The phenomenology of bloody performance art! In: The Phenomenology of Blood in Performance Art

Bloody is a colloquial term in English language used as slang in the UK to express annoyance, sometimes shock, but often for emphasis. It can also infer a sense of unpleasantness or perversion. A notable example for the context of this book originates from the Daily Record tabloid headline ‘A Bloody Disgrace!’ used to denigrate the artist Ron Athey ahead of his 1995 performance at the Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts, Scotland. This tabloid line has since been reclaimed by the artist and strategically redeployed in his own artistic merchandise, where the language now operates visually on the face of t-shirts. Here, it retains its symbolic and literal sentiment for outrage and disgust that performance artworks using blood can often produce in certain spaces, cultures, and contexts more than others. The term bloody also usefully occupies a dichotomy with language that infers biologies of bloodshed. The phraseology of ‘The Phenomenology of Bloody Performance Art’ acknowledges these complexities as blood, present and in absentia, explored in this book, occupies a cultural landscape that is exposed, challenged, and sometimes changed through the artist's application and approach to blood as a catalyst.