Keenan's response to Chapter 1

According to Allan Kaprow, “Pollock’s near destruction of this tradition [painting] may well be a return to the point where art was more actively involved in ritual, magic , life.” Performance art seems to represent an attempt to get back to the source of expression—the human body—by circumventing the traditions set up by theatre, sculpture, painting, and other conventional mediums. Vito Acconci said, “If Minimalism was so great, what could I do? ... I had to reveal the source.” Acconci’s vision of minimalism in performance art was to eliminate all but the human process.

 In many of the works displayed in this chapter, this human process took the form of a ritual. Much like a shaman might perform a ritual to commune with the spirit world, Joan Jonas performed rituals in her piece, Funnel, which were “based on her interest of the native Americans.” She wore long blue robes and carried a magician’s funnel hat. She imagined herself as “an electronic sorceress, conjuring the images.”

 In addition to Jonas’s Funnel, Carolee Schneemann’s Eye Body, “recreate[s] mythical goddess imagery”; Gina Pane’s Le corps pressenti and Pier Marton’s Performance for Video both feature the artist physically harming his or herself (slashing her toes, and beating himself with a chair, respectively), which could be seen a sort of sacrifice to the art; and Bruce Nauman’s Clown Torture features a clown being punished while repeating, “No, no, no” and “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” These pieces all bring ritualistic qualities into the performance. By focusing the performance on the visceral human process, and by rejecting the built-up conventions of traditional art, these pieces function as a throwback to rituals of old as the original performance art.

 While many of the performance pieces in this chapter emulate rituals, they also utilize new technology. “Sound wizard” Billy Kluver used projection and computer generated soundscapes in his collaborations with other artists; Robert Whitman’s Prune Flat featured performers interacting the filmed images of themselves projected onto screens behind them. In a magical sleight of hand, the present performer interacts with his or her past self. Here, the minimalist human process meets illusory, and seemingly magical, new technology.


Can these examples of performance art be considered rituals, or do they resemble rituals only superficially? Jonas may see herself as “conjuring images”, but isn’t she aware that it’s all an illusion for the audience? Does the use of illusory technology contribute to the determination of whether these performances are rituals or just imitations? And finally, do these pieces fail to get to the heart of the minimalistic human process by merely imitating rituals themselves?