ANDRE STITT
PERFORMANCE AKSHUN

ASA - European
Performance Conference 29th Sept. 1996

"Second Skin - Europe Endless"

lf only 1 could throw away the urge to trace my pattems in your heart 1 could really see you

The central metaphor in the performance is the use of an enamel bathtub, continually beaten, hammered and ritually cleansed to expose and evoke the profound depths of Ihe human souls spirit and inlegrity. The akshun explores the conflicting roles of control & abandonment, power & powerlessness-; forms of Aggression & victimisation.

One cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one see oneself.

The psychological and built environment becomes a second skin. The more removed we are held within the protection of our second skin the more divorced we become from truth, compassion and justice; from reality, nature and life.

Ethnic cleansing becomes global cleansing via inquisition technology. The human body and by associafion, all life becomes reduced to the unknowing and disempowered object of surveillance.

In utilising these metaphors and structural devices within a performance context the artist is continuing to explore and express concems and issues central to lifework: power, control, oppression, manipulation, freedom, spiritual growth an the commodification of human/nature consciousness. Central to these concems is the relationship between human addiction, fear/destruction, group narcissism, and the seeming inability to make coherent choices on a local, communal, global scale.

The akshuns are seen as part of a continuous ongoing revelatory evolution initiated during February 1996 under the functioning title: Akshun Cycle Phase II - Threshold (threshold: point of entry - limit below which a stimulus ceases be perceptible) and further addresses personal recurrent themes of mental & physical torture, emotional and spiritual loss and the journey toward redemption.

We all wear masks and the time comes when we cannot remove them without tearing our own skin

(André Stitt 1996)