not needing to be part of it at all:
‘In the 1950s, work started being created by artists like Jackson Pollock, creating art by moving around the canvas on the floor, Kazuo Shiraga, painting with his feet while suspended by a rope, or by painting with a paintball gun like French artist artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Through interaction and physical movement artists stopped feeling the need to produce something as a result of this movement and suddenly the movement itself became the work.’ (Klein, J. 2018)
Performance being live and ephemeral, therefore renders it intangible. Some artists try to fight this through the means of documentation, which is a personal choice on behalf of the artist. For example, Berlin-based artist Tino Seghal, creates no physical documentation of the work. For him, it is ephemeral and only wants his work to be spread by word of mouth. In comparison to this, for American photographer Spencer Tunik, who is known for his nude outdoor shots, the reason for the gathering of people is for the photograph. In this case, the visual documentation is the artwork, in the form of a physical and commercial product.
“Whereas once performance art sought to break the art market by dematerializing the work of art into ephemeral events, today dematerialization and rumour have become two of the most effective forms of hype.” (Bishop, 2012, p.102)
Marina Abramović and VALIE EXPORT are among the many artists who have both tested the limits of their own mind and body, with their works often having an element of serious risk. Abramović’s work often consists of participation on behalf of the viewer, trying to build a relationship between audience and performer. Many of her works involve putting herself in extremely vulnerable positions, testing her levels of endurance. I will focus on one of her earlier works with her partner Ulay, ‘Rest Energy’, (1980), which was a performance for just over 4 minutes, where the two artists held one arrow between them, equally distributing the weight of their bodies, with the arrow pointing towards Marina’s heart. (Fig. 1)
Fig.1. Marina Abramović & Ulay, ‘Rest Energy’, 1980.
Fig. 2. VALIE EXPORT, ‘TAP and TOUCH Cinema’, 1968.
A similar, yet not so life-threatening vulnerability is displayed in VALIE EXPORT’s, ‘TAP and TOUCH Cinema’. (Fig. 2) This was an iconic feminist action of ‘expanded cinema’ in Munich in 1968. Using performance arts main purpose, EXPORT took aspects from art and life and created something to connect the two. This performance raised issues over the idealized representations of women in television, film and print during this time. By confronting passersby and inviting them to put their hands inside this specially constructed box and touch her breasts, EXPORT was testing the conventions that had defined the medium of film by opening them up to performance and other interventions.
Using their body’s as their subject matter, the material and the means for producing art, Abramović and EXPORT allow us to think about how we feel about our own bodies and in-turn how we think and feel about other people’s bodies. In the two works seen above, the artists play the role of performers. They are the ones, in this case, with their breasts being felt by strangers or with an arrow pointed at their heart. What I really want to stress here is that the risk, be it emotional or physical trauma or pain, is completely self-inflicted.
“If body art in the 60s and 70s was produced quickly and inexpensively (since the artist’s own body was the cheapest form of material), delegated performance today, by contrast, tends to be a luxury game.” (Bishop, 2012, p.102)
So what has changed since then? Performance art today has taken on a whole different meaning from performance art when it first emerged in the 60s and 70s. It has been coined as a historical definition following a certain type of art, known as ‘body art’, where the artist was actually present in the work. “One of the most conspicuous manifestations...in contemporary art since the 1990’s has been the hiring of non-professionals to do performances.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.91) Performance art and body art share the same desired outcome and that is to create direct confrontation between artist and audience. Where the difference lies with delegated performance though is who is needed to create the work and what lengths artists will go to communicate their ideas. This is where the questions of ethics arise.
“Contemporary performance art does not necessarily privilege the live moment or the artist’s own body, but instead engages in numerous strategies of mediation that include delegation and repetition.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.102)
Artur Żmijewski is an artist whose work has stirred up quite a lot of controversy with regard to the use of other people’s bodies. Żmijewski’s practice has been defined as “a form of ‘relational aesthetics’, where ordinary people are invited to participate in artificially constructed situations with the aim of revealing deep social problems.” (Johnson, K. cited in Moreno, I. 2015 p.26) I would challenge this description of his practice by taking the word “invited” out and arguing that in some cases, Żmijewski’s participants are very obviously pressured into taking part in the work.
But at what cost? Or as Kerry Guinan asks, ‘what for?’ With most of his works consisting of penetration, masturbation and the permanent marking of people's bodies, I begin to wonder why he is doing this? Is it purely for the shock factor? Why does he feel the need to push his ‘performers’ so far beyond their limits? Żmijewski is testing the capacity for mental and physical endurance, like Abromovic and EXPORT, but in this case, it is not his he who suffers the consequences. Żmijewski could not even begin to understand how emotionally challenging his performances are because he simply does not have the same experiences as the people he gets to do them.
The ‘luxury’ of delegated performance that Bishop mentions shines through in Żmijewski’s ‘80064’, (Fig. 3) a film documenting a 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor being persuaded by Żmijewski to renew the number that was tattooed on him in the concentration camp. I am focusing on this work as it is by far one of his most shocking, if not just totally upsetting works. As with a lot of his work, this piece created a lot of commotion in the public realm and began to raise many questions about Żmijewski’s practice and whether this use of the public was really necessary.
Using their body’s as their subject matter, the material and the means for producing art, Abramović and EXPORT allow us to think about how we feel about our own bodies and in-turn how we think and feel about other people’s bodies. In the two works seen above, the artists play the role of performers. They are the ones, in this case, with their breasts being felt by strangers or with an arrow pointed at their heart. What I really want to stress here is that the risk, be it emotional or physical trauma or pain, is completely self-inflicted.
“If body art in the 60s and 70s was produced quickly and inexpensively (since the artist’s own body was the cheapest form of material), delegated performance today, by contrast, tends to be a luxury game.” (Bishop, 2012, p.102)
So what has changed since then? Performance art today has taken on a whole different meaning from performance art when it first emerged in the 60s and 70s. It has been coined as a historical definition following a certain type of art, known as ‘body art’, where the artist was actually present in the work. “One of the most conspicuous manifestations...in contemporary art since the 1990’s has been the hiring of non-professionals to do performances.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.91) Performance art and body art share the same desired outcome and that is to create direct confrontation between artist and audience. Where the difference lies with delegated performance though is who is needed to create the work and what lengths artists will go to communicate their ideas. This is where the questions of ethics arise.
“Contemporary performance art does not necessarily privilege the live moment or the artist’s own body, but instead engages in numerous strategies of mediation that include delegation and repetition.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p.102)
Artur Żmijewski is an artist whose work has stirred up quite a lot of controversy with regard to the use of other people’s bodies. Żmijewski’s practice has been defined as “a form of ‘relational aesthetics’, where ordinary people are invited to participate in artificially constructed situations with the aim of revealing deep social problems.” (Johnson, K. cited in Moreno, I. 2015 p.26) I would challenge this description of his practice by taking the word “invited” out and arguing that in some cases, Żmijewski’s participants are very obviously pressured into taking part in the work.
But at what cost? Or as Kerry Guinan asks, ‘what for?’ With most of his works consisting of penetration, masturbation and the permanent marking of people's bodies, I begin to wonder why he is doing this? Is it purely for the shock factor? Why does he feel the need to push his ‘performers’ so far beyond their limits? Żmijewski is testing the capacity for mental and physical endurance, like Abromovic and EXPORT, but in this case, it is not his he who suffers the consequences. Żmijewski could not even begin to understand how emotionally challenging his performances are because he simply does not have the same experiences as the people he gets to do them.
The ‘luxury’ of delegated performance that Bishop mentions shines through in Żmijewski’s ‘80064’, (Fig. 3) a film documenting a 92-year-old Auschwitz survivor being persuaded by Żmijewski to renew the number that was tattooed on him in the concentration camp. I am focusing on this work as it is by far one of his most shocking, if not just totally upsetting works. As with a lot of his work, this piece created a lot of commotion in the public realm and began to raise many questions about Żmijewski’s practice and whether this use of the public was really necessary.
Fig. 3. Artur Żmijewski, ‘80064’.
“The act of symbolically repeating the tattoo may here be interpreted as an attempt of mastery overy the subjects experience of Nazi persecution. However the anxiety the man expresses for the tattoo’s authenticity confirms Lacan’s thesis that precise reproduction of historical significance is fundamentally impossible.” (Guinan, K. 2015, p.3)
Renewing this number is seen to be a metaphor about memory and history. What Żmijewski is trying to communicate with this documentry, is that we mustn’t forget the Holocaust or similar events are bound to happen again. But the bigger question for me is it was worth the price of this old man’s peace of mind? Żmijewski does not try hide his narcissistic attitude and the fact that his ‘performer’ would really much rather go home without his tattoo being renewed.
“When I undertook this film experiment with memory, I expected that under the effect of tattooing the "doors of memory" would open, that there would be an eruption of remembrance of that time, a stream of images or words describing the painful past. Yet that didn't happen.” (Żmijewski, A. 2008)
Żmijewski’s language with regard to the documentary is pretty horrific, referring to it as some kind of ‘experiment’ makes me feel that the consequences don’t matter to him, as they do not directly affect him. But unlike a science experiment gone wrong, this action has significant consequences on a real human being who has feelings, very strong ones, especially around this particular subject matter. So what I stressed before, I want to bring up again in this new light, and that is that the risk, be it emotional or physical trauma or pain, is in no way self-inflicted here, and this is where my problem lies with this work.
“By placing them at opposing ends of the autonomy spectrum, with the artist benefiting from a privileged position over his collaborators, Bishop emphasizes the distance that is at the core of collaborative works. Such distance stems from the performance being delegated rather than performed by the artist.” (Moreno, I. 2015 p.10)
Works by Spanish artist Santiago Sierra have raised a lot of the same ethical questions as Żmijewski, specifically in Sierra’s works that involve tattooing people’s bodies and performances where people are paid minimum wage to do meaningless tasks, such as bleach their hair or hide behind museum walls. Sierra’s work is seen to raise issues around the “the ways in which people exchange their time and energy for money within the capitalist framework.” (Spiegler, M. 2003 p.94)
Fig. 4. Santiago Sierra, ‘250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Paid People’.
“Answering provocation, the artist claims that his work is made possible by the existing socio-political conditions. Specifically referring to the recipients of his tattoos, Sierra explains that, ‘The tattoo is not the problem. The problem is the existence of social conditions that allow me to make this work.’” (Spiegler, M. 2003 p.95) For me, it’s this self-awareness of what Sierra is doing that differs him from Zmijewski. “Having a tattoo is normally a personal choice. But when you do it under ‘remunerated’ conditions, this gesture becomes something that seems awful, degrading - it perfectly illustrates the tragedy of our social hierarchies.” (Sierra cited in Spiegler, M. 2003) Why artists make the work they make is intensely important to being able to make a judgement on it. As Mark Spiegler explains, before Sierra began these works, he was “quite simply, frightened by the emotional toughness of doing work where he played the role of the exploiter even if the work was aimed precisely at highlighting social exploitation.” (Spiegler, M. 2003, p.94)
My initial reaction to this work was the same saddened feeling I got after watching Żmijewski’s ‘80064’, wondering how belittling it must have felt to be the subject of these human experiments, especially when you are left with a permanent reminder of the work, sometimes only learning later on what it means to have been part of that performance. With further reading on both artists and their practices I began to make some distinctions between them. With deeper inspection and the application of Bishop’s proposal of a way of judging these works, I attempt to approach this subject matter more open-mindedly.
“To judge these performances on a scale with supposed ‘exploitation’ at the bottom and full ‘agency’ at the top is to miss the point entirely. The difference, rather, is between ‘art-fair art’ and work that reifies precisely in order to discuss reification, or that exploits precisely to thematize exploitation itself.” (Bishop, C. 2012, p. 110)
A similar distinction can be made between Żmijewski and Sierra’s work as was made in the beginning of the essay between Sehgal and Tunik. Sierra’s performances, like Sehgal’s, are live and ephemeral and happen in public.
“Unlike Santiago Sierra whose works ask spectators to ponder on the reasons some people agree to stand hidden in boxes for hours, get tattooed or have their hair bleached, in exchange for minimum pay, Artur Żmijewski’s films bring to light people’s ability to unleash their hatred given the right conditions.” (Moreno, I. 2015 p.12)
Żmijewski’s performances, just like Tunik’s photography, are recorded and made deliberately to be in the form of a physical and commercial product. “Żmijewski relies on video to record participants’ reactions when prompted to act freely in response to provocation.” (Moreno, I. 2015 p.26) Sierra and Seghal construct these performances with a solid idea of what they are trying to communicate, whereas Żmijewski’s approach seems to be far more flippant, as he simply sits and waits for people to “unleash their hatred” (Moreno, I. 2015 p.12) This element of live performance can make an artwork extremely rich and interesting as can be seen in Abramović and EXPORTS work mentioned above, but I think what is unethical about Żmijewski’s work is entering these experiments with such unknown, when he is not the own who suffers the consequences. Another difference between the work of Sierra and Żmijewski is brought up in Moreno’s thesis (2015), explaining that Sierra’s performances are always fully consensual. “Although highly scripted and seemingly degrading, repetitive, and pointless, his performances involve only consenting participants.” (Moreno, I. 2015 p.11) As we can clearly see, this is not the case for Żmijewski’s work.
Social responsibility and political ideology seem to be the two major themes that surround these artists work, but there are ways of doing this that don’t require this kind of outsourcing or delegation. As can be seen in works by artist Christoph Schlingensief, in his piece ‘Please Love Austria’, (2000) he hires professional actors to play the role of migrants. As far as the public are concerned, they were 12 asylum-seekers. So I ask the question, if the same socio-political problems and questions are raised with actors, is there a need to use vulnerable members of the public, who in most cases, don’t have much knowledge of why they’re being asked to participate in these projects/human experiments? I think for Sierra this may be a critical part of the work by rendering them more complex but I can only imagine, in cases like Zmijenskis ‘80046’ there were serious physiological effects of being part of this work. So where do we draw the line between creating work to raise problems, and actually causes problems in the making?
After considering this, we are able to now see a distinction between works of art like Żmijewski, and Sierra, which at first glance, whose work seemed inherently similar. The distinction that can be made here is between ‘artists whose work address ethics as an explicit theme and those who use ethical discomfort as a technique to express and foreground questions of labour.’ (Bishop, 2012, pg112)
We can see the progression of body art to delegated performance in the last 60 years as the perfect example of the ever-changing art world. This essay has made evidant that we do not have a set of instructions in order to create grounds in which delegated performance is ethically acceptable. What it means to use our body for art is seen in works by artists like Abramović and EXPORT pioneering the performance art movement by using their own bodies to create work about trust, reality and changing idealized representations of people in a society. What it means to use other people’s bodies in art is seen through artists like Sierra and Żmijewski, relying on the co-operation and participation of others to complete their performances. Through these performances, we continue to see artists using performance as a ‘tool...in order to raise questions about how art relates to us and the rest of the world.’ (Klein, J. 2018) and how powerful, in comparison to alternative mediums such as sculpture or paint, the use of people’s bodies can be in give visibility to certain social and ethical problems.
“It is true that at its worst, delegated performance produces quirkily staged reality designed for the media...but at its best, delegated performance produces disruptive events that testify to a shared reality between viewers and performers, and which defy not only agreed ways of thinking about pleasure, labor, and ethics, but also the intellectual frameworks we have inherited to understand these ideas today.” (Bishop, C. 2012. p.112)
Bibliography
Bishop, C. (2012) ‘Artificial Hells. Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship’
Bishop, C. (2012). ‘Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity.’ October, 140, 91-112. Accessed at: www.jstor.org/stable/41684268
Guinan, K. (2015) ‘What For…? Trauma and the Political in Artur Zmijewski’s 80064’
Klein, J. (2018) ‘Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society?’ Tate.
Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGy9yJN12lo&t=30s
Accessed on: November 14th , 2019.
Moreno, I. (2015) ‘A Look at Delegated Performance Through the Lens of Santiago Sierra, Artur Żmijewski, and Yael Bartana’. Unpublished Masters Thesis.
Spiegler, M. (2003) ‘When Human Beings are the Canvas’, ARTnews, 102 p.94-97.
Tate Shots. (2017) ‘An Introduction to Performance Art’
Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z-YZ3A4mdk
Accessed on: November 14th, 2019.
Zmijewski, A. (2008) ‘The Social Studio at BAK’ article.
Accessed at: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/bak_basis_voor_actuele_kunst/
Accessed on: November 25th, 2019.
Fig. 1. Marina Abramović & Ulay, ‘Rest Energy’, 1980.
Accessed at: https://publicdelivery.org/marina-abramovic-rest-energy/
Accessed on: November 16th, 2019
Fig. 2. VALIE EXPORT, ‘TAP and TOUCH Cinema’, 1968.
Accessed at: https://ribbonaroundabomb.com/tag/1960s/
Accessed on: November 20th, 2019.
Fig. 3. Artur Żmijewski, ‘80064’.
Accessed at: http://www.ubu.com/film/zmijewski_80064.html
Accessed on: December 1st, 2019.
Fig. 4. Santiago Sierra, ‘250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Paid People’.
Accessed at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/santiago-sierra-250-cm-line-tattooed-on-6-paid-people-havana-cuba
Accessed on: November 22nd, 2019.
Bishop, C. (2012). ‘Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity.’ October, 140, 91-112. Accessed at: www.jstor.org/stable/41684268
Guinan, K. (2015) ‘What For…? Trauma and the Political in Artur Zmijewski’s 80064’
Klein, J. (2018) ‘Performance and Protest: Can Art Change Society?’ Tate.
Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGy9yJN12lo&t=30s
Accessed on: November 14th , 2019.
Moreno, I. (2015) ‘A Look at Delegated Performance Through the Lens of Santiago Sierra, Artur Żmijewski, and Yael Bartana’. Unpublished Masters Thesis.
Spiegler, M. (2003) ‘When Human Beings are the Canvas’, ARTnews, 102 p.94-97.
Tate Shots. (2017) ‘An Introduction to Performance Art’
Accessed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z-YZ3A4mdk
Accessed on: November 14th, 2019.
Zmijewski, A. (2008) ‘The Social Studio at BAK’ article.
Accessed at: https://we-make-money-not-art.com/bak_basis_voor_actuele_kunst/
Accessed on: November 25th, 2019.
Fig. 1. Marina Abramović & Ulay, ‘Rest Energy’, 1980.
Accessed at: https://publicdelivery.org/marina-abramovic-rest-energy/
Accessed on: November 16th, 2019
Fig. 2. VALIE EXPORT, ‘TAP and TOUCH Cinema’, 1968.
Accessed at: https://ribbonaroundabomb.com/tag/1960s/
Accessed on: November 20th, 2019.
Fig. 3. Artur Żmijewski, ‘80064’.
Accessed at: http://www.ubu.com/film/zmijewski_80064.html
Accessed on: December 1st, 2019.
Fig. 4. Santiago Sierra, ‘250 cm Line Tattooed on Six Paid People’.
Accessed at: https://www.artsy.net/artwork/santiago-sierra-250-cm-line-tattooed-on-6-paid-people-havana-cuba
Accessed on: November 22nd, 2019.