Undressing the nude was my final Masters Dissertation at the university of Kent.

ABSTRACT

Robert Bresson once said in an interview “In the Nude all that is not beautiful is obscene.” The naked body, and more specifically the female naked body, has been and is a vehicle for meaning. When putting the naked body in a performance space it stands at the center of the dichotomy between absolute presence and representation, as well as art and reality. This paper researches the subject of the naked body in contemporary performances. The discourses on the subject include (art) historical-, aesthetical-, feminist-, and ritualistic discourse to define the difference between the Nude (the elevated artistic naked body) and the naked (the obscene naked body) in contemporary performance. The main sources include Lynda Nead, Larissa Bonafante, Erika Fischer-Lichte and Falk Heinrich. The difference between naked and nude also prompts the central question this research paper examines: Can the body be naked in a performance (and thus art) without it automatically turning into the artistic nude? The ritualistic discourse opens a door to the naked body in initiation rites for rituals and the liminal (temporary, in between) phase of a ritual. The liminal phase marks a turning point in this research paper as it identifies where ‘nakedness’ can be found in performance and which strategies a performer can employ to extend the nakedness of the naked body and temporarily escape the artistic nude. Thomas Zollinger, Milo Moiré and my performance, exemplify which strategies are used to identify and prolong the liminal phase, which creates nakedness in a performance. It is important to find nakedness in performances as the naked body is still a taboo today. By countering the artistic nude, the performer can explore the nakedness of naked body, which has more links with the naked body outside of performance space.

Keywords: The naked body, The Nude, Performance, Urban spaces, ritualistic phases

Introduction

In my second term of my master’s degree, I performed a performance naked. Before I had established I would do so, I had encountered different opinions about being naked in a performance. The most prominent one concerned the condition to be naked. A good reason was always needed to be naked and when nakedness was used as a shock factor, it was considered negatively. The subject of this dissertation is a result from performing naked, the obstacles I had when doing so and the questions I received about my. I was allowed to perform naked, but I had to risk assess my performance and make it inaccessible to minors. That means only people over eighteen were allowed to attend the performance. I was also not allowed to make a poster on which I was displayed naked and distribute it on campus, as that would be considered pornography and the university are not licensed for it. There were a lot of rules for what was allowed to happen outside the space.

The question whether you have reasoning behind your naked body can be equated to being a dramaturgical question. One should question all their strategies one employs during a performance. The naked body, however, is still considered a taboo, but not always in art. I want to understand why that is. Why is the naked body outside performance space so shocking while it is acceptable inside the space considering you have a ‘good’ reason?

I argue that there are therefore two categories of the naked body: one that is naked and one that is nude.[1] The distinction between the two has become complicated after the turn of the 20th century. Before the 20th century, the distinction between nude and naked is clearer cut than it is now. The distinction between theater and life is also more defined. As a reaction against the German (romantic) theater, in which the distinction between performer and spectator is taken seriously, the collapse of the distinction between both object and subject, and life and theater is sought after. “Nothing achieves this collapse more successfully and more ecstatically than the nakedness of human bodies.”[2] Max Herrmann, for example, writes about the ‘real’ body and the ‘real space’. Erika Fischer-Lichte writes in her book ‘performance aesthetics’ about Max Herrmann. She states that Herrmann is less interested in the body as signifier and more in the ‘real’ body.[3] This lack of distinction between art and reality and the ambition to explore the ‘real body’ in performance space, makes the distinction between naked and nude problematic. I want to explore how the naked body transforms into the Nude and whether the opposition in performance is possible. My research question is whether it is possible to ‘undress’ the Nude in performance and which strategies are used to do so. I want to know whether ‘nakedness’ is possible in performance and how acceptable it is when it is not being elevated to the status of the Nude.

My methodology draws upon primary and secondary literary sources as well as personal experience of performing naked. I will analyze different case studies to exemplify my arguments and the strategies each artist uses.

This research paper will focus on performance art (and contemporary performance) in its case studies rather than (traditional) theater because it gives me the opportunity to consider cases where the boundaries between art and reality are blurrier.

This paper also focuses on Western society. It focuses on the development of Western society and its influence on contemporary Western performance.

I want to give you a brief introduction on the etymology of the word ‘naked’ and ‘Nude’ before I delve into my first chapter about the discourses on the naked body. The discourses will include an art historical, aesthetical, feminist and ritualistic approach. I will then conclude whether it is possible to undress the Nude in my second chapter. My case studies will serve as examples and analyses of strategies in which one can show whether an artist succeeds to undress the ‘nude’ in my third chapter.

Etymology

To summarize several dictionaries[4] I conclude that several sources define naked as the body being without clothes, undisguised, vulnerable, unprotected and even embarrassed. I would like to stress the importance of both the exposure of skin as well as the genitals. The genitals, according to Christianity, arouse powerful emotions of shame, shock, lust, admiration, violation, pity, and disgust.[5] That is why the most frequent associations with it are taboo, magic, and ritual. The genitals or a woman’s breasts can signify weakness but can also function as powerful magic. “Like the Goron’s gaze, it can paralyze or protect.”[6]  Christianity considers the genitals as dirty and obscene. Another example that supports the definition of the genitals as shameful and obscene is the translation of genitals in Greek: the sexual organs literally mean ‘shameful things’.[7] The Greek word for naked, or nude, is ‘gymnos’. It refers to total nudity, but also refers to being unarmed in a military context,[8] which implies the connotation of vulnerability.

I add the importance of skin because it is the medium, in which we experience the world with, and the world experiences us. It is the first communication. Everything derives from skin, most importantly: the first contact. To look at skin, or to dig deep into our skin puts us in a position where we are confronted with the depth of our origin and the possibilities of our body and being. To dig deep into our own origin is to explore ourselves and the body we own.[9]

The confrontation with skin in combination with genitals, each having its problematic representation and presence, can be overwhelming. That overwhelming feeling is therefore rejected and demonized. There have been cases, however, where the exposure of these genitals has been accepted throughout history.[10] This is where the Nude makes its appearance. According to Francois Julien, the Nude is an expression of essence and form. It is divine as it evokes the eternal by freezing a moment in time.[11] Compared to Chinese art, the Nude is made possible by the Greek metaphysics of logos, eidos, and hule, form, and matter.[12] I will discuss the subject of form and matter further throughout the art historical- and aesthetical discourse. The Nude is the acceptable form of the naked body. It is significant to acknowledge when and why that is. Different kinds of mediation can create acceptance concerning the naked body.

I will assess different discourses (feminist, (art) historical, aesthetical and ritualistic) to determine the most well-known mediations concerning the naked body, which made the latter acceptable.

1.  Discourses on the naked body

I am using several discourses to talk about the distinction between naked and nude as they inevitably intertwine. It is important to state that the discourses mentioned below are paraphrased (and perhaps simplified) and only serve as a base for this study.

(Art) Historical Discourse

I start with the (art) historical course to which aesthetical discourse will add and eventually overlap.

Kenneth Clark and John Berger are two important scholars in the mid-20th century who write about the Nude in the context of art history and art aesthetics. In 1951 Clark writes The Nude:  A Study In Ideal Form. At the time, Clark’s work is most authoritative on the subject of the Nude. Berger also takes on the Nude in the 1972 BBC program, ‘Ways of seeing’ (which is later published in written form).

Kenneth Clark makes a particular distinction between the naked and the Nude. He states that “naked is the body unclothed, huddled and vulnerable, whereas the Nude is the body reformed instead of deformed ‘balanced, prosperous and confident'”.”[13] He makes an overview of the Nude throughout history, starting with Greek antiquity and ending with what was then called contemporary art, but is the 1950’s as that is when the book was written. To simplify, he states that naked is the body unclothed, whereas Nude is a form of art. John Berger questions Clark’s opposition. John Berger assesses the Nude in terms of how it is viewed, especially by the male spectator. He also speaks out about the Nude but only manages to invert the naked/nude opposition. He states that “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (…) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display.”[14]

Both Clark and Berger’s argument is based on historical developments throughout Western society. The distinction between nude and naked derives from two places: a male point of view, and an aesthetical point of view, which will intertwine and influence each other.

Aesthetical Discourse

“In the Nude, all that is not beautiful is obscene.”[15]

• Robert Bresson

There are two concepts that shape the aesthetical point of view, namely, ‘Matter’ and ‘Form’. It is imperative to make a distinction between both to proceed further. Form signifies the mind, the culture, and the ratio. Matter signifies the body, the uncontrollable, and nature. This distinction, between form and matter, mind and body, goes back as far as Plato and his dualism (Greek metaphysics as mentioned in the introduction). Plato states: we are simply tokens of an ideal form. He makes a firm distinction between body and mind, in which body is secondary to mind as the body is simply a token of an ideal form of the body, which exists in the world of forms. Descartes also speaks out about it when he states that the body is the source of all obscurity and confusion in our thinking.[16]  The body refers matter, which makes the latter the ‘source of all obscurity’ and inherently negative. The goal of Cartesian thought is the creation of an absolute distinction between the spiritual and the corporeal with the complete transcendence of mind over body.[17]

Conclusively, what they try to pertain, each with a different theory, is that the mind is superior to the body.

Kant goes a step further when speaking about this distinction and links it more distinctively to the judgment of beauty, and inherently art.  Kant introduces us to Critique of aesthetic judgment in 1790. He distinguishes sensory from contemplative pleasures, meaning, he tries to make a distinction between the pleasure of the body and pleasure of higher contemplation (the mind) when observing something beautiful. The hierarchy between body and mind is affirmed once more, this time in association to our judgment of beauty. Kant maintains that to appreciate something aesthetically, we need to consider the object only for its own sake. The object should not serve an ulterior purpose. “The observer’s desires and ambitions should be held in abeyance in the act of pure contemplation.”[18] The body and its needs have repeatedly ulterior purposes to keep its needs sated. He makes a distinction between what lies inside of art and what lies outside of it. He proclaims that only that without ulterior motive lies within art, and therefore excludes bodily pleasures from that statement. He says that only intrinsic beauty lies within the limits of art opposed to decoration or sensuous appeal. Sensuous appeal is essentially linked to bodily pleasures and needs, so this cannot be considered as art. When things go beyond beauty, Kant calls this the sublime. He characterizes the beautiful as a unity contained and limited by the borders of art. It is harmonious. Whereas the sublime is presented in terms of excess, of the infinite, it cannot be framed and is almost beyond representation. It is ob – scene,[19] literally off scene. Therefore, within the context of performance, we can acknowledge that the sublime is off scene, outside the performance space, whereas the beautiful is inside, on-scene.

One could argue that the naked body cannot be intrinsic beauty as it is linked to bodily pleasures and needs. Therefore, it belongs to the obscene, the sublime, the matter. The naked (female) body, however, is portrayed in art history. It is part of the canon. The naked body has thus found a way to become intrinsic beauty.

As I have stated before, there is a male point of view, concerning these discourses, that sheds light on this puzzling contradiction.

Starting with Greek culture, then Christianity and eventually intensifying with the Enlightenment, male has been considered ‘form’ whereas female has been considered ‘matter’. Not just normal matter as you would have with different objects, but pure matter. The first matter or the original sin so to speak. She is both mother and matter, which makes her pure matter according to Christianity.[20] There has been an anxiety around this matter, though, a kind of male anxiety, to contain it. There has also been a desire to be able to gaze at this forbidden fruit without being penalized. Both aspirations can only succeed if the naked body (which normally lies in the territory of obscenity and therefore should not be considered art) earns an artistic dimension and is thus contained by artistic form. Therefore, the most logical thing to do is to regulate it and transform the matter into form, or obscenity into intrinsic beauty. The artistic Nude is conceived.

Feminist Discourse

The artistic Nude in this sense has earned a lot of criticism from feminism throughout the years for sustaining the inequality between the sexes, as its existence is based on maintaining the hierarchy between male form and female matter. The nude exists to contain the naked female body and keep it subordinate to male form. Not only its existence but how the female Nude is portrayed preserves this inequality.

Ann Eaton states, “Insofar as it makes male dominance and female subordination sexy, the female Nude is one important source of this eroticization and in this way is a significant part of the complex mechanism that sustains sex inequality.”[21]

The female nude as a passive object to be gazed upon creates a sex inequality.[22] We are not speaking about nudity alone; we are speaking about what this Nude does when she is nude. Her recurring body type and actions are equally significant to display the sex inequality. Both body type and action or pose are part of a prototype/template of ideal body types and actions/pose the Nude should possess to qualify as a Nude. Ann Eaton considers Gorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’ as a prototype for a tradition of resting nudes. The word prototype is vital as many of the artistic nudes throughout art history are interchangeable and lack any individual personality. Their body and its position are a template of an ideal Nude, which marks it as a Nude and not a ‘naked’. Eaton refers for example to the pudica gesture of the Nude, which calls attention to that which it supposedly hides.[23] The shape of the hand is a visual metaphor for the genitals below. She speaks about the emphasis on vulnerability, which is not caused by sleep but rather serves as a purpose to provide maximal visual access to erogenous zones.

To come back to why the Nude is created, rather than how, I concur once more that the male spectator needs to regulate pure matter by turning it into form to allow themselves for gazing at the naked body without consequences, but also regulates it due to their anxiety concerning pure matter. If pure matter can be turned into form, surely the opposite is possible too. This reversal is disconcerting as they value pure form above all. On this subject, Lynda Nead states “The fetishistic restoration to the lapsing female body of the erectile definition that it seems to the anxious male imagination to lack, makes for a complex interchange between male and female bodies. In this, the characteristically female body is paradoxically subject to a masculinization, in order to make it conform to an ideal of the male body that precisely depends upon a dread that the male body might itself revert to what it is feared may secretly be its own female formlessness.” [24] The solution to both anxieties as well as desire is the same: an ideal template.

What Nead maintains, is that there needs to be a ‘safe’ possibility of an undisturbed aesthetic experience when viewing the female body, because it is the female form that controls that mass of flesh.[25] One way of doing that is one I have already mentioned: turning it into form (into art) by for example regulating its pose and its body type (so no individuality can confront the spectator), creating an ideal template as stated above. The template, albeit similar throughout time, does tend to shift from period to period, but always preserves an ideal template within that particular period.

When that ideal is breached due to aging, excessive matter (literally too much matter, meaning too fat), or skin color, etc., it will fall back into nakedness. It is considered ugly. Therefore, no one would or could consider it aesthetically without being penalized for doing so. It will only be considered in a fetishistic manner, which falls into the category of eroticism and pornography and pierces through the boundaries of art. It will not be able to be elevated to the Nude and aesthetically considered.  Lynda Nead states on the subject that, “The transformation from the naked to the Nude is thus the shift from the actual to the ideal- the move from a perception of unformed, corporeal matter to the recognition of unity and constraint, the regulated economy of art. It is this process of transfiguration that renders the Nude the perfect subject for the work of art.”[26]

The Nude can be considered a costume, in this sense, that it can be changed by cultural and historical context. The person is clothed in art. This ‘clothing’ has been challenged by feminist art, particularly performance art in the 70s. The objective for this period is to transform the passive quiet female (and therefore also the female Nude) into a speaking subject.[27] It has as a goal to portray female identity outside of the ‘template’, which means to portray a diverse set of women, each with their unique set of traits. The individuality, that before is to be avoided, will now confront the spectator and question the position of the spectator in relation to the performer.  Lynda Nead states it perfectly when she says, “Redrawing the lines represents the shift from the implied singularity and inclusiveness of the category woman towards a situating of the multiplicity and plurality of subject position that constitute the woman’s movement.”[28] An example of one of those performers is Marina Abramovic. She is one of the key figures in the performance art movement and is also known as the grandmother of performance art. She questions and pushes the boundaries of the body, which also includes female sexuality. For example, she experiments with nakedness in her performance with Ulay, ‘Imponderabilia’ in 1977. Both her and Ulay stand in a doorway, naked, and force people to squeeze between them. The feminist performance art movement questions the artistic Nude. By doing so they deconstruct the Nude and play with nakedness but one could argue that by doing so they also dress themselves in a differently designed costume (as a result of the performance space).

This would be acceptable if it were not for the developments at the turn of the 20th century. In my introduction I have stated that there is a development from a clear distinction between reality and art, to a vague one. As I have stated before Max Herrmann considers the body and the space as real, which creates two categories that can be challenged: one being, the artistic nude as a category and what that entails in contemporary performance, and the other, the naked real body and how the performance space influences the status of that real body. I do not consider the issue of the transformative powers of performative space regarding the naked body solved by questioning the Nude (and therefore playing with the naked body) alone. One must also question the performative space regarding that body.

Before I delve into this last subject, I think it important to continue with the subject of the Nude as a costume.

Ritual discourse: A ‘ Birthday Suit’

“I wasn’t really naked. I simply didn’t have any clothes on.”[29] 

• Josephine Baker

The naked body can be referred to as your birthday suit, which implies a clothed connotation to the naked body. The body as a costume, used in different circumstances would be an appropriate subject to raise. One of these circumstances would be Greek culture, which raises important themes for this paper.

Bonafante speaks of the naked body as a costume in classical art (meaning Greek culture), by tracing the development of the admiration of the naked (male) body and its commodity in Greek tradition. She tries to exemplify why it is acceptable for a man to be naked in public spaces, such as Gymnasiums. It is the Greeks who bring into our culture the ideal of male nudity as the highest kind of beauty.[30]  What I consider most vital for this study is her examination of the naked body during practices, which relates to rituals.  Before I dive into that subject, I would like to give you an overview of the development of the naked body in Ancient Greek culture.

Bonafante speaks of different kinds of nudity in her article ‘Nudity as a costume in classical art’. She speaks of religious nudity, divine nudity, and ritual nudity as “special mode of dressing for initiation rituals for boys and girls, for sacred prostitutes serving at the temple, for a priest sacrificing before his god.”[31] Ritual nakedness is a typical initiation motif. Bonafante states, “In initiation rites in ancient Crete, the young man was naked before he took the arms of the warrior and entered into his manhood.(…) Women too participated in ritual nakedness in the course of initiations into special cults, for example, the Athenian festival in honor of Artemis.”[32] I would argue again that nakedness here is nudity as a costume during rituals and initiation rites of youth.

Nudity develops from having a religious (as the image of Apollo, a funerary image, or in servitude of the God) set up from the seventh century B. C., and a ritualistic connotation (during the Olympic games dedicated to the Gods for example), to an athletic connotation of the citizen-soldier.[33] Before nudity can mean vulnerability (and chaotic power), now it means (controlled) strength or bravery.[34] Civic nudity marks a break with barbarians, who assert their authority and elegance through wealth and luxurious garments. Civic nudity allows people to climb the social ladder using their body alone.[35] This includes citizens only, which means slaves and women are excluded from this development.

Bonafante looks at the development of female nudity in Ancient Greek culture and states that “the female nude appears briefly, in the early Archaic period, as a religious fertility motif, following the Near Eastern model of the naked mother goddess. After these early figures, the image was used for pathetic appeal, for magic or erotic appeal, or for scenes from the life of a courtesan.”[36] We can state a difference between men and women, where the connotation of male nudity develops into strength, female nudity keeps its connotation of vulnerability. Therefore, when women appear (partially) naked in mythological scenes, it is to indicate their weakness and vulnerability.[37] It also keeps its magic (and chaotic power), like the gorgon gaze, it can paralyze. Therefore, anything that deviates from the ideal, which is a young Greek man, has both vulnerability but also power. Bonfante states, “Like the phallus, the eye, and the frontal face, the sight of the naked breast has a double role. It is a sign of helplessness, at the same time it is a remarkable magic force. It is no coincidence that the herm consists of a frontal face and an erect phallus: it was meant to serve an apotropaic function, protecting the city and its citizens.” [38] This last point is important because not only are the connotations of the naked bodies different, they are portrayed differently. Not only in their actions, but in their anatomy. Satyrs, herms, and actors in Greek comedies, have enlarged phalluses, whereas the athletic nude’s genitals are not as obtrusive.[39]

Marra and Clayton state when speaking of the phallus in Greek comedy that, “the symbol invoked ancient fertility rites and that it was exploited for bawdy, comic effect.”[40] We come back to both form and matter. What is controlled and what is chaotic. What is on-scene and off-scene as mentioned before when speaking of Kantian thought. What is most interesting here is that the dichotomy between form and matter can possibly translate to Greek tragedy and Greek comedy, and how nudity is used as a motif to humor. Serious nudity is employed when portraying the ideal Greek youthful man, but not when portraying anything that stretches beyond that template. It is known that padding, ugliness, etc. are used as themes in Greek comedy, which further supports my claim for a parallel between form and matter, and tragedy and comedy.

As I have mentioned before, when speaking of the female Nude as an ideal template, which contains that matter, and the matter leaks out of the form, the form becomes contaminated and develops into a fetish, or humor. It transforms into something that is not beautiful. So what is naked and what is Nude within a performance? In performative space, one would assume that the Nude is simply another costume. The body would be clothed in art if I follow that argument as I stated earlier. I do not follow that argument however. My next most important question, that will dictate the tone of this article further is, is it possible to undress the Nude?

To answer my question I want to employ the phases of an initiation rite. I have discussed before how the naked body would be employed as a starting point of an initiation rite for the youth. I want to draw a parallel between a temple where initiation rites are performed and artistic space.

2.   Undressing the Nude in performative space

A ritual, like a speech act, or art, ‘creates’, in the sense that the symbols used in the process of a ritual, are associated with the performative function. The symbols can only be referential because they are performed in a certain way.[41] This is why the temple can be connected to performance space, as they both possess performative and transformative entities. I also want to draw a parallel between art space and a ritualistic temple on the basis of the naked body as a costume. The Nude which is inside the ‘temple’ is elevated and accepted. Inside the temple refers to the inner boundaries of art. As I have concluded above, the naked body is elevated to make aesthetic evaluation possible. Profanity literally means ‘outside of temple’, so one could assume that ‘naked’ is profane and Nude is sacred. Outside the temple would refer to piercing through the outer boundaries of art, and therefore, trickling into the field of pornography/profanity. This inside versus outside is reminiscent of Kant’s dichotomy between inside/ intrinsic beauty/ art and outside/ the sublime/obscenity as mentioned before. The naked body is sacred inside the temple and employed for an initiation rite. The naked body is transformed and, therefore, contained. The naked body outside the temple is an example of profanity as it is not transformed and therefore chaotic.

I would argue that in contemporary performance practice, the ‘temple’ or artistic space is not exclusively bound to an actual temple made of stone, so to speak. I consider, keeping the developments of post-dramatic theater in mind, this to be a transportable ‘aura’ that is initiated by someone with authority. It is a means to contain ‘matter’, whether that containment translates itself into a building or into an authorization. Erika Fischer-Lichte states in her book ‘The show and the gaze of theater’ (1997) that “(…) this procedure is certified as a ritual because an authorized person executes the actions in a particular context and under particular conditions and because the congregation is convinced that she/he is entitled to perform the actions; In this respect the ritual is comparable to a speech act.”[42]  She refers to the association of performances with ritual, and questions what entitles an artist to perform a ritual. What entitles them to have that authority? I am not trying to equate ritual to performance, although certain performances (f.e. Abramovic’s ‘The lips of Thomas’, (1975)) which include effects on the body (mainly self-harm or risks) make that distinction difficult to make.[43] I argue that a ritual and a performance have a particular condition in common to exist, namely that these actions performed require authority. The authority is required not only for the actions but also in order to create performative space. As stated earlier, the ‘temple’ initiates a transformation from naked to nude. To consider this transformation further, I employ the three phases of a ritual, as stated by Arnold Van Gennep: The pre – liminal phase, (separation); the liminal phase (the transition); and the post-liminal phase (reincorporation).[44]

I am particularly interested in the liminal phase, in which something has already been separated from its previous entity but not yet transformed into something else. Erika Fischer-Lichte identifies two factors, which repeatedly create (sub)liminal experiences that possibly prolong this (general)liminal phase. The first one is autopoiesis and emergence; and the second one is the collapse of dichotomies.[45]

Autopoiesis means that a system is capable of reproducing and maintaining itself. Emergence refers to a process where larger entities or patterns are created by interaction among smaller entities. Autopoiesis and emergence relate to Fischer-Lichte’s autopoietic feedback loop. The autopoietic feedback loop concerns the relation between the performer and the audience. According to Fisher-Lichte, the audience members are active participants as they cannot not react or participate.[46] What she means is that the audience members are inherently involved. The autopoietic feedback loop allows participants to experience themselves as co-determinate participants of actions.[47] They are not distanced from the event. Fischer-Lichte declares that the audience members “create meaning in a performance by virtue of the fact that they themselves partake in creating the process they wish to understand.”[48]

By collapse of dichotomies, she firstly refers to the (dissipating) distinction between performer and audience. In the autopoietic feedback loop, the distinction between subject and object fades, as audience members and performers embody both. As a result, “the binary of performer-audience collapses and dissolves the fundamental subject-object opposition”[49] in which object and subject fuse together and create liminality. She also means the collapse of binary oppositions in terms of what is theater and what is a social situation, or what is considered art and what is considered is reality. The collapse of dichotomies as stated earlier creates liminality. A liminal experience tends to put people in an unsettling position, as they can no longer place their associations in the approved and designated ‘box’. As I have assessed in my introduction, the developments initiated for example by Max Herrmann create liminal experiences as he considers the body and the space as the real body and the real space. Therefore, the distinction between a body in art and a body in reality dissipates. What is the difference between the real body within the (artistic) space and the one outside? By placing the spectator in a liminal experience, one shatters the perceptual and behavioral framework of the spectator.[50] Fischer-Lichte argues when speaking of self-harm during a performance that “in this situation, a purely aesthetic response would border on voyeurism and sadism.”[51] The same could be said when speaking of the naked body, as boundaries between art and pornography tend to faint when one ‘undresses’ on-scène. Fischer states further that conventional behavior patterns become redundant when people drift through this liminal experience. The spectator can only overcome the liminal situation by “seeking out new standards of behavior despite the constant threat of possible failure.”[52] More importantly, Fischer-Lichte links this liminal phase to her autopoietic feedback loop (the co-dependent relation between performer and spectator, which constantly loops between the two). The feedback loop takes turns between spectator and artist, by doing so it creates transitions and therefore a liminal situation.[53] It creates an unstable situation with unpredictable consequences. There is an equal chance to fail, as there is to succeed.[54]

Mary Douglas’ account of danger not existing within any given category but in transitional states correlates with what is stated above. She associates holiness to wholeness. Being holy is unity and integrity according to what she says. This ideal expands into the perception of the body in association with the social community.[55] She also introduces concepts of purification and pollution as a defense mechanism against this confusion. She distinguishes four kinds of danger that result in (social) pollution. (1) Danger presses on the external boundaries, (2) Danger that transgresses the internal lines, (3) danger in the margins of the lines and (4) danger from internal contradiction/conflict.[56] One can assume as we have said before that the naked body lies within the margins: the naked presses on the external lines and the Nude on the internal lines. The inner conflict concerns the naked body used in artistic space as it tries to defy the Nude or vice versa, like the feminist performance artists have done. What is most interesting is her correlation between the crevices of the body and the boundaries of society (which are most critical in maintaining order).[57] The crevices of the body, more importantly, those of the genitals, represent a boundary, which can serve as a metaphor for the boundaries of inside space and outside space. The body is sometimes referred to as one’s temple, which links nicely to Douglas’ metaphor. The naked body not only pushes against the boundaries, which lay between art and reality but is an embodiment of that space. By putting the body naked outside of the space (temple), one not only pushes against those boundaries but also reveals and emphasizes the existence of those boundaries by embodying them. It creates a factor where the ‘willing suspense of disbelief’ is broken, and the spectator experiences the ‘Estrangement effect’ (Verfremdungseffekt [58]). The crevices of the body out of which bodily fluids flow are considered the most vulnerable places of the body, according to Douglas.[59] One could consider that the (naked) body keeps the bodily fluids together, it keeps the matter from polluting the form but is most vulnerable at the seams out of which those fluids flow. One of the most important seams are the genitals (and perhaps the anus as well), which brings us back to the naked body. More often the naked body is represented visually. When thinking about the naked body in terms of taste or smell, bodily fluids can come to mind. Peter de Cupere, for example, creates an artwork, ‘Deflowering’ (2014), in which he uses the smell of (female, vaginal) bodily fluids and incorporates it in holy water, then freezes it in the shape of the Virgin Mary.[60] The ice melts and the bodily fluids pollute the air. They both represent a threshold that is constantly being challenged and placed in a liminal experience. Also, by using a different sense of the body one challenges the ideal template which by default has been visual throughout (art) historical discourse. There is no ideal template for different senses, which places the other senses in a position of an instigator of a liminal experience. A performance that uses non-visual input not only challenges classical theatrical strategies but also finds new ways of breaking boundaries and implementing liminal experiences. I consider performative space and the artist as instigators of the liminal phase. Performative space and the authority that has authorized this to be a performative space, create a transformation from reality to art. It is in that liminal phase that the artist can take advantage of prolonging it by using certain artistic strategies (which on their own create a sub-liminal phase) and play with the boundaries of art and reality, presence, and representation.

 

I want to draw a parallel between Erika Fischer-Lichte’s constant recurring transformation that is created by the sub-liminal phase (during the autopoietic feedback loop of a performance) and the embodiment of the prototype of flesh introduced by Falk Heinrich. The prototype is a concept deriving from Alfred Gell, who considers art as a medium for energy transferences. He illustrates four components to describe this process: (1) artist, (2) recipient, (3) index, (4) prototype. The index refers to the material entity of the artwork, whereas prototype refers to represented object, the referenced.[61] Heinrich presents a dichotomy between presence and representation in her article ‘Flesh as communication- Body art and Body theory’, in which she states “flesh in performance art is presented as absolute presence, but flesh can only be perceived through a reflective bearing.”[62] In performance (art) the artist is both agent, index, and prototype. She states that “The connection between index and prototype occurs via abductive inferences” (logical interferences based on observation). The body’s actions create an index formation that points at a generalized prototype because the movements are recognized and interpreted.[63] The performer is the prototype. The meaning always falls back on the bearer, even more so in performance due to the absolute presence of flesh. The spectator’s experience is delayed which creates a feedback loop of the index via the prototype to the body’s singular actions.[64] As a result, the prototype and the body overlap.[65] Neither can be detached from each other. Therefore, there is always a shift between presence and representation. By performing, the performer is met by the spectator’s prototype of his or her own flesh.[66] The performer is consequently the embodiment of the prototype of flesh.

The transitions Fischer-Lichte speaks of can be linked to the constant transition between absolute presence and representation. The naked body (being at the center of the distinction between reality and art) amplifies this disposition. The embodiment of a prototype of flesh is created by the autopoietic feedback loop as stated earlier, in which the presence of a body and the representation of that body overlap and the distinction between either possibly collapses.[67] This creates a constant transition between body, prototype, and embodiment of prototype, and consequently the existence of liminality is created. When I link this to the debate between naked and nude, and the liminal phase, I would suggest that the prototype of flesh only exists within that liminality created by particular strategies used by the artist within this autopoietic feedback loop. Unfortunately, the prototype of flesh exists in every performance using a body regardless of the strategies. The strategies, however, can prolong the existence of the prototype of flesh and the length of the transitory moment between presence and representation. The prototype of flesh, under these circumstances, is then that what is both naked and nude. Presence transitions to representation and back within the sub-liminal space (which happens in every performance regardless of what these strategies entail). The content of the strategies the performer employs prolong the general liminal phase.

As a conclusion, I state that it is both in the liminal phase as the sub-liminal phase that one can attempt to undress the Nude. The liminal phase is an in-between/inbetwixt phase where the artist is neither nude or naked or perhaps both, which is interesting as it is in this phase in which nakedness becomes a possibility to explore, albeit always within the category of nudity. It endlessly shifts from creating a liminal experience through strategies employed by the artist to keep the spectator from placing what they see in a definitive box. This suspension in limbo gives the spectator the opportunity to question what they perceive, and to question the boundaries between art and reality.

My next chapter will discuss the strategies different artists employ that prolong the general liminal phase and gives the opportunity to explore nakedness in performances.

3.   The practice of undressing the Nude: Artistic Strategies

Céline Deveux, Skindeep, 2016

Skindeep is a performance I executed in the second term of my Master’s degree at the University of Kent. My performance’s starting point revolves around the skin and its materiality. I discovered early into my process that to examine skin I would be naked on stage. This particular process is what initiated the question central to this paper as I faced several obstacles regarding my performance, some of which I have stated in my introduction. For practical reasons, I will refer to myself as ‘the performer’ further.

The performer includes strategies, which automatically initiates the sub-liminal phase of the autopoietic feedback loop, but also allows the Nude to be undressed, the naked to be explored and the (general) liminal phase (created by the institution) to be prolonged. These strategies will be discussed further in more detail, but before I do so, I want to question whether this body is naked/nude.

1Before the performance starts, the performer is covered with strings and plaster on top of those strings. The performance starts after that. The first phase of the performance consists of the performer standing in the middle of space as the audience may enter. The first question, as stated, would be, is this a naked body?  Although the body here is not ‘clothed’ in the traditional sense of the word, the body is covered. The genitals and breasts are not visible,  cannot be distinguished, and are not hidden in any way that would call attention to them (as the pudica gesture would). When the audience pulls on the strings and undresses the performer, the situation becomes ambiguous. The performer is passive as the audience undresses her, which heightens the vulnerability and submissiveness of her body. By staging the undressing, the boundaries between naked and ‘covered’ are emphasized, even more so as a result of the audience’s agency.

One of the first strategies employed here is the approach to the body as a costume. The concept of ‘costume’ works ironically here. The performer is wearing a costume of plaster and is shedding it as a second skin only to enter another skin, that of the artistic nude (which the performer constantly breaks and reinstates by further strategies). The performer examines the skin and the flesh in great detail throughout the performance. The naked body does not tell a story or hold a narrative, which permeates the artistic nude and reveals pieces of the naked. By crumbling surface, which reveals the flesh beneath, creates a dichotomy between two layers of skin/flesh and questions what it means to be naked, therefore revealing the boundaries of that definition and consequently exploring nakedness.

Douglas speaks about four kinds of danger of pollution as stated above. The naked body in this performance presses on the external boundaries by stressing the importance of the materiality of flesh, which exits the territory of exclusively evaluating this body aesthetically. Although the performer does not speak, and on first sight could be regarded as passive, the body speaks in its absolute presence but also in its liveness and a-liveness later on. The performer scrubs skin clean by carefully breaking the mold at first, to gradually scraping the plaster of the skin. The flesh speaks in its sound and creates an audible materiality, but also encourages haptic and tactile perception.[68] The audience uses the same neural substrate as the performer to feel and by consequence imagines and feels similar things, or at least reflects on said feeling. This results in a contemplation of one’s body (the feeling of their skin and materiality) and presence in the space. The body does not have a representational meaning of a certain concept, but a representational meaning of its own, a body an sich.[69]Another strategy is the transformation from passivity to activity. After the last string meets the ground, the performer comes alive and creates a contrast between what before can be viewed as a reference to nude classical sculptures and the agency the performer reclaims. It breaks the mold and possibly attempts to shed the ‘Nude’. When the performer is clothed in plaster, it ‘represents’ the classical shape of a female, a template rather easily swapped with another. Only when the performer comes to life, ‘breaks free’, and moves while examining its own flesh, does it shed its ‘nudity’ and explore its ‘nakedness’. Its liveliness gives individuality to the performer because it contrasts the stillness established before. This is a strategy within the sub-liminal phase that prolongs the liminal phase and breaks dichotomies by constantly shifting between naked and nude. It reveals, emphasizes and moves across the boundaries. This last strategy also prolongs the moments where the body meets the prototype of flesh (coming from the audience), and generates the embodiment of the prototype of flesh, while again creating liminality.

I would also like to discuss the concept of the ‘authorizer’, albeit it not being a strategy ‘Skindeep’ employs. The authorizer and space are clear, as it is performed on the campus of the University of Kent in a black box studio. The authorizer is the University of Kent, The School of Arts and their tutors and more importantly Faith Evans, who approves the risk assessments sent in by the students. A performer who stands naked must be risk assessed. What is interesting is that a man would not be allowed to do this performance naked, due to the risk of an erection (and that being ascribed to pornography for which the school has no license). An erection implies not only arousal but also the risk of exposing bodily fluids. As stated before the body’s crevices are an embodiment of the boundaries of society. By exposing an aroused genital and the possible consequence (the bodily fluids) one emphasizes the boundaries between art and pornography. The risk of exposing or losing control of pure matter becomes clear. When making a risk assessment, the risks must be able to be controlled. This, however, is uncontrollable and therefore chaotic. The boundaries throb as the erection exists within the margins of the lines. The erection represents an uncontrollable danger which cannot be elevated or subdued. We exit the territory of aesthetic contemplation and enter the territory of pleasures of the body (discussed by Kant) by doing so automatically. A body aroused has an ulterior motive rather than being an intrinsic beauty. It cannot be perceived as a thing an sich, but it associates automatically with sex acts and perhaps even reproduction (or the lack of reproduction as seeds are ‘lost’. The same would go for perceiving menstrual blood). This would be described as ob-scene/off-scene as it belongs to what Kant calls the Sublime.The performance presses on the inner lines because it borders body art and contemporary performance art (in which the real body is examined and used as a canvas). This announces the next strategy. The performance touches on classical sculptures when it begins, then takes a step back from the traditional expression of the Nude in art historical discourse, only to reference an Edgar Degas painting by the end of the performance when the performer is washing her body (utilizing a tub). Degas is renowned for his ‘keyhole’ approach to his nudes. The women he paints appear unaware of a spectator as his paintings capture intimate moments (predominantly moments of bathing).[70] This transposes the role of the spectator to some kind of peeping Tom. It heightens the voyeuristic atmosphere of the painting, which  this performance alludes to as well.  Even though the performance begins interactively, t  he performer remains in a bubble created by the blinding light. The performer does not have a clear view of the audience (only shapes and shadows are visible), which renders the spectators relatively unknown to performer. There is a shift throughout the performance between voyeuristic spectators and non-voyeuristic spectators. The audience infringes on the body when they are tasked to pull off the strings, and consequently plaster, an action, which several audience members have reported as intrusive and has left them feeling disconcerted. The performer is aware of their presence and depends on this intrusion to continue. Once the first phase has concluded, the infringement first cast on the body transforms into an infringement cast on intimacy created by the last phase (the bathing). The bathing also gives the performance a ritualistic quality. References of cleansing the body here are clear. The elevation of a cleansed body (which would lie within the aesthetic contemplation) contrasts a real body perceived by a voyeuristic audience. This all creates internal conflict and results in the possibility of a liminal experience, which exists within the margins of the lines between reality and art.

To conclude, the performance succeeds undressing the Nude while prolonging the liminal phase by using several strategies, namely, it’s ironic approach to the costume, which can be viewed as the ‘nude’; its transformation from passivity to activity; its references to art history and creation of voyeurism; and its constant shift between real and ‘elevated’ body. However, one must remember that the Nude can never be absent, and as a lenticular printing, which when moved gives the impression that image moves or changes, the Nude and naked constantly shift among themselves throughout the liminal phase.

Thomas Zollinger

Thomas Zollinger proposes while speaking of concepts of Ritual theater that the divisions between stage and auditorium, actors or performers and audience are disappearing.[71] This development parallels the development in the 20th century which speaks about the real body in performative space. He considers the human body the only medium left as he excludes objects or materials. “The body is in motion or pure standstill within the limits of precisely defined time structures and within, outside or between precisely defined rooms. Thus arises a situation, which leaves open where exactly ‘theater’ and ‘art’ happen.”[72] Where art and theater happen is part of the discourse this paper challenges and/or confirms the status of the naked body is inherently tied to where it is (how it is presented, and what kind of body it is). It is interesting to look at two projects Thomas Zollinger participates in or organizes concerning his concepts of Ritual Theater.

Naked Slow walk, Zagreb I love you, 2014

The first case I will discuss is ‘Naked Slow Walk’ which the police interrupts and arrests the performers, even though the festival had invited these performers to participate in the festival and authorities had been informed. Thomas Zollinger, Elias Kirsche and Glynis Ackermann perform ‘Naked slow walk’ in Zagreb as part of the festival ‘Zagreb, I love you’, a festival inspired by artist Tomislav Gotovac who performs ‘Zagreb, I love you’ (1981) as he walks naked through the streets of Zagreb. The festival pays tribute to the then recently deceased artist and discusses themes revolving around “the challenge and confrontation involving the naked body and urban landscape in the historical core of the city, expressing in this way the duality between nature and culture.” [73] The performers execute ‘Naked slow walk’ in the pedestrian zone of Varsavska Street. The police stop the performance twenty minutes into the performance.

I want to look at the strategies the performers employ, but more importantly at the role of the interruption of the police plays and how its link to concept authorization and the conflict between outside and inside space.

The first question, as before, is ‘is this a naked body?’ In this particular case, there is no ambiguity whether these performers are naked. The body is completely uncovered, and nothing is left to the imagination.

They walk remarkably slowly. Their near stillness in the classical architectural landscape of Zagreb alludes to classical sculptures in an urban setting, which are part of the city’s landscape. It is a reference to allowed nudity in urban setting often embodied in classical sculptures (although those can be assumed tokens of the ‘temple’ and often related to mythical/religious stories which inherently are part of the temple’s aura that stretches into the urban spaces and leaves its temple space). It is clear however that these performers mean to break the connection between the temple and their bodies. By placing a real body, which is a body an sich and not a representation of the body in stone, the presence conflicts the representation and the boundaries are severed as these bodies reject their ties to the temple. The classical sculpture would be a mold in which nudity lives, which is played with when the body is presented as that of a real person. Liveness and a-liveness is crucial in this case.

The most interesting moment is when the police interrupt the performance. Although the performers had been part of an authorized festival and the authorities had been informed, there still is a conflict between the reception of this piece and the so-called ‘permission’ it had been given. This interruption comments on the artistic space, which had technically been created when the festival had been given the permission to execute this performance. Artistic space in urban space works as an extension of the ‘temple’.  The interruption, however, questions whether this is artistic space or if artistic space can only be understood by the informed spectator. It can also be a question of whether or not the ‘authorizer’ of the performance here is visible enough. When a performance is executed inside a studio/gallery/museum/theater/… the institution which by default has authority is clearly visible. The performance is also sheltered and the audience chooses to be there, whereas in urban spaces there is a possibility of an unwilling audience who cannot escape the extension of the artistic space into urban space. This also creates a liminal experience as they are neither in true urban space nor in artistic space. They are in something that is in-between and where the ‘authorizer’ is invisible.  It is uncontrollable and uncontained, both by the fact that it remains outside of an institution (which makes the authorizer invisible) and because the choice of the public to be an audience member is semi-taken away. This reversed role of imposed nudity, transforms nudity (which before can be gazed at by a spectator in an art institution and remains passive) into nakedness (which reclaims its assertiveness and becomes dominant). What makes this interruption so compelling is the conversation it evolves into. After the police stop the performance, they engage a conversation with the performers, most likely about what to do. This moment breaks the persona of the performer as a performer. The performer becomes a person and the emphasis of what is the real body and real person inflates. This small moment can also be considered a liminal phase,An interesting strategy here is the contrasting age between Elias and Glynis and their relationship to each other. The first can possibly reveal the boundaries between what is a template and what is not. Albeit, both of these performers do not necessarily fall into the subject of ideal beauty, one does more than the other does. Glynis’ age contrasts Elias’ youth and reveals boundaries of what is considered aesthetically pleasing in terms of sensuality and what is not. It is unusual in society to have a younger man with an older woman; more often, the opposite is common and normalized. The opposition between the older woman and the younger man accentuates a (fetishistic and) sexual aspect.  The second reveals boundaries between intrusion and aesthetical judgment. By placing Glynis’ body snuggly on top of Elias, a sensual dimension is added to the performance. That alone, bodies that touch, pushes on the external boundaries and transgresses the inner lines. Molding two naked bodies together implies a relationship between these two bodies and people. A sense of intrusion heightens when perceiving a relation between two bodies, rather than perceiving an isolated naked body. The private dimension to this intimacy pushes against the boundaries by putting this in a public space, like the soft bodies that push against the hard stones of the public square. The fusion of two bodies in an embrace (albeit seemingly innocent) make an automatic association with sexual intimacy (which is highlighted due to the opposition between older woman and younger man as stated before), as people usually experience this kind of embrace during, before or after sex. This creates conflict between pleasures of the body and aesthetical pleasure (Kant). It questions where pornography starts and art ends. It presses on the external boundaries. It also questions whether pornography can be viewed aesthetically (though that is an entirely different and too broad of a subject to delve into here, but relevant to note).

To conclude, not only do the strategies of a performance undress the Nude, but unfortunate interruptions by police (even after authorities give permission) reveal the boundaries and the problems around the naked the body within contemporary performative space which today includes urban spaces. These conflicts between ‘authority’ and other ‘authority’ here create a liminal experience which questions how the naked body works within urban spaces and who the true authorizer is, or what kind of authority is needed to initiate these kinds of performances.as it is unclear whether these people are performing or not. The body becomes an embodiment of what is considered ob-scene. It pushes the boundaries surrounding artistic space and the body within that space. It creates a conflict between what is considered ‘performing’ and what is not. The naked body is the factor that pushes against those boundaries as they are technically still wearing their performer’s ‘costume’.  The naked body as a costume, still stands here, which they are then told to ‘take off (on)’ as they are told to ‘dress’ themselves. This interruption permeates the artistic space and heightens reality and the consequences of the naked body in reality. The ‘matter’ of the body and the ‘matter’ of reality interweave with the ‘form’ and art. This creates a conflict within the margins of the boundaries between both.

Body and freedom festival, Biel, 2015

Thomas Zollinger attempts at investigating the naked body and the taboo it carries in urban space once more. He organizes a festival in Biel, Switzerland. This time the festival proceeds without interruptions as the police have also given their permission.

Vanessa Wyssenbrod,

To continue the discussion about authorization, I employ Vanessa Wyssenbrod’s performance at the body and freedom festival. She plays with the contradiction between the naked-authorized- and the naked-non-authorized zones. The festival authorizes zones in which the festival can perform. As any festival, it is common to have borders. As the naked body carries such a taboo it makes these borders more interesting and conflicting. In the Nidaugasse, Wyssenbrod appears wearing a costume, which she discards when crossing the borders into the side streets.[74] She carries a mannequin on which she places this costume when she undresses. To cross non-authorized streets however, she dresses herself in ‘normal’ clothes.

Another part of her performance is meaningful to remark as it reveals the dichotomy between the naked and the Nude and therefore questions the meaning of both. Throughout her performance, she uses a mannequin. It is interesting how she dresses the mannequin as she undresses and vice versa. The mannequin embodies the female form, which recalls the female template, a token or form of the female body. I argue that she plays with what it means to be a female nude by doing so. The mannequin, which is merely a shadow of the female body and is not a real body, is completely acceptable in urban space. It is a representation of the female nude in its purest ‘form’, in which no ‘matter’ is recognizable. She presents a dichotomy between the naked real body and the naked mannequin, which she then dresses, although the dress is not necessary for it to be appropriate. I argue that she makes a distinction between the naked and the Nude by using a material token for her naked body. She uses irony once more to play with boundaries, this time between the naked and the Nude all the while she plays with the boundaries between authorized and non-authorized, which questions the naked and the Nude again, albeit differently.What is interesting and most obvious, that what Wyssenbrod raises, is the issue of authorization. Her performance questions to which extent these spaces can be regarded as urban spaces. If the space is authorized, does it not consequently transform into an artistic space or at least an institutionalized space? And if so are we really attaining the goal of questioning the naked body and its relation to urban space. Although, people can walk in and out, freely, and there is no visible barrier between the authorized and non-authorized space, the fact that either one exists presses on the boundaries and reveals how problematic performative art (especially containing the naked body) in urban space is. Of course, this can be a stepping stone to further development regarding the naked body in urban space, or it can be a practical issue that exists for every performative festival that employs urban space as its stage. After all, issues concerning risks and insurance come into play here. Being naked, however, is considered a risk and therefore, adds to the requirements of containing the risks an artistic festival may present. The naked body here presses on the boundaries between art and reality more, because the risk of being naked is greater than that of a clothed body. Whereas ‘matter’ in other situations (f.e. the Ghent festival where an unauthorized performance could hinder other performances or traffic) are hazardous in terms of practicality, the naked body is hazardous in terms of morality or taboo. It is more intrusive than another performance would be.  This is why Wyssenbrod’s performance is so interesting. She plays with the naked body as ob-scene and as on-scene. She reveals the questions surrounding the suitability of the naked body in urban space. She questions the visible and invisible borders between reality and art and therefore creates a liminal experience. Her work is ironic.

To conclude, Wyssenbrod’s work is layered in which she uses strategies to question the borders between ob- and on-scene. She works within the margins of those borders and questions what happens when you literally stand on those borders. She also questions the Nude and naked by using her mannequin as a material token/template of the ideal female nude.

Naked audience

‘The naked audience’ is a performance, in which a group of people, who had previously donated more than what equates to $127, are invited to undress, and sit on plastic chairs (on the sidewalk) while watching pedestrians walk by.[75] Although the distinction between performer and audience appears to fade here, I would argue that by placing people in a performance that is part of a performance festival, giving it a name and giving it ‘authority’, these people possibly transform into performers. The performers are non-professionals who embody and audience, which questions the dichotomy between performer, and audience. As a result, the threshold between the ‘audience’ and the ‘performers’ minimizes by employing people of the public and calling the performance ‘the naked audience’. The performance lasts for 15 to 20 minutes. The people performing are diverse in terms of age and gender (though that is where the diversity ends).

I will only briefly touch on this case as several strategies have already been discussed. The first strategy puts the naked body in urban space. The second allows the audience to perceive the act of undressing. I have furthermore questioned when a performer is performing. A follow-up question on the latter can possibly raise the issue of the distinction between the audience and the performers. ‘The naked audience’ plays with the boundaries between audience and performers, and questions what those concepts mean. Thomas Zollinger as stated before adds new concepts to Ritual Theater. One of those concerns the distinction between the audience and performers, or rather the lack of. Zollinger states, “The traditional role of audience/viewers disappears.”[76] It is remarkable that Zollinger equates audience to viewers because that is what this performance broaches: who is viewing/watching and therefore who is the audience? Creating a performance that consists of a ‘naked audience’ as performance, turns the tables, regarding the audience’s gaze and the dichotomy between passive and active.  It swaps the classical position of a clothed audience regarding a naked body, which gives the performers as well as the audience passivity, but also simultaneously activity. Here the ‘audience’ is naked and looks back to the ‘other audience’. This creates liminality in which the roles and their possible dominance are revealed and questioned. The audience’s gaze reflects back onto itself. I recall Gell’s commendation theory examined in chapter 2, in which he describes a transfer of energy. He speaks of artist, recipient, index and prototype. In this particular performance, recipient and artist fuse, as well as index and prototype. Fischer-Lichte, as stated earlier, describes a collapse of the dichotomy between object and subject, and therefore that of audience and performer. This performance maximizes that collapse and therefore maximizes the liminal experience. The distinction between reality and art blurs here as well as these people have been given the authority by another artist to perform there, instead of claiming the authority themselves as other participating artists of the festival would. This questions this authority and reveals the weaknesses of the lines between art and reality. The performance represents what a naked audience would look like and therefore serves as a mirror to the by-passers that day in Biele.

To conclude, the urban space offers the opportunity for the artistic nude to be undressed simply by its uncommon ‘stage’ that is normally automatically considered ob-scene as it lies outside the ‘temple’. The temple, though, as stated before, can stretch by employing authorized-zones within urban space and therefore creating another ‘temple’, albeit less obvious and therefore liminal. Different strategies can push the boundaries further and raise more questions. Blurring the lines between what is allowed and what is not is one of those strategies, as well as blurring the lines between the artist, recipient, index and prototype. Unfortunate situations, like arrests also reveal the problems still surrounding the naked body and offer possibilities for further examination.Although this performance does accomplish to create enough liminality to question the Nude and therefore touch on nakedness, it fails to go further and present a relation between a naked audience and a naked performance. It would have added another layer had they touched on a naked audience in relation to a naked performance. If the ‘ naked audience’ had been watching another naked performance, it would furthermore question where reality and performance begin or end? Would the audience automatically be part of the performance to contain the chaotic character of their nakedness? Or would their naked presence create a liminal experience. I argue that it would possibly be the latter as the gaze of by-passers would be scattered between audience members and performance, questioning which is which. The position of the spectator but also their body is questioned. It creates liminality but also the possibility of a spectator to examine his own body, and his own nakedness.

Milo Moiré

Milo Moiré is a Swiss artist who has been arrested for performing in urban spaces several times (for example, she has been arrested for her performance ‘Naked selfies’ (2015) as well as her performance ‘Mirrorbox'(2016)). Moiré’s works are inspired by satirical images of sexuality, and are shaped by the feeling of otherness and the admiration for moral distance.[77]  Moiré’s work can fill a whole paper of case studies on the naked body. Her performance ‘The PlopEgg Painting – A birth of a picture’ (2014) raises the issue of bodily fluids as the eggs plop out of her vagina and would have served as a good case to examine that subject. Her performance ‘The script system art Basel'(2013) places the representation of the artistic nude (A Venus for example) in contrast to her real body holding a real baby while walking through the museum. It would have touched on the dichotomy between the template of the female nude and real female naked body. The reason I do not use these performances is that she is a woman with a certain body type. As I have stated in my introduction, I aim for a more diverse set of case studies (albeit that diversity only being gender and age). Her performance ‘The mirror box’ (2016) however, touches on a subject that I have only briefly raised when I speaking about Peter De Cupere and his piece ‘Deflowering’ (2014). It is also important to speak of Moiré in regard to the naked body as a protest as her performances are politically charged, which opens a new discussion. ‘The mirror box’ is a performance she performed in different cities, namely, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam, and London in 2016. The Mirrorbox is an homage to VALIE EXPORT, an Austrian artist who fought for women’s rights in the 60s through artistic actions. Mirrorbox is an expansion of her “Tap and touch cinema”.[78] In Mirrorbox, Moiré wears a trapezoidal skirt made of mirrors. There is a rectangular opening, however, at the front of her body (where her genitals are) that is closed off by a red curtain. With a megaphone, she invites by-passers to touch her vagina for 30 seconds. Moiré wants to raise issues surrounding the autonomy of female sexuality. She states, “I am standing here today for women’s rights and sexual self-determination. Women have a sexuality, just like men have one. However, women decide for themselves when and how they want to be touched and when they don’t.”[79]  Her performance is politically charged and protests unwanted sexual advances. She attempts at reclaiming control by deciding when, where and for how long someone is allowed to touch her vagina. She symbolizes the consensual nature of sex, shows female desire, and consequently claiming a sexual voice as a woman. [80]

My first question is whether this is a naked body, as her genitals and breasts are covered. I would argue that this body is naked for the people that are touching the genitals. They experience this nakedness through touch and can visualize it by exploring that surface. The question here is whether this can be considered nudity, though. There are two arguments to why this is a case where nudity is either almost impossible or problematic. The first argument touches on how the artistic nude is ‘represented’ in our society (and its history). The artistic nude is visual. The ideal template of it, that what can be elevated for.

I have previously mentioned the male gaze. An argument could be made that, as in the performance ‘the naked audience’, the spectator’s gaze is also reflected back on the spectator. To comment further, I employ Gell’s concepts of his communication model.[81] The mirrored surfaces embody the index but also the recipient. It is the reflection and embodiment of the spectator and serves as a device to reverse the roles of spectator and object. The spectator’s gaze is once more reflected back on itself, this time, more literally, more materially. I have mentioned before that she protests male sexual desire by claiming female sexual desire and consent. She also manages to reject the male gaze, which embodies male sexual desire, by literally deflecting it by use of mirrored surfaces. Moiré states, “The audience’s reflection on the mirrored box simultaneously becomes a visual metaphor for the role reversal from voyeur to the object of view: a constant play of inversions analogous to our roles in the digital world.”[82] Index and prototype fuse, because the meaning falls back on the bearer (referring to representation versus absolute presence), but also because Moiré uses her body as a weapon to disrupt power structures. She pushes the boundaries of art, protest, and reality.aesthetic judgment is visual. When one uses a different sense to define or experience a naked body, that template to contain the nakedness and transform matter into form, simply does not exist. That is why it is difficult to call this an artistic nude because nakedness is so prevalent here. Moiré also rejects the institution by using her body as a weapon and not an instrument to transform matter into form. She wants to use the risk matter represents and confront people with that risk. It rejects the ties to the temple and the possibility of being nude. It wants to be naked out of protest. It is protesting the institution and its faulty translation of the naked body from art to society. She reclaims female sexual desire and consent, which protests male sexual desire the male gaze has represented throughout art history. She not only reclaims a voice and takes on the position of the female active subject in (performance) art but she also claims the position of a sexual active subject, which permeates the boundaries of art and create liminality. The sexual connotation of touching someone’s genitals is my second argument to why artistic nudity is difficult to place here. As I have stated before, while speaking of the ‘naked slow walk’ in Zagreb, when a spectator perceives intimacy between two bodies it can arouse a liminal experience as said intimacy has a private and sexual connotation. It is unsettling because the public is ‘polluted’ by the private, the highest position of the private, which in our society could still be considered sexual intimacy. I recall Mary Douglas’ book in which she states that the body can serve as a metaphor for society, and the body’s crevices translate to the boundaries of what society contains. The bodily fluids are considered a danger to pollution. When watching people put their hand in Moiré’s ‘box’, I argue that they are exploring the boundaries of art by probing at the boundary of the body, meaning the genitals out of which bodily fluids flow. By touching the genitals, one is either revealing the opening between reality and art but also traveling or penetrating through it.

Yet it is still called performance art. It is unauthorized performance art, so where does Moiré have the authority to call this art? The risk she takes by rejecting the temple as safety and using her body (as people before her have done like Abramovic) gives her authority but also makes her more vulnerable to arrest and criticism. This criticism is important as it reveals the irony that still lies around the naked body and art. This criticism and her use of risk heighten the weak boundaries between art and reality. This also makes this a protest as well as a performance. She uses her body as a weapon and not only as an instrument to create art.

To conclude, Moiré succeeds at reclaiming the position of an active sexual female subject by literally deflecting the male gaze through her mirrors and rejecting it by means of controlling the time, place and person that touches her vagina. She also manages at making it nearly impossible to transform her ‘naked body’ into the artistic nude by employing the haptic sense which does not have an ideal template to fall back on, and exposing a sexual connoted intimate moment in a public (urban) space.

The genitals or a woman’s breasts can both signify weakness but can also function as powerful magic. Like the Goron’s gaze, it can paralyze or protect.[83]

Conclusion

The aim of this research is to investigate the possibility of nakedness instead of nudity in performance. Part 1 outlines the art historical, aesthetical, feminist and ritualistic discourses on the naked body, which allows us to understand the difference between the naked and the Nude and why that difference exists. This furthermore allows going into part 2 to find a way to deconstruct this difference within the institution of art and performance. Part 2 outlines the parallels between the institution of art and performance and a temple. It also describes the theory of liminality and how nakedness within that liminality can be attained. It allows us to understand the importance of the artist’s strategies, which prolong that liminality and create the possibility of deconstructing the Nude and exploring nakedness. Part 3 portrays case studies as examples of strategies utilized by performers to explore nakedness by creating and prolonging liminality within their performances.

The first crucial strategy is one that questions whether a body is naked in the first place. By doing so, it reveals and questions the issues surrounding the naked body. ‘Skindeep’ (2016) does this for example by ‘covering’ its body in plaster but still alluding to the naked shape of the body. Milo Moiré does this as well when she motivates us to consider the naked body in a non-visual way.

The latter raises the subject of the ideal template of the naked body, which has been used to elevate the naked body and to create the Nude. The ideal template is a vehicle for making the naked body acceptable. By contradicting or playing with this template, one makes this elevation impossible and therefore explores nakedness. ‘Skindeep’ uses irony when referring to Degas to play with this template while also contradicting it with voyeuristic dimensions. ‘Naked slow walking’ (2015) does this by referring to naked sculptures in urban spaces but severs this connection by their (a-)liveness. Vanessa Wyssenbrod’s performance on the body and freedom festival (2015) also plays with this template as she dresses and undresses a mannequin, which serves as a template (or an acceptable shadow of her body).

What is also essential in this sense is the naked body as a costume. ‘Naked slow walk’s’ interruption underlines the collapsing dichotomies between reality and art. The performers are still wearing their ‘costume’ but are not performing anymore. Revelations of boundaries are just as important to deconstruct as contradictions. Vanessa Wyssenbrod questions the boundary between reality and art by playing with the authorized and non-authorized zones. She uses irony to reveal the risks the naked body possesses and to what length authorities go to contain that risk. This last also alludes to the reversal of roles between spectators and performers. When the naked body is positioned in urban spaces, the body becomes more intrusive than it would be when in an artistic institution, as the possibility of an unwilling audience is present.

The reversal of roles is also important when speaking of the ‘gaze’ in performance. ‘The naked audience’ (2015) reverses the roles of who is viewing, and reflect the audience’s gaze back on themselves. By doing so they also play with the status of those roles (namely, object/subject). They make those roles interchangeable and therefore also the connotation (dominance/submission) of those roles interchangeable.

These last strategies are essential to this paper to understand how nakedness can be attained. These performances employ constant recurring shifts that then imply a constant shift between naked and nude. It is like a lenticular print that changes depending on how the image is angled.

This research is important, as the naked body remains a problematic issue in our society. It is important for art that it does not operate in a vacuum (as the Nude would). It is important to link our practice to our society and understand the influences our practice has or can have. This research is limited by its case studies. More diversity would be desirable as it would open and reveal more issues surrounding this subject. The subject of gender, sexuality, intersex genitals, or (abnormal) body types, to name a few would be commendable for further research. It would also be fitting to look at traditional theater practices and explore how this works here.

The naked body is a promising subject and certainly not finalized. It stands at the center, between art and reality (and pornography) and is, therefore, crucial for further research.

References

[1] The Nude referring the artistic elevated nude, which is considered acceptable, and the naked referring to the naked body outside art, which is considered obscene. I will elaborate on each category further throughout this paper.

[2] K. Toepfer, One Hundred Years Of Nakedness In German Performance, TDR/The Drama Review, 47 (2003), p. 182

[3] E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power Of Performance (London: Routledge, 2008),  p. 24

[4] ‘Naked’; http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/naked; http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/naked; http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/naked; Clark; Berger; Bonafante; Nead

[5]  P. Ableman, Beyond Nakedness, (London: Orbis Publishing Limited, 1982)

[6] L. Bonfante, Nudity as a costume in Classical art, American Journal of Archeology, Vol . 93, no.4 (Oct., 1989), p. 544

[7] ibid., p. 545

[8] Ibid., p. 547

[9] Unpublished, C. Deveux, MA Contemporary performance practice, Research portfolio, p. 6

[10] This is not the case in Chinese art. I am speaking of Western art. For more information on this disparity, view the work of Francois Julien ‘The impossible Nude’ (2007)

[11] C. Helmut Wenzel, “The Impossible Nude: Chinese Art And Western Aesthetics, (Review)”, Philosophy East and West, 59 (2009), 240-243

[12] Ibid.

[13] K. Clark, The Nude ([New York]: Pantheon Books, 1956), p. 1

[14] J. Berger, Ways Of Seeing, (London: Penguin Books, 1972), p. 48

[15] B. Cardullo, The Films Of Robert Bresson (London: Anthem Press, 2009), p. 95

[16] L. Nead, The female nude, (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 23

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., p. 24

[19] Ibid.

[20] Ibid.

[21] A. Eaton, What’s wrong with the (female) nude?, (2012) p. 4

[22] For more information on this particular subject, consider Laura Mulvey’s study on the male gaze

[23] A. Eaton, What’s wrong with the (female) nude?, (2012), p. 9

[24] L. Nead, The female nude,  p. 18

[25] Ibid.

[26]Ibid., p. 14

[27] Ibid., p. 63

[28] Ibid.

[29] J.C. Baker & C. Chase, Josephine (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 474

[30] L. Bonafante, Nudity as a costume in classical art, American journal of archeology, Vol. 93, No. 4, (Oct., 1989), p. 544

[31] Ibid.,  p. 546

[32] Ibid., p. 553

[33] Ibid., p. 556

[34]Ibid., p. 556

[35] Ibid., p. 557

[36]Ibid., p. 558

[37] Ibid. p. 560

[38] Ibid., p. 562

[39] Ibid., p. 550

[40] K. Marra. & K. Clayton, (1993). Phallocracy and Phallic Caricature: Re-Viewing the Iconography of Greek Comedy. Theatre Survey, 34(01), p. 5

[41] E. Fischer-Lichte & J. Riley, The Show And The Gaze Of Theatre,  p. 244

[42] Ibid., p. 244

[43] Ibid., 244

[44] A. Van Gennep, The rites of passage, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1961)

[45] E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power Of Performance, p. 177

[46] D. Newton, Performativity and the Performer-Audience Relationship: Shifting Perspectives and Collapsing Binaries, The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Vol. 7 (2014), p. 9

[47] E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power Of Performance, p. 165

[48] Ibid., 155

[49] D. Newton, Performativity and the Performer-Audience Relationship: Shifting Perspectives and Collapsing Binaries, p. 9

[50] E. Fischer-Lichte, The Transformative Power Of Performance, p. 177

[51] Ibid., p. 176

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid., p. 177

[54]Ibid.

[55] L. Nead, The female nude, p. 31

[56] M. Douglas, Purity And Danger (New York: Praeger, 1966), p. 123-124

[57] L. Nead, The female nude, p. 31

[58] Bertold Brecht coined the term. It involves the use of techniques designed to distance the audience from emotional involvement in the play through jolting reminders of the artificiality of the theatrical performance.

[59] M. Douglas, Purity And Danger , p. 116 – p. 122

[60] P. De Cupere, Deflowering, 2014, http://www.peterdecupere.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=1:exhibition-news&id=148:the-deflowering-in-the-olfactory-at-the-muhka

[61] F. Heinrich, Flesh as communication – body art and body theory, (Rhode Island: Contemporary Aesthetics, 2012)

[62] F. Heinrich, Flesh as communication – body art and body theory, (Rhode Island: Contemporary Aesthetics, 2012)

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Ibid.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] Haptic perception refers to the achievement of exploring surfaces of objects by a moving subject. Tactile perception refers to the brain’s ability to understand what the hands are feelings.

[69] Unpublished, C. Deveux, Research portfolio, p. 10

[70] A. Juzefovič, Creative Transformations In Visual Arts Of Early French Modernism: Treatment Of Nude Body, Creativity Studies, 9 (2016), p. 32

[71] Thomas Zollinger, http://www.ritualtheater.ch/index.php?page=353, Last consulted on 23 August 2016

[72] Thomas Zollinger, http://www.ritualtheater.ch/index.php?page=353, Last consulted on 23 August 2016

[73] Emil Matešić, http://www.ritualtheater.ch/naked-slow-walk-zagreb, Last consulted, 23 August 2016

[74]Vanessa Wyssenbrod, https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bodyandfreedomvanessa/149006787, Last consulted on 30 August 2016

[75] Body and Freedom festival, http://hyperallergic.com/224959/swiss-city-grooms-for-first-nude-public-performance-art-festival/, Last consulted on 22 August 2016

[76] The naked Audience, http://www.ritualtheater.ch/index.php?page=353, Last consulted on 23 August 2016

[77] Milo Moiré, http://www.milomoire.com/?page_id=1574, Last consulted on 27 August 2016

[78] Ibid.

[79] Ibid.

[80] Ibid.

[81] Index (the material entity of the artwork), prototype (the representation), artist and recipient

[82] Milo Moiré, http://www.milomoire.com/?page_id=1574

[83] L. Bonfante, Nudity as a costume in Classical art, p. 544