Response to Art as Performative Enactment

Of all of the readings we have done so far, this is definitely the most interesting to me. I appreciate the philosophical analysis that the author utilized from Gadamer. The three concepts that he talked about as the origin of the work of art: play, symbol, and festival - all helped to put into perspective for me the abstract and ontological conceptualizations that artwork provides both the artist and the viewer. However, after reading through the descriptions of each of these concepts, I feel that Hans Breder's work did not help me to understand the grandiosity with which Gadamer explains all of these topics. This could also be because I did not find Breder's work very fascinating. Anyways, I would like to focus more on the three concepts that Gadamer suggests for art.

Play was the most interesting to me because I've never understood a game to play me. More importantly, I've never looked at art as having boundaries that we work within. I understood those boundaries to mean working with the goal of creating meaning where there is none. 

"Opposite movements activate self-consciousness in a place that is between dream and waking consciousness - a place of deep meditative consciousness." 

This is my favorite line in the entire article. Even though this line is interpretive of icons in Breder's work, I find it to be indicative of what happens in viewing a lot of performance art. Seeing something exist within reality, but is contrary to reality, evokes a sort of meditation that requires introspecting beyond surface level explanations. And I believe that it is this reason why there is a theme in art that goes, the harder it is to understand, the more meaningful it is. As cliche as this explanation may sound, I do believe there is some truth to it.

The video that I am choosing to include is the weirdest performance art video that I have seen. I do believe that this video invokes the viewer to meditate on a deeper consciousness.