Bruce Nauman

Per soddisfare l'ansia di disumanizzare l'arte, non è, quindi, d'obbligo alterare le forme primarie delle cose. Basta invertire la gerarchia e realizzare un'arte dove risultino in primo piano, distaccati con un rilievo monumentale, i minimi accadimenti della vita". Josè Ortega y Gasset, La disumanizzazione dell 'arte, 1925 A partire dalla metà degli anni Sessanta è possibile riscontrare una certa omologia tra la produzione di Samuel Beckett e quella di Bruce Nauman, un'identità funzionale che, pur nella differenza dei mezzi espressivi, determina una sostanziale convergenza fra le poetiche dei due. Nauman si interessa a Beckett a partire dal 1966 1 e, guardando alla sua prima produzione in particolare alla serie degli Studio Films, si evince che uno degli aspetti fondamentali di questi anni è il rapporto che si instaura con lo spazio esperito dall'artista. Lo studio diventa l'ambiente in cui temprare e comprovare la propria esistenza e assume la valenza di un luogo teatrale. Come quello di un palcoscenico, il pavimento dello studio è ridefinito in sottoinsiemi di spazio con strisce di nastro adesivo, in cui si verificano le capacità di resistenza psico-fisiche. In questa fase di sperimentazione l'uso della pellicola permette a Nauman di addensare in brevi azioni di dieci minuti 2 le sue riflessioni sul corpo assumendo un controllo totale sulla valenza drammatica delle proprie azioni; anche Beckett all'inizio degli anni Sessanta si confronta con i nuovi media: scrivere drammi televisivi sembra essere una via preferenziale per costringere lo spettatore ad una visione obbligata. Ciò è evidente nella violenza insita nel dramma Eh Joe, trasmesso dalla BBC nel 1966: l'occhio della telecamera segue il protagonista mentre cerca di scappare da questo estremo atto di interrogazione sulla sua esistenza. Gli ultimi scritti destinati al teatro, come per esempio Not I o That Time, acquistano un valore unicamente visuale che affida tutta la portata comunicativa all'immagine della scena; la battuta ed il testo rimangono con il loro aspetto di definitiva incomunicabilità. Contestualmente Nauman è alla ricerca di un modo, o per meglio dire di un metodo, per scandagliare la portata del gesto all'interno del sistema linguistico. Questo tipo di analisi verrà rafforzata nel corso degli anni Sessanta con l'uso delle "istruzioni" che consentono di dare un'indicazione, compatibilmente all'inadeguatezza del mezzo linguistico, il più precisa possibile. La codificazione del gesto attraverso il sistema del linguaggio -e in questa trasposizione fisiologicamente qualcosa si perde -gli viene suggerita dalla lettura di Wittgenstein. Tutto è teso alla ricerca di un possibile modo, certo e scientifico, di passaggio dalla percezione, alla codificazione linguistica della stessa e viceversa. Le manifestazioni performative che Nauman inizia a prediligere devono essere inserite, per non correre il rischio di fraintenderle e di accomunarle con altre azioni che stanno invadendo la scena americana di questi anni, col profondo cambiamento dell'uso dello spazio scenico che rinnova il teatro già dagli anni Cinquanta. É d'obbligo a questo proposito ricordare perlomeno quegli esponenti della nuova danza, come Yvonne Rainer e Meredith Monk, che Nauman conosce personalmente. Le azioni, in questo contesto sperimentale di ricerca, non possono non assumere quindi una valenza di partitura scenica, di copione: sebbene gli ordini impartiti diventino col tempo sempre più precisi, non si riesce a trovare una via di interpretazione unica del gesto stesso. Questa ambiguità è all'origine dell'angoscia di Nauman. Non è quindi violento l'ordine impartito, ma il linguaggio, che genera incomprensione, che nasconde una crudeltà tanto più disumana, quanto più nascosta nelle forme dell'ipotetica democratizzazione di un'arte che dovrebbe, in questo modo, sganciarsi dalle contingenze materiali e commerciali. La risposta che l'artista vuol dare è psicologica e non fisica, come potrebbe invece sembrare ad una prima, parziale 1 Cfr. Sillars 2006, p. 37. 2 In questi primi anni di ricerca Nauman utilizza pellicole da sedici mm. che permettono di realizzare un girato di dieci minuti.

Praktyki powtórzeniowe w sztuce performance godnie z rozpowszechnioną interpretacją, specyfika sztuki performance leży w "niepowtarzalności" działania artystycznego, które może zaistnieć tylko raz, w konkretnym miejscu i czasie. Tego rodzaju interpretacja stanowiła jeden ze źródłowych kontekstów sztuki performance: narodziła się wraz z nią, by na długie lata ukształtować jej samoświadomość i autodefinicję. Po dziś dzień -pomimo krytycznych przewartościowań dokonujących się tak w dyskursie teoretycznym, jak i w sferze samych praktyk artystycznych -pogląd o zasadniczym przeciwieństwie performance'u i powtórzenia nie zatracił swej atrakcyjności oraz siły oddziaływania. Wyrazem tego jest słynne, często przywoływane stwierdzenie Peggy Phelan: Z "Performance żyje jedynie w teraźniejszości. Performance nie może zostać zachowany, zarejestrowany, udokumentowany ani też w inny sposób uczestniczyć w obiegu reprezentacji, które reprezentują inne reprezentacje: gdy tak się jednak dzieje, staje się on czymś innym niż performance. […] Byt performance'u […] staje się sobą poprzez swoje zniknięcie.

The series Eleven Color Photographs of Bruce Nauman was started in 1966, at the very moment when the ‘linguistic turn’ described by Richard Rorty in 1967 led to an understanding of images that was no longer apprehended in a closed and autonomous manner but as a complex in which the regimes and codes of visuality, discursivity, power, bodies, and figurability were articulated. Nauman was at that time influenced by Man Ray and Wittgenstein. Beyond the fact that this influence allows one to historically sketch a visual and theoretical background for this series, it also enables one to explain how it is inhabited and conditioned by a form of skepticism, which refers to the challenging of language and images in Man Ray’s and Wittgenstein’s work. Regarding Man Ray, this reference also allows the displacement of Nauman’s horizon of influences from Marcel Duchamp to the American-born photographer, a relevant association when one considers a double challenge at play in Man Ray’s practice: a challenging of the mediums’ stability and of the stable meaning of works. As for Wittgenstein, one may consider that it is from the point of view of skepticism that a renewal of the relation with Nauman would be relevant. A skepticism that is not far from what Peter Schjeldahl would describe in his article entitled ‘The Trouble with Nauman.’ as ‘tragic skepticism’ in the sense that Nauman would turn his photographs into places marked by the impossibility of grasping the essence of things and where the social contract enabling, by convention, the definition of the address and the exchanges between the work and the spectator, would itself, each time, be systematically, questioned and rethought.

El ser humano ha comprendido la realidad a través de códigos heredados, ha pre-comprendido el mundo que habita. La obra de arte provoca una alteración en ese sistema de representaciones y prejuicios, en la recepción de la obra se pone en crisis la concepción pre-comprendida respecto a la realidad.
Llegamos así a un punto neurálgico en el cual la subjetividad toma un papel protagónico: la Modernidad; en este momento la subjetividad ejerce una actividad fantástica, productora de ficción; configurando y reconfigurando cuando entra en crisis. Así mismo, en la Modernidad, la subjetividad va adquiriendo cada vez más una auto-consciencia respecto de su propia actividad representacional y es justamente esa autoconciencia respecto al carácter representacional de la realidad lo que denominamos Ironía.

Undici saggi analizzano alcuni capolavori dell’arte contemporanea, distanti tra loro ma accomunati dal fatto di conferire movimento all’immagine. Muovendo dalla specificità dei singoli casi, l’autore documenta le motivazioni che hanno spinto i pittori a sperimentare quello svolgimento nel tempo che una volta era loro precluso, e oggi è invece un campo operativo solidamente acquisito, come si constata nella vitalità del film e soprattutto del video d’artista.
L’esame si addentra in profondità, interrogando le opere e le poetiche anche nei loro aspetti più sottili, tenendo conto sia del “da dove si viene”, ossia della storia dell’arte che continua a far scorrere sangue blu nelle pratiche degli artisti; sia del “là fuori”: la produzione mediatica, extra artistica, dove l’immagine in movimento si è via via imposta come il più popolare dei mezzi d’espressione, che ormai tutti maneggiamo in qualità di creativi grazie alla videocamera che teniamo immancabilmente a portata di mano.

Since the mid-1960's, Bruce Nauman's abundant and complex body of work continues to address a fundamental notion in art: the nature of artistic experience. While Nauman's work is often labeled as conceptual, it carries a strong existentialist and deeply humanistic undercurrent, mapping a phenomenology of both artist and viewer from a dual perspective of spatial environment -as physical space and psychological entity -and of body, as a site of psycho-physical tension. As we shall see, in Nauman's work the boundaries between these two perspectives are never firmly established. They appear as a function of the interaction between artist, viewer and work -and embrace a number of philosophical tenets rooted in the notions of empathy and embodiment. In addition to exploring the sites of space and body, we will also consider Nauman's use of mirrors as an interface between them. We should mention a fourth perspective, central to Nauman's phenomenological mix: communication (in its verbal and textual forms), as a manifestation of the artist-viewer relationship. We will, however, focus primarily on the first two propositions of space and body, and their connector, the mirror.

This study responds to the ways in which linguistics, "the scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of grammar, syntax, and phonetics" 1 and utterances, "something expressed in speech or writing" 2 have been used within performance art 3 from the 1960s and 70s. The performances will be analyzed through the use of language theory to show whether a prior knowledge gained from the situations around us, affects the way in which we comprehend and interpret performance art involving speech 4 . This dissertation will proceed to investigate both Western and non-Western cultures and how language is used within these different cultural systems. This will include acts such as communication, translation, speech acts and utterances. Overall this dissertation will question whether the knowledge an audience have gained from the social situations around them and different experiences can affect the way in which they understand performance work involving speech and whether gestural devices such as body language and tone alter understanding.

Głównym celem artykułu jest zbadanie źródeł zjawiska skandalu w sztuce współczesnej oraz zaprezentowanie w tym kontekście artystycznych działań Abnormals Gallery. Wychodząc od założeń psychoanalizy lacanowskiej przyglądam się dwóm strategiom posługiwania się perwersją w sztuce, mającym na celu wyrażenie sprzeciwu wobec Prawa Ojca. Męska twórczość (père-version) polega na tworzeniu alternatywnej wizji świata, będącej infantylną karykaturą ojcowskiego porządku. Natomiast kobieca działalność artystyczna (père-aversion) ujawnia się w radykalnym, gwałtownym zerwaniu z opresyjnym porządkiem patriarchalnym za pomocą cielesności. Następnie przedstawiam zjawisko Abnormals Gallery, której funkcjonowanie w specyficzny sposób żywi się skandalem. Opisuję zatem cielesne performance’y Lukasa Zpiry, spreparowane zwłoki zwierząt Iris Schieferstein, kontrowersyjne, zanurzone w popkulturze prace Maxa Papeschiego oraz fotografie Michela Valentino.

stefan neuner, wolfram pichler I. According to the classical theory of artistic perspective, our vision is enabled by a pyramid that results from visual rays coming from the object and converging in the eye. The object is thus the base, while the eye is at the tip of the pyramid. 1 At least this is how it appears when we take a theoretical "look" at vision from "the outside"-by its very nature a paradoxical undertaking. Here the eye, there the object, the third, linking the two, being the lines converging towards the visual organ. But, according to the same theory, the experience of vision from the inside, i.e. my own experience of vision, appears as the convergence of the perceived objects towards a point in the depth of space: the vanishing point where the lines of depth seem to come together on a distant horizon. Seen in this way, I am standing at the base of the pyramid, and the top is not located in my eye, but somewhere opposite me in the depths of space. It seems that I will never be able to reach the point where the lines of depth converge, no matter how far and how fast I might move toward it. It withdraws from me, like a rainbow's iris. Unless the space itself begins to narrow, and the pyramid, instead of making my gaze into the distance possible, begins to physically close in on and encompass it. As if to prove that a pyramid will never be anything else but a grave, it would suddenly petrify, so that my gaze, arriving at the end of the depths, would find itself caught in the stony narrows at the top of the pyramid: the gaze walled in within its own perspective. 2 As Karl Philipp Moritz wrote in The Poetics of Withdrawal Bruce Nauman: Audio-Video Underground Chamber 30 stefan neuner, wolfram pichler

A.C. Danto discusses particularly Bruce Nauman's interest in the way, Wittgenstein »proceeds in thinking about things«. Regarding the two versions of »Pay Attention« (both 1973), Danto is speaking about Wittgenstein's concept of »language games«, formulated in his »Philosophical Investigations«. One aspect being argued is, that the meaning of »Pay Attention« is »what it does to us« and that »we do what we see«. The article has been published in »The Nation«, May 8, 1995. Printed again in the recommendable reader: Morgen, Robert C. (editor), (2002): Bruce Nauman, Baltimore / London [The John Hopkins University Press], p. 146-154

A.C. Danto (1924-2013) has been one of the most renowned philosophers (analytical tradition) and writers on philosophical aesthetics. Amongst many other publications, his »Transfiguration of the Commonplace« (1981) counts as an influential contribution to analytical aesthetics.

Why do we continue to look to photographs for evidence despite our awareness of photography’s potential for duplicity? Documents of Doubt critically reassesses the truth claims surrounding photographs by looking at how conceptual artists creatively undermined them. Studying the unique relationship between photography and conceptual art practices in the United States during the social and political instability of the late 1960s, Heather Diack offers vital new perspectives on our “post-truth” world and the importance of suspending easy conclusions in contemporary art.

Considering the work of four leading conceptual artists of the 1960s and ’70s, Diack looks at photographs as documents of doubt, pushing the form beyond commonly assumed limits. Through in-depth and thorough reevaluations of early work by noted artists Mel Bochner, Bruce Nauman, Douglas Huebler, and John Baldessari, Diack advances the powerful thesis that photography provided a means of moving away from the object and toward performative effects, playing a crucial role in the development of conceptual art as a medium of doubt and contingency.

Discussing how unexpected and contradictory meanings can exist in the guise of ordinary pictures, Documents of Doubt offers evocative and original ideas on truth’s connection to photography in the United States during the late 1960s and how conceptual art from that period anticipated our current era of “alternative facts” in contemporary politics and culture.

The paper discusses a set of similiarities between Samuel Beckett and a group of visual artists, in particular sculptors, associated to the American Minimalism and to its immediate posterity, artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Morris, Sol LeWitt and Bruce Nauman. This approach is based on two elements: 1) the use of artistic procedures common to all these artists, that is, the use of serial and repetitive schemes in the production of artworks; 2) an analysis of Rosalind Krauss's essay, "LeWitt in Progress," which defends the proximity between such artists by means of a form of rationality proper to the serial schemes. Based on this, the article asks if such artists would have been taken to serial schemes by facing similar problems in each of their artistic mediums. In other words, one wonders the specificity of the use of serialism in each artistic medium employed by them, from prose to the visual arts.

Bruce Nauman (Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941), artista total, ha sabido movilizar múltiples recursos. Sus trabajos oscilan entre la performance, el vídeo, la escultura y la instalación. Ninguna de ellas deja al espectador indemne. Trátese de un vídeo o de un conjunto de sonidos, de un constructo arquitectónico o de una escultura, la obra de Nauman sorprende, incomoda, incluso agrede. Abundan los recorridos laberínticos, claustrofóbicos, las situaciones de vigilancia y de sobrecarga sensorial, las cacofonías, las repeticiones, los contratiempos arrítmicos, los espacios inhóspitos, con formas e iluminaciones profundamente disfuncionales. Instalaciones que el espectador se ve abocado a asumir, a encajar, quiéralo o no, a contracuerpo. Si la fenomenología busca revelar las estructuras básicas – limítrofes – de la experiencia mediante suspensión y variación eidética, Nauman obra, con sus instalaciones, un tipo de epojé y variación sui generis que procede a toda una serie de desplazamientos, diferimientos y hetero-localizaciones. Las instalaciones, aun tomando un camino distinto al estrictamente fenomenológico, constituyen potentes dispositivos de variación reveladores de los límites y estructura del humano vivir. De ahí que el presente estudio apueste por interpretar la obra de Nauman desde su íntima relación – más o menos consciente, fructífera en todo caso – con la fenomenología.

"One Million Years—System und Symptom" addresses the aesthetic,
cultural, and political implications of systems logic from the point of view of contemporary art. The project reflects projects that tackle systems and systematics in a wide variety of ways. Systems are, on the one hand,
invisible; on the other, they are ubiquitous. Systems order things and regulate everyday life. They define processes and relations. Complexity is organized into functional structures in systems. Systems are patterns. Only through continual repetition are their principles recognizable. Otherwise the
pattern disintegrates. Texts referring to artists such as Vito Acconci, Josef Albers, Christian Boltanski, Hanne Darboven, Thomas Demand, Andrea Fraser, Katharina Fritsch, On Kawara, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Henrik Olesen, Falke Pisano, Martha Rosler, Jan J. Schoonhoven, Andreas Slominski, Simon Starling, Octavian Trauttmansdorff, Heimo Zobernig.
Kunstmuseum Basel, 2014.

Throughout the 20th and in the beginning of the 21st century, many artists take up a double role as both art practitioner and writer. In recent years, scholars and the general public have become increasingly interested in artists'writings. A growing number of collected writings by many major 20th and 21st century artists is now being published in carefully edited publications. What is much less present, however, is a focus on how to understand these artists'writings. That is the aim of the present volume, which contains contributions by artists, academics and curators who undertake a reflection on artists'writings from the 20th and the 21st centuries. Emphasizing the visual arts, including performance art, Not a day Without a Line focuses on artists'writings that do not resemble the more explanatory kinds of writings by art critics, art philosophers or art historians, but which challenge our understanding of them as a text or an instance of reflection. The intricate relations between writing and art practice, between text and image, and between writing and the life of the artist, are important factors in what could be called the artist’s methodological promiscuity in writing.

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Ever since the emergence of the avant-garde in the 19th century, artists have taken creative risks, explored unknown territories, thrust us out of our comfort zones, and upset the status quo. No American artist, however, has used a more wildly eclectic range of methods, materials, images, and ideas than Bruce Nauman to answer the question, "Can this, too, be art?" His will to experiment has earned him ardent admirers from the get-go and, I suspect, just as many detractors.

In diesem Vortrag werde ich über den Einfluss Ludwig Wittgensteins auf zwei amerikanische Künstler der Gegenwart, Jasper Johns und Bruce Nauman sprechen. Nach einer kurzen Einleitung, bespreche ich zuerst Jasper Johns und seine Verbindungen zu Wittgenstein. In diesem Teil des Vortrages orientiere ich mich u. A. an einer Vorlesung die Professor Sebastian Egenhofer im Herbstsemester 2015 hier an der Universität Zürich hielt.  Anschliessend wende ich mich Bruce Naumann zu und versuche plausibel zu machen, dass und wo man bei ihm Bezüge finden kann.

"This publication seeks to counter the tendency to cast Bruce Nauman as an outstanding, solitary figure of postmodernism by putting the artist’s work back in context. Nauman’s early works were originally discussed in the context of contemporary practices and discourses, such as minimal music, postmodern dance, conceptual art, Gestalt therapy or the philosophy of language. But soon Nauman’s reputation came to precede him, and his more recent work has largely been appraised independently of any artistic, social, historical or theoretical context. Critical consideration of Nauman’s work has narrowed to a relatively small selection of the artist’s works and ideas.

Bruce Nauman: A Contemporary redresses this imbalance by focusing on thematic concerns shared by Nauman and his contemporaries. Scholarly essays explore how Nauman and his works enter contemporary conversations on the relationship of art and work, art and globalization, and corporeality in the digital age."

Resumo
Este artigo trata da análise de Square Depression de Bruce Nauman, uma escultura que reaviva o debate sobre aproximação da arte com a arquitetura no espaço público. Uma obra que se desenvolve no chão, construindo uma nova topografia no espaço urbano e trazendo uma experiência diferente no cenário artístico com relação aos domínios público e privado. O trabalho procura também enquadrar a obra dentro do panorama das esculturas do artista revelando assim seu aspecto único.
Palavras-Chave: Escultura. Espaço Público. Arte. Arquitetura. Experimentação.

Resumen
Este artículo aborda el análisis de la Square Depression de Bruce Nauman, una escultura que revive el debate sobre el enfoque del arte con la arquitectura en el espacio público. Un trabajo que se desarrolla en el piso, construyendo una nueva topografía en el espacio urbano y aportando una experiencia diferente en la escena artística con respecto a los dominios públicos y privados. La obra también busca enmarcar la obra dentro del panorama de las esculturas del artista, revelando así su aspecto único.
Palavras-Clave: Escultura. Espacio Publico. Arte. Arquitectura. Experimentación.

Abstract
This paper deals with the analysis of Bruce Nauman's Square Depression, a sculpture that revives the debate on approach of art with architecture in public space. A work that develops on the floor, building a new topography in the urban space and bringing a different experience in the artistic scene with respect to the public and private domains. The work also seeks to frame the work within the panorama of the artist's sculptures thus revealing its unique aspect.
Keywords: Sculpture. Public place. Art. Architecture. Experimentation.

Que peuvent bien se raconter ce personnage en train de déféquer, peint par Francis Bacon dans le panneau de gauche de Three Figures in a Room (1964) [Cat. xx] et le clown qui chie sous une caméra de surveillance dans une vidéo de l'installation Clown Torture de Bruce Nauman (1988) [ ? Certes, l'espace du triptyque de Bacon a quelque chose d'une piste de cirque, mais sa peinture ne joue pas pour autant sur le registre de la pitrerie. À première vue, rien ne rapproche vraiment ces deux artistes que l'on imagine plutôt dos à dos que face à face. Ils ont beau, pour un temps, être « contemporains », leurs oeuvres appartiennent à des époques différentes. Une relation indéfectible à la grande tradition de la peinture traverse l'art de Bacon, tandis que l'oeuvre polymorphe de Nauman se déploie dans une diversité de médias et de formats qui s'insèrent mal dans les catégories consacrées (performance, installation, art vidéo, etc.). Francis Bacon (1909Bacon ( -1992 était un peintre reconnu lorsqu'au milieu des années soixante, Bruce Nauman, né en 1941, commençait des études d'art à l'université de Californie, Davis. Mais c'est surtout à la génération des expressionnistes abstraits américains que ce dernier se confrontait tandis qu'à la même époque, le peintre anglais dénigrait malicieusement le « bâclé » de l'art américain qui lui était contemporain 1 . Dans ses entretiens,

The traditional art-media of painting and sculpture underwent substantive revision during the course of the twentieth century as the traditional status of the art-object was in continual question. The dismantling of the hierarchy of media and the superiority of painting and sculpture is evidence of the change in consciousness experienced by artists in relation to the production of their work and also in their attitudes to the purported function of art in society. In this essay I will focus largely on the work of Bruce Nauman and Michael Asher who both represent different but characteristic examples of the idea that the production of art exists comfortably outside of the confines of traditional painting and sculpture. Along with other radical developments in performance and land art, the emergence of a more conceptually based practice sought to address the failings and shortfalls perceived in Modernism and the urge for many was to break free from any notions of a rigid adherence to established forms and structures.

http://revistadefilosofia.com/66-12r.pdf

El presente trabajo trata sobre la obra del
artista americano Bruce Nauman y su íntima
relación con la fenomenología. Para manifestar
esa relación, hemos elegido tomar a una de sus
obras como hilo conductor: Pasillo grabado en
vídeo en directo de 1970. Trataremos, en
primer lugar, de los montajes de pasillos o
similares en la obra de Bruce Nauman. A
continuación, recapitularemos ciertos temas,
relacionados con la fenomenología, y
recurrentes en su variopinta producción. Por
último, emprenderemos una reflexión general
sobre el estatuto ontológico de la obra de arte
en el caso de los montajes y, en especial, del
montaje del pasillo grabado en directo,
preguntándonos pues qué es y dónde se
encuentra, en dicho caso, la obra de arte.

Palabras clave
Bruce Nauman, Edmund Husserl,
fenomenología, cuerpo, Leib, sujeto, estética.

Counter-bodyness: Bruce Nauman and
phenomenology
Abstract
This paper deals with the work of the american
artist Bruce Nauman, and its close relation to
phenomenology. In order to exhibit this
relation, we have chosen one of his works as a
sort of common thread: Lived-Taped Video
Corridor from 1970. We will first discuss
some corridor montages or similar within
Bruce Nauman’s work. We will then focus on
some recurring topics of his diverse production
which happen to be closely related to
phenomenology. Finally, we will undertake a
general reflection on the ontological status of
an art piece such as a montage and, more
specifically, that of the above mentioned
“Lived-Taped Video Corridor”. We shall then
reach issues such as what is, in this very case,
the art piece, and where and when does it
occur.

Keywords
Bruce Nauman, Edmund Husserl,
Phenomenology, Body, Leib, Subject,
Esthetics.

di Teresa Macrì
postmedia books 2017
172 pp. 46 ill. bn
isbn 9788874901845

Con questo libro Teresa Macrì analizza il concetto di fallimento come antitesi della dimensione ostentativa del successo. Pressoché rimosso dalla sfera della coscienza contemporanea – predisposta sull'efficienza della prestazione e sul conformismo dei canoni – il fallimento viene invece rilanciato, come energia rigeneratrice e ricostituiva attraverso l'opera d'arte e, al tempo stesso, rinvia alla metafora del fallimento ideologico, politico e culturale della società consumistica.

This is my review essay on two fascinating exhibitions, <The Voice> (Coreana Museum of Art, 4.20-7.1.2017 https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/124075/the-voice/) & <Video Portrait Vol.1> (Total Museum of Contemorary Art, 4.27-6.18.2017 http://www.totalmuseum.org/).

They showed internationally well-known works from earlier period- e.g. <Aria> (John Cage, 1958), <Lip Sync>(Bruce Nauman, 1969), <Mouth to Mouth>(Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1975)- to the recent one- e.g. <Song> (Ragnar Kjartansson, 2011), <Beoynd the White Walls>(Jeremy Deller, 2012)-, along with selective audiovisual works by contemporary Korean artists such as Okin Collective, Yeondoo Jung, and Choe Yunseok, to name just a few.

As the counterintuitive title ('I HEAR your Face') amply suggests, I saw, or rather, 'heard' the kernel of each exhibition from the (aural) perspective of the 'original disparity or 'irreparable gap' between image and sound.

And it is precisely this primordial split, whose implications I recently tried to refine and mull over theoretically in terms of 'per/sona' a la Hannah Arent and others in my essay on Heungsoon Im.

Despite the diminished importance of medium in critical discussions after the 1960s the term “sculpture” continues to be used by artists, critics and institutions who still call on it to describe a range of artworks that extend beyond the category’s traditional limits. Critics have addressed this issue previously by either expanding the terms of sculpture until its coherence as a delimited category is threatened, or by abandoning considerations of medium altogether. Current critical dialogues lack convincing ways of addressing the persistent use of the term “sculpture” that avoid essentialist ontologies and their concomitant associations with medium specificity. This project develops a new critical framework for addressing the potential influence of sculpture on diverse artworks that acknowledges the interdisciplinary context that dominated art after modernism. This is achieved by detailed discussions of the holograms, films, videos, texts and installations made by the American artist Bruce Nauman, between 1965 and 1974, which highlight their connection to issues traditionally associated with sculpture. The research draws on the writing of sculpture’s commentators – including Johann Gottfried Herder, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Morris and Alex Potts, among others – to identify some persistent concerns that extend from the critical discourse that has attended sculpture’s theory and practice from antiquity onwards. These insights are used to argue that certain features and effects of Nauman’s diverse practice can be characterised as sculptural. By drawing on sculpture’s discourse, this thesis develops a notion of the “sculptural” that it claims can be used to trace sculpture’s influence beyond its categorial limits, in work such as Nauman’s. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by establishing a new methodology for engaging sculpture in interdisciplinary discussions of contemporary art. It suggests one route by which sculpture’s discourse can continue to have contemporary relevance in critical debate beyond the field of sculpture studies.

""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""Der Experimentierende (allgemeiner: der Forschung praktizierende) – in Kunst und Wissenschaft – setzt sich willentlich einer Fremderfahrung aus. Er konfrontiert sich z.B. mit dem eigenen Nicht-Verstehen, der Möglichkeit des Scheiterns, und mit vielem mehr. Für diesen eigentümlichen Willensakt des »Sich / Etwas / Aussetzens« bedarf es einer besonderen Motivation, die notwendig mit einer Selbstrelativierung verbunden ist.  In Bezug auf eine anthropologische Studie von Ernst Tugendhat soll diesen Zusammenhängen nachgegangen werden. Mit Mitteln der analytischen Sprachphilosophie werden durch eine Analyse der Struktur der propositionalen Sprache Phänomene wie das »ich«-Sagen, Egozentrizität, die Fähigkeit zur situationsunabhängigen Handlungsausrichtung, Selbstaktivierung, der Zusammenhang von Vernunft und Emotionen, u.v.m., verständlich gemacht. Ergebnis ist u.a., das Phänomen der Selbstrelativierung in zahlreichen Facetten beschreiben zu können. So wäre die Tugend der »intellektuellen Redlichkeit« erklärbar, die in einem weit verstandenen Sinn sowohl dem (forschenden) Wissenschaftler, als auch dem (experimentierenden) Künstler zukommt. In einer radikalen Form, besonders in der Kunst, kann das »Zurücktreten von Sich« Formen annehmen, die strukturgleich sind mit Praktiken des »Zurücktretens vom eigenen Wollen«, wie sie etwa im Zen-Buddhismus zu beobachten sind. Diese Praxis ist von grundsätzlich anderer Art als die Theoriestrukturen der meisten Religionen, die auf dogmatischer Schriftgläubigkeit aufbauen, mit allen damit verbundenen Problemen wie religiös motiviertem Fundamentalismus oder institutionalisierter Machtausübung mit den damit verbundenen Möglichkeiten zum Machtmissbrauch. Wiederum mit den Mitteln der Sprachphilosophie lässt sich zeigen, dass prinzipiell jeder Mensch, der eine propositionale Sprache spricht, grundlegende Bedürfnisse entwickelt, »von sich Zurückzutreten«, notwendig etwa in einer »schwachen« Form, um sein »Wollen« situationsunabhängig auf Zwecke auszurichten. In einer radikalen Weise dagegen (und im Zusammenhang mit dem Referieren-Können auf Zukünftiges) entsteht das Bedürfnis nach Selbstrelativierung insbesondere im Bewusstsein der eigenen Sterblichkeit. So bietet sich das Experimentieren als eine Möglichkeit an, als Mensch im »post-säkularen« Zeitalter jenseits religiösem Dogmatismus oder modischer Esoterik in einer systematischen und praktischen Weise eine spirituelle Praxis auszuüben, ohne den Anspruch der Vernunft aufgeben zu müssen. Experimentieren und mystische Praxis kultivieren dabei ein spezifisches, emotional-kognitives Vermögen, auf die Wirklichkeit aufmerken zu können: das Vermögen zum Staunen (von Platon und Aristoteles bekanntlich wiederum als Ausgangspunkt des Philosophierens begriffen). Die Praxis des Experimentierens ist grundlegend an den Gebrauch von nicht-sprachlichen Symbolsystemen gebunden. Im begriffstechnischen Sinn, an die Referenz durch »Exemplifikation« (Goodman), oder schlicht, an die Praxis des Mustergebrauchs. Diese Art nicht-sprachlicher Selbst- und Weltverständigung kann in Bezug auf Nelson Goodman differenziert analysiert werden. Dem Beitrag liegt u.a. das methodologische Anliegen zugrunde, die Einsichten der Sprachphilosophie, ausgehend vom »linguistic turn«, an die Untersuchungen der »post-analytischen« Philosophie, insbesondere in Bezug auf die Arbeiten von Nelson Goodman, anzubinden. Besprochen werden die Arbeitsweisen von Künstlern wie John Cage, Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman, oder Olafur Eliasson.


Literatur:

Goodman, Nelson (1997):
Sprachen der Kunst. Entwurf einer Symboltheorie.
Frankfurt am Main [Suhrkamp] (1976)

Tugendhat, Ernst (2003):
Egozentrizität und Mystik.
München [Beck]

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Excerpt from the chapter:
Mantoan, Diego: “Video art between aesthetic maturity and medium immersion. Patterns of change and generational shift in moving image technology”. In: Grabbe, Lars; Rupert Kruse, Patrick; Schmitz, Norbert (a cura di): Transmedia Form Principles in Contemporary Art and Technology. Büchner Verlag: Darmstadt 2018

This article examines the films and videos made by Bruce Nauman between 1965 and 1970, framing its discussion of these works in the context of the critical debates on Minimalism and its associated viewing practices. It offers formal analyses of a selection of Nauman’s early films and videos, comparing their effects with those produced by studying Minimalist sculpture in the round. It suggests that Nauman used a variety of techniques to establish a reflexive relationship between his on-screen depiction and the viewer which echoes the relationship between a Minimalist sculpture and the viewer. By exploring how sculptural concerns are manifested in and by Nauman’s early films and videos, the article presents new discussions of this area of his practice while enriching our understanding of the ways in which a regime of concerns associated with a particular medium can persist after what is arguably the reductive moment of modernist medium specificity.

'The Long Now' is an exhibition that explores the dialectical relationship between cinema and photography, and the liminal space between the still and moving image through the work of internationally acclaimed artists and filmmakers, including Chantal Akerman, Mark Lewis, Sharon Lockhart, Bruce Nauman, Paul Pfeiffer, Kelly Reichardt, Michael Snow, Andy Warhol and Gillian Wearing.