Hardship Art: Pain and Performance Art, 1990 to the present

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Works of art and performance that privilege hardship, extremity, pain and wounding may sometimes seem unbearable, unwarranted, or unintelligible, for straying too far beyond a certain aesthetic limit. I propose to undertake a series of research-based activities on the theme of hardship art after 1990. These activities will include two strands: firstly, the completion of the typescript for a sole-authored publication (under contract); and public engagement activities in London and Los Angeles. Some events will take place during a period of research as AHRC Visiting Professor at University of California, Riverside, lasting one month. A defining assumption of the project considers 'hardship art' as a set of important contemporary trends in the performance of extremity. While the works of key artists have been undeniable fixtures on the national and international programming circuits in visual art and performance, their theorisation and historicisation has been limited. The term 'hardship art' was put forward in the 1980s as a tentative critical neologism, with a short and peripatetic history of usage, falling out of favour for less specific umbrella terms. Subsequent studies have historicised the work that came before or around the time of its first provisional theorisation. A starting point for the project involves an acknowledgement of 'hardship art' as a terminology for studying performance art, live art, theatre and visual art, and the elaboration of new critical methods to engages with performance of excess or 'extremity'. "The Preferred Ordeal: 'Hardship Art' and the Performance of Extremity" (the monograph) constructs a history of contemporary performances and related documents that involve the production and representation of pain, wounds, and hardship. I counter the absence of sustained study of hardship art and related practices by arguing that such works demand a reconfiguration of our assumptions about politics and aesthetics. Case studies include Ron Athey, Franko B, Sheree Rose and the late bob Flanagan, Rick Castro, and Kira O'Reilly. These artists are familiar to specialised audiences, but perhaps less well-known to general audiences of art and theatre. I therefore contextualise their art practices through new close readings of more established artists including the most-cited and vastly exhibited artists including Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, Robert Mapplethorpe, ORLAN, and Gina Pane. Introducing emerging or marginal practices is a revisionist strategy to insert disorganizing supplements into the existing cultural histories of performance and visual culture. The length of the introduction and seven chapters will be around 10,000 words each; the projected word count is 86,000 words (including prelims and bibliography). Through primary research and extensive critical analysis, I will show that these artists and others enable new perspectives on the cultural politics of performance and visual culture. They provoke new approaches to the ideological function of institutions: artistic, theatrical, critical, legislative and academic. "The Preferred Ordeal" suggests that we might search for the bite, the flinch, and the grimace of one's confusion in the encounter with art and performance - despite the consolations that more convivial forms might sometimes offer. The PE activities complement, extend and inform the written research towards the monograph. As such, the project involves a series of engaging and accessible critical dialogues with key artists in London and Los Angeles, at non-HE institutions including: Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Arts, and/or INIVA (London); and Culver Arts Center and Human Resources (Riverside/Los Angeles). Representatives of the venues in London have provisionally confirmed their willingness to discuss programming the proposed events; the venues in California are confirmed.