Lecture given at Dia: Chelsea, April 21, 2015
Review Edited and Written by Peter Buller
In conversation on performance art, performers and spectators nominally remain separate from one another. On one side of the theatre the performers act out their parts; and on the other the audience, for whom the actors perform their art. Occasional performances cross the line between actors and spectators, from the Marx Brothers joining spectators in their seats to magicians asking for volunteers in their tricks; yet it was not until Bruce Nauman's striking pieces that another question rose: what parts do actors play upon a stage? Moreover, how involved are spectators in this performance? David Levine's lecture not only forms the conceptual foundations which Nauman's avant-garde pieces utilize, but furthers Nauman's exploration through his own theatrical work.
Levine begins his lecture by focusing on his own frustrations with theatre. "This is Acting," projects behind him as he explains the rigours endured by theatrical performance when Nauman began his career. Similar to how literary studies embarked from explanations of literary themes to examinations of literary works in the early 20th century (leading to the rise of modernism, and later, postmodernism), Levine's theatrical interests grappled with the potential of theatre. Until visiting Berlin to view an exhibition of Nauman's Theatres of Experience (2004), Levine struggled to accept theatre as capable of the conceptual goals other art media already begun to question. Abstract Expressionists like Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock founded their artistic critique by use of colour, shape, and form--not just to avoid political controversy at the time, but to base their conceptual goals in fresher light. For writers, modernists and post-modernists alike toyed with sentence structure, narrative play, and conceptual imagery to convey criticisms of contemporary culture and art. But theatre works with elements different than those of writing and painting--how could one approach the avant-garde in performance media? Levine found an answer to this question in Theatres of Experience.
Nauman critiques the brush of theatre directors: actors. Nauman removes the faces from his actors as Pollock and Kooning remove colour from their paintings. As Levine expertly explains, the anonymity of Nauman's actors responds to the conception of acting as playing a role. Spectators expect to watch performers re-enact Hamlet. Until Constantin Stanislavski developed the first techniques to "act with authenticity," actors maintained cognizance of their performance. Actors did their job, which was to deliver a performance; but after Stanislavski's exercises worked into acting school, it became less important to perform a role than to become that role. At what point, then, does the labour to act become the thing itself? Levine explored this query when he hired an actor to perform the role of a farmer for six months. Unfortunately for Levine, spectators could not tell the difference. More significantly, Nauman already pursued this quandary.
Nauman's installations Elke allowing the floor to rise up over her face (1973), and Tony Sinking into the Floor, Face Up, Face Down (1973) feature two actors sinking into the floor. At first glance, the installations merely appear to feature two people lying down at length. Until the end of the film rolls, when the two actors find the floor's molecules mingling into their bodies; yet spectators see only the startling image of the actors choking, gasping for breath at the end of their performance. Assuming Tony does sink into the floor, at what point do spectators enter this art space? Levine attempts to accomplish this by tasking several actors to rehearse a play non-stop in living arrangements spectated by museum-goers; meanwhile, cameras record the spectator's actions as they peer into the players' living space. However, as Levine notes himself, Nauman pursued this question himself more elegantly. One exhibition features the placement of bleachers in a position that disallows spectators from seeing anything, instead allowing onlookers to watch the clueless spectators. Another piece, Live-taped Video Corridor, features a narrow corridor with two screens featuring live cameras. The top films an empty corridor, while the other films the spectator on the other end of the hallway--the result being that as the spectator approaches the lower screen, they watch them walking away from the camera. In other words, spectatorship cannot view its own performance.
Which left Nauman with one final question: where does that leave the sunken actors? Levine finds a compelling answer in Nauman's works featuring tunnels and corridors. Interpreting the actor's sinking as a transitory phase, Levine argues that they face similar consequences to those who walk through Nauman's endless tunnels. Doing so risks walking into Nauman's cruel room: a small space yelling at us to leave. This feels discouraging as, after all, every bit of subject matter presented here had been related to the audience via a spectated lecture. Certainly this illuminates how coherent and thorough Levine's presentation felt. Images and video clips wove into his lecture like threads woven into a tapestry. His charming wit rescued him from those rare moments where he could have faltered. More than anything, Levine's passion for the conceptual framework of his predecessor justifies Nauman's ventures, leaving his audience interested in the work for days afterward.
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