Performance And Affects

From Eros to Thanathos

Professor Cláudia Madeira

FCSH/UNL Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas

da Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Freud - Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
The life and death instincts :

Eros is concerned with the positive emotions of love, survive,

procreate/satisfaction, life producing drives;
and Thanatos with the negative emotions of fear, hate, and anger,
death drives.
Dieter Borchmeyer -“The Kiss of love and
death. Eros and Thanatos in the opera” (2010)
in many plays, we have love and death joined in “mystical sympathy” (p.80) — the
lovers “are prepared to die because eternal love for them is possible only in death.
Death are here the catharsis, the purifying power of love.” (p. 81).
“Love does not fear death – at least not in myths, in poetry and music, as
demonstrated by the innumerable martyrs of love, ready to expire and never afraid
of any kind of torture, who populate especially the operatic stage.” (p. 81).
If in Antiquity this mystical unity “topic is always the love of a god for a mortal:
Dionisius loving Ariadne” (p. 84), etc., after Romanticism we will have the love of
men as center. For Wagner, for example, in Tristan and Isolde, “The love between
Gods and mortals is replaced by a purely human love on which the old religious
sentiments of Eros and Thanatos are projected symbolically” (p. 90).
Eros and Thanatos: an Alchemic process?

Alchemy is a kind of early experimental laboratory,

previous to scientific and chemical laboratories, which
aims to transform states, with material goals, like the
transformation of poor materials as lead in gold, or also,
more intangible and spiritual goals, like the
“philosophical stone”, to achieve knowledge or the
spiritual love. Alchemy works in the microcosms as it
works at the macrocosms for the transmutation of men.
Yvette Centeno - “The Love Alchemy” in
Literature and alchemy (1987)
“Alchemy operates the transformation, as a rule, of an imperfect
matter into a perfect matter: lead in gold, black in white, somber in
luminous, etc. By alchemy, say his followers, a pure substance is
released from an impure substance. This process can be understood on
two levels: physical, or spiritual. In both the transformation leads to a
union of contraries, to a "conjugation" in which everything is annulled
in another higher reality” (p. 107)
Yvette Centeno -“The alchemy and the Faust
of Goethe”
In her book “The alchemy and the Faust of Goethe” Centeno identify the alchemic
structure at Goethe masterpiece, in its two parts. From the various existing alchemic
symbols I will highlight here the color system of the alchemic work: Black, White and
Red - that as Centeno tell us is comparable to the three traditional phases of the
mystical path - Purgation, Enlightenment and Union (p. 40). The black (nigredo) is an
initial phase in which the matter of the Work (raw material) is dissolved in its
elements, undergoing a purification: separatio, division, putrefactio. After the
dissolution, or division, a first unification of the opposites is given, followed by death
(mortificatio, calcinatio) of the union product and a new nigredo. The albedo, or the
passage to white, is then verified, which represents the first positive result of the
Work. The white is followed by red, which marks the final achievement (pp. 50-51).
“The beginning of Alchemic Work, of the Work of transformation, it is always marked
for the “black”, from “nigredo, that corresponds to a deep spiritual crisis (…).”
In the first part of Faust tragedy, what announces the nigredo is the death, the
suicidal. It´s night and all in Faust cabinet breathes death, putrefacio. Faust,
desperate, denies sterile science and medicine that doesn’t give him the real
knowledge. For him, medicine is the “false alchemy”, the science that doesn’t cure
as he saw also in is father practice. So, this death desire is an initiatory beginning to
his alchemic trajectory. It is in this existential crisis that Mephistopheles appears: it
is necessary to have a master that will guide him in his alchemic process. This
master appears first as a black dog incarnation. The dog, in alchemy, always appears
linked to the fair, to the purification work”. To Jung (Métamorphoses de l’Àme et ses
Symboles) the black dog episode represents Faust’s spirit overture to the
unconscious world (p.91), symbolizing the excessive sexuality and sensuality.
Mephistopheles will introduce Faust to the art of living, and he discovers the art of
love in a mirror where he sees Margarita.
Margarita represents in this phase of the alchemic Work, the “perfect
white”. With Margarita Faust learns the capacity of feeling, but
Margarita begins her nigredo. The relationship with Faust will lead to
three deaths: her mother, her brother, and her sun. The latter will die
during the abandonment of Faust, who had traveled with
Mephistopheles to the cave of the witches, the cave of pleasures,
leaving her unknowingly pregnant and at the mercy of the
condemnation of the community. When Mephistopheles tell him what
happened to Margarita, he returns to encounter his abandoned
beloved in prison, condemned, waiting to be punished by death.
Faust asks Mephistopheles for help to save her with magic, but
Margarita resists and will be saved by her sacrifice of death. Faust
returns to nigredo and then begins the second part of Faust, where he
meets Helena and with the Emperor begins the construction of another
world, the Big World of progress that will destroy the Little one. Helena
represents the superior love, for Faust Helena is the philosophical
stone, the interior and unconscious world. They have a child,
Euphoricon, but there doesn’t exist an equilibrium in him and he dies.
The dream ends. Faust remembers Margarita and he tries to dedicate
himself to a humanitarian activity: make the land that will be ripped off
to the sea fertile. This action causes a war.
Once again, Faust asks for Mephistopheles’ help and manages to create the
great world, the developed world. Faust states that he intends to contemplate
his work without any kind of obstacles, which he considers magnificent, and
to obtain from it a vision without limits, he is willing to sacrifice everything
and everyone, even destroying a couple, Baucius and Philemon, who did not
want to leave Earth, that had saved and welcomed him at times and that
allowed him to pursue the construction of the great world. These will be the
last victims of his imperfection. Wishing so much to see this Great World, he
will lose his sight, thus being punished for his selfishness, but as he regrets
the deaths of Philomon and Baucius, he repents and acknowledges that it is
only by human effort, the simple human effort, that life is justified.
As a blind man, he finds the light of his soul and leaves the nigredo. No traces of
egoism remain in the hero at this time. He guides the project to his followers: to be
free among men, to live in a free land in the midst of a free people. This is how Faust
dies, given to a last vision, which only within itself came to be real but saves the soul.
It is the love of the acting force, the creative force, the "sublimating" force of the
whole universe. The chorus of the boys comments that he who has learned can
instruct them. Margarita will be his guide from now on. There is no rest in death, there
is always movement, in a spiral, in which from circle to circle progress happen,
towards an ever more perfect sublimation.
We have some materializations of this alchemic process in an opera about Faust made
by the Fura del Baus, The Damnation de Faust (Hector Berlioz, Salzburger Festspele,
1999) where the colours allow us to visualize the states of the alchemic work.
Fura del Baus, “Faust Damnation”
We have some materializations of this alchemic process in an opera about Faust
made by the Fura del Baus, “Faust Damnation” … where the changing of colours
allow us to visualize the states of the alchemic work.
In this opera, that represents the first part of the Faust, we could see a mystical
furnace, where souls enter, represented by humans who bring in their backs a
white matter, to symbolize its original purity. This matter could suffer a
metamorphose in this furnace, as happens here with the main characters, Fausto,
Mephistopheles and Margarita. White, black and red represent man transmutation.

Fura Del Baus, Video, Opera The Damnation de Faust (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0UQ8_CWms
From Alchemic process to the transformative role of performance

Apparently we could say that this alchemical process would have

nothing to do with contemporaneity, however, books like Alchemy in
Contemporary art (Urszula Szulakowska, 2011) show us the opposite,
and even in the field of performance there are authors who are often
associated with alchemy.
Joseph Beuys – “social sculpture”
Apparently we could say that this alchemical process would have nothing to do with contemporaneity,
however, books like Alchemy in Contemporary art (Urszula Szulakowska, 2011) show us the opposite, and even
in the field of performance there are authors who are often associated with alchemy. One of them is for
example Joseph Beuys, the author who stated that “every man is an artist”. The performance art has for
particularity a real action, which happens through a real body, often having a political and social approach, or
even an activist action …That real action coexists with symbolism, that surpasses the love of man for a more
universal love, an humankind love, a kind of cure, even if this love is shown by actions of contestation,
transgression, violence that criticizes and disturbs the frames of society, asking for social change.
In a journalistic text about Beuys art Olivia Lang wrote:
 
“His central interest was transformation, the alchemy of one thing turning into another. As a boy in Cleves,
northwest Germany, he had dreamed of becoming a doctor, and though art soon superseded medicine, he
continued to strive in all his varying mediums to propose magical strategies of healing, to translate sickness
into health. “Yes,” he told an interviewer in 1979, “perhaps I have a mission ... to change the social order.” It
was this gargantuan intention that unified his divergent activities, from lecture tours to sculpture”
Diogenes of Sinope – “The Philosophical
Dog”
In one of the most important representatives of Greek Cynicism, the fourth-century philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, we find a
referent of this attitude. This philosopher, nicknamed the “Dog” for his decision to divest himself of his possessions and live on the
streets in an empty barrel with a cup as his only possession, intentionally began to search for a “return to the animal nature” of
humanity (Sloterdijk 2011 [1983]:165). Thus, in public, he exposed his animal nature and corporeality, just as they were, as
opposed to his urbanity, therefore not hesitating to urinate or even masturbate in public. This display of his divesting himself of
objects and passions was combined with the use of “argumentation” (Sloterdijk 2011[1983]) or a “rhetoric of confrontation”, a
sign of protest against the opulence and corruption of Athenian society. Diogenes considered himself a citizen of the world. During
the day, it is said, he came to the point, in his “cynicism”, of walking the streets with a lantern in his hand, looking for a single
reasonable person. When the young Alexander asked him if he could satisfy a wish, he merely replied, “Yes, get out of my light”
(Sloterdijk 2011[1983]:160). In this way, a kind of cynicism was established that can reflect an effective form of resistance against
all the powers, on the basis of laughter and irony (Sloterdijk 2011[1983]:160, Maffesoli 2001:91). Diogenes thus personifies the
political animal that is searching for an honorable place for the animal side (Sloterdijk 2011[1983]:167) of humanity.
In contrast to the rhetoric of Aristotle, which presupposed the assets of order, civility, reason, decorum and civil law (Scoot and
Smith quoted by Kennedy:1999).  

Diogenes of Sinope, image, Diogenes Sitting in his Tub by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1860)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diogenes#/media/File:Jean-Léon_Gérôme_-_Diogenes_-_Walters_37131.jpg
Beuys - Coyote: I Like America and America
Likes Me (1974)
This referent for performance can be rediscovered in Beuys’ “social sculpture”
Coyote: I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) – in which, for seven days, he
interacted with a coyote in a gallery space, only protecting his body with a
walking stick and a rag. The aim was to reflect the history of the persecuted
American Indians. He traveled from Germany to America never treading another
soil in America other than the gallery space. From the airport to the gallery was
taken in an ambulance, the objective was to demonstrate the coyote syndrome.

Joseph Beuys, I Like America, America Likes me (1974)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzWjPCri8b4
Oleg Kulik – “I Bit America and America
Bite Me” (1997)
The figure of the dog has served for the most varied performances. We can star with
Oleg Kulik, the Russian performer who has repeatedly embodied the posture of the
dog, to the point of biting some of the visitors to a gallery who did not realize that
there was a “dangerous dog” beside him. His various performances, of which his
Beuysian performance I Bit America and America Bite Me (1997) was part of, emerge, in
his words, as a way of underlining “the fall of the consciousness of the human horizon.”

Oleg Kulik, video, I Bit America and America Bit Me (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRiH7ys_A_s
Wafaa Bilal - “Dog or Iraqi” (2008)
From this same perspective we can also see the “Dog or Iraqi” (2008)
performance by the Iraqi artist Wafaa Bilal, who has lived in the USA since
1992: after putting to the vote of the internet users whether a dog or he, as
an Iraqi, should be tortured (in a rigged vote), he was publicly tortured by
the waterboarding method, which induces the sensation of drowning until
the victim passes out. The site of this initiative, promoted by Torture Choice,
an American anti-torture protest group, stated that the U.S. government’s
approval of this torture technique opened the way for this “unique and
exciting” performance to be created.

https://theartstack.com/artist/wafaa-bilal/dog-iraqi-gets-waterb
The figure of the dog, which in alchemy as we have seen appeals to the
sensuality of the animal, to pathos, wants to show here a contestation
to the conflicts provoked by the man himself.
Marina Abramovick - “An Art Made of Trust,
Vulnerability and Connection”
Marina speaks to her audience by talking about the memory of her
performance Rhythm 0. The audience is barred with black bands to better
imagine the scene that she describes and their sensations. She tells us
about vulnerability, violence, loss of control. She talks about being a mirror
of the instincts of the public, of a real experience, and about her
relationship with Ulay. In fact they tell us why she prefers performance
instead of theatre.
In an interview for Sean Sean O'Hagan for The Guardian (Sunday 3
October 2010 00.04 BST) she said:"To be a performance artist, you have
to hate theatre," she replied: "Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the
blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the
opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real."
The universal themes of life and death are recurring motifs, often linked
to the use of visual symbolic elements such as crystals, bones, knives,
tables, and staves.
While some references to her work are related in her personal history
(the circumstances of his childhood and family under the Communist
yoke in former Yugoslavia), others relate to more recent and
contemporary events such as the wars in his homeland and other parts
of the world.
Her performances were marked by what she calls terrorism, sacrifice,
testing the limits of the body.
In one play, she lies on a bed, her head hanging on the edge and
screams without stopping until her voice stops. She cuts herself off,
drugged herself, brushed her hair for hours, and in 1974, she almost
died performing a play in which she stepped inside a burning 5-pointed
star.
Abramovic – “Balkan Baroque” (1997)
Abramovic made Balkan Baroque (1997) in response to the Yugoslav Civil War (1992-
95), although the images mean 'for any war, anywhere in the world'. In the original
performance of the Venice Biennale, Abramovic continually rubbed 6,000 kilograms
of flesh-blooded beef bones in front of the public. "It was summer and the smell was
unbreathable," she recalled. The task was deliberately futile: "You cannot wash the
blood of your hands, just as you cannot wash the shame of war. But it is also
important to transcend this. "As a sound, Abramovic tells stories and sings childhood
songs from the Balkans, while projecting images of herself and her parents on the
walls of the gallery. The performance also included buckets with black water. The
scene evokes both personal and collective suffering, as well as universal suffering.

Marina Abromovick, video, Balcan Barroque (1997)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbswpr7ibBA
Abramovic – “Dangerous games” (1997)

She has done another work, a film, called Dangerous games about
children games of war. We also have, as we said, her relation with her
ex-companion Ulay, with various works about trust, confidence,
duration, violence.

Marina Abromovick, vídeo, Dangerous Games (2012)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJJIn0CdHN4
We also have, as we said, her relation with her ex-companion Ulay, with
various works about trust, confidence, duration, violence.
Sia
Melati Suryodarmo – “I Love You”
Other artists work about this same issues. More recently the artist
Melati Suryodarmo has done the performance “I Love You” at the
Fondation Beyeler. As you can see the work is very simple: the artist
interacts with a big glass and says I love you. The glass, with its
transparency and its fragility was a symbol of love.

Melati Suryodarmo, video, I Love You. Performance (2014)

• Suhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1nNdU9ws-g
Lady Alchemy – “Negredo” (2014)

Another performer called Lady Alchemy mixed different worlds of

performance; from cabaret to performance art, having done the
performance Negredo (2014).
Yael Kanarek – “Love Letter” Demolition
And another performer called Yael Kanarek has done a performance
called Love Letter Demolition Performance (2010)
Yoko Ono – “Peace” (1969) and “Cut Piece”
We have for example Yoko Ono in her works about peace with John Lennon
and the performance “cut piece” where she exposes herself to the audience’s
violence in the period of the Vietnam War. We can say the same when we
refer to “Shoot” by Chris Burden.
 
Yoko Ono with John Lennon, video (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zir-k65kNo

Yoko Ono, video, cut piece (1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYJ3dPwa2tI
Takeshi Kitano – “Dolls” (2002)

In some of the art works some artists from film/ Performance or

experimentalism use ropes to state the relationship idea: black ropes or
red ropes. You have for example the film Dools (2002) from Takeshi
Kitano about a tragic love story where the lovers unite through red
ropes.

Takeshi Kitano, image and film trailer, Dolls (2002)

https://opuszine.us/reviews/dolls-takeshi-kitano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjXQoZRbXXY
Vânia Rovisco – “Metaphysical
Materia” (Berlin 2011)
But also the performance Metaphysical Materia (Berlin 2011) from
Vânia Rovisco where her naked body will be wrapped in a red string,
exposing itself to a symbolic metamorphosis that will oscillate between
eroticism (sexual organs), censorship (mouth) and immobility and
violence (head).
 
https://vaniarovisco.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/img_3194.jpg
Or even the works of Helena Almeida where she uses ropes to
construct symbolisms about relations.

http://5dias.net/2011/07/29/uma-nota-suplementar-sobre-o-video-
em-baixo-assinalado-de-helena-almeida/
Conclusion
As said by Deleuze e Guatari in the book “What is Philosophie”: “It should be said of all
art that, in relation to the percepts or visions they give us, artists are presenters of
affects, the inventors and creators of affects. They not only create them in their work,
they give them to us and make us become with them, they draw us into the
compound” (172). So, “the aim of art is (…) to extract a bloc of sensations, a pure being
of sensations” (167). In another book entitled “Dialogues II” Deleuze analyses the
questions of Spinoza's: ‘What can a body do?’, of what affects is it capable? analyzing
the role that the body has in this extraction, and he responds: “Affects are becomings:
sometimes they weaken us in so far as they diminish our power to act and decompose
our relationships (sadness), sometimes they make us stronger so far as they increase
our power and make us enter into a more vast or superior individual (joy).”
https://transversalinflections.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/deleuze-3207-what_is_phil
osophy-fenomenologie-van-schilderkunst.pdf
 
So Deleuze answers to these questions, “What is a body capable of? what affects are
you capable of?” , warning us to “experiment, but you need a lot of prudence to
experiment. We live in a world which is generally disagreeable, where not only people
but the established powers have a stake in transmitting sad affects to us. Sadness, sad
affects, are all those which reduce our power to act. The established powers need our
sadness to make us slaves. The tyrant, the priest, the captors of souls need to
persuade us that life is hard and a burden. The powers that be need to repress us no
less than to make us anxious or, as Virilio says, to administer and organize our intimate
little fears. The long, universal moan about life: the lack-to-be which is life ... In vain
someone says, 'Let's dance'; we are not really very happy. In vain someone says,
'What misfortune death is'; for one would need to have lived to have something to
lose”.
http://www.elimeyerhoff.com/books/Deleuze/Deleuze%20-%20Dialogues.pdf