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AN ANALYSIS OF EMBARRASSMENT USED AS A STRATEGY IN CONTEMPORARY PERFORMANCE ART
Master Thesis
by
Agata Maszkiewicz
Foreword to the publication on corpus
It was late that evening,
after a couple of beers and I found myself running to catch the last train. It
was kind of a high tech one, coming from Bregenz. I jumped on it and
immediately went to the toilet. High technology sometimes can be disturbing: I
had no idea how to lock the automatic doors. But as the pressure on my bladder
was getting stronger, I happily got rid of my trousers. I was just about to pee
when suddenly the doors opened ... It was the controller, quite confused.
I still wonder who was
more embarrassed: me, caught in a rather intimate 'just about' activity or the
man, confronted with a rather unexpected image? He looked as if he were angry
at my improvidence but really, I did not plan to impose myself on anyone.
Nevertheless both our
bodies reacted strongly: hearts started beating like crazy, mouths got dry,
minds went unclear. We were alternately blushing, sweating, gesticulating unnaturally, blinking nervously
... all in all experiencing a symbolic dying in front of each other, which at
the same time strongly called the presence to our minds. We could not escape
the moment.
All the senses were
shouting that something was at stake: the order was disturbed, the limits
trespassed, the rules of daily etiquette were broken.
We both had misbehaved.
What a lovely experience of “here and now”.
* * *
After the
toilet doors were finally closed, I burst into laughter. Not only out of
relief, but because I was at that time engaged in writing about embarrassment -
more precisely, embarrassment treated as an artistic strategy in a contemporary
performance field.
Embarrassment has a great potential and can be used as a tool in art to
establish a particular (intense, equal, respectful, surprising, pleasurable)
relationship between the audience and a performer or an art piece.
Its greatest uniqueness lies in its ability to stop the flow of unreflective patterns of re-actions. It calls
for active interpreters.
Facing embarrassment, none of the well-known sets of behaviour fit. And
it can be so uncomfortable that it's impossible to ignore it and to continue
without stopping and giving it a thought. A spectator has to deal with this
situation right on the spot, at the very moment. It brings him straight to the
present.
To the 'here and now'.
Like in that toilet ...
* * *
"Oh my god ... it's not possible! Analyzes of embarrassment used as a
strategy in contemporary
performance art" is my master thesis which in its main part gets published here on corpus www.corpusweb.net.
I invite anyone who would like to know more about what a toilet story,
mockery, bad taste, and failure have to do with contemporary performance art to
give it a good read!
PDF View/Download (204 kB)
Agata Maszkiewicz, December 2009
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