The Body as the Object of Modern Performance

Abstract

Max Weber had described the progress of what he called "rationalization 1 ' in the modern world.It calls for the "disenchantment of the world," with the replacement of magical thinking by reflective reason.Collective myth which for so long had acted as the unifying element in culture is displaced by a reason which compartmentalizes reality through its "will to knowledge" (Foucault).This compartmentalization results in what Weber designates as autonomous "cultural spheres of value," namely three: science-technology, artliterature, and law-morality.The separation of the artistic sphere from its relation to the culturally unifying agencies of religion and centralized political power has resulted, through the ongoing process of rationalization, in the search for the "essence" of art.Jiirgen Habermas has noted that art becomes rationalized when, first, it becomes autonomous, second, it divests and purifies itself of "theoretical and moral admixtures," and third, in reflecting upon its own formal processes, makes those processes transparent (178).Each particular form of art within modernism has engaged in this process-literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, theatre-and in each, the relentless pursuit for understanding the essence of its formal properties has resulted in one or another kind of minimalism.Each has reduced itself to its most basic form of objecthood-sound, color, plastic form, etc., but also drawing attention to what gives it shape-silence, emptiness, stillness.This movement has even resulted in certain reversals that end up encroaching on the territory of other arts or disciplines: conceptual art's reliance on language, minimal art becoming body art, then performance art, which slides into the theoretical purview of theater.Jon Erickson is assistant professor of drama in the Department of English at Ohio State University.Over the past ten years Erickson has created sound-text poetry and intermedia performances and body art works.His performances embody a confrontation with language as a coercive institutional force that shapes identity and a search for the most private voice at the edge of articulation.His essays on performance and culture have been published in Theatre Journal, Discourse, Boundary 2, and Ear Magasine.In addition to performance theory, Erickson has written about and lectured on painting, conceptual art, and poetry.

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