Performing Art(s)

I intended to write about Deepa Mehta, or Patricia Rozema, or Shamim Sarif, or Hanan Kattan. Filmmakers are easy for me. It is the world in which I invariably find myself trapped. I wanted to explore them, and their craft, and the reasons why Deepa Mehta has become my comfort zone. Then I saw that someone else has connected with her stories, and I remembered that I already divulged my love for Fire and Water in my previous post so I challenged myself to look elsewhere.

I arrived in New York a few months after The Artist Is Present exhibition at MoMa ended. I had no idea who Marina Abramović was. I had no idea why people were so emotional about the experience. I had no idea, and I never would because I had missed it. Performance art is live, unapologetic, palpable, experimental, memorable. Performance art is overlooked - by everyone, by me. If it isn't in your face, it doesn't have an impact. It is not film or video, it cannot be recreated. I tried to watch recordings of Ulay's visit to the exhibit but I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel the weight of their reunion in my bones the way that it had been described to me. My retrospective glance at her eventually shifted to those who surround her place in history. Zackary Drucker and Heather Cassils use their bodies to make statements about institutions in ways that I have never seen before.

Heather Cassils appeared as a featured extra in Lady Gaga's short film/music video, "Telephone" where she caught the attention of the public with her gender bending. She works as a personal trainer but her passion is art. Her work seeks to critique the social laws that define gender. According to John Berger, in the text, Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC television series, "To be naked is to be oneself [whereas] to be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself" (54). I think Cassils challenges that concept. In her performance pieces, she makes herself the naked subject who displays her body to present abstract concepts. She is neither naked nor nude by Berger's narrow standards.

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In her book, Deadly Persuasion, Jean Kilbourne writes that, "Women are especially vulnerable because our bodies have been objectified and commodified for so long" (132). Although she identifies as gender non conforming, Cassils continually shows that the body is malleable; as are societal ideals and the gender roles prescribed at birth. The body does not make the person. It is such a simple idea but it is almost entirely absent in the American Media landscape. Artists like Cassils are an integral part of the messages that are dispersed daily. She reveals what the advertising industry, the social institutions that be, and our peers hide behind close doors. Through discipline the self can be divorced from the body to achieve the level of self-reflection necessary to transcend stereotypes, because unfortunately that's what conforming to social roles has become... stereotypical.

Works Cited

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing: Based on the BBC Television Series. London: British Broadcasting, 1977. Print.

Cotter, Holland. "Performance Art Preserved, in the Flesh." The New York Times 12 Mar. 2010, The Arts sec.: C25-26. Print.

Cassils, Heather, and Robin Black. "Artist Statement" LadyFace // ManBody. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2013.

Kilbourne, Jean. Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising. New York, NY: Free, 1999. Print.