In Goldberg’s chapter seven,
various types of performance were discussed, but I found the author’s explanation
of ritual art an interesting section in the chapter. Goldberg explains that
unlike performances that were focused on formal properties of the body in space
and time, ritual performance art was more emotive and expressionistic (page
163). “Those of the Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch, beginning in 1962,
involving ritual and blood, were described as ‘an aesthetic way of praying’”
(page 163). In these performances, or what Nitsch considers rituals, Dionysian
and Christian rites were acted out. In Hermann Nitsch’s various performances
from Orgies, Mysteries, Theatre, he
would slaughter a lamb on stage in the name of ritual. Nitsch claimed that, “humankind’s
aggressive instincts had been repressed and muted through the media,” and that “these
ritualized acts were a means of releasing that repressed energy as well as an
act of purification and redemption through suffering” (pages 163-164). Nitsch’s
performances raise some questions for me, more specifically regarding the
relationship between performance and religious rituals. Were his projects really
about performing religious rituals, and if so, how are these rituals situated
in the context of performance art? Does Nitsch connect with the viewer, and if
so, how?
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