Whether it's done for press or personal gain, performance art can get out of hand. From explicit sexual acts to life-threatening violence, the most extreme examples tend to escape the art world and horrify the public at large. Here are 10 of the most famous.
10. 100. Action by Herman Keach (1998)
Part Viennese Actionist movements, Hermann Nitsch's work is often gory and deliberately shocking. Under the banner of his Orgiastic Mystery Theatre, he staged scenes of animal sacrifice and human torture, among other earthly pleasures. But his magnum opus was his six-day play of 1998. All his earlier work was merely preparation.
100. Aktion" (note: the video above is not related to this work, but should give you a good idea of his work) took place in his in your own private castle with its vast grounds, extensive vineyards and underground tunnels. Although there were 100 actors, the "actual events" of the play were "performed" by the audience (500-1000 guests). In addition to the actors, there were 180 musicians, including an orchestra, brass bands and tavern orchestras, who played a specially composed score of 1,595 pages. A bell tower with five church bells was also built for the play.
Supplies included 13,000 litres of wine ("to produce the intoxicating, unbridled joy demanded by the score"), 10,000 roses, 1,000 litres of blood, as well as dead pigs and sheep, 60 stretchers, more than 10,000 metres of canvas (for the "painting actions" of the second day) and 5,000 torches for the night parades. Two battle tanks were also brought in on the fifth day.
But the shock value of the work was not only in its excess. The play also involved the slaughter of three live bulls, one each on the first, third and fifth days. The idea was to reveal what was hidden. Even if they had been slaughtered, they would have been killed anyway. As Nitsch put it, “Society killed the animals… not I.” In fact, that was the purpose of the six-day play: to lay bare the facts of existence, “from the most sublime feelings of happiness and ecstasy… to the deepest abysses, disgust, the bestial destructive fury of the darkest inner impulses.” . (The six days allude to the Christian creation.)
That wasn't all the symbolism, though. When asked why participants were sometimes tied up and blindfolded, Nitsch simply replied that he likes it .
9. Solo Christos by Sebastian Horsley (2000)
Sebastian Horsley was an artist who had a problem: he could only paint what he had experienced. At least that's how he explained his decision to go to the cross in the Philippines; he wanted to paint the Crucifixion.
To gain experience, he went to the village of San Pedro Cutud, where every year during Holy Week young people are crucified with nails on their hands and feet. They are not punished or killed; it is their way of feeling closer to God.
Horsley was not the first foreigner to seek out crucifixion. In fact, locals had already banned foreigners from participating after a Japanese man sold footage of his own crucifixion as sadomasochistic pornography. However, after much persuasion and a bribe, Horsley was allowed a relatively low-key session, which was documented by a photographer friend.
It didn't end well. He collapsed forward, unconscious from the pain, breaking the straps on his wrists and arms that were meant to support his weight and minimize damage from the nails. The platform supporting his legs also fell away. Horsley collapsed to the ground , and the villagers ran away screaming. This was, he later said, an act of God, in whom he did not believe.
Adding insult to injury was the reaction at home. Not only was the British press characteristically brutal, with headlines like “Artist Crucifies Himself,” but the art world was dismissive.
8. "Dinner is Eating People" by Zhu Yu (2000)
Chinese artist Zhu Yu, like Feng Boyi and Ai Weiwei, intended to shock as a political statement. "Dinner Is Eating People" is a series of photographs of Zhu foraging, cooking, and eating six month human fetus with an indifferent look.
The photos are horrific no matter how you look at them, but while the fruit is real, it is in no way fresh. You can see that it is soaked in formalin. Even after cooking, he only pretended to bite into it.
However, once online, the photos lost all context. People saw them as evidence: of a tendency to eat babies, that caused the coronavirus pandemic ; underground taiwanese embryo cuisine ; legalized eating aborted fetuses in China; and so on. Apparently pleased with the results of his "experiment", Zhu, two years later, filmed himself negotiating with a prostitute to allow him to impregnate her and then abort her in order to feed the fetus to a dog, which he appears to do later in the film.
7. “The Bed” by Vito Acconci (1972)
Every Wednesday and Saturday for three weeks, visitors to the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo would have been forgiven for thinking that nothing was going on. Room A was completely empty. But as they walked down the ramp into the room, Vito Acconci’s Bed of Seedlings began.
"You're pressing... on my mouth," his voice came from the speakers. "I'll bury my eyes in your hair."
Hidden beneath their feet, inside the ramp, the artist masturbated repeatedly. He used the sound of their movements to fuel his sexual fantasies, which he recited into the microphone. Increasingly breathless (and figurative), he climaxed with words like "I did it for you, I did it with you, I did it with you..." Then he would start again with the next person.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art called it "original work". The goal, they said, was to “create a close connection between artist and audience, even if they remained invisible to each other.” Plus… it was the ’70s.
6. “Resonate/Obliterate” by Ron Oni (2011)
Ron Athey's 50th birthday celebration was meant to be bloody. He is a queer artist known for self-mutilation and bloodletting. Drawing on his Pentecostal upbringing and HIV-positive status, his work has involved scarring, branding, stitching, penetrating and hooking. In his words, in his works he always plays"either with flesh, or with liquid, or with blood" .
And his 50th birthday was no exception. In the article under the name "Resonate/Obliterate" He is shown doing yoga inside a glass box, naked but for a long blond wig pinned to his head. He aggressively combs the extensions to the beat of a "futuristic soundtrack." Then, folding them into a pile to reveal his face, he removes the pins, blood flowing "like Christ in a crown of thorns."
Finally, Atey smeared the blood-tinged grease all over his body, "jabbed his fist into his rectum and... laughed triumphantly." After the show, he restored his blood sugar levels with a birthday cake.
5. “Untitled” by Aliza Schwartz (2008)
Yale art student Aliza Schwartz gained instant notoriety in 2008 when news of her untitled senior thesis leaked off campus to the press. Using sperm from donors (or “fabricators,” as she called them), she had repeatedly artificially inseminated herself between days nine and fifteen of her menstrual cycles for a year. Then, on day twenty-eight of each cycle, she took an herbal abortion pill. Although she was never sure she was actually pregnant, she experienced cramping and heavy bleeding as a result.
After collecting this blood, she planned a sculptural installation as part of her work; but once the Washington Post got wind of the story, Yale University Takes on Renovations . The university banned the sculpture and lied to the press, claiming that Schwartz had fabricated the whole thing. She, they said, never impregnated herself for this piece. Schwartz denied their denial, and the story went viral online.
Looking back, she noticed that in the absence of any material elements (sculpture, video, photographs, etc.) "a work exists only as a narrative." As for the meaning of her works, they were meant to “open up questions of material and discursive reproduction.” Which is certainly what happened.
4. "Untitled" by Lai Thi Dieu Ha (2011)
Hanoi-based artist Lai Thi Dieu Ha has gained fame for her performances that explore Sexuality and Taboos in Vietnam . According to her, her work "about government control, cultural censorship." It is she who causes shock in the Vietnamese press ( gay soc ).
In "Fly Up" ( Bay Len ) She stripped naked and covered herself in glue and blue feathers before performing bird-like movements. The piece ended with the release of a live bird from her mouth.
But it was her next work that attracted the most attention. this untitled work She held the hot irons to the mass of pig blisters and then ran them over her arms, legs and face. She then pressed the irons to her hands, sticking the blisters and blistering the skin before peeling off the scorched parts.
3. "Shoot" by Chris Burden (1971)
Chris Burden was vehemently against war, especially when it came to Vietnam. As a performance artist, he expressed his solidarity with the victims through shocking acts of violence directed at himself. Examples include being crucified on a Volkswagen Beetle, thrown down two flights of stairs, and confinement in a school locker with a bottle on top to drink from and a bottle at the bottom to pee in. He also had an audience sticking pins in him.
In the work for which he is best known, Shoot, a friend shot him at close range with a rifle. There were only a few guests in the gallery, all friends of the artist. But the moment was captured on Super-8 film. In the footage, we see and hear gunfire, the victim stumble forward, and the shell hit the ground.
The gun was off target. The bullet should have just grazed his arm, but instead it went right through him, forcing Burden and his party to rush to the hospital and leave staff confused about the cause . While he may not have thought so at the time, it was actually better for the subject matter, which caused real wounds. After all, the goal was to challenge America's desensitization to violence.
2. "Ham Cybele - Banquet of the Century" by Ham Cybele (2012)
For a short time, on April 8, 2012, the noise cut through one tweet :
"[Please retweet] I offer my male genitalia (full penis, testicles, scrotum) as food for 100,000 yen... Will cook and prepare at the buyer's request at the place of their choice."
He then assured readers of the quality of the meat - 22 years old, with no disease, dysfunction or hormone treatment. This was not a bot. The tweeter was Tokyo artist Ham Cybele (HC), and this was a serious proposition. They had previously had their nipples removed. The idea behind this "testicle feast" was to raise awareness of "asexual" (non-binary) rights. And while some tried to cancel the gruesome meal, it was not against the law. Cannibalism is legal in Japan, as it is in all US states except Idaho .
Five days after the tweet, five diners split the bill and watched HC fry his penis, testicles, and scrotum with button mushrooms and parsley while listening to a piano recital. After signing a release of any liability for adverse reactions, the diners settled down. The verdict? Rubbery and tasteless But that wasn't the point.
1. "Rhythm 0" by Marina Abramovic (1974)
Marina Abramovic's Rhythm 0 takes the top spot on this list not because she went too far as an artist, but uniquely because the audience went too far as her audience. In fact, she was more shocked than anyone.
This could not be said of her earlier Rhythm works. In Rhythm 10, for example, she performed an old gangster trick by rapidly plunging a knife between her fingers into a table, not stopping until she had cut herself twenty times. "Rhythm 5" she jumped onto a flaming star-shaped platform, passing out from lack of oxygen, and had to be rescued by spectators. Then on the second and fourth beats, she passed out again, this time on purpose — first from drugs, then from hyperventilation .
«Rhythm 0» was a different beast entirely. When viewers entered the room, they found Abramović standing passively at a long table on which she had arranged 72 objects. Some were intended to induce pleasure (perfume, grapes, wine), others pain (a whip, a needle, razor blades), and others ambiguous or neutral (newspaper, paint, lipstick). Some objects, like a bandage, were intended to cause injury. But the most shocking objects were a bullet and a gun. The written instructions were simple: "There are 72 objects on the table that you can use on me at your discretion. I am the object. During this period, I take full responsibility."
Abramović's entire work was about testing her limits, but here she was testing her audience. She wanted to see how far they would go. At first they were playful. But they became more aggressive. "It was six hours of pure terror," she recalled. "Someone cut her clothes. Someone stuck spikes in her stomach.
Another took a knife and cut her close to the neck, drinking her blood before applying a bandage. Someone even picked her up, now half naked, and carried her around the room. Throwing her on a table, they plunged a knife into the wood between her legs. Finally, someone loaded a gun and pointed it at her head. They “put their hand in my hand,” she recalled, “[to] see if I would press it, her hand, against my hand, if I resisted.”
As with some of her other works, it took someone else to stop the piece. When the gallerist came in and said it was ready, Abramović woke up as if in a trance. Naked and bloodied, with tears in her eyes, she walked through the audience and everyone ran away; “literally [ran] out the door.” When she returned to her hotel room that evening and looked at herself in the mirror, she saw "a really big strand of grey hair."
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