Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
storey house before the action itself took place, he carefully
stage-managed this photographic event (several people were
holding out a jumping blanket) in order to simulate the
original situation while pretending it was purely documentary
material. Two aspects seem especially significant in this
context: (a) Not coincidentally, this origin of pain sold as
art was a male narcissistic fantasy of heroic omnipotence and
superhuman transcendence, which negated any notion of pain or
danger (and was continued by artists such as the Australian
Stelarc in his 1976 to 1988 Suspension Performances, who had
his skin perforated by meat hooks and his body lifted in the
air by ropes attached to them). (b) Klein was so euphoric
about his successful leap and anxious to create photographic
"evidence" for it that he created artistic material which
faked the risk of pain and death (Zell 45-46) and thereby gave
rise to a whole new tradition of photographic body work.
4 Even though it is held to be the first instance of
calculated self-harm in performance art, Klein's example is
not representative. Since the skin is not only perceived as
the border of the self but is also the organ most sensitive to
pain because of its enormous amount of nerve cells, body
artists experimenting with real pain preferably draw on
diverse forms of skin penetration such as cuts (Gina Pane,
Marina Abramovic, Valie Export, Yoko Ono, Günter Brus),
shooting (Chris Burden), biting (Vito Acconci), suspension
(Stelarc), crucifixion (Chris Burden, Magnus Scharmanoff, Bob
Flanagan) and operations (John Duncan, Orlan). While the
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