|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
The concept of ‘EXTREME ART AND LITERATURE’ changes all the time.
What is actually ‘extreme’ today – in a mixture of globablised, regionalised, nationalised and localised perspectives ? My own opinion is that ‘extreme art and literature’ today takes its starting point in the accepted banalities of everyday life, experiences and consciousness on the respective and combined levels (social, philosophical, political, economical, sexual and spiritual). Contemporary ‘extreme art / literature’ no longer attempts to shock in an obvious way, but rather entices the public to feel that he / she is a ‘member’ of the experiential understanding and consciousness, only to interject a "triggering" aspect that creates a sense of uncomfortableness caused by the realization that one has been busted by a banality. These “trigger mechanisms” are (in fact) integral parts of the art itself – often passing by in fleeting moments, sometimes blended in with an obsessive and "flat" (journalistic or photojournalistic) expression or a long tirade of banalities that do not even pretend to be surrealistic. These small "electrical shock" triggers will hopefully ignite an inner experience within the public so that the viewer / reader begins to investigate his / her own personal reality, his / her actual contributions to a collective reality and hopefully to re-evaluate his / her own concept of what one prefers to create as an individual and collective reality. The illusion of spiritual and emotion separation (the illusion that we are all separate, individual and self-sustaining entities that can determine our roles on Terra or in the Interlife totally without contact or influence with / from others) is a vital element here, and that common illusion is therefore "fertile ground" for artists. Here we artists and authors can play, provoke, prevaricate, entice, seduce and fool the audience to believe in us as a part of "themselves", and then trigger the reader / viewer to consider the possibility that there might be (in fact) a miscommunication or misconception running loose ... a sense of everyday reality that is inconsistent or which has consequences that one was never aware of.
Perhaps the most meaningful and interactive way to help another person to 'wake up' from their perceptual drowsiness is to enter into their everyday dreams and illusions (their banalities) and
suddenly say "BOO !!!" Artists and authors who attempt to shock through
their art with the blatantly obvious, often thus fail to
explore and exploit the deeper, symbolic depths of the
subconscious and the more mystical elements
that make up our everyday and banal thoughts, activities,
attitudes etc., and therefore are denied "personal access" by some viewers / readers who may consider the art to be too intellectual, too elitist, too directly confrontational, or too foreign. Sex and religion are often used today in art and literature as "shock elements". It is not necessarily sex or religion which are provocative
or interesting in themselves, but rather the unspoken
and quietly accepted perceptions that we chain ourselves
to unquestionably, and which can totally be set in chaos
just by the artist and author changing or adding one simple
element or context that we do not feel belongs in our reality-defining
"picture".
‘Extreme art and literature’ is thus not blatantly provocative in itself; it rather shows the audience the possible ramifications of acceptance, non-involvement, personal meanings and behaviour by confronting us with triggered or mixed in ‘extreme’ moments, and then lets the audience choose to begin its own personal creative life process of evalution and re-creation (if desired) ... without commentary or guidance.
Adam Donaldson Powell, Norway
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
BODY OF POET
("Annihilation is the invaluable sumptuousness!"
(Georges BATAILLE)
In some details is the project the critical confrontation between the forms of the traditional art, to which we all have already got accustomed? And is it a form of the extreme, for which the notion of “norm” is hostile? Practice confirms that the accent is made on the shocking discrepancy, which makes a “break” in the settled values. The imperative of the extreme art is not to trifle round with who has to evaluate it, but to cut and hitch him up from the inside and reveal the “interiors” of the common psyche and consciousness. It is a special form of torture and at best a try to put to death always “untouchables”: readers, spectators and so on. In 1969 great French theoretic and practice of “the art of body” Michael Journiac composed a special treatise, containing the following: “How to transform the body into the work of art. Conditions: 1. You should bequeath your body to Journiac. 2. You should die”. “You will die to become a masterpiece”. Since then the dead human body is not only an inert form of the substance. Tattooings, scarings, maimings are the saint signs of freedom which are realized as a new language and form its nontextual and overtotalitarian discurs. “A wound now is no more a damage of the tissue, but a new rule”. The borders of this breaching “negations” and revolutionary ideas are already gave up or left behind in history of Russia. First and foremost it touches upon the extremely discrepant art of AZsacra (Master of Death). He made people speak about himself by means of “the art of body”, using photography as one of the presentation means of his own Games with the death as well as of his risky experiments on his body and reason. Identifying himself only through the spiritual rebel, AZsacra maintained his art in quite different “acts of death”, which are performed before the video and photo cameras. At the moment he is the author of the most complex extreme philosophy which reveals, scares and captivates us at one time. His over..crossing the borders overgressing art combines five most nihilistic aesthetics: “how to lead philosophy with a hammer” by Nietzsche, “wish to be killed with roses” by Mishima, “to die and to become a masterpiece” by Journiac, “clearing theater of cruelty” by Antonin Artaud, and “western zen” by de Sade. Such “detonating mixture” was necessary for AZsacra only to reveal and raise his own idea of “the body as the cipher of the absolute freedom”. Body is the only clear mirror. Forcing the danger and horror reveal itself in it, the creator works out his own form of the language. Negative aggression is incessantly established as the overpositive will to Nihil. It is something like Zen without zen. AZsacra proposes: “Poetics is not the power of the word, but an extra strong psycho and physical development. Not the language of reason but only will, playing in the centre of the body, creates a masterpiece. We should go forward behind “Hatred to Poetry”, “Flowers of evil”, and even behind Tommazo Marinetti with his scaring “no masterpiece if no aggression”. And really instead of shy “guillotine weeds” pseudoradical performances and installations of the most actual art AZsacra does the Other and the Present, which is the break of the culture by means of deadly Game in realities. His “art of aggression” turns into transgression and overgression only to break with these limits. And if in “Body mass” Journiac used his own blood to treat the spectators, AZsacra does (manifests!) something more important. He burns himself cruelly, cuts, pierces himself, puts his own body to the blows of heavy chains and hammers. “When I really, practically, on all hundred percent “lead my philosophy by means of the hammer”, I inevitably come to the effect of the “final Nietzsche”. I recover his “incomplete philosophy” by means of my own body. And in this case it is better to be killed by everyone then to be publicly recognized”. It is the mission of the creator damned by the society, which is to attack the culture of prosperity, money and comfort, where everyone becomes “the body of inspection”, even being deprived of the opportunity to become a slave. Overtaking death in every second, AZsacra reminds us of the Grandeur of the Order, which is Freedom when no one is free. Nothing without Nothing! There is no AZsacra, only "azsacracidos" of the word and image, which illuminates the ritual of the intrusion into the powerful sphere of philosophy by means of the art “to be killed”. He is and realizes himself without the context of fear! Muscular cipher of the body, symbols of maimings and anticodes of tattoos will always challenge and dominate because only they are the basic expressive means of the genuine freedom. AZsacra’s wounds are furiously and afflictedly transferred into the pure poetry of the “bloody metaphors”. Blows, cuts, piercings represent the maximally tragic objectification of “the body-in-itself”, what in the end brings not to something like a purified body-art or hedonistic body-building, but to quite the opposite: transformation of the body to the object of art through the jump into Death:
unfamiliar spring to people -
flower sketch on the opposite
side of the mirror
- by AZsacra Zarathustra, Russia.
(photograph of Zarathustra by TheatreOfCrueltyNOH.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
