Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
further in opening up additional, often politicized, levels of
semantic content and offering some sort of "legitimation" for
the pain undergone. In recent years, however, artists such as
Stelarc, Orlan or Matthew Barney proceed from the tenet of the
human body's obsoleteness in a highly technologized world and
aim at overcoming its biological constraints. Viewed against
this development, it appears only logical that the treatment
of pain as manifested in their performance work is tantamount
to negation and marginalization. Any articulation of real pain
would run the risk of reintroducing notions of the embodied
subject into the discussion.
39 This development from an early focus on the "realness"
of the body to its political framing and a revised notion of
the embodied subject can be illustrated, I would contend, by
body art's changing references to the highly popular motif of
crucifixion. One of the first and most notorious artists to
use it in body art was Chris Burden. In Trans-Fixed (1974) he
was nailed with his arms spread wide onto the bonnet of a
Volkswagen beetle. Insofar as he made a profane substitute
(the car) take the place of the cross and had his own cries of
pain replaced by the roar of the engine, Burden deprived a
2000-year old motif of Western art history and the central
image in Christian religion of its singularity and pathos in
an expressly antireligious, political gesture (Schröder 117).
Because the action was not shown in public and many people
(not unlike Thomas the apostle) doubted the authenticity of
the action, he had photos taken of his pierced palms for
http://www.genderforum.uni-koeln.de/anybody/gutenberg.html (45 van 60)31-3-2005 18:21:57