Don’t watch this if you have a weak stomach.
I met Peter last fall, and got to see some of his performances in person. All of his pieces are one-shots, never repeated except in documented form. His website has several of these. He’s Brooklyn-based now, but grew up in the midwest.
Well, if no one else wants to be the uptight bourgeoisie here, I’ll say it: this is um, kinda disgusting.
Is he Opus Dei sponsored?
Eric Fischl: “By the time you have artists doing bad things to themselves in the name of art, you have absolutely reached a point where the audience can no longer follow, at least not in a healthy way.”
It’s that, follow in a healthy way, that seems to be key here.
Or,
Peter Dobill is the uptight bourgeoisie here, rebelling against already shredded taboos. He re-legitimizes standards of “decency” that I thought were no longer major impediments.
There is also the aspect of the spectacle, and I might as well be the first to mention Matthew Barney as one who utilizes this as well: they are both flamboyant, theatrical, imaginative with the requisite shock value for cred. This is kind of the Twisted Sister or Poison (remember them?) of peformance art. (I would give Barney a little more credit)
Perhaps to contradict myself here, this Dobill vid is a little boring. I have wierder things for breakfast.
I don’t mean to be too harsh here, it is fun and charming, just too derivative.
I am also thinking of Paul McCarthy without the humor, and Noh and Kabuki theater, and the Butoh troupe.
“I have wierder things for breakfast.”
So do all of you. I’m not special.
I do agree. As art, it’s the lack of humor and the failure to be ’spectacle’ that sink the work. As art.
It’s still disgusting.
Realistically, I’d namecheck GG Allin and the Jim Rose Sideshow before Burden, Barney or Bob Flanagan.
Question: how much do “taboo” and “disgusting” overlap?
To be completely honest, I’d rather be talking about Julia Schwadron, like: how much do “affirmation” and “authenticity” overlap? But here we are…
Well, I thought it was a good question. We talk about beauty like that. How much does the sphere of beauty overlap with desire, commerce, power, lust, violence, truth, etc.
Does art this ugly have to be about taboo, which is kind of what vc is saying? Or can it only slightly overlap taboo and be about something else as well?
Sam, you’ve got the inside information?
PS. If we’re throwing out the names of 80s metal bands—Gwar!
I have some but not a ton.
The only thing I’d add is that Peter reminded me of many of the hardcore punk kids in Ft Smith when I was growing up. They make this intense, scary, humorless stuff, but are really mild-mannered and nice when you talk to them, and usually their ideas about life were pretty positive.
I’ve thought a lot in the last few years about why people make culture out of the things that disturb them. It’s across the board, from Radiohead to freshman poetry classes to Perez Hilton to Wes Craven to countless other places (including the big money professional art scene).
I think that my own desire to see or make things along these lines might be ancient DNA programming that doesn’t really have a proper (-more correctly, its original) outlet. Because when I think about it, the ‘why’ is pretty tricky.
I say Wes Craven meaning Last House on the Left, not his later stuff.
For some reason, this is all I can think of when I look at this video:
http://www.dragons.dk/Cate%20Blanchett/Cate%20Blanchett%20as%20Elizabeth.jpg
or this:
http://www.indiewire.com/people/photos/people_030515barney.jpg
i’m completely unmoved by this piece. maybe i’m just being a prick, but it just doesn’t do anything for me. when dobill does something half as powerful as bjork’s final scene in “dancer in the dark” give me a call.
of course, that’s not fair. this piece is a documentation of an event - it’s not a piece of video art. it is not a mode of transmission for an acting performance. it is not explicitly created as art - the event itself may be very powerful, but it falls flat to me. am i just being a jackass today?
No you’re not. I just keep wondering what the ideal viewer’s reaction is intended to be? Shock: I’m not shocked. Grossed out: Not grossed out. Somewhere between bored and annoyed: Yes.
Another person who does the whole “I’m my own artwork, look what I did (am doing) to my body” thing much better and in a more unnerving, taboo-violating way, I think, is Orlan.
Maybe the point of this is to point out how desensitized we are to seeing things like this, via reflection on our indifferent reaction to the artwork. (i kid)
yes, yes, yes! i remember nearly 10 years ago being transfixed by orlan in a hallway at SAIC - just stood there for like 20 minutes watching one of her surgery pieces. did it work for me then because i was naive and less experienced? perhaps, i’ll admit. but there is a sense in which the notions orlan dealt with in those performances (and continues to deal with) are specifically OUTSIDE the self, and reflect on how those outside things inflect and influence the self. with a lot of performance artists, the zone of contention is entirely about an internal contemplation, one with which i am given very little incentive to identify. with orlan, i’m COMPLICIT (in a sense) in the system she’s talking about. with dobill, i have very little access (i’m speaking of this specific piece).
…maybe it’d work on the big video display behind marilyn manson during a performance of “antichrist superstar”??
I think it’s more indie-scuzzy-punk. Japanther? or Fire Don’t Care?
Now what is that supposed to mean, Chris?
I do think what he’s doing is interesting, precisely because the ‘why?’ is there, and precisely because it’s inward-turned. How many of us really expect anyone else to ‘get’ what we’re doing, the way we ‘get’ it?
And I’m not, as some of you probably know, usually disposed towards really theatrical aesthetics (or, for that matter, anything risking or involving actually hurting myself), so I’m interested by this as something foreign to my own practice, that I don’t totally understand.
I do think you guys are being a little snarky, for the record. Just a little. Mostly thoughtful.
I actually became a little faint after watching this. It wasn’t too gorey, but the wait was a little sickening, not knowing how awful things may go. His statement reads:
In these actions, mental and physical planes of existence are created, establishing autonomy in endurance, physical movement, and structure. With my body, I alter and construct my vessel of experience, intrinsically connecting and emptying myself to a singular moment and time. Within these moments, I can then seek to communicate, focusing on energy exchanged between the audience and myself.
He does create such a ‘plane of existence’. But I don’t appreciate the experience.
Real suffering and pain and illness are reassuring. Un expected tragedy gives us new life experiences. This planned suffering is so bourgeois, and one faces a steep hill to take it anywhere interesting.
…I didn’t mean anything insulting by it, just that Dobill’s aesthetics are more lo-fi. The Barney comparisons are a bit unfair.
Regarding snarkiness. I think it’s just natural. Going back up to the Fischl quote, there just isn’t a straightforward, healthy way to approach work like that involves a person doing these things to themselves. I think snarkiness just has to be expected. Coping mechanism.
Also, going back up the thread a little again, I think it makes a big difference if the ‘why’ of this is taboo or if there is some other reason.
sam and carla make good points.
i think for me what cut me off from the work was that about an hour before i looked at it i saw these images over at the “big picture” blog from the boston globe (it’s an awesome feature and i heartily recommend it):
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/06/ethiopia_in_food_crisis_once_m.html
after seeing these images of real suffering and heartache -
the gesture in the hands of the mother who just lost her child to malnutrition, the searching ache in her eyes - the affectation of tension, implication of pain, and threat of endurance in the artistic expression of one individual really had nothing to give me. on another day i might have responded differently. i hold my hand up as one of the snarky ones today.
due to the ‘weak stomach’ disclaimer, i have been unable to bring myself to actually watch this. though all of the above comments have left me intrigued…i remain a wimp when it comes to this sort of thing.
anyway, i wish i had something to contribute, but all i have are two anecdotal and loosely quasi-related things:
#1: some of you know Elke Pessle. well, this semester she had a student do a performance piece in which he proceeded to ‘vomit a drawing’.
now what this entails, i am not entirely sure. but, i am pretty certain that whatever i am imagining is more fascinating than the reality proved to be. yuck.
#2: i had a student do a self-portrait in which she posed as sid vicious (from the image where he is standing in front of a ‘never mind the bullocks’ poster (partially cropped out of the picture) and a swatstika shirt.
anyhow, that’s all…
Anyone ever seen Jeffrey Deitch’s book Live Through This? I keep feeling this work is related to the scene depicted in that book.