Abstract
This chapter presents a three-stage phenomenological reduction of witnessing a moment in a bloody performance art event, examining the interplay between concealment and unconcealment within the act of “audiencing.” Moving from a mundane description to a transcendental reduction, the analysis interrogates the intentional structure of performance art that pushes bodily limits, questioning both the artist’s purpose and the spectator’s response.
Stage I offers a visceral, first-person narrative of encountering a performance at Tempting Failure in Bristol, 2013. The account highlights a persistent sense of alienation, discomfort, and absorption, emphasizing how audience perception is shaped by personal memory, space, and affective atmosphere. A single moment—an indigent performer lying under a blanket, partially covered by an audience member—becomes the catalyst for deeper phenomenological inquiry.
Stage II problematizes conventional notions of empathy, arguing that attempts to “feel” the artist’s suffering are ultimately self-referential, concealing rather than revealing the other’s experience. Drawing on Edith Stein and Husserl’s theories of intersubjectivity, Grant suggests that bloody performance art exposes the limits of empathy, demanding instead a confrontation with the unknowability of another’s pain.
Stage III advances a transcendental reduction, positing that bloody performance art enacts an ontological rupture, marking the boundaries of selfhood through its radical exposure of embodied limits. Referencing Levinas and Schmitz, the chapter frames this as an ethical encounter that challenges the audience to reckon with distance, separation, and the fundamental impossibility of mutual experience.
Through this layered analysis, the chapter reveals how bloody performance art does not simply depict suffering but actively performs the conditions of intentionality, compelling audiences to confront their own role in processes of witnessing, meaning-making, and existential self-reflection.
Stage I offers a visceral, first-person narrative of encountering a performance at Tempting Failure in Bristol, 2013. The account highlights a persistent sense of alienation, discomfort, and absorption, emphasizing how audience perception is shaped by personal memory, space, and affective atmosphere. A single moment—an indigent performer lying under a blanket, partially covered by an audience member—becomes the catalyst for deeper phenomenological inquiry.
Stage II problematizes conventional notions of empathy, arguing that attempts to “feel” the artist’s suffering are ultimately self-referential, concealing rather than revealing the other’s experience. Drawing on Edith Stein and Husserl’s theories of intersubjectivity, Grant suggests that bloody performance art exposes the limits of empathy, demanding instead a confrontation with the unknowability of another’s pain.
Stage III advances a transcendental reduction, positing that bloody performance art enacts an ontological rupture, marking the boundaries of selfhood through its radical exposure of embodied limits. Referencing Levinas and Schmitz, the chapter frames this as an ethical encounter that challenges the audience to reckon with distance, separation, and the fundamental impossibility of mutual experience.
Through this layered analysis, the chapter reveals how bloody performance art does not simply depict suffering but actively performs the conditions of intentionality, compelling audiences to confront their own role in processes of witnessing, meaning-making, and existential self-reflection.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Feb 2025 |