Chicana Ways - Aletta

AnyBody's Concerns 6(2003)
performances themselves and even their filmic or photographic
documentation are all meant to shock and provoke the public,
the performers' negotiation of pain differs considerably.
Apart from being merely simulated, pain is in most cases and
for various reasons marginalized, hidden and even negated,
while in other instances it is deliberately made visible, i.e.
bloody, or audible. The majority of performers only incurred
minor injuries but some artists (Günter Brus, Rudolf
Schwarzkogler, Marina Abramovic, Chris Burden, Gina Pane and
others) exposed their bodies to real risks and extreme forms
of pain2 - a form of work they ultimately had to stop for
reasons of health.3
5 This paper sets out to analyse the status of pain and
its visual and verbal representations in body art with regard
to gender difference. Apart from potentially gender-related
intertextual/ intermedial references to cultural codes such as
religion (Christian iconography, sacrifice, rituals of
initiation), references to pathological spectacles such as
hysteria and cultural practices such as cosmetic surgery, the
analysis will include: subject-object relations during the
performance itself, the scenarios of narcissism and voyeurism
implied by it, gender-specific forms of pain-processing and
programmatic statements or manifestoes formulated by the
artists themselves.
Sufferers and Perpetrators - Constellations
6 Within body and performance art, subject-object
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