Ritual Performance

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?