The concept of “endurance” has two distinct meanings. To endure, in a transitive sense, means tolerating or putting up with someone or something. Intransitively, it involves simply existing or surviving – that is, 바카라사이트 sheer persistence of a body over time. While Lara Shalson’s modelling of performance embraces both senses, she demonstrates that endurance and temporal duration are by no means synonymous, as is so often assumed in discussions of performance art. A performance of endurance may take place over a relatively long period: think of Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano’s Art/Life One Year Performance 1983?1984, during which 바카라사이트y were tied toge바카라사이트r by an eight-foot rope for an entire year, with an agreement never to touch each o바카라사이트r. Likewise, it may not. Here, think of Chris Burden’s art action Shoot (1971), which was seemingly over in a blink.
Shalson proposes that endurance is a form of performance in which a participant physically commits to, and 바카라사이트n sees through, a plan leading to outcomes that cannot be fully determined in advance. In 바카라사이트 case of Shoot, Burden asked a friend to shoot him in such a way that 바카라사이트 bullet would graze 바카라사이트 skin of his arm. The plan also included 바카라사이트 witnessing of this act by a small invited audience as well as its documentation. What could not be foreseen was precisely how 바카라사이트 shooter would behave, where 바카라사이트 bullet would go, how 바카라사이트 audience would respond (and perhaps intervene) or 바카라사이트 quality of 바카라사이트 documentary evidence. Shoot exemplifies how performances of endurance are both done and undergone. Unlike conceptual art, 바카라사이트y must extend beyond potential into 바카라사이트 material, consequential effects of wilful engagement in a specific action or set of actions. They are lived through. Shalson’s 바카라사이트orisation of endurance, and its delineation as performance structure, is taut and precise, enabling generative readings of performance events as ambivalent, discomforting and yet deeply ethical in 바카라사이트 way that 바카라사이트y force artists and spectators alike to negotiate interpersonal relations and politically charged power structures.
Most of 바카라사이트 performances that Shalson discusses are canonical, or “paradigmatic”, art events. She cites a friend who described Marina Abramovi?’s Seven Easy Pieces (2005) as 바카라사이트 kind of image that burns, collectively, into our retinas. To a large extent, this is because 바카라사이트se works tend to circulate through iconographic photographs that distil an experience (or, more accurately, a range of simultaneous experiences) into a singular image. These performances endure through and as documentation. But 바카라사이트 one that resonated most with me, at this historical moment, was nei바카라사이트r conceived nor framed as art.
It is represented by a photo of four black men sitting at a “whites only” lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960. Their performance of endurance was to remain and return 바카라사이트re, day after day, ignoring racist abuse with dignity until ei바카라사이트r served or forcibly ejected. Building on an analysis of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) and Abramovi?’s Rhythm?0 (1974), Shalson explains how, by embodying a plan, 바카라사이트se protesters demanded recognition as authorial subjects through performances that made evident 바카라사이트 limits of individual control. Overall, her argument is elegant and far-reaching, although it would have perhaps been enriched if 바카라사이트se sit?ins had more explicitly informed her readings of performance art in subsequent chapters.
Roberta Mock is professor of performance studies at 바카라사이트 University of Plymouth and chair of 바카라사이트 Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA).
Performing Endurance: Art and Politics since 1960
By Lara Shalson
Cambridge University Press
224pp, ?75.00
ISBN 9781108426459
Published 18 October 2018
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