Crotch Funk as Art
Aesthetes that my readers are, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the name of Jan Fabre, a Belgian performance artist and “theatre-maker” who, we’re informed, “expands the horizons of every genre to which he applies his artistic vision.” Mr Fabre’s acclaimed efforts at horizon-expanding include Preparatio Mortis, a piece unveiled at the Vienna International Dance Festival and which entertained us no end with its combination of moths, underwear and staggering pretension.
While writhing in her bra and panties, the dancer, Annabelle Chambon, was tasked with nothing less than “an attempt to reconcile life and death.” Or as one commenter suggested, to reconcile boredom with public subsidy.
You will, therefore, be thrilled to the tips of your nipples by Mr Fabre’s recent curatorial triumph. Sweat is a performance piece by fellow Belgian Peter De Cupere, choreographed by Fabre, in which five dancers spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour. “The intention,” we’re told, “is to catch the sweat from the dancers and to distil it. The concrete of the sweat is sprayed on a wall of the dance lab and protected by a glass box. In the glass is a small hole where visitors can smell the sweat.” Yes, you can smell the sweat.
If that’s not a good night out, I don’t know what is.
Oh, there’s more to it than that of course.
Peter De Cupere is creating his smell. Not just a smell, but a composition of the smells of his body, skin of different parts, breath, sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood and many more smells you can imagine with a person. The smells are and will be subtracted on different times, after different moments, after special dinners made for himself by himself. A research that will go on his whole life. His first edition of his perfume will be soon available… The perfume is called ‘Peter’.
Now, who’s up for fourteen minutes of excruciating toss?
Don’t think of running. I’ve locked the doors.
This is all for your benefit.
Hold still, goddammit. I’m nailing some culture into you.
Update:
According to ArtNews, De Cupere is “incorporating scent into the aesthetic experience.” Thing is, the performance above isn’t an aesthetic experience. It isn’t by definition. (By all means feel free to point out the beauty. There’s cake to be won.) Described more honestly, it’s a hackneyed, rather desperate, attempt to transgress. (“Sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood…”) Now imagine if arts writers were fined £5 every time they lied. Destitution would ensue in a matter of days.
And from the same article, this:
New York activist-artist Lisa Kirk was seeking to evoke a social experience when she developed a perfume called Revolution for her 2008 exhibition at Participant Inc. on the Lower East Side. Kirk contacted witnesses to political upheavals, including Central American revolutionaries and ex-Black Panthers, and asked them, “What does revolution smell like?” The answer: dried blood, smoke, burning tires, gasoline, and urine. Kirk relied on perfumer Patricia Choux to create the scent and jeweller Jelena Berhrend to design containers that looked like pipe bombs, fabricated in silver, gold, and platinum, and priced from $3,750 to $47,750 per bottle. “If we can’t start a revolution, at least we can create a fragrance that symbolises rebellion,” says Kirk.
Yes, rebellion. She’s an “activist-artist,” see.
Feel free to tickle my buttons.
Now, who’s up for fourteen minutes of excruciating toss?
I couldn’t do it. I cracked after about 3 minutes. Is it too early to get drunk?
“…after special dinners made for himself by himself.”
Wow! I can foresee a blinding crossover opportunity with Channel Four’s ‘Come Dine With Me’!
five narcissists spend fourteen minutes rolling about and jumping up and down – naked, obviously – while attempting to fill their transparent plastic overalls with all manner of body odour
So it’s basically a pretentious version of ‘pull my finger’.
“So it’s basically a pretentious version of ‘pull my finger’.”
Um, yes.
Let me guess….
I funded it without choosing to buy a ticket for the show?
Sadly, Fabre failed to insist on a score. I have found just the thing:
http://youtu.be/jcZUPDMXzJ8
Open that up in another tab and try watching the above video again. I think it’s a marked improvement.
[ * Link fixed. DT ]
Oh lord, I look at that top picture and could only think of the proposed description of the coverart for Spinal Tap’s “Smell the Glove” …
but these are serious. Earnestly serious.
“Peter De Cupere is creating his smell.”
I frequently make a smell but no ones offered to fund it. Yet.
A research that will go on his whole life.
Or until the Arts Council gravy train dries up.
The concrete of the sweat is sprayed on a wall of the dance lab and protected by a glass box
The concrete of the sweat?
“The concrete of the sweat?”
If you pull at that thread, the whole thing will start to look silly.
AC1
You beat me to it. I would bet my house that you and I are paying for this.
CIngram & AC1,
I haven’t been able to find details of how this particular, um, effort was funded. But Mr Fabre’s previous ventures have been bankrolled by the European Commission.
Incidentally, is anyone else reminded of a certain South Park episode?
If you pull at that thread, the whole thing will start to look silly.
And we can’t have that. Ridicule is for the degraded masses.
No. Just no.
I have just one word to bring this to a halt: asparagus.
That is all.
I think I preferred the guy in the inflatable rubber Superman suit.
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2012/04/im-not-familiar-with-the-kind-of-thing-im-seeing.html
He actually looked like less of a dick.
What’s the big deal with wrapping oneself in a plastic bag with a u-bend strapped to your nose?
I’ve been doing that for years….every weekend in the basement of my favourite club….
Whips and all…I’m not shy…
Neither are my gathered friends….
That’s the thing.
De Cupere has taken naked dancers, fetishism, fart jokes and what I assume is an allusion to cocaine – for some, the basic elements of a good night out – and the result is as flat and tedious as a thing can be.
When I was a teenager I went to a fancy dress party in a wetsuit. It turned out that dancing in a wetsuit made me pretty hot and sweaty, so friends helped me out by pouring the dregs of their drinks into the collar of my suit.
Toward the end of the evening we decanted one wetsuit shoe into a glass and managed to convince one of the party-goers to drink the contents. I can’t remember if we told him what it was.
If only we’d known we were staging a performance art piece decades ahead of its time. I feel proud to be part of art history.
Mr. Potarto, what are you talking about? Cash in!
1) Write grant proposal.
2) Get everybody you know who was at the party, and remembers that truly disgusting thing you did
(“truly disgusting” is not meant as condemnatory…oh, why lie? Yes, it is).
3) Stage a re-enactment, again shooting video of the re-enactment (original participants portrayed
by actors).
4) Edit video into documentary, titled to taste–you know, artsy, or edgy, or something.
5) Collect tax money (some of which was yours originally, and taken from you upon pain of
imprisonment, don’t forget).
6) Use shamefully obtained proceeds to throw another party.
This could work. You know it could work.
Sorry, Step 2 above should have ended with “and shoot some video footage of what they remember.”
According to ArtNews, De Cupere is “incorporating scent into the aesthetic experience.”
Thing is, the performance above isn’t an aesthetic experience. It isn’t by definition. Described more honestly, it’s a hackneyed, rather desperate, attempt to “transgress.” (“Sweat, sperm, spittle, nose drops, blood…”) Now imagine if arts writers were fined £5 every time they lied. Destitution would ensue in a matter of days.
And from the same article, this:
Yes, rebellion. She’s an “activist-artist,” see.
The performance is shown for a selective audience (200 people, no places available anymore).
I propose a minute’s silence for the 200 people who had to sit through this bollocks.
Oh, I’m pretty sure they had it coming.
I just had a thought. Why not be really transgessive ( got to use that word) and transgress the transgessors? And be sure to label it performance art. Get a group of people to show up at one of these exhibits/happenings, allow the performance to get ramped up and have the group, dispersed throughout the crowd, simultaneously fall on the floor belly laughing and shouting “Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!” making sure to point at the stage, paintings, whatever. Cap it off with some sort of really bad dancing on the way out of the hall, gallery possibly including some farting or nudity. Afterword make sure everyone knows this was a performance and that the point of the piece was to challenge the powers-that-be who control the art world. Then demand funding.
And call it Laughing Truth to Power.
Now, who’s up for fourteen minutes of excruciating toss?
I couldn’t do it. I cracked after about 3 minutes.
I’m an optimist so I watched it to the end. IT DID NOT GET BETTER.
RickC:
This is the closest I could find to what happens when transgressive art is transgressive against the wrong group.
Well, actually, there’s also Mirth and Girth.
David:
I like.
Ted in the Catskills:
Censorship. Of course. Sacred cows and all that. One thing about a guerrilla performance piece though, especially if recorded, is that the internet is tough/impossible to censor. Cerny’s mistake was in representing Bulgaria as a toilet. Should have shown EU HQ circling the drain.
So, how close are we to ‘artists’ masturbating on stage, funded by taxpayers?
Rob, that’s what’s happening with every single one of these performances. Oh! Did you mean literally masturbating? I’d lay money that’s actually been done as well.
I think Annie Sprinkle has:
http://anniesprinkle.org/
Does Puppetry of the Penis count?:
http://www.puppetryofthepenis.com/
I probably don’t need to add, NSFW. Keep your head on a swivel, and watch your six.
Is there any art movement in the history of the world that has been more destructive to artistic traditions and reception of artistic ideas than conceptualism?
It seems that conceptualism is an explanation – in reality, an excuse – for a variety of crimes, whether it be artists selling their own sweat, or canning their own poo, or slicing cows in half, or turning lights on and off, or going around the world taking pictures of naked people (and somehow managing to make those pictures uninteresting).
I mean, ‘conceptualism’, originally based around the questionable theoretical proposition that the art lay in the idea, and had nothing to do with the craft/rendering/expression/skill/intelligence/care of the individual artist, these days seems to have resulted in a series of attention-seekers performing a series of supposedly shocking gestures in order to get a few tabloid headlines.
TimT,
I tend to think of conceptual artists as tragic figures, or tragicomic at least. By and large they’re the leftovers, the dregs. They’re the people who weren’t good enough to get a job in advertising.
Has anyone called Mr. Schweddy and asked him about his balls? At least that was funny.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nprs-delicious-dish—schweddy-balls/2846
I mean, ‘conceptualism’, originally based around the questionable theoretical proposition that the art lay in the idea, and had nothing to do with the craft/rendering/expression/skill/intelligence/care of the individual artist, these days seems to have resulted in a series of attention-seekers performing a series of supposedly shocking gestures in order to get a few tabloid headlines.
Or museum recognition. Or tenure.
“What does revolution smell like?” The answer: dried blood, smoke, burning tires, gasoline, and urine.
And perhaps some shit and pus and putrefaction as well. The odd thing is that artist-activist Lisa Kirk seems to regard these as attractive smells, “fragrances” even. But the perfume she has inspired would surely be utterly repugnant to anyone who smelt it, thus undermining her thesis that rebellion is desirable. Perhaps she could dab some behind her ears next time she goes out? It would be daringly transgressive, and ensure her of a seat on the subway.
>I tend to think of conceptual artists as tragic figures, or tragicomic at least. By and large they’re the leftovers, the dregs. They’re the people who weren’t good enough to get a job in advertising.
Yes, but the extra funding just keeps them wasting their own time (as well as our money). If they got the same unemployment benefit as everyone else they might be tempted into not being a dead loss to society.
I guess everyone that gave a comment on the SWEAT performance doesn’t understand the context and idea behind it. A good friend of me was one of the lucky 200 that could see the smell performance in real and she was really impressed by the dancing and choreography. The video actually doesn’t give a good impression of the performance. Some parts are more fast played than in real.
A pity I couldn’t be there to see it. Peter De Cupere is the most known Olfactory artist in the world. He has made more than 200 olfactory installations. Have a look to his website http://www.peterdecupere.net
By the way he has no free time, his life is his art. Besides being an artist he also invented the Olfactiano, the first scent piano in the world and recently he created the Blind Smell stick http://www.blindsmellstick.com to guide blind people through the city by creating a smell pad / track.
It’s easy laughing with crazy ideas, but it are them who creates them that makes these ideas for a reason. maybe we need to question more why artists like Peter De Cupere are making works with smell!
Spinal Tap as serious performance art [Darleen Click]
TweetRecall the description of the cover art Spinal Tap wanted for their Smell the Glove album: We laughed. We chuckled. Now David Thompson points out: You will, therefore, be thrilled to the tips of your nipples by Mr Fabre’s recent curatorial triumph…