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Performance interrupted: death and the other fabulous nonsense
by Tatjana Macic ©
When performance artists reflect on performance art, they currently often do so by appropriating or re-enacting historic performances. These reflective performances can therefore be described as
performative maps of performance art. Such vibrant morphing of the artistic maps and codes doesn't occur without an inner struggle, as Macedonian artist Bojana Panevska emphasises in her performance
'Step 3 Towards Enlightenment- The Housewife and The Art Collector's Wife'. One of the two fictive characters, The Collector's Wife, tries to move the audience from lethargy of everyday life. By taking
the goldfish out of the water and placing them on the floor flipped around, Bojana provokes the audience to become the performance artists themselves. Furthermore The Collector's Wife talks about the
difficulty and struggle to be original, while referring to the history of performance art. She cannot take a moralistic point of view but merely portray the situation as she encounters it.
The premiere of the performance 'Step 3 Towards Enlightenment - The Housewife and The Art Collector's Wife' in de Brakke Grond at KunstVlaai 2010 was apparently provoking enough, because the
scheduled second performance on the very same day, the19th of May, never took place. De Brakke Grond, Flemish cultural centre based in Amsterdam, that prises itself as a podium for extreme
performance, showed performances every day during the KunstVlaai in the Machinegebouw. After the premiere the artist was seen frustratingly walking away from de Brakke Grond, while the curator
Fleurie Kloostra invited the spectators to attend a Q & A on the grass field near the Machinegebouw at 16.00 hours instead. What happened exactly and why the second performance was cancelled, is in
fact not certain, as the actual events are interpreted by both the artist and the curator in a profoundly different way.
This became clear during the one hour long Q & A, attended by 20 or so young artists, curators and spectators. While 48 goldfish were swarming around in one transparent plastic container in the middle of the group (courtesy of the curator), both parties defended their position vigorously, growing even more apart as the dialogue progressed. In the words of Leen Laconte, the director of de Brakke Grond: “Contemporary performance art has lost its subversive edge, so de Brakke Grond aspires to offer a platform to the new generation of artists who re-define the performance art”. The outraged Bojana however claimed that the performance was interrupted by the curator, who “took and hid” the goldfish from the artist who than refused to perform again without the fish. The curator on her part insisted that the performance was finished when she engaged in rescuing the fish that would otherwise die on the stage. Much to a dismay in the audience, Leen Laconte lamented on some recent scientific statements according to which even animals posses the ability to experience culture and therefore no difference between killing a human being on a stage and killing a goldfish exists... 'Should an artist be allowed to kill a human being on the stage?'- she wondered. Promptly Bojana Panevska grabbed one goldfish from the plastic container, holding it high for all to see, stating theatrically: 'The difference between you and this goldfish is that I can buy goldfish for 75 eurocents while I can not and do not want to buy you!'. Young artists laughed. Not amused, the director of Brakke Grond wondered 'if such violence is still necessary in art today?'
The question at hand is how far may and should the artist go in threatening, or ultimately terminating, any life-form during a performance. Is the authority of the artist on the stage different than any other authority- meaning do the moral codes, laws and socially excepted behaviour not apply for the artist? Who has the final saying in such life and death matters in art: the artist, the curator, the institution, animal right's activists, or the (unsuspected) public? According to Bojana Panevska 'The only tortures we inflict these days are undeserved and anonymous ones. Hence this performance raised questions about the relationship between art and the market, the artist and the institution, and their old anxieties about another.' So, has de Brakke Grond overstepped the boundaries of a hospitable art institution, by interrupting the performance (if that is what happened), turning itself into some kind of a moral police in the Arts? Or is it the other way around: has the artist turned her back on the institution, by strategically planning the apparent provocation, without informing the curator beforehand? After all, during the Q & A, Panevska claimed herself that the young performance artists have inherited a history which is hard to outshine: there is simply an alarmingly small manoeuvring space left to provoke the public - while being interesting and fresh at the same time. The mission of mapping and re-mapping, positioning and re-positioning the performance art becomes thereby the issue of rearranging history, our inner borders and maybe even some institutional borders; while the artists continue to put themselves on the ever-changing map of the history of art.
Curator Fleurie Kloostra (on the left) and
the team de Brakke Grond collecting fish, photograph courtesy Bojana Panevska
Q & A, photograph courtesy Bojana Panevska
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