Two worlds of Performance Art
Hey Guys,
Sorry that I haven’t psted yet, but with all the holiday craziness it was hard to get to the asia society and to sit down and actualy write. I just wanted to start out by marveling at the amazing creativity and thought that Zhang Huan puts into the performances he does. I was sincerely blown away.
Anyway, the performance artist I picked is a little out of the ordinary. Andy Kaufman is oftened mistaken for a comedian. However, he himself considers himself a dada performance artist. In many of his performances, one of the common themes has been the ceration of a person or a personality. In his first famous routine he created the personality of a man from a fictional island. He would then give a complete non-sensical performance in a starnge accent. The audience feels as if it is attending a horendous comedy act. However, at the end of the show he does a tremendous elvis impersonation, capped off by the recitition of Elvis’s famous “thank you very much” in a starnge accent.
Again, in another one of his famous shows, he caps off the show with loading the entire audience onto buses and taking them out for milk and cookies. The show then resumes the next morning on the Staten Island Ferry. All of Kaufmans performances are dotted with starnge and seemingly non-sensical points and antics. He is essential saying nothing with his art. He is saying that nothing is still something, that even though the viewer is not sure what reaction to have, that feeling on its own is a reaction. Kaufman strives to force puzzelment into the minds of the viewers. He is trying to evoke a feeling, to dupe the audience if you will.
In stark contrast Zhang Huan’s performance art has a point, and tries to evoke directed emotion. In his performance, where he lays motionless on a block of ice in the center of manhattan, I think he is trying t comment on endurance. That perhaps working everyday is much like sitting on a block of ice, that tremendous endurance and concentration are needed, but once removed from the ice relief comes strong and fast.
Also, in the performance where his body is wrapped in an armor of meat, there is a point. I think that he is trying to show the strength of man against animal. That man at many points in his life is strong, perhaps the strongest being among all creatures. The animal meat on the body of a man, creating the image of a tremendously strong man shows the superiority of the human.
Zhang Huan was clearly commenting on man in this world while kaufman was not commenting on anything.
I think that these performances are diffirent from those that will be created in the near future. I think that an impactful performance for this day would be one of politics. We currently live in a world dominated by conflict and war. A great piece would be one perhaps commenting on the individual in a war. Borrowing Huan’s idea, one man sitting in pain among many people in a city could illustarte this point.
The range of performance art is clearly very wide, and the style can be used in many diffirent ways. I think that the effectivness of performance art is directly related to the scale of it. It must catch the viewer in a big way. It must make an impression of some sort, whether puzzeling or directed.